I’m not sure there’s anything surprising there… They all hate his guts, since most of them are rational people and have the benefit of plenty of intelligence profiling confirming what we all know, that he’s a genuine sociopathic narcissist and is easily manipulated.

They’re doing what needs to be done to weather a violent storm, trying to manipulate him towards good (or less evil) to counteract Putin manipulating him towards evil (or more evil), and nothing more.

I suspect, with gerrymandering the House creating a nearly insurmountable GOP advantage (would not be surprised to see nationally +5-10% democratic votes but end up with a GOP House majority), this may be the moment non-fascists lost any chance to avoid a trifecta MAGA government for the next two years - and maybe beyond.

To be clear, I am not blaming this on anyone but Platner, to the extent we can (as we must) guess at the truth without a criminal investigation and trial. But I admit, I would have really liked for these stories to be not true. I could buy him lacking awareness of the tattoo, and further his uncovered private Reddit posts corroborated that he legitimately was going to fight for left causes and was not a Fetterman. And the timing means the story being released now is suspicious as hell.

But corroboration as detailed as this, with reliable journalism checking contemporaneous sources, makes the story credible. After all, the likely fact that it’s a political hit piece doesn’t make it not true, and in fact the ideal hit piece is one that is true. And if this story is true, then yes, that disqualifies him and also means he likely would lose the general even if he didn’t withdraw. This isn’t a Franken if the story is true - Franken was sacrificed by Gillibrand and others for a stupid but ultimately harmless photo, not any actual physical contact or conduct at all.

I agree with everyone here dooming about Maine’s chances now, though. Democratic insiders will always choose a safe loss over a risky victory.

Obviously we need to keep pushing as hard as we can to salvage November, but also keep one eye on what we need to do to resist the next stage of politically unopposed fascism from 2027-2028 (as if figuring out how to resist the fascism already here wasn’t enough).

Why would anyone just give you $200 like that?

Well, I take that to mean that Google (ad profit), Meta (ad profit), and Nvidia (hardware profit) are profitable companies even if AI is a notorious money-sink. I do agree that if they weren’t able to absorb vertigo-inducing billions of dollars of AI losses via their other income, the AI bubble would have popped already.

It’s important to remember, there’s no point in fighting against a worse future. Especially if you are in the minority, since you’ll lose anyway. Resign yourself to things getting objectively worse because nobody likes a whiner.

“Instead of chasing AI”? They heavily implement AI to lay off employees, even though it severely degrades service.

Their whole business model is just typical private equity nihilism. Buy a business with a lot of user inertia, strip out all the development and maintenance costs while leaving the bare essentials to keep subscriptions or ad revenue flowing, and let the hollowed out business zombie-walk as long as it makes money.

Fluff journalism.

This is perfect for a needlepoint kitchen hanging.

Dead corporation theory.

This is not to say that Trump has not had success influencing America’s electoral system, particularly in the past year. The president has elevated MAGA-friendly election deniers into the federal government, sicced the Justice Department on his political enemies, and drafted multiple agencies into his relentless hunt to substantiate his broad claims of voter fraud. The Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais ruling in April gutted the Voting Rights Act and cleared the way for several Republican-led states to redraw congressional maps and eliminate Democrat-leaning districts with large portions of minority voters. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court rolled back campaign-finance restrictions on political parties, which Trump hailed as “A BIG WIN FOR REPUBLICANS.” At the state level, pro-Trump lawmakers have implemented miniature versions of the SAVE America Act or found other ways to support the president’s vision for voting. At least 10 states have voluntarily turned over the personal information of millions of voters to the Justice Department.

Unfortunately, here’s the paragraph that reveals this article to be hopium/copium.

I am holding out my own hope that voter anger will be impossible to gerrymander away. But the Supreme Court rubber-stamping racial gerrymandering will very likely result in an insurmountable bias towards the GOP in the House. With Virginia striking down the democratic gerrymander to counteract GOP’s huge gains in Texas, Florida and the deep south states, although I haven’t seen a detailed analysis yet, I assume democrats will now need +5-7% at least in general ballots to overcome new built-in right bias.

That’s the thing about fascists who want to tear down a system. We need to win every fight to uphold our institutions; they just need to win once or twice. As Trump plans to do, they attack the chain at its weakest links, suppressing or invalidating votes and voter will in a few key left-leaning districts. Like most sociopaths Trump and his strategists - Miller, Bannon and Stone before that - know that compliance may not happen the first time they attempt to break their victims, so they keep trying things until they find what does.

The DOJ losing so many cases is great, sure, but we absolutely cannot take lightly how harder their few victories have made it for us through gerrymandering, infinite PAC spending, and all the usual GOP suppression tactics. We will need to work as hard as we can this fall to make sure they do not subvert the will of voters.

Hearn “forcefully and violently” pulled the pool’s lining, she said.

But asked whether the pool’s lining was already damaged when Hearn touched it, Pirro said she was “not going to get into the evidence.”

“What I told you is what our witnesses saw and experienced,” she said. “Irrespective of whether or not we think there is some situation that preceded it, we can state and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he caused damage.”

I swear, these people somehow seem to be addicted to the sounds of their own voices and yet can’t even hear themselves talk.

I hope you aren’t putting wrecked EV batteries anywhere there may be flammable anything, such as near your house, your neighbor’s house, a forest…

“Tina Peters just came to the White House to thank me for getting her released from prison in Colorado,” the president wrote. “She was put there because she found Election Fraud, but instead of arresting the people that committed the Fraud, they arrested her!”

Trump posted a photograph of the two of them smiling from behind his desk in the Oval Office.

See, Jared? You went out of your way to try to score points with one convicted fraudster by releasing another convicted fraudster, and of course after you’ve debased yourself and justice, and now breathed new life into their denialism by showing none of them have to suffer any consequences, none of these people will even give you credit for any of what you did.

Do you see how much you’ve owned yourself, Jared? Will you learn anything from it?

I don’t disagree, but thatsthejoke.jpg

Yes, that’s of course fair. Even if it’s not perfect compliance, though, the more people hold out, the faster and lower prices drop, so there’s still value in it.

But short of regulation, is there anything else within our power to do?

OpenAI and Anthropic’s IPOs +2-4 weeks is my best guess for when the market starts sliding. Investor money is already drying up, but too many rich people haven’t cashed out yet, helping themselves (like SpaceX) to our index retirement funds to countersign withdrawals at the inflated valuations.

I’m on the fence after that if it’ll happen slow or fast. Possible we’ll get a Bear Stearns/Lehman type failure that brings down the world’s markets, after a major player no longer has a blank check at multi-billion/quarter burn rates, and hits insolvency like a freight train. But also likely it could unravel more slowly like a sweater, as de-escalating levels of market access pull on the thread in turn.

Don’t doom too much about this headline. HBM contracts represent artificial AI demand. When the bubble pops (and it will pop), the HBM demand evaporates and it’s back to competing for consumers. That said, there will be a very slow ratchet to get back to consumer-competitive prices, because as component costs go down, additional companies will be “priced in” to speculative AI business models, even if hyperscalers and other AI-drunk multinationals are backing off.

Regardless of whether there is a bubble, though, AI spending is ludicriously, unsustainably inflated even from existing memory customers. They are purchasing one-time AI infrastructure that needs to last a decade to even have a remote chance of paying off the hardware investments. There are only a few companies that can afford current AI pricing, those companies have already played their hands and paid for allocations, and they will not keep purchasing at this pace even in their own best case scenarios.

Regulation could keep consumer prices down, but of course we’re in the bad Trump timeline and that won’t happen until at least 2028. Assuming the bubble pops before then, the key to resetting this “new normal” is to NOT purchase anything you do not need to until we’re back to $80-130 / 64GB or cheaper, like it was in 2025. Hold out, make them desperate to lower prices.

The fear is that, if the past is anything to go by, the AI boom will follow a similar arc to these other technology-driven infrastructure booms: a flood of speculative capital will flow in, leading to massive overinvestment, asset price bubbles and ultimately a crash as euphoria collides with a disappointing reality.

Shocking.

Next up: Meta plans rural backyard wrestling league. Analysts expect a healthy side business selling whippits.

In his memo, Zuckerberg predicted that even more difficult days could be ahead for the company, despite vowing to hold off on any future layoffs for the rest of the year.

“Given the complexity of these changes, we’ve made mistakes and will almost certainly make more,” he admitted.

“I will certainly make more mistakes that you will have to pay for, but I can promise you you will probably not be laid off for at least six months.”