Browsed by
Author: From elsewhere

Elon Musk is deliberately ‘strengthening those who are weakening Europe’

Elon Musk is deliberately ‘strengthening those who are weakening Europe’

Anne Applebaum writes: Only one institution on the planet is large enough and powerful enough to write and enforce laws that could make the tech companies change their policies. Partly for that reason, the European Union may soon become one of the Trump administration’s most prominent targets. In theory, the EU’s Digital Services Act, which took full effect last year, can be used to regulate, fine, and, in extreme circumstances, ban internet companies whose practices clash with European laws. Yet…

Read More Read More

How youth pop culture has embraced Trump

How youth pop culture has embraced Trump

Brock Colyar writes: [T]he youngest, most online members of Trump’s party have acquired his knack for turning the culture wars into something as entertaining as reality TV. Attention is power. One honoree of the night [at the Power 30 Awards, held at Sax nightclub in Washington DC, the night before the inauguration] was DuRousseau, whose TikTok is full of sometimes transphobic rants for a target audience he describes as “Beverly Hills conservatives.” “When you look back, this was the first…

Read More Read More

What to make of China’s suddenly popular DeepSeek AI model

What to make of China’s suddenly popular DeepSeek AI model

Matteo Wong writes: One week ago, a new and formidable challenger for OpenAI’s throne emerged. A Chinese AI start-up, DeepSeek, launched a model that appeared to match the most powerful version of ChatGPT but, at least according to its creator, was a fraction of the cost to build. The program, called DeepSeek-R1, has incited plenty of concern: Ultrapowerful Chinese AI models are exactly what many leaders of American AI companies feared when they, and more recently President Donald Trump, have…

Read More Read More

They followed North Carolina election rules when they voted. Now their votes could be tossed out.

They followed North Carolina election rules when they voted. Now their votes could be tossed out.

By Doug Bock Clark This story was originally published by ProPublica A Republican judge has spent more than two months trying to overturn his narrow defeat for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat by arguing that around 60,000 ballots should be tossed out. But many residents have only recently learned that their votes are in danger of not being counted and say they have done nothing wrong. ProPublica has heard from dozens of voters who expressed astonishment and anger at…

Read More Read More

The oil companies that are hugely positive about Trump have no plans to ‘drill, baby, drill’

The oil companies that are hugely positive about Trump have no plans to ‘drill, baby, drill’

The New York Times reports: President Trump is swinging American energy policy sharply in favor of fossil fuels, but oil and gas companies say those changes won’t push them to engage in the frenzy of new drilling that Mr. Trump wants. The oil industry is thrilled by Mr. Trump’s executive orders, which are designed to make life harder for renewable energy companies and easier for oil, gas and pipeline businesses. But on the critical question of whether his policies will…

Read More Read More

Does the DeepSeek AI advance mark a global technology tipping point?

Does the DeepSeek AI advance mark a global technology tipping point?

Deepseek R1 is AI's Sputnik moment. — Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 (@pmarca) January 26, 2025 The New York Times reports: Advances in artificial intelligence by Chinese upstarts rattled U.S. markets on Monday, with the threat of greater competition prompting a slide in shares of the biggest technology companies. The Chinese A.I. company DeepSeek has said it can match the abilities of cutting-edge chatbots while using a fraction of the specialized computer chips that leading A.I. companies rely on. That’s prompted investors…

Read More Read More

80 years after Auschwitz, Elon Musk promotes fascism

80 years after Auschwitz, Elon Musk promotes fascism

Brian J. Griffith writes: Similar to many 20th-century European fascists, Musk has expressed strong anxiety regarding what he perceives to be White demographic “decline” in the West, a disdain for labor unions and left-wing politics in general, and has even dabbled in promoting, however loosely, Holocaust denialism. To Musk, much like far-right thinkers 100 years ago, Trump represents a Strongman approach to “restorative” politics, at a time when, from Musk’s perspective, society, culture, and economics are increasingly disjointed and “in decline.” Put plainly, like…

Read More Read More

Firing inspectors general begins Trump’s assault on the rule of law

Firing inspectors general begins Trump’s assault on the rule of law

Michael J. Kelly writes: After sundown Friday, a new crack appeared in the wall of America’s rule of law. A wall that protected us for two and a half centuries, but that’s showing signs of strain. It is axiomatic that corrupt governments eliminate those responsible for policing corruption. The Friday night massacre of over a dozen inspectors general across the executive branch lays the groundwork for taking over that government from within. The job of an agency or department’s Inspector…

Read More Read More

Trump pardoned the January 6 convicts. Now his DOJ is burying the evidence of the rioters’ crimes

Trump pardoned the January 6 convicts. Now his DOJ is burying the evidence of the rioters’ crimes

CNN reports: As President Donald Trump this week sought to rewrite the history of his supporters’ attack on the US Capitol, a database detailing the vast array of criminal charges and successful convictions of January 6 rioters was removed from the Department of Justice’s website. The searchable database served as an easily accessible repository of all January 6, 2021, cases prosecuted by the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. The US attorney’s office declined to comment. The removal…

Read More Read More

A Palestinian father and journalist reflects on the ceasefire in Gaza

A Palestinian father and journalist reflects on the ceasefire in Gaza

Mohammed Mhawish writes: On the morning of Sunday, Jan. 19, I turned to my son, Rafik. He was building something with blocks, his small hands working furiously to stack them higher and higher. I watched as the tower wobbled and fell. He laughed and started over again. He kept rebuilding, and it kept falling, over and over. I could feel it inside me, somehow — joy and sorrow fighting for control, just like my son’s toy tower. One moment, his…

Read More Read More

Sweden suspects ‘gross sabotage’ after damage to communications cable under Baltic Sea

Sweden suspects ‘gross sabotage’ after damage to communications cable under Baltic Sea

The New York Times reports: The Swedish authorities on Monday boarded a ship in connection with what they described as “gross sabotage” after an undersea communications cable in the Baltic Sea was damaged a day earlier. The ship was escorted to the coast of Sweden for an investigation, the authorities said. “We suspect that a serious act of sabotage was committed in the Swedish economic zone yesterday,” Mats Ljungqvist, the Swedish prosecutor leading the investigation into the damage, said in…

Read More Read More

Songbirds being killed by topical pesticides used for pet fleas and ticks

Songbirds being killed by topical pesticides used for pet fleas and ticks

The Guardian reports: Songbird chicks are being killed by high levels of pesticides in the pet fur used by their parents to line their nests, a study has found. Researchers surveying nests for the harmful chemical found in pet flea treatments found that it was present in every single nest. The scientists from the University of Sussex are now calling for the government to urgently reassess the environmental risk of pesticides used in flea and tick treatments and consider restricting…

Read More Read More

How the roots of Musk and Thiel’s ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa

How the roots of Musk and Thiel’s ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa

Chris McGreal reports: When Elon Musk’s arm shot out in a stiff arm salute at Donald Trump’s inaugural celebrations, startled viewers mostly drew the obvious comparison. But in the fired-up debate about Musk’s intent that followed, as the world’s richest man insisted he wasn’t trying to be a Nazi, speculation inevitably focused on whether his roots in apartheid-era South Africa offered an insight. In recent months Musk’s promotion of far-right conspiracy theories has grown, from a deepening hostility to democratic…

Read More Read More

Head of Jewish Council for Public Affairs says Musk will spur violence with his ‘Nazi salute’

Head of Jewish Council for Public Affairs says Musk will spur violence with his ‘Nazi salute’

The Guardian reports: The head of a prominent US Jewish civil rights body said Elon Musk’s repeated fascist-style salute during Donald Trump’s inauguration could act as a spur for violent extremists. “The salute itself should be enough to warrant condemnation and attention,” said Amy Spitalnick, adding that so should “the ways extremists see an action like this and take it as license for their own violent extremism”. Spitalnick is chief executive of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a progressive…

Read More Read More