How Chronic Disease Became the Biggest Scourge in American Health Americans live shorter and sicker lives than people in other high-income countries. (Brianna Abbott / WSJ) —
AI therapy is a surveillance machine in a police state: Big Tech wants you to share your private thoughts with chatbots, while backing the US government and its contempt for privacy. (Adi Robertson / The Verge)
For One Hilarious, Terrifying Day, Elon Musk’s Chatbot Lost Its Mind
Grok’s AI incident highlights the limitations of generative AI, emphasizing the need for vigilant fact-checking and care in its use.
"Trumpism relies on the fusion of two groups of people: a tiny number of oligarchs, and millions of everyday people who are constantly victimized by those oligarchs."
… To get this latter group of Christmas-voting turkeys to stay in the coalition, Trump needs to deliver something that keeps them happy. Mostly, Trump delivers negative things to keep them happy – the spectacle of public cruelty to immigrants, women, trans people, academics, etc. There is a certain libidinal satisfaction that comes from watching your enemies suffer – but you can’t eat schadenfreude. You can’t make rent or put braces on your kids’ teeth or pay your medical bills with the sadistic happiness you feel when you hear the sobs of people you’ve been taught to despise.
For Trump to keep the turkeys voting for Christmas, he needs to do something for them. He can’t just do things to scapegoats. But America’s eminently guillotineable oligarchs have found so many ways to turn working peoples’ torment into riches, and they are so greedy and unwilling to give up any of those grifts, that Trump can’t manage to deliver anything positive to his base.
What to Get in the Next Uprising (Hamilton Nolan) — The collapse of corporate DEI should teach the left a lesson for the next uprising: Don’t seek policies. Seek the power to make policies.
Why The New Surgeon General Pick Might Be The Most Dangerous One Yet (The Disabled Ginger)
“Wellness” is eugenics adjacent. It’s always been about hiding or eliminating the disabled and chronically ill, not about actually helping them.
Surgeon General nominee Casey Means is a “wellness influencer,” as is RFK Jr. and Medicaire/Medicaid administrator Dr. Oz.
Personalization, The Vastly Bigger Story Behind the Pimpmobile Jet Bribe
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:
Calling it a “bribe” almost doesn’t do it justice. It’s more like the decked-out Maserati one Fortune 50 CEO gives to another after they ink a $100 billion merger – a kind of token of appreciation for a vastly larger transaction, which in the case of Trump involves subverting U.S. foreign policy to the interests not only of Trump’s pocketbook but cementing his power within the U.S. If Trump can use his power as President to cut in all the big CEOs on the money geyser in Saudi Arabia, you can bet they are going to stay securely on his side in the U.S.
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We’ll focus on Trump wanting to be king. That’s another reason why he likes those folks – even the ones who bankroll Hamas. They’re kings. They get it. They’re Trump’s kinda guys.
As a neighbor of Ukraine and host to more than 2 million of its war refugees, Poland has seen, heard and felt what Russia is capable of, and it is now preparing for the worst.
In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration.
Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us. Raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.
— Bruce Springsteen, kicking off his “Land of Hopes and Dreams” tour, Manchester, UK.