Society

"AI Will Empower Humanity," says Reid Hoffman, venture capitalist, OpenAI funder, co-founder of Linkedin, and member (along with Peter Thiel, David O. Sacks, and Elon Musk) of the "PayPal Mafia." (Related, from The Guardian's Chris McGreal: "How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa.") Hoffman imagines

It all traces back to billionaire-backed fearmongering in the 1960s—weaponizing panic around socialism and communism to crush unions, cut taxes, and hoard profits...

The confessions of a concerned bird.

The World War II-era "Simple Sabotage Field Manual" is full of steps that office workers can take to resist leadership.

For some tribes, the fight for recognition has spanned generations.

Show some fucking class.

President Biden’s signature American Rescue Plan Act gave local governments $350 billion to recover from COVID-19. They spent much of it on police, prisons and the courts.

Attackers explain how an anti-spam defense became an AI weapon.

The SAVE Act would be one of the worst voting laws in congressional history.

I left to stay true to my byline

I Wrote This Book for Everyone Who’s Tired of Playing a Rigged GameThis is a collection of two long-form essays, where I lay out exactly how power, wealth, and control have been weaponized against us—and what we can do about it.In Clash, I bring together two of my most-read pieces:• We Didn’t Start the Class War, where I dive into how billionaires rigged the system to steal from the rest of us, and why it’s time to fight back.• The Future Will Be Decentralized, where I make the case for tearing down centralized media and building systems that serve people, not profits.This collection is a roadmap for anyone who’s ready to challenge the status quo.Why I Wrote Clash:I wrote these blog posts because I’ve had enough. Enough of the excuses for extreme inequality. Enough of the myths that keep us quiet and compliant. Enough of watching a system built by billionaires work exactly as they designed it—at our expense.But I also wrote them because I believe there’s hope. I believe we can dismantle what’s broken and build systems that actually serve humanity. From decentralized platforms to worker-owned businesses, I wanted to show what’s possible when we stop playing by their rules and start creating something new.What’s in it:• How the Game Is Rigged: I break down how wealth extraction works, why the gap between billionaires and workers keeps growing, and who’s responsible.• Decentralization as a Solution: I explore how we can rebuild media, technology, and governance to distribute power instead of concentrating it.• The Future We Deserve: Practical ideas for reclaiming agency in a system designed to keep us powerless.Who I Wrote This For:This is for people like you—people who know something is wrong but feel stuck in a system that was never built for us. It’s for anyone who’s ready to think differently, act boldly, and demand better.Free or Pay What You WantClash is free to read. I made this choice because I don’t want money to be a barrier to ideas. If you believe in what I’m doing, you can support my work by paying what you want for the eBook or PDF.About Me:I’m JA Westenberg. I’ve spent years writing about tech, politics, and power—not just to critique the system, but to imagine better alternatives. Through my work, I’ve built a community of people who believe in questioning the status quo and creating something new.Why Clash Matters:I want Clash to be the beginning of a conversation. A challenge. A call to action for anyone tired of watching power stay in the hands of a few while the rest of us are left to fight over scraps.Let’s stop playing their game. Let’s build something better.

In 1934, a courageous, flawed, complicated journalist named Dorothy Thompson was kicked out of Nazi Germany for reporting with relentless, brutal accuracy on...

A collapsing America is a billionaire’s paradise, and Trump’s all in…

Trump pardoned the notorious Dark Web crypto-criminal Ross Ulbricht. Why?

Invisible, isolated from one another, and with little income security – such is the lot of data workers. And yet without them, there'd be no ChatGPT, Midjourney or Gemini.

Visit the post for more.

As menacingly foretold, an addled, vengeful dolt has unleashed a deluge of mindless venom, rancor, racism, cruelty - and domestic terrorists - on a populace he just vowed "to serve and protect," banishing any vestige of fairness or mercy in the name of a re-whitened "blood-and-soil America (wher...

User growth is ‘stagnant’ on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

The administration is trying to assert political control over American higher education.

The dismissals could clear the way for the president to install loyalists in the crucial role of identifying fraud, waste and abuse in the government.

The richest man in the world intends his far-right project to go global

Yes, every billionaire really is a policy failure.

Fifty years ago, Republicans strengthened their opponents. Will Democrats do the same?

Last updated: 19 Jun 2018 Download: The Self Under Siege (1993) Lecture 8: Fatal Strategies.avi Transcript: In the, ah, final lecture on, ah, The Self Under Siege, we will discuss the work of Jean Baudrillard, a French social theorist. Actually that now is a misnomer since one of Baudrillard's theses is the disappearance of the

Microstrategy and the dark arts of 'volatility arbitrage'

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/opinion/marc-andreessen-trump-silicon-valley.html [Ross Douthat and Marc Andreessen in The New York Times]This podcast conversation with Marc Andreessen is very revealing. It's particularly fascinating to me that

And it is more open and more efficient, too