Moltbook was peak AI theater | MIT Technology Review: Moltbook looks less like a window onto the future and more like a mirror held up to our own obsessions with AI today. It also shows us just how far we still are from anything that resembles general-purpose and fully autonomous AI.
'A very dangerous person': alarm as Pete Hegseth revels in carnage of Iran war | US military | The Guardian: With machismo, Christian nationalism and callousness toward the lives of US troops, they say, Hegseth's puerile displays on TV are aimed at sating Trump's desire for a warmonger worthy of the manosphere. This was reinforced by a lurid social media video that intersperses clips from Hollywood blockbusters such as Braveheart, Gladiator, Superman and Top Gun with Hegseth and real kill-shot footage of the attacks in Iran.
Effort Without Improvement - Kristie De Garis: We're told that health, like success, is something you earn through discipline, restraint, and the right behaviour. If you work hard enough, comply closely enough, optimise carefully enough, improvement will follow. Chronic illness disrupts that extremely saleable, inspirational narrative. It produces people who do everything right and still don't get better. In fact, I have never met a group of people who are doing more right than the chronically ill. And society, rather than question the belief, questions the person.
BuzzFeed Nearing Bankruptcy After Disastrous Turn Toward AI: [After announcing their AI pivot the] company’s stock price jumped aggressively, from around $3 per share to north of $15. But longer-term, neither insiders nor the public were particularly compelled by the move. [...] After the initial spike in enthusiasm, the company's stock took a massive beating; as of this week, its shares are hovering around 70 cents. Now, three years after its AI pivot, the writing is on the wall.
Endgame for the Open Web - Anil Dash: Tim Berners-Lee is no billionaire, but none of those guys with the hundreds of billions of dollars would have all of their riches without him. And the thanks he gets from them is that they're trying to kill the beautiful gift that he gave to the world, and replace it with a tedious, extortive slop mall.