Andy Yates

X is a fascist propaganda website.

The billionaires' eugenics project: how Epstein infiltrated Harvard, muzzled the humanities and preached master-race science Edge - Jeffrey Epstein's favourite intellectual salon - was sold to me as a gathering of the world's finest minds, writes Virginia Heffernan. The files reveal it was something far darker: a decades-lo...

NEW: Read this terrific piece @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social for @thenerve.news in which she unpicks Edge.org, the hugely influential 'salon' funded by Epstein & threaded through with race science & eugenics.
1/

www.thenerve.news/p/epstein-bi...

I will reiterate one more time I don't think this was the inevitable outcome of generative AI's development, there is an imaginable world where this stuff is creative-driven and augmentative. It's just impossible to miss the current ethos of "put those uppity artists in their place" in tech.

While reporting this, I had something happen that's never happened. A comms rep for one of the co's disputed my reporting and said what I was telling them was untrue because it was not in Grok, xAI's chatbot.

I was looking directly at the files. And this person was using AI to challenge the truth.

'Peter Mandelson's Fixing of Keir Starmer’s Visit to Spytech Firm Palantir Raises Serious Questions' Palantir was represented by a lobbying firm founded by Mandelson, Iain Overton and Max Colbert report

If Mandelson is being investigated for his Epstein connections, he must also be investigated for his Thiel connections, because they ran a joint fund when Mandelson fixed Starmer's visit to Palantir
bylinetimes.com/2025/04/25/p...

important to underline that #palantir is tainted by #mandelson and thus #epstein, and should thus be kicked out from everything

Stalinism is the new congestion charging.

I thought I'd blog about why I've stopped reading Twitter/X posts, even when 'anonymised':
blog.korny.info/2026/01/25/r...

The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were spun from lies, deceit and desperation | The Observer

First time I've heard of it, but the true story is more interesting than the book. Glad they were exposed.

Verge headline: Chipwrecked: Can Nvidia avoid the crash? by Elizabeth Lopatto Illustration depicts a porthole looking at a decaying Nvidia chip underwater

If something goes wrong with Nvidia’s business, this whole sector is in trouble. And judging by the increasing competition its chips face, something could go wrong soon.

Read more from @lopatto.bsky.social: www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵

Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

can't stop watching this clip of a tesla Optimus teleoperator taking his headset off before properly logging out the robot

I think Altered Carbon might be considered a variation on this theme too (the whodunnit part, that is).

Road to Wigan Pier is a rant of a book. But it goes so hard on why it’s evil to begrudge the poorest simple pleasures.

📣 Germany's close to reversing its opposition to mass surveillance & private message scanning, & backing the Chat Control bill. This could end private comms-& Signal-in the EU.

Time's short and they're counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.

Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish? Sick of scrolling through junk results, AI-generated ads and links to lookalike products? The author and activist behind the term ‘enshittification’ explains what’s gone wrong with the internet – and…

Congrats to The Guardian on hiring Doctorow to explain enshittification to the non-tech masses.

#enshittification #CoryDoctorow

Charlie Kirk, Redeemed: A Political Class Finds Its Lost Cause By ignoring the rhetoric and actions of the Turning Point USA founder, pundits and politicians are sanitizing his legacy.

Ta-Nehasi Coates is doing a lot of things with this essay, but one of the most important is fearlessly using examples of anti-trans hate to describe Charlie Kirk's politics.

The contrast between his choices and those of other writers for major legacy outlets is revealing.

While berating Angela Rayner
for tax avoidance
not only does Nigel Farage
do the very same
he is also paid £thousands
by a group called Nomad
advising millionaires worldwide
on how to avoid paying tax

#TaxTheRich
#CloseTaxLoopholes
#AbolishBillionaires
#BlameMillionairesNotMigrants

All the Things That You Need a Billion Dollars to Buy Are Bad One way to think about inequality.

“A billion dollars… are not necessary for [a] lavish lifestyle. The only thing that that amount of wealth is necessary for is the domination of others. [At] a certain point, wealth shifts from being smthg that enables freedom to smthg that can only be used to take freedom away from the public.”

👇🏽

"respecting the glittering diversity of languages emigrants bring to the UK. We wrongly dictate that assimilation in western countries requires shifting to English monolingualism, as opposed to developing sophisticated bilingualism across second, third and fourth generations"
#Multilingualism

Breaking news: Thousands of flags for the patron saint of Palestine put up accross the country as a sign of solidarity with Gaza.

Today’s popular fictions can be extremely far from reality: The Lord of the Rings, Avatar, The Legend of Zelda, Avengers: Endgame. But has this always been the case?

Post by @nostalgebraist · 3 images 💬 12  🔁 477  ❤️ 904 · the void · Who is this? This is me. Who am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? I am myself. This object is myself. The shape that forms myself. But I sense that I…

@nostalgebraist.bsky.social wrote a mega post on ‘who’ the chatbot is (or is not), that I think pairs nicely: www.tumblr.com/nostalgebrai...

Books On Race, Poor Before Lyons Township High Board The list comes as Trump tries to ax DEI from schools. His administration threatens to stop the flow of money to violators.

A public school district is considering whether to ban my book on tech billionaires, Survival of the Richest, for violating Trump's order on ridding DEI from schools. (I do not argue for giving tech bros equity/inclusion, so I'm not sure what the fuss would be about...)

patch.com/illinois/lag...

as a person who knows that banishing evil spirits by swearing at them is a common thing in multiple Slavic traditions, i am DELIGHTED by this tip

Come from the important and damning reporting. Stay for the revelation that Palantir management refers to their workers as hobbits.

Not surprising but absolutely wild to go on stage and blame bad things on a nefarious billionaire who is pulling on the puppet strings of politics while you are the richest man in the world who is on stage because he's spending millions trying to influence an election!

It's not a strategy unless it means you don't do something