Notices by Clive Thompson (clive@saturation.social)

@band @GhostOnTheHalfShell

good one

who could have seen *this* coming

https://futurism.com/neoscope/23andme-selling-data

So it turns out that Michael "Reply All" Waltz, Trump's national-security advisor -- the guy who accidentally invited the editor of The Atlantic into a Signal chat to reveal top-secret military plans in realtime ...

... also had left his Venmo "friends" list comppletely public

Wired discovered this and reported it, whereupon the account went instantly private: https://www.wired.com/story/michael-waltz-left-his-venmo-public/

(in other news, Wired continues to kill it)

https://www.wired.com/story/michael-waltz-left-his-venmo-public/

Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/G68KW

This story is *wild*

Michael Waltz, Trump's national security advisor, was using Signal to chat with high-up Trump officials like defense secretary Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, Stephen Mille, a CIA operative, and JD Vance ...

... to co-ordinate the Mar 15 bombing of Houthi targets

Waltz added -- apparently by mistake -- Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, to the group

a wild, clownishly self-own of a leak

https://archive.is/JEYep

Hey Canadians:

I just heard about two Canadian friends of a friend who were driving into the US

the border agents demanded they unlock their phones; the agents searched the phones, found anti-Trump stuff on one ...

... then confiscated that phone and neither person was allowed into the US

These folks weren't activists or anything -- the search doesn't appear to have been triggered by that

so, govern yourselves accordingly

So: The linguistic practices of cows!

they're *complex*

for one thing, they're *slow* -- "when a mother calls to her calf, it sometimes takes 60 seconds for the calf to respond"

some researchers argue that the communications of cows might be more complex than that of whales

Item #4 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read and subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-32-technofossils-sticktok-and-a-web-site/

you don't say

Okay mastodonians 🐘

it's time for the opposite of doomscrolling

my latest "Linkfest" newsletter just dropped 📬

crammed full of gems pulled from the inky mineshafts of the internet

Free to read and subscribe to, right here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-31-tactile-graphics-alexinomnia-and-a-to/

This issue includes:

👉 tactile graphics from 1900
📇 "alexinomia"
☁️ fog harvesting
💖 dataviz on how romance is vanishing from movies
🎲 a to-do app controlled by dice
📱 WikiTok
🎒 solar backpacks
🐟 66 million year old fish vomit

and SO MUCH MORE

An argument: We need working-class media -- https://www.cjr.org/analysis/america-needs-working-class-media-end-catering-rich-audiences.php

co-sign

I’m at a March in NYC to support congestion pricing

This is one of the times when the classic chant — “whose streets? our streets“ — is not just a metaphoric but literal lol

As ever, Timothy Snyder -- the historian of tyranny -- distills the moment perfectly

The key line:

"In general outline, the idea is to make the government as a whole dysfunctional, while preserving the parts of it than can intimidate and oppress citizens."

https://snyder.substack.com/p/kash-patels-plots

A powerful and unsettling post by Timothy Snyder, the historian of tyranny ...

... about Trump's horrific stance towards Ukraine -- i.e. demanding half the profits of Ukraine's mineral rights, *in perpetuity* (among other things) ...

there's too much to quote in here, but the tl;dr is

- it's effectively colonialism
- it rewards Russia
- it massively overstates the aid the US gave to Ukraine ...
- ... and understates the huge benefits the US got

Read the whole thing: https://snyder.substack.com/p/recoup-the-costs

How the behavior of DOGE -- and Trump's lackeys who are running riot through the federal government -- is exactly that of ...

... a protection racket

An excellent way of understanding it, via @Dahlialith at Slate

unpaywalled: https://archive.is/tNrHM

An excellent interview with Elizabeth Warren ...

... about the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ...

... how much banks loathed it ...

... how much money it has put back in the pockets of Americans, by cracking down on deceptive and usurious bank charges ...

... and why Musk in particular would hate the CFPB: He wants X to be a financial app, and doesn't want to treat his customer's privacy and rights seriously

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/sen-elizabeth-warrens-two-word-plan-to-save-the-cfpb-from-elon-musk

"I wrote in my notebook, from the front seat of a silent Tesla carrying me, its driver, and one other person through a pastel-toned tunnel, that 'nothing can prepare you for how fucking stupid this shit is.'"

David Roth on this year's CES

https://archive.is/mo4AS

I'm working at a cafe today and "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House comes on

during the chorus I look to my left far across the cafe where two young women, maybe 20 years old, are sitting together

they both have their heads tilted back and eyes closed, mouthing DON'T DREAAAAAAAMMM it's OHHHHHHH-VER like they're onstage in American Idol

man, I had no idea Gen Z kids even *knew* that song

Well what do you know

Marko Elez, one of the young software guys Musk has illegally turned loose to alter critical government high-tech services ...

... was, just back in December, posting on X about how he wanted there to be a "eugenic immigration policy" ...

... how "you could not pay me to marry outside my race" ...

... and "Normalize Indian hate", referring in this case to folks from India

the Wall Street Journal just broke the story (gift link): https://www.wsj.com/tech/doge-staffer-resigns-over-racist-posts-d9f11a93?st=8613EM&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

In addition to formal government institutions, Musk is also trying to tear apart Wikipedia

That is almost certainly, as this analysis notes, because Wikipedia is "a last bastion of shared reality" ...

... and Musk, in contrast, only wants online sources that repeat his sort of conspiratorial blather

The piece: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/02/elon-musk-wikipedia/681577/

Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/1mjMq

"Of course it's a coup"

as ever, Timothy Snyder cuts to the chase

https://snyder.substack.com/p/of-course-its-a-coup

More excellent reporting from the team at Wired, on the activities of Musk’s group of 20something tech folks

Marko Elez, a 25-year-old who worked at SpaceX and X has admin privileges over critical systems the federal government uses to pay money out out — to agencies, individuals, contractors, you name it

In addition to being able to cause damage, Elez is now a *mammoth* security risk

https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-associate-bfs-federal-payment-system/