Tag: control
The world’s worst people have a plan
Silicon Valley Dreams of Authoritarianism
Gil Durán’s new book, The Nerd Reich, catalogs how tech oligarchs like Peter Thiel took over America.
Ed Zitron killed the god of AGI
The first anti-AI protester to be jailed has a message for OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta: ‘Regain your humanity’
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
THE GRAB | Official HD Trailer (2024) | DOCUMENTARY
THE GRAB is a jaw-dropping global thriller combining hard-hitting journalism from The Center for Investigative Reporting with the compelling character-driven storytelling of director Gabriela Cowperthwaite (BLACKFISH), taking you around the globe from Arizona to Zambia, to reveal one of the world’s biggest and least known threats.
The Doomsday Organism
Scientists working on synthetic “mirror life” have come to realize that, if created, it could pose an existential threat to life on Earth.
Seasoned bioethicist Laurie Zoloth has a trick she likes to play in her seminars at the University of Chicago. She tells each student to pick up a pencil, then she gives them a series of instructions about how to maneuver it in their hands. At some point, nearly everyone drops the pencil. And that’s the point she’s trying to illuminate: “Humans always make errors,” Zoloth told me over Zoom. We drop things, we forget to switch things off, we lose our focus, we get tired. “Being human is like driving in a snowstorm, all the time,” she said, the hint of a smile emanating from beneath her round glasses.
Man Accused of Starting Palisades Fire Admired Luigi Mangione, Prosecutors Say
The Los Angeles suspect was lonely and angry and felt “enslaved” by rich people, prosecutors say. After being romantically spurned, they say, he went into the mountains and lit a fire.
We need another Surrealist Revolution
on resisting authoritarianism and the flaws in contemporary realism
Our dreams are birds, they pluck fruit from high branches we cannot reach with our hands. They carry the fruit down to us, and we choose what to do with it. Some dreams are totally alien and need to be examined, while others are easier to digest. Some dreamers cannot recognize their fruits and toss them aside. Others examine them closely. Whatever kind of dreamer you are, these dreams are speaking to you. They hold meaning no matter how strange or insipid they seem. At some point in life, we all experience a dream so striking and bizarre that we are haunted by it into the next day, even if it was completely abstract and not a conscious fear. This is the essential language of dreams, and the font of surrealism’s power.
The Rise of Neo-Kaczynskiism
Altman got Molotoved. Warehouses are burning. The ruling class brought this on itself — ad still won’t tap the release valve.
For years, we’ve been bearing witness to the rise in what some call neo-Kaczynskiism – a swell that’s going to crash harder and harder into the ultra-wealthy and their bottom lines. Last week, multiple attempts were made on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s life. The 20-year-old from Spring, Texas who allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman’s home published a lengthy diatribe beforehand on his Substack arguing that artificial intelligence is a threat to human existence. Not 48 hours later, shots were fired at Altman’s same residence in San Francisco.
Ted Kaczynski – the “Unabomber” – authored a manifesto that offered a hauntingly accurate critique of industrial society before ultimately resorting to random acts of violence, murdering 3 people and injuring 23 others in a nationwide mail bombing campaign between 1978 and 1995 targeting those he believed were advancing modern technology and destroying the natural environment.
Neo-Kaczynskiism is an apt term for the rise in lone acts of violence and destruction we’ve been witnessing – including the 7 warehouse fires (and counting) that have cropped up across the country in the last week. Like Luigi Mangione, accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024 and currently held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, these seemingly random acts of violence don’t occur in a vacuum. They’re connected.
The targeting of billionaire tech oligarchs and millionaire health insurance CEOs, the employees setting their workplaces ablaze, the surge in individual acts of violence against the rich – it’s all a symptom of the economic regime we’re living under. And it’s going to escalate.