Month: August 2026

Silicon Valley Dreams of Authoritarianism

Gil Durán’s new book, The Nerd Reich, catalogs how tech oligarchs like Peter Thiel took over America.

Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Harun Ozalp/Anadolu via Getty Images, Florencia Tan Jun/Web Summit via Sportsfile via Getty Images and Marco Bello/Getty Images.

LINK: https://slate.com/culture/2026/08/tech-silicon-valley-elon-musk-peter-thiel-trump-politics-fascism-gil-duran.html

The COMPLEAT Broadcasts: Final Thoughts and Credits

Plus a linked index of the series
The COMPLEAT Broadcasts: Final Thoughts and Credits
This is the final segment of the free podcast/post series of Ong’s Hat: COMPLEAT

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The COMPLEAT Broadcasts Archive

Chapter 0

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Final Thoughts and Credits

This completes the COMPLEAT Broadcast series. It will remain here on this Substack so you may revisit it or share it. If you’d like a print copy of the book section of this work, it is available through https://compleat.store

The first anti-AI protester to be jailed has a message for OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta: ‘Regain your humanity’

Activist Wynd Kaufmyn in the living room of her home in Berkeley, California, on 13 August. Photograph: Winni Wintermeyer/The Guardian
Activist Wynd Kaufmyn in the living room of her home in Berkeley, California, on 13 August. Photograph: Winni Wintermeyer/The Guardian

Wynd Kaufmyn, 69, chained and locked the front doors of OpenAI’s headquarters last year with members of StopAI

LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/16/california-openai-protester-wynd-kaufman