Damon Beres

6 Jan

Sharing some exciting personal news: I’m writing a book! About digital technology and the human mind. I’m excited to tell a story that anchors the reader in reality, when so much feels slippery and weird (and overwhelming and scary and oh jeez people are doing WHAT with Grok now??)—wish me luck! ✍️

showbiz411.comControversial "Musk" Documentary Pulled From Almost Every One of 472 Theaters After One Week by Newly Sold Bleecker Street Films - Showbiz411Alex Gibney's "Musk" movie is pretty much gone. Released October 9th to four theaters, it expanded to 472 last Friday. And now, one week later it's gone

I know people are freaking out about this but fuller context is that this is a 4-hour (!) doc about someone everybody has already made up their mind about, which made less than $700 per screen after its expansion; by comparison YCSE was in more than double the theaters making >$17,500 per screen.

Brandon Friedman@brandonfriedman.bsky.social

This seems like a big deal

I think while many things are the result of evil conspiracy, this is possibly more like, people aren’t seeing the movie and it’s costing theaters money, and it will be possible to stream it soon (not just on HBO but rentable online through Fandango etc)

yes bsky.app/profile/mark...

Mark Harris@markharris.bsky.social

In fairness (sorry), the film flatlined the second it expanded from 4 to 472 screens. It's not You Can See Everything; it's four hours, with good but not great reviews, about someone who's already in our faces 24/7. But I do think we should watch for how easy, or not, it becomes to stream or rent.

Super

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theatlantic.comThe Myth of Safe AISilicon Valley promises to make AI benevolent. That may be technically impossible.

“OpenAI and Anthropic still can’t really tell you what an aligned AI model looks like. But anybody can tell you it doesn’t look like this.” @matteowong.bsky.social

theatlantic.comWhat the U.S. Is Really Doing in VenezuelaSuppressing democracy and extracting resources at the expense of its people

“Fishermen sometimes rinse their crabs and shrimp with gasoline to remove the crude oil. All of their nets turn brown.” Nobody does it like @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu

Damon Beres reposted

Tressie McMillan Cottom

@tressiemcphd.bsky.social

Amazing

Charlie Warzel@cwarzel.bsky.social

70 percent of the internet was vulnerable yesterday to very bad security flaws inside a coding language. Turns out, *one volunteer* is mostly responsible for maintaining that code & helping push updates. Yesterday Ondřej Surý saved the internet. So I called him up www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

theatlantic.comThe Man Who Saved the Internet YesterdayOndřej Surý was a relatively anonymous volunteer working on PHP security. Then the internet exploded.

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theverge.comTrump says Sundar Pichai talked him out of renaming the Atlantic OceanPichai allegedly said, “Oceans are different, sir.”

you're just going about your day and you now get to read stuff like "Trump says Sundar Pichai talked him out of renaming the Atlantic Ocean" and you just have to nod and move on with your day. “Oceans are different, sir.” lmao www.theverge.com/policy/10167...

Really about to lose my mind

theatlantic.comThe Man Who Saved the Internet YesterdayOndřej Surý was a relatively anonymous volunteer working on PHP security. Then the internet exploded.

"I feel a responsibility toward the users of the internet. It would be a crazy day for me if I was on a boat in the middle of the Adriatic Sea. That could happen. But I had time to prepare the packages." Hero.

I'm looking to hire a Japanese-English translator to do a very small amount of work related to something for my book. It is probably 30 minutes of work and I will pay. If you have any leads, send them my way please either by responding here or emailing me (damon.beres@gmail.com) ☀️

I should add: ideally this would be a person who is very familiar with the Japanese cultural side of things, the way certain words would "feel" to a native speaker, rather than an academic who could do more of a technical translation. 🐛 Ty

Damon Beres reposted

Replying to @cwarzel.bsky.social

This peice felt like an extension of a few other things I've written over the last four or five years. So I wanted to throw out some gift links to those. 1st is an old newsletter about 'builder brain' and what it overlooks www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

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theatlantic.comYou Can Believe EverythingWhat do Elizabeth Holmes and Elon Musk's flying car have in common?

I wrote about watching You Can See Everything at a moment when the tech industry has really adopted a zealous, faith-based approach to the future and who’ll get us there. It’s about the cult of the builder, vc betting and the problem with ‘never wrong, just early’ www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

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theatlantic.comImagine Every AI Agent on Earth Buying the Same Cheap Paper TowelsAI agents are doing our shopping for us, and wreaking havoc on the internet.

I really, strongly feel everybody needs to read this—because everybody is going to live in this emergent world, whether or not they believe themselves to be full participants in it. Pretty bleak. Great work @cwarzel.bsky.social and @matteowong.bsky.social

wired.comNathan Fielder Tells Us EverythingIncluding what Elizabeth Holmes said to him last week. A WIRED exclusive interview with the comic auteur, as his first feature film hits theaters.

Elizabeth Holmes says her favorite movie is “Elf”

Damon Beres reposted

Anthony Macuk

@anthonymacuk.bsky.social

love 2 enjoy a frictionless, stress-free life as I'm locked in an arms race of agentic haggling with every business entity I ever interact with

Damon Beres@damonberes.com

theatlantic.comImagine Every AI Agent on Earth Buying the Same Cheap Paper TowelsAI agents are doing our shopping for us, and wreaking havoc on the internet.

theatlantic.comThe Flying Car Must Never Be BuiltIt is not a goal to be reached, but a dream of new freedom deferred.

“Perhaps the dream this car truly realizes is not yours or mine, but Elon Musk’s: to claim to have delivered what a century of his forebears could not.” @ibogost.com

theatlantic.comImagine Every AI Agent on Earth Buying the Same Cheap Paper TowelsAI agents are doing our shopping for us, and wreaking havoc on the internet.

theatlantic.comThe Blog Post That Set the AI World on FireAn incendiary post from a prominent researcher suggests that AI is actually more predictable than we thought.

Perhaps you missed this (I did—am on parental leave with an infant!) and I'm so glad we have @matteowong.bsky.social to make sense of it. Fascinating

theatlantic.comNine-Inch SnailsThey block roads, eat houses, and spread literal brain worms. Only Florida knows how to deal with them.

THIS HEADLINEEE

nytimes.comThe Dirty Secret Behind the Farmed Fish You EatForced labor, rancid waste, harmful chemicals. What to know about the seafood that could end up on your plate.

Can genuinely say I didn’t have even the faintest glimmer of awareness that so many people are experiencing profound suffering—even death, sometimes from asphyxiating on fumes from mass rotting—as part of the fishmeal economy. What a world.

theatlantic.comThe Tragedy of AI CodingAI-assisted software development could have liberated programmers. Instead, it has become the latest way for Big Tech to confine us.

I adore this story by @ibogost.com, which brings a valuable historical perspective to a modern conversation that often seems myopic or ill-informed

theatlantic.comYet Another Literary Prizewinner Seems to Be AIThe prestigious Caine Prize, announced last week, went to a story with many red flags.

@vauhinivara.bsky.social has been doing an incredible job covering this sequence of tragedies in the literary world:

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Mark Harris

@markharris.bsky.social

An enraging and essential piece of reporting.

Adam Serwer@adamserwer.bsky.social

After years of championing "free speech," Texas lawmakers have enabled a dramatic rise of censorship in Texas universities, banning concepts, canceling courses and closing departments seen as "woke," and even using AI bots as censors. All in the name of freedom. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...

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Adam Serwer

@adamserwer.bsky.social

theatlantic.comTexas Is Destroying Its Own UniversitiesA censorship bot, political interference, and the assault on free speech

Said with sorrow as someone with family there — How could anyone in good conscience send their kids to be educated in Texas at this point?

theatlantic.comThe Best Protein Source Is Hiding in Plain SightJust have some yogurt.

Folks, it is time to GURTMAXX

theatlantic.comThe People Who Refuse to Let Their Gadgets DieWhat if you never upgraded at all?

"When I asked Larye Parkins—the proud user of a Compaq computer released in 2007, the same year that Superbad hit the box office and Myspace dominated social media—what he would call himself, he came back with a simple reply: 'I’m just cheap.'"

theatlantic.comI Quit OpenAI Because Its Culture Is BrokenThe industry’s approach to safety guarantees more failures.

“The future depends on wisdom that Silicon Valley lacks. Wisdom about how to handle dangerous technology and, more fundamentally, wisdom about what it means to care for people.” — David Robinson, who formerly led transparency work for OpenAI’s safety team

djunah.bandcamp.comGiallo, by Djunah12 track album

New Djunah time

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x.comAlexandr Wang (@alexandr_wang) on XWhy I'm Building Muse

For a long time I've wanted a sense of how trump has or hasn't interacted with chatbots (we know he posts a lot of slop sure). And this TIME anecdote about Grok arguably leading Trump into war is just extremely bracing

✍️ ✍️ x.com/alexandr_wan...

Something I’ve noticed tinkering with Meta’s Muse product (the agentic AI): Unlike, say, Claude, the entire thing runs as one ongoing stream-of-consciousness chat rather multiple one-offs according to task. Feels like it’s made to lead people to forget about the data they load the thing up with?

View full thread

It seems pretty good about deleting on command when you remember what you want it to scrub, though I don’t know that there’s a good way to verify it’s actually cleared data out (and I wouldn’t trust Meta for even half a second)—and I suspect the UX design will lead most not to revisit these choices.

theatlantic.comIt’s All Fun and Games Until You Give AI Your Credit CardAI personal assistants are now acting on people’s behalf in the real world—and all sorts of strange things are going wrong.

Anyway, as @lilashroff.bsky.social wrote:

i.e., you might upload bank statements on Monday, give it Gmail access on Tuesday, health records on Wednesday, and by next Friday have done enough in the chat window to totally bury and forget about all of this while Meta maintains access to the data in perpetuity.

theatlantic.comThe Private-School DecisionI admire Nikole Hannah-Jones’s choice. I am making a different one.

Too many great lines to share from the new essay by @jenishawo.bsky.social, so read it:

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Anne Applebaum

@anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu

14 Sept

Trump's foreign policy is not isolationist. On the contrary, his ideologues want to build an international empire run by far-right political movements who serve American crypto, mineral and tech companies, many with links to the president. Read more here: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

theatlantic.comEmpire of GriftFar-right ideologues have transformed American foreign policy into a tool of private gain and antidemocratic reaction.

nytimes.comAnthropic Pursues IPO Despite Its A.I. Safety WarningsThe company is expected to reach $100 billion in annualized revenue this year, even as chief executive Dario Amodei calls for slowing down development of some advanced A.I. models.

19 Sept

You don’t say

theatlantic.comThe Most Powerful Man in AI Isn’t Worried at AllJensen Huang: not a doomer

16 Sept

“while Huang was onstage ripping Amodei’s doomerism at a taping of the popular tech-industry podcast All-In, Trump called his cellphone. Huang put him on speaker, and as the live audience hooted and clapped, the two men bonded over their shared view that, as Trump put it, doomerism is ‘all a hoax.’”

theatlantic.comPennsylvania’s Measles Outbreak Is EnormousThe two latest deaths suggest that the true number of infections is much larger than reported.

16 Sept

“Four deaths in roughly four weeks suggest that the state is in the midst of an enormous outbreak. The Pennsylvania health department lists total cases at 693 … But considering that measles kills about one to three of every 1,000 children it infects, the actual number is likely much larger.”

nytimes.comNaomi Klein and Astra Taylor Say the End of the World Is Now on the TableIn a new book, the writers argue that a powerful coalition of “end times fascists” is just fine with the earth’s demise.

12 Sept

“they want to be our overlords and our edge lords … You can be a joke and be really dangerous at the same time.”

theatlantic.comThis Tiny E-Reader Is the Single Best Piece of Technology in YearsThe $70 Xteink X3 puts Silicon Valley to shame.

6 Sept

ALL HAIL THE XTEINK

theatlantic.comThe Limits of Yayoi Kusama’s InfinityThe visionary artist once challenged ways of seeing—until she was seen by everyone.

28 Aug

"You will no longer need an inner life, says this logic. You will no longer even be you. You will be data points and dollar signs. You will be ubiquitous, self-obliterating dots."

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Matteo Wong

@matteowong.bsky.social

28 Aug

Can the climate playbook be used to harness the AI backlash into a pointed movement? And could such a movement overcome the wealth of Silicon Valley? On a new group (with very experienced founders) placing a bet on just that: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

theatlantic.comThe AI Backlash Is Transforming Into a Political MovementA new group is targeting tech companies and the government with the climate movement’s playbook.

theatlantic.comThe AI Backlash Is Transforming Into a Political MovementA new group is targeting tech companies and the government with the climate movement’s playbook.

28 Aug

A new organization, founded by climate activists associated with the Sunrise Movement and 350.org, is targeting AI. Rather than articulating a specific plan for the future, they're hoping to draw on populist outrage in the present: “We’ve aligned around saying no” @matteowong.bsky.social

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