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Licensed to Loot – Big Finance, Big Tech and the AI Infrastructure Grab: I. Introduction: A manufactured market. The global race to build AI data centres is a manufactured investment cycle. Consumer demand did not create it and no credible case for economy-wide benefit underpins it. It is built by concentrated financial capital in alliance …
Dean Blundell: “The $400 Million Question: Was Trump’s “Privately Funded” Ballroom Always Headed for Your Wallet? On July 31, 2025, Donald Trump made a promise. He was going to build a 90,000-square-foot ballroom on the East Wing of the White House — a venue grand enough for state dinners, presidential inaugurations, and the kind of …
The New York Times Gift Article / DataVis “Electricity is perhaps the most underrated issue of our time. In the United States, we have been blessed with a power grid that instantly responds whenever you flick on the lights. It works mostly as expected, cooling our homes, charging our laptops and phones, running life-saving equipment. …
Via Yasir Ai: “Two researchers from UPenn and Boston University just published a paper that should be uncomfortable reading for every CEO automating their workforce right now. The argument is straightforward. Every company replacing workers with AI is also eliminating its own future customers. Laid off workers stop spending. Enough of them stop spending and …
Worse on Purpose: “One company owns Brooks Brothers, Champion, Eddie Bauer, Billabong, Sports Illustrated, and the licensing rights to Elvis’s likeness. They don’t make a single product themselves. Pick up a Brooks Brothers shirt and turn it inside out. Look at the shoulder stitching. If it looks like a rat’s nest of tangled thread done …
The Conversation: “The U.S. government “is able to purchase Americans’ sensitive data because the information it buys is not subject to the same restrictions as information it collects directly. The federal government is also ramping up its abilities to directly collect data through partnerships with private tech companies. These surveillance tech partnerships are becoming entrenched, …
Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, April 25, 2026 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly …
Wired – no paywall: “As people increasingly rely on AI chatbots for guidance, even on financial matters, a healthy dose of skepticism is critical. I’ve used ChatGPT to help me build a budget before, and it was genuinely helpful. After I input my monthly salary as well as my standard utilities and recurring expenses, the …
The Atlantic – Gift Article: “The best thing I watched in the past year was an epically long movie about retired militants, but it wasn’t One Battle After Another, the Oscar winner for Best Picture. It was The Sorrow and the Pity, a four-hour documentary from 1969 about life in Nazi-occupied France. Reviewing the film …
Wes Siler’s Newsletter – “Testifying in front of the House of Representatives on Monday, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum revealed that the maintenance backlog in national parks now totals over $35 billion. This is the first time we’ve gotten an estimate on the increase to the backlog caused by the Trump administration’s first year …
Bloomberg (Gift Article): “A small group of unauthorized users have accessed Anthropic PBC’s new Mythos AI model, a technology that the company says is so powerful it can enable dangerous cyberattacks, according to a person familiar with the matter and documentation viewed by Bloomberg News. A handful of users in a private online forum gained …
CNBC:” Banks in the U.S. may not like the idea of being forced to collect citizenship data on customers, but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says they better be prepared for the task. “If Treasury and the banking regulators say it’s their job, it’s their job,” Bessent told CNBC’s Sara Eisen at the Invest in America …
