Dave Karpf

Scoop: The Israeli company Discover-Tech -- alleged to be at the center of a vast web of ad tech surveillance -- has been heavily targeting users of Elon Musk's Starlink, sources tell me. www.reuters.com/business/med...

somebody just needs to tell them a Black Harvard professor was involved

The powerful executives who cozied up to Trump didn't oops accidentally forget about pendulum swings. They either: 1) Like the fascism 2) Calculated it was here to stay, so going along was savvy 3) Saw no real downside, no consequences when the pendulum swung Crucial to show them 3 was a mistake

I think the lesson from Lula is not never talk about the opposition; it's articulate a positive vision that's basically, We Can Just Do Things. That's why Mamdani-ism is so popular - voters have an intrinsic sense that their electeds have agency they're not using

I'm going to try to do this cleanly. Today's right wing governments are networked to each other. Those networks are well-documented. You can read about them in books. Following the elections in one node of that network is good practice for understanding the U.S. node.

The political media is visibly chafing at the current situation, where Republicans are glaringly awful, fucking everything up, running deviant candidates everyone hates, and Dems are just being normal & winning. The force is out of balance. They are viscerally eager to go after Dems about something.

You can argue the distinctions don’t matter, but it seems relevant that Larry Page was an actually-smart grad student who turned real research into a trillion-dollar company, while Musk was a middling student who couldn’t cut grad school and made a career of stealing credit from actual researchers.

People are saying…

Michael Clanchy told people over 50 years ago not to fetishize writing, but he would not diminish the significance of writing today because he knew well that it now equates to power and to eschew it is to disempower one's self. I mention this bc we are seeing the emergence of an arch stance on GenAI

𝖳̶𝗁̶𝖾̶ 𝗌̶𝗄̶𝗒̶ 𝖺̶𝖻̶𝗈̶𝗏̶𝖾̶ 𝗍̶𝗁̶𝖾̶ 𝗉̶𝗈̶𝗋̶𝗍̶ 𝗐̶𝖺̶𝗌̶ 𝗍̶𝗁̶𝖾̶ 𝖼̶𝗈̶𝗅̶𝗈̶𝗋̶ 𝗈̶𝖿̶ 𝗍̶𝖾̶𝗅̶𝖾̶𝗏̶𝗂̶𝗌̶𝗂̶𝗈̶𝗇̶ 𝗍̶𝗎̶𝗇̶𝖾̶𝖽̶ 𝗍̶𝗈̶ 𝖺̶ 𝖽̶𝖾̶𝖺̶𝖽̶ 𝖼̶𝗁̶𝖺̶𝗇̶𝗇̶𝖾̶𝗅̶.̶ I'd stayed up too late the previous night at an AI-themed party in the Mission, snorting ketamine while debating the singularity.

I'm barely two minutes in, and dogshit has never smelled so bad

hunter s thompson sure did ruin a lot of male writers huh

Hey Gemini what is my kid's name and what does she look like, I'm at her school play and I can't figure out which one it is

New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854

"This could have been an email." Aragorn whispers. "He ALWAYS pulls this shit in 'Any Other Business" Boromir replies, quietly. "It's why Faramir marked himself as busy when the invite went out."

@gabrielzucman.bsky.social: So let met get that straight: paying a wealth tax is impossible (“billionaires have no liquidity”, “it would be taxing unrealized gains”, “their wealth is virtual”) but one man paying half a billion to influence elections is possible. Did I understand well?

we've identified another vulnerability leak. now hackers on the dark web have identified your bad knee and that weird thing your shoulder does if you sleep on it wrong. there's no patch available for this, they're now just keenly aware you feel like your career has stalled out

It strikes me that Yglesias just has no concept of non-electoral politics whatsoever. He has a set of cookie-cutter advice for political candidates in general elections. He applies this advice to literally everyone all the time. This is dumb for obvious reasons that are hard to miss.

Peak podcast episode title. It doesn’t get better than this.

A helpfully clear exchange here Hasan: "So your argument is that [Minnesota ICE protesters] should stay at home because immigration is a salient issue for Donald Trump. Opposing ICE is only going to help Trump. Wait until we win the election in 2028." Yglesias: "Yes that is what I would have said"

A bonus episode of Office Hours with Karpf and Loge could consist entirely of @ploge.bsky.social saying "so, Dave, prediction markets" letting @davekarpf.bsky.social express his feelings. www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-t...

And now the media heavyweights weigh in. @danagoldstein.bsky.social does a thorough job reporting on the ed-tech ambitions of Alpha School, and whether existing claims about its effectiveness withstand scrutiny (answer: no). Appreciate the nod to my reporting on the boot camp too. But...

As I've dug into this story, I've realized Alpha is just part of a larger terminally online ecosystem that has abandoned public schooling as something worth preserving. That in my view is the big story here, Alpha may live or die, but the Silicon Valley intellectual ecosystem will endure.

Palmer Luckey is making a real go this year at being the most annoying billionaire who got rich for the dumbest reasons, though Elon Musk continues to lead the sack

My new book HYPERSCALE is finally out this week! Yesterday I went on MS NOW’s The Beat with @arimelber.bsky.social to talk about data centers, AI, and the threats that come of how tech billionaires have shaped the technology to benefit themselves. Get your copy today: hyperscalebook.com

He’s gonna end up over half a billion. And that’s not counting the in-kind contributions from the media platform he owns.

Palmer Luckey is just a doughy, oafish Bond villain.