Feed aggregator

A wave of anti-immigrant violence rocked Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday night after a Sudanese man was charged with attempted murder in a knife attack in the city. Racists have used the tragedy to stoke outrage at the broader immigrant community, and they’ve been aided by Elon Musk, the world’s richest person. The wave of violence forced immigrant families to evacuate their homes after…

Source

The media giant is pushing to expand its mobile and gaming business.

The most AI-obsessed firms are spending roughly $7,500 monthly per employee on AI, per Ramp AI Index. That's not more than an engineer's salary — yet.

Graham Platner, the rugged oyster farmer positioning himself as a progressive populist, won Maine’s Democratic Senate Primary on Tuesday, earning more than 70 percent of the vote so far. He is now slated to face incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins in the November general election.

By some measures, the outcome was long-expected, since Governor Janet Mills announced she was suspending her Senate bid back in April. But at that point, only some of the salacious revelations about Platner’s past had come to light: namely, his tattoo resembling a Nazi Totenkopf symbol (he has since covered it up), and the racist and sexist posts he penned on Reddit more than a decade ago, including ones questioning why Black people “don’t tip” and criticizing sexual assault victims for not taking responsibility for what happened to them.

Since then, additional allegations against Platner have emerged. One June article by the New York Times quoted some of Platner’s past romantic partners, including one who was a Republican operative, who characterized their relationships with Platner as “unsettling.” And a May story by the Wall Street Journal indicated Platner had sexted other women while married. During his speech accepting the primary nomination on Tuesday, Platner leaned into a redemption-arc narrative. “If you believe, as I do, that we can change our politics, and change our country, then you must also believe that people can change,” Platner said, speaking at a YMCA. “And the reason I believe that is because I have lived it—and the reason I have lived it is because of my wife.”

“If you believe, as I do, that we can change our politics, and change our country, then you must also believe that people can change.”

A couple of decades ago, these revelations would have been disqualifying. But as the Democrats confront how to win back voters who have—now twice—elected a president with a penchant for his own sexist, racist, and even criminal behaviors, Platner’s proliferating controversies are perhaps less disqualifying, and possibly even endearing to some discontented Americans.

As New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie said in a recent podcast episode about the rise of the “dirtbag” Democrat, Platner is not just a candidate but a manifestation of the crossroads at which the Democratic Party now finds itself.

“It stands with how you view the kinds of people that Democrats tend to recruit to run for office. Should they be polished, with the right credentials?” asked Bouie. “Or should there be a bit of a looser and more open approach to candidate recruitment?”

And yet, character does matter. At least it seemed to be relevant in 2020, when Collins focused on her opponent, Maine Speaker of the House Sarah Gideon, the then-Democratic nominee, and accused her of not investigating a fellow state representative who had been accused of preying upon teenage girls. Six years later, I wanted to know how a candidate like Platner pulled off a victory in Maine’s Democratic primary in spite of—or maybe even because of—his questionable past. So I asked Musa al-Gharbi, an associate sociology professor at Stony Brook University who wrote the best-selling book “We Have Never Been Woke,” which examines how political correctness isn’t the remedy to inequality that elites have assumed.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why do you think Graham Platner emerged as the winner in the Maine Senate Primary?

One thing that influenced how the primary shook out is that there are a lot of people within the Democratic coalition who recognize there’s a large cultural distance between them and the rest of society. Maine is a pretty rural state; it’s a pretty purple state, and so they were maybe thinking, hoping, that someone like Platner would send a different set of social signals than the typical Democrat. The problem, though, is that on the one hand, he’s someone who positions himself as working-class, but the reality is he is from a pretty affluent family. He positions himself as an oyster farmer, but the farm provides stuff mostly to his mother’s restaurant. The house that he lives in was bought with a $200,000 loan from his father. An open question in the general election would be: To what extent are swing voters going to buy into this portrayal of himself that he’s tried to cultivate?

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) is another example of a wealthy person from elite schools who positions himself as this average-Joe kind of a person. Even to the point of wearing hoodies to Congress. Here’s a pro tip: Someone who’s genuinely poor and from a working-class background who made it into Congress wouldn’t be showing up in a hoodie.

So, how much do Platner’s alleged controversies factor into the choices of voters who are on the fence in the General Election?

A lot of working-class voters, irregular voters, and so on, are often over-willing to overlook various types of indiscretions of politicians who represent them, as long as they have the sense that this person is on their side and not looking down on them—even if the candidate isn’t a saint, even if they have serious character flaws.

In a world where a lot of voters have come to feel like neither party and almost no candidate is actually going to help them or improve their lives, then the main thing that they have left to vote on is basically, “Okay, well, if my life is not going to be meaningfully improved by these folks in Washington either way, then I can at least vote for the person who doesn’t hate me.”

In his best-selling 2024 book, “We Have Never Been Woke,” Sociologist Musa Al-Gharbi explains how elite progressives use social justice rhetoric to gain more power, without helping the marginalized people they claim to care about.

Is there a world in which Platner’s controversies and mainstream media’s reactions to them make him even more appealing to some voters in Maine?

To the extent that people feel like a politician is being held to an irrelevant standard (i.e. Who cares about his sex life? I’m not hiring him to be my son-in-law), or to a needlessly high standard, then that can redound to the benefit of the person who is being targeted. It can generate more sympathy.

For instance, when people were calling Trump racist. For a lot of voters who themselves feel unfairly maligned as racists, it just evokes something in them that actually makes this person more sympathetic to them than they otherwise might be—even if they don’t like the way the [politician] is talking about racial issues.

And you could see a lot of this in the polls and surveys, even from most Republican primary voters in 2016. Most Republican voters reported being deeply disturbed by Trump’s rhetoric and behaviors with respect to race and gender. They [largely] didn’t approve of them, which runs contrary to a lot of our assumptions that they voted for him because he’s a racist. No, they voted for him because the other choice was this person that they viewed as corrupt, who called them deplorables, who said that they wanted to put coal out of business.

You also saw this with President Bill Clinton. A lot of polls showed that the way that the media responded to Bill Clinton made the public sympathize with him more, even though they didn’t approve of his behavior. They didn’t approve of him cheating on his wife or exploiting an intern, but they thought the attacks were out of proportion and were devoid, importantly, from the main responsibilities of the job.

Don’t President Donald Trump and Platner have a few things in common? They both ran as populist outsiders facing various controversies regarding racism, sexism, and infidelity. They certainly aren’t perfect on paper, but maybe that makes some voters feel less judged for their own improprieties?

They’re both deeply flawed candidates in many respects. But one disadvantage that Platner has is that a lot of the people who have felt frustrated or alienated have voted Republican in recent cycles. The Republican Party has been the party of people who feel that sense of alienation, and in this case, Platner is running against a Republican—a Republican, sure, who bucks Trump sometimes, but Platner is also positioning himself as someone who’s bucking Trump. For the swing voters who still think the Republican Party is a better vessel for their frustrations and more proximate to them in various respects, Platner has an uphill struggle there.

That said, one thing you can clearly see in the polling is that a whole bunch of folks who drifted away from the Democratic party in recent cycles are now very frustrated with Trump. They still don’t hold the Democrats in high esteem, either. But it’s a two-party system, and Trump is the one in power, so if people are dissatisfied with the way things are going, that will probably benefit Democrats in these midterms.

Why do you think swing voters are becoming dissatisfied with Trump?

One of the things anti-woke people often take for granted when they get elected is that they were elected in the first place because the public is tired of culture-war stuff taking precedence at the expense of the things that they care about. Rather than concluding, “Oh, people are tired of the culture wars,” the message that anti-woke people often internalize is, “Oh, people are done with left-leaning culture wars.”

Some anti-woke people, like Trump, think voters want the culture wars to simply go in the other direction. If you look at the Trump administration and its focus on wanting to change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and put Trump’s face on everything from passports to coins—there’s this really intense focus on symbols, even though a lot of Americans are struggling with more concrete things. People who voted against Biden voted because he seemed like this addled old man: The world seemed to be burning, and he seemed to be incapable of doing anything about it. Well, that’s basically the same situation that voters face now with Trump in office, so that probably won’t work out well for him in the midterms.

If a conservative candidate were facing identical allegations to Platner’s, do you think the media and other perceived elites would be responding in the same way?

Certainly, if a Republican candidate said, “Hey, look, I got this Nazi tattoo. I didn’t know what it meant at the time”—they wouldn’t be given the same grace.

In terms of the extramarital stuff, that’s hard to determine, because Trump has really lowered the bar with that for Republicans. In the past, a Republican who had serial infidelity would have been lambasted by the media as a hypocrite, especially if he positioned himself as some kind of Christian or family-values kind of guy. In Platner’s case, he doesn’t really position himself that way. He says he loves his wife and all, but he’s not the family-values candidate, and the Democratic Party isn’t the family-values party. So he’s maybe less susceptible to that kind of angle.

What should establishment or elite Democrats and the mainstream media learn from Platner’s race so far?

Someone like Platner is kind of directionally correct for the party. He’s plain-spoken and tends to emphasize issues voters care about in a very economically populist way. He’s also unapologetically manly. He’s a war vet, he has a strong physique, he does a job that is, at least superficially, physically demanding. He has this kind of unapologetic masculinity about him that isn’t necessarily toxic, or that doesn’t have to be. You’d want a guy whose understanding of what manliness means is—among other things—taking care of your family, being a good leader, putting the needs of your community ahead of yourself and your own ambitions and desires. Unfortunately, the extent to which Platner could be this kind of positive male alternative is undercut by the allegations against him.

That doesn’t mean women can’t be strong Democratic candidates. The real problem for both Hillary [Clinton] and Kamala [Harris], wasn’t that they were women, it’s that they were both kind of urban, highly credentialed people whose whole public persona and manner was like, “Look, I have all these wonky technical plans, and I’ve workshopped everything I said with seven different committees before it comes out of my mouth.” If [Democrats] nominate a man who’s like that, that man is not going to succeed in Maine, either.

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was back on his propaganda grind Wednesday, telling Newsmax that the possibility of yet another government shutdown under a Republican-controlled Congress would somehow be the Democratic Party’s fault—because apparently, it’s opposite day. “Don’t blame Republicans,” Johnson said, regarding the tepid support for increasing the military’s already-bloated…

Source

The grand jury transcripts from the “Broadview Six” case, in which the federal government tried to charge six Chicagoans with felony conspiracy for their participation in an anti-ICE protest, were released this week, offering a rare look inside an aggressive federal prosecution. 

The Broadview case collapsed in late May amid prosecutorial-misconduct allegations, a month after the harshest charges against the protesters were dropped. The transcripts show unnamed jurors repeatedly pressing prosecutor Sherri Mecklenburg on why defendants faced assault and conspiracy charges when the ICE agent whose vehicle they blocked was unharmed.

“This person wasn’t harmed, but by extension impeding and assaulting his vehicle, that constitutes simple assault?” one juror asked. “The law doesn’t require that you actually touch him,” Mecklenburg said. 

The juror then asked whether the ICE agent had the right to drive into the protesters. “So if the person comes and stands in front of my car, do I have the right to drive against him?” the juror asked. Mecklenburg brushed it off. “That didn’t happen.”

“It happened,” the juror responded. “He moved.” In video from the protest, the ICE agent’s car can, indeed, be seen driving towards the crowd of protesters. 

In another interaction, Mecklenburg explained the requirements of a charge of “conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer,” which the Trump administration has repeatedly brought against ICE protesters. 

“Are you actually presenting any new actual facts or just a different viewpoint on your side?” an unnamed grand juror asked.

“Okay. I’m feeling the skepticism already. Are you going to be able to listen with an open mind? Tell me the truth,” Mecklenburg said.

“I heard this case like last week, and I thought it was a crock of shit then and I still think it is,” the juror said. Prosecutors required multiple attempts across three separate days to secure an indictment—and a visit from Chicago’s U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros, who gave a speech to the grand jury on the importance of impartiality, according to a special report released by his office. 

The Broadview case is part of a larger federal effort to silence dissent. Last September, Donald Trump explicitly directed federal prosecutors to target ICE protesters, telling US attorneys’ offices to “charge all such persons with the highest provable offense available under the law.” Some prosecutors resigned rather than comply. Others followed orders: in Chicago, in Los Angeles, and in Washington State, prosecutors came for ICE protesters. 

“The right does have a bloodlust to imprison dissenters,” Kat Abughazaleh, a former congressional candidate and Mother Jones contributor, said in an interview May 27. “I and a bunch of other people got hit by a car while exercising our First Amendment rights, and then the federal government tried to charge us with conspiracy.” 

The conspiracy charges could have put the six defendants, who are all involved in local Democratic politics, in jail for the better part of a decade, all for standing in the way of one ICE vehicle. “The conspiracy charge got dropped about a month ago when we asked to see the unredacted grand jury transcripts,” Abughazaleh said. 

“The government was embarrassed, just as they were embarrassed that ICE shot Joselyn Walsh, my co-defendant’s, guitar. And they should be embarrassed. This is absolutely pathetic behavior from supposedly the strongest government in the world.” 

In Spokane, Washington, three people were found guilty last month of the same charge the Broadview protesters were charged with: “conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer.” Cases against ICE protesters in Texas and Minnesota are ongoing. 

“I think the goal is to make an example out of us,” Abughazaleh said. 

The lure of datacenter dollars is a strong one for America’s mega corporations - so strong that even automobile giant General Motors is getting in on the game by turning its battery research efforts toward stationary grid-scale energy storage. GM announced a partnership with energy storage firm Peak Energy on Tuesday that will see the Big Three automaker develop next-generation sodium-ion battery cells designed for grid-scale energy storage. GM will manufacture the cells and Peak will deploy them as part of its own proprietary energy storage systems, Peak said in its version of the partnership announcement. Oh, and GM will be making an investment in Peak too, though the amount wasn't disclosed. For those unfamiliar with sodium-ion batteries, there’s a good deal of chemical similarity between them and the lithium-ion batteries that have come to dominate the world’s portable rechargeable electronics, from massive electric vehicle cells to the tiny batteries in wireless earbuds and hearing aids. Rechargeability and chemical similarities are where many of the comparisons end, though. GM and Peak argue sodium-ion systems can be made simpler, and can operate across a wider temperature range than conventional lithium-ion batteries, potentially reducing the need for the costly, energy-intensive cooling systems often used in grid-scale Li-ion storage deployments. Score one for Na-ions, but while sodium might be stable and abundant, it also doesn’t have nearly the energy density of lithium. If one wants to build a sodium battery able to hold as much energy as a Li-ion one, be prepared to build a larger, heavier pack. That’s not a problem as far as GM is concerned in this case, though: Weight doesn’t matter if the batteries aren’t mobile. “When you’re talking to a utility, a hyperscaler, or other power providers in need of energy storage solutions, their priority is not maximizing range or minimizing weight,” GM VP of battery and sustainability Kurt Kelty said in the company’s announcement. “It is delivering reliable, affordable power over long periods of time in real-world conditions.” Kelty said that GM is perfectly positioned to develop next-generation Na-ion batteries due to “important architectural similarities” with Li-ion cells, meaning “the battery expertise GM has built in cell design, prototyping, and industrialization” is a perfect fit for grid-scale sodium cells. “We believe sodium-ion can become a defining chemistry for grid-scale energy storage in the years ahead,” Kelty added. Peak has already developed its own passively-cooled sodium-ion energy storage systems, which it says can reduce energy storage costs by 20 percent compared to conventional Li-ion systems. According to the company’s own analysis, the US could avoid around 2 terawatt hours of wasted energy per year if everyone were to dump lithium iron phosphate energy storage systems in favor of its passively-cooled Na-ion systems. Sodium-ion batteries aren’t without their own challenges, though. GM mentions that advanced Na-ion cells can handle more charge cycles than their lithium-ion cousins, but sodium-ion batteries have historically come with tradeoffs of their own, most notably lower energy density and a far less established manufacturing ecosystem. Researchers have been working to address that, and others claim that their sodium cell designs have already surpassed Li-ion units. Despite those claims, lithium-ion batteries still dominate the energy storage space, both on and off the grid. China is home to the vast majority of sodium-ion battery factories, and it’s not clear whether GM’s ambitions will turn into scalable competition for overseas battery tech development. We reached out to the automaker with questions about its sodium-ion plans, as well as a timeline for the project, but didn’t hear back. ®

Problems with Starlink's India expansion could challenge SpaceX's IPO growth story.

Energy consumed by datacenters is set to grow 26 percent this year thanks to AI, and grid supply may be unable to keep pace with demand by 2030, Gartner warns. The research giant expects global datacenter electricity consumption to reach 565 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2026, as power demand rises from 104 GW in 2025 to 132 GW this year. This is higher than the 500 TWh per year Gartner estimated two years ago that AI-optimized servers would consume by 2027. And as everyone knows by now, the culprit is the ballooning requirement for compute power to drive AI workloads, as fear of missing out (FOMO) drives otherwise sensible companies to throw money at AI projects, despite seldom seeing much of any return on their investment. In fact, Gartner notes that AI-optimized servers are what continue to fuel the increase in datacenter power consumption. This has been reported before, with hyperscalers and other buyers funneling much of their server budgets into heavily configured systems to meet the requirements of AI processing. Now, the firm estimates that AI-optimized servers will account for 31 percent of all datacenter power consumption this year, and that, by next year, their combined power consumption will surpass that of all conventional servers in operation. This matches up with earlier forecasts that AI was on track to overtake all other server workloads – such as databases and analytics – and become the top workload by server deployment by 2027. But this continued expansion points to a worrying forecast. Total datacenter electricity consumption is estimated by Gartner to pass 1,200 TWh by 2030, and it says that grid supply may be insufficient to support additional datacenter capacity. There have been earlier warnings about the bit barn energy demands outpacing the capacity of the grid to deliver. Goldman Sachs estimated that their combined energy use would more than double by the end of the decade, but if Gartner’s figures are correct, demand is already higher than where that report estimated it would be for 2027. Energy infrastructure biz Schneider Electric also published four scenarios for future electricity consumption by AI datacenters at the start of last year, but Gartner’s latest estimate for total datacenter electricity demand in 2030 surpasses even Schneider's most aggressive forecast. Power grid operators and datacenter developers in the US in particular are in a bind, as The Register reported recently, and energy analysts can't see an easy way out. “Surging demand for compute-intensive AI workloads is driving unprecedented datacenter power growth, while AI capacity is now constrained by power availability, making datacenter power security the new battle ground for scaling and protecting margins in the global AI race,” commented Gartner director analyst Linglan Wang. But can anything be done to mitigate this coming power apocalypse? “Infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders must prioritize efficiency upgrades and secure grid access. They also need to invest in high-efficiency cooling systems and edge computing to mitigate power constraints and ensure sustainable, scalable growth,” Wang said, helpfully. ®

New research suggests that AI memory systems can degrade model performance and encourage sycophantic tendencies.

GOP Rep. Nancy Mace will now have unlimited time to police America’s bathrooms, after she handily lost South Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial primary on Tuesday. Mace—who led multiple polls when she first launched her campaign last August—came in fifth place out of the five legitimate contenders in the race, garnering just 12% of the vote. She did not win a single county in the state…

Source

A cartoon by Pedro Molina. Related | Scott Pelley spills messy details about CBS News’ MAGA makeover…

Source

Backed by Alexis Ohanian’s 776 and Kindred Ventures, Zest uses transaction data and AI to generate restaurant recommendations based on users’ real dining habits and the places they frequent.

Cybersecurity researchers are complaining that Anthropic's new model Fable has guardrails that are too strict for any cybersecurity work.

macOS 27 may have dealt a blow to Intel Macs, but it has also caused headaches for Linux on Apple Silicon, according to the Asahi Linux team. Apple's next operating system debuted at WWDC this week and promptly landed as a beta, but the Asahi developers say the update has "changed how the boot picker and Startup Disk application detect valid OS boot volumes." The upshot is that the Asahi partition is no longer visible, which means no Linux booting on Apple Silicon for the time being. The advice for Asahi Linux users is not to upgrade to macOS 27 until the issue is resolved. The team added: "If you insist on trying out macOS 27 as soon as possible, please ensure you install a secondary copy of macOS 26 first, or install macOS 27 itself on a secondary volume." They've also updated the installer to prevent installs from running on macOS 27 for now. For anyone who ignored all of the above, "we will not support users who have installed the macOS 27 beta without ensuring at least one stable version of macOS is installed." Considering macOS 27 is in beta, the issue may be accidental rather than an attempt by Apple to block Linux on its hardware. The Asahi team said it has filed bug report. The good news for anyone who pulled the trigger on installing the macOS 27 beta is that although the partition might not be visible, it hasn't gone anywhere. The Asahi team wrote: "If you have already upgraded to the beta and noticed that your Asahi partition has disappeared, do not stress. Your Asahi partition is still there, and you have not lost any data." Asahi Linux has come a long way on Apple Silicon despite some turbulence, including a leadership shake-up earlier this year. The project released Fedora Asahi Remix 44 in April and remains the leading option for Linux on Apple hardware. This is a bump in the road, not a dead end. And to anyone who installed a beta OS without backups or a fallback plan... well. You know. ®

While Silicon Valley continues pushing aggressively into large language models and consumer-facing AI products, many European companies are focused on applying AI to complex systems already embedded into everyday life.

This post is updated throughout the day to reflect the latest incidents. It was last updated at 8:31 a.m..

Here’s what’s happening on the roads this morning…

▼︎ new incidents   ▼︎ long-term incidents

Road incidents as of 8:30 a.m. on June 10

• Highway 9 at Pool Drive in San Lorenzo Valley will have alternating lane closures because of bridge work. This will continue until April 30, 2027, at 6:59 a.m.
   
• Highway 9 at Cascade Avenue in San Lorenzo Valley has one-way traffic due to ongoing work. This closure will last until August 31.
   
• South Highway 1 is facing closures at Park Avenue in Capitola / Soquel because of road work. The closure will last until Aug 19 at 7:01 a.m.
   
• A lane on westbound SR-152 at Clifford Drive/Ohlone Parkway in Watsonville and Pajaro is closed for asphalt paving. The closure will last until July 3 at 5:59 a.m.
   
• Single lane closures are scheduled on Soquel Drive between Huntington Drive and Jaunell Road in Aptos from June 11 to June 12, between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., for overhead tree trimming by County crews.
   
• A white Honda HRV and a black Kia Rio were involved in a collision at Beach Rd and Thurwacher Rd in Watsonville / Pajaro. No one was hurt, and the cars were still in the road, but no tow trucks were needed. The people involved were told to move their vehicles. The incident was reported today.
   
• CHP helped Caltrans with maintenance work at the intersection of State Route 152 and Pennsylvania Drive in Watsonville/Pajaro today.
   

Long-term projects

These have been going on for a while, but are still worth keeping in mind.

• Thurber Ln near 4672 Thurber Ln in Santa Cruz will be fully closed from June 8-12 between 8:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. each day for tree trimming and vegetation management by county crews.
   
• Mill St. between Main St. and Highway 9 in Ben Lomond will be closed to vehicles from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on 6/6, 7/4, 8/1, 9/5, and 10/3 for the Ben Lomond Village Market event. Traffic control and detour signs will be posted.
   
• River Rd at 618 in San Lorenzo Valley will be closed to vehicles on June 11 during work hours from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. while crews repair a connector and replace a broken crossarm.
   
• Lompico Rd will be closed to vehicles at 12320 Lompico Rd in San Lorenzo Valley on June 11 from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. while crews replace a crossarm and cutouts.
   

Disclosure: Traffic incidents are partially generated by artificial intelligence. We are constantly working to improve the accuracy and quality of our AI-generated content. However, there may still be errors or inaccuracies. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.

The post Wednesday morning traffic: Highway 1, 9, SR-152 lane closures; tree work delays appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

Inflation rose in May as Americans continue to deal with the fallout of President Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran earlier this year, and now Trump has inadvertently admitted that his efforts at diplomacy in the Middle East are a failure. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Tuesday that annual inflation rose at 4.2%—the highest it has been since 2023. The rate also increased…

Source

AI coding agent startup Niteshift has raised a $7 million seed round from a who's who of angels. It's betting companies will want power over, not lock-in, with model makers.

This Friday (June 12) at 1 p.m. Pacific (4 p.m. Eastern) join Dr. Dave Karpf and me for a live discussion of the latest developments with tech fascism. I’ll send out a Zoom link on Friday morning. Please click here to RSVP.

Dave has been tracking the political infrastructure of tech power for decades, and he’s usually right about where things are headed. We’ll discuss Palantir’s manifesto, Peter Thiel’s temporary move to Argentina, the backlash against AI data centers, the possibility of a trillionaire Elon Musk, and Dave’s predictions for the year.

And we’ll answer your questions. (Leave them in the comments below or email gil (at) thenerdreich.com)

About Dave: Dr. Dave Karpf is an associate professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. He is the award-winning author of The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy (2012, Oxford University Press) and Analytic Activism: Digital Listening and the New Political Strategy (2016, Oxford University Press). Both books discuss how digital media is transforming the work of political advocacy and activist organizations. His writing has been published in academic and journalistic outlets, including Wired, The Nation, Nonprofit Quarterly, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Dr. Dave Karpf