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highplainsdem

(59,812 posts)
Thu Jan 1, 2026, 12:57 PM 22 hrs ago

Ed Zitron: 2025, A Retrospective

I've recommended Ed's writings here quite often. He really understands the AI industry, and he writes brilliantly.

Yesterday he posted a newsletter looking back at what he did last year, from doing 110 episodes of a podcast, to writing over 440,000 words, to getting close to 90,000 subscribers for his newsletter, to being interviewed/profiled by the New Yorker, Slate, the Financial Times, NPR, the BBC, and way too many others to mention.

He linked to a lot of his best newsletters and the media coverage, and it's a good way to catch up on what he's been saying and why it's so important.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/2025-a-retrospective/

I have no idea what happens next. My fear - and expectation - is that many people still do not realize that there is an AI bubble or will not accept how significant and dangerous the bubble is, meaning that everybody is going to act like AI is the biggest most hugest and most special thing in the world right up until they accept that it isn't.

-snip-

I realize right now everything feels a little intense and bleak, but at this time of year it's always worth remembering to be kinder and more thoughtful toward those close to us. It's cheesy, but it's the best thing you can possibly do. It's easy to feel isolated by the amount of hogs oinking at the prospect of laying you off or replacing you - and it turns out there are far more people that are afraid or outraged than there are executives or AI boosters.

Never forget (or forgive them for) what they've done to the computer, and never forget that those scorned by the AI bubble are legion. Join me on r/Betteroffline, you are far from alone.

I intend to spend the next year becoming a better writer, analyst, broadcaster, entertainer and person. I appreciate every single one of you that reads my work, and hope you'll continue to do so in the future.


If that last link looks odd to you, it's for a Reddit forum or subreddit, r/Betteroffline - https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ - where Ed posts, and where there are already 22K members.
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Ed Zitron: 2025, A Retrospective (Original Post) highplainsdem 22 hrs ago OP
Ty SheltieLover 22 hrs ago #1
Yvw highplainsdem 19 hrs ago #3
On it and thank you highplainsdem. nt Prairie_Seagull 22 hrs ago #2
You're welcome, Prairie_Seagull! There's a lot of great reading in those links. highplainsdem 19 hrs ago #4
Ed Zitron does good work jfz9580m 12 hrs ago #5

jfz9580m

(16,536 posts)
5. Ed Zitron does good work
Thu Jan 1, 2026, 11:23 PM
12 hrs ago

I agree with his piece “Never Forgive Them”.

I think if even one or two of these guys: Musk, Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Nadella, Ellison, Andreessen, end up doing hard time like Elizabeth Holmes is doing, after this era is over, it will seriously act as a deterrent and send a warning to all the white collar criminals unconstitutionally encroaching into our homes, streets and lives and turning people into streams of (nonsense) data.

I personally think Yasha Levine is peerless in tech writing and if I can get in touch with him, I will try to tell him what I know like those kids told that Wall Street reporter about Theranos.
This is more widespread than one company and it has been legitimised and normalized and needs serious and draconian pushback against the private sector and their shills inside the state.

And I learnt from watching the pandemic and seeing this online sleuth bullshit turn what was obviously most probably a wet market issue into a bullshit lab leaks story.

It was picked up by bored morons online and nitpicking “truth tellers” turned into a bullshit political issue to attack poor Dr.Fauci with while claiming that wet markets are awesome and it is somehow prejudice to consider them a barbaric animal abusing nightmare.

These are people who comment online and write opeds (most of which are as rubbish as this post) wouldn’t be able to do the kind of work Dr. Fauci or most of the honest and decent doctors and scientists (not the creeps you find at Stanford/MIT/Harvard/Yale/Dartmouth. Those people should be tossed into virtual viper pits.) I mean decent pis and doctors-the vast majority of quiet, mild normal doctors and scientists.

I hate that contact with these technologies and these morons has turned me into an aggressive person and I don’t like that.

I am seriously thinking of free will now and influence which harnesses your resentment.
Well it does have a purpose re survival if honed and targeted only to morons doing real damage..not the unfortunate moron ;-/. Hey we have all been there.

I think this culture of toughness and yelling and truth telling is bullshit. Unless fine honed and instead of contributing to the spectacle fine tuned and directed at a small a specific set of nuisances and their acolytes and others with such parasitic tendencies.

As for the rest of us ;-/ we all need grace.

But these wetware markets could cause a large ransomware issue-not the reputation ransomware or political ransomware these brainless and stupid creeps with their porn are obsessed with.

But serious ransomware as in a take down of banks. That’s my nightmare. My bank. That would hobble everything and with these guys, their deregulated ways, normalization of data leaks and demonisation of people like Dr Fauci, they would target universities and hospitals, where the admins with ties to the private sector should be metaphorically burnt with fire and attacked with torches and pitchforks, but not random labs.

That TwitterFiles, LabLeak, BeagleGate stuff is such rubbish. No priorities.
This is harder to report since it is so much more insidious than Theranos which was one creepy little company.

This is turning into a set of policies that no one in the general public agreed to. And that has to stop.

And as for free will, to get to the crux of the matter, I don’t like being annoyed in my home. This is the one place I come to avoid the bullshit pervading every other space. It is the one place where I can recover from the inflictions of moronic moronicity and annoying me here with unwanted interactive junk tech while hoping I can be written off a crazy person, yeah that makes me as barbaric as these guys.

I was willing to cooperate as much as I can and admit all personal issues and flaws except insanity. But this has crossed a line and it is..

I feel like I end up parroting the same people I can’t stand-aggressive, vapid and a mix.
That is overwriting who I am and that is really annoying. I was a peaceful and often indolent but well intentioned person and I was doing my part as much as the investments by this shit society permit and even warrant.

My sole regret is wrt my main mentor and my oncologist and my best friend from grad school and my ex, four people who go beyond the call of duty and deserved more.
With everyone else, well tragic or possibly tragicomic that jfz9580m turned out to be such an unprepossessing mass of id and directionlessness. Oh well..

But this cannot go on and so I am thinking of free will more and o don’t want this junk in my home. Low tech just for bank security without security theatre and basic stuff without any add ons and I am still filing complaints about everything targeting the private sector and any bored morons online who thought any of this was cute.

Times have changed and we need human rights, sexual harassment, harassment, malfeasance laws.
I hope the field of constitutional law (off the cuff that’s what comes to mind) gets some more Lina Khans because these are fundamental attacks on democracy.

It is an attack on the best parts of the public sector and education and the growth of a bunch of diseased Facebook and YouTube offerings replacing anything healthy is an insult.
Facebook like Google is a cancer. These industries lull the brain. One Yan LeCun doesn’t change the fact that Facebook is a parasite and fluffy and stupid.

This can be a time of dramatic change and as with the lableak bs, while i condemn academic labs that played along with these private sector parasites, the biggest and most urgent issue is Google/Facebook/Microsoft/all things Musk or Ambani or Adani etc and they are robber barons. If one of those guys went to a real prison and did hard time like Elizabeth Holmes, it would send a message into the future about tampering with democracy and civil ans women’s rights exploiting every crisis and making new ones. And they are the root cause or one anyway behind the explicitly Nazi parasites like Vance, Trump etc. Blah fascists and faux elite lead to faux populist nazis and Nazi fascists. This is completely unacceptable.

This defies common sense and is illogical and morally bankrupt, cruel, inhumane and awful and these guys need to be destroyed along with their junk tech.
I haven’t liked the person they have turned me into ;-/.
And I don’t like being annoyed in my home.

This is the one place I come to be alone and shore up patience for everything else that is hideous and awful and needs grace.
I was myself a sloven wretchedly scrounging around at the very bottom of the white collar academic world and this has annoyed me enough to make this completely unfunny and angering. It is not histrionics.

I don’t care about morality as much as about being left the hell alone to at least use my own resources to do what most humans do-lead a decent like minimizing harm and these guys should be destroyed. These parasites like Pichai, Musk, Zuckerberg, Hennessy, Andreessen, Horowitz etc and that will ensure that the world doesn’t turn into a reality show that elects a complete ass like Trump.

If you work in the private sector just make products people actually want like utilitarian (not the stupid Peter Singer ideology -fuck that guy-he should also be destroyed for associating the animal rights movement with crazy people) stuff commensurately priced instead of taking over all of reality ineptly till one of you must do hard time/ I think they should draw straws as to who takes the fall like Elizabeth Holmes. I am fine with Musk/Pichai/Nadella etc …but that’s for you guys over there to decide
Here it is whichever creeps it was locally and that hopefully should also affect their US offices.

There are also a slew of these small creeps* in ai and one of them going to prison is fine by me. But till some of them do hard time, they won’t learn that you don’t fuck with democracy and women’s rights and civil rights with corrupt lying shrinks and admins.

And these YouTubers and influencers are another scourge and some of them should also do hard time along with these cyberwarriors.
This is for experts who are honest and work in the public sector not under these Trump toadies like Bhattacharya. But peopel like Lina Khan. She is my template. And she was decent human being. I loved Lina Khan.
She was draconian in the right way and that’s what’s needed not snapping at poor Dr Faucis heels when all you do with your life is have a creepy online influence thing.

Yasha Levine is awesome and get priorities that way as does Zitron. Sorry. I must work today and go offline and I wanted to cover everyone and everything that should be destroyed or supported in one fell swoop and that’s hard.


*: I live in India as I am Indian and this slew of creepy Indian Trumpers or Indian American sleazebags I read about in the news worry me in this deregulated era of ai and big data.
E.g.: Mitesh Bohra of infobeans; that guy with that junk MixPanel; that total creep Vincent Xavier Palathingal who participated in Jan 6 -that guy should have been sent to prison and going by that behavior he is totally the type who would exploit this era of deregulation and ai shilling and a few guys of that type should do hard time. That will send a real message about consequences for fraud in big data and ai and just for profit. Completely unprincipled and mercenary and that guy is that type. You don’t need pseudo sophisticated personality bs, just a human jury that isn’t corrupt nor daft; Shalab Kumar this other creepy Indian Trumper. Ragy Thomas this creepy little data miner I saw in a Covid era scandal.
Till some guys like these as well as the Pichai Nadella Musk type do hard time, things won’t change. They exploit outdated marijuana laws and sexism and these fraudulent “health” industries that are as bogus as Holmes.
If Holmes is doing time so should those guys.

My medical MJ company offers a real service and I don’t need an Ambani and Zuckerberg pair to bs about colonisation where anti MJ laws and reefer madness were brought to this country by the Brits. And now legalization of MJ meaning a whole slew of parasites who don’t make products or make access to products easy as my doctor does and aren’t patients or users like me, but want to extort both parties and take a cut, they should do hard time.
This mass incarceration is a travesty but a number of white collars criminals who exploited this era 2000-2025 and going forward to subvert democracy BTS and undermine society and turn every place into this monoculture or ai and YouTube slop..that is criminal.
And these YouTubers are parasites.

I have been through hell and I think it is time to visit it on these guys.

I know I sound ott. But that is because there is an urgency here. These guys accelerated and destroyed society there and here in my neck of the woods for me as well.
This is a time when a pushback Lina Khan style is possible and this time the left and progressives shouldn’t hold back.
I will do my part. I am not don’t this for income or attention like a YouTube creep.
This shouldn’t be on the net as it would excite these brainless online sleuths with no lives. Or morons on Facebook etc. Because they stare at any trainwreck being soulless, mindless, brainless zombies: the type of thing I don’t want to turn into.


Though if you guys here on DU want to stare at this, just know I am not a bot or crazy. I have no patience with sleuthing or toughness etc.
But I had and have a small set of resources and I can’t stand their parasitism and encroachment anymore. This isn’t an income source for me and I hate this type of attention.
It is spectacular unless real results like one of these guys going to prison for their delusions of grandeur and virtual nuisance and creepy snooping and spying driven overtake of reality is not checked.

Holmes was easy. This is widespread and affecting lots of society and exploits human insecurities over trivial crap.

Something DUer Marble Falls said stuck with me “piggies get fed. Hogs get slaughtered” These guys are hogs and they won’t stop.

I watched The DropOut and felt so sorry for those kids because the burden is always on the complainant. And that is so wrong. It is gaslighting.
These industries need serious regulation but if someone like Nadella or Pichai or Palathingal or Mitesh Bohra-that type where they thought some sort of cornucopian

Being an Indian woman who has been sexually and otherwise harassed by Indian men of this type, I am rooting for one of these guys going to prison. I can’t list the defence contractor with a Lockheed Martin contract who harassed me without risking my anonymity which

These insidiously creepy local bot or not tests I suspect exist are about silencing women who leak info online because women who have been subjected to harassment have the right to anonymity here which I support.

I have no wish to ever “tell my story”. I want the parties responsible - I don’t even know who they are-arrested without my small and decent medical MJ company or my doctors (especially my onc who I am very fond of) harassed.

Most Indian men are decent and these assholes give racists a reason to smear all and so they should be destroyed. I am feeling vengeful. They can’t break all norms and rules and twist them to exploit and subjugate (lol..nice try though ..I am real submissive as is clear. I have to fight to not smite and that only so I am not labeled borderline ..a sexist and vicious label) women and expect to get away with it.
Women would never have had any rights if this could have worked or been validly glossed over where convenient. The future cannot be like the past. That is senility.
And this endless online chatter is a waste of everyone’s life. Gossip and it is disgrace that reflects poorly on the intelligence and character of everyone who does it.
But I look at the Elizabeth Holmes case and hope that can happen with these guys and that should set legal precedents in data and ai that are not controlled by creeps at Stanford and MIT for some lame Wikipedia like bullshit, but results in real pushback.

I think I have sent out all the threats I want to seriously/ it’s all opaque and some bs like this is metaphorically like being an anti vaxxer. Wrong. If I engage with such stupid metaphors, I am pro vaccine. I just think vaccines are an only a bandaid. wet and wetware markets should be shutdown as they did in Vietnam (well wet markets anyway).

I am feeling very Straw Dogs about my home and street. These guys need to be shut down. I would love to see Sundar Pichai do hard time. After a rant yesterday, I walked out into a living room and saw him vapidly talking about Ai predictions on tv and wistfully hoped that one day he follows human predictions, predicting that he does hard time one day. He is really a good person to make an example of and he was at Trump’s inauguration and it would be so just in a wat if his own support of racists like Trump ended up sending him to prison. He really deserves to do hard time. He recently became a billionaire as well. He is a human being who is such a vapid and morally bankrupt man. If Sundar Pichai along with an online sleuth/youtuber or two does hard time it will send a message to all these other tech creeps and this online nuisance they built.

Now I must go work to get back into the real world to file complaints and see that I do my part to ensure that I don’t play along like these creeps who took to this like fish to water or allow corrupt shrinks and systems to label me schizophrenic or borderline. Elizabeth Holmes is doing time and cyberstalkers and bullies go to prison and so should these guys and a real one. It is long past time to fight for democracy and women’s rights and I really don’t like being annoyed in my own home.
I must at a minimum be excised from this grid but even if it is not widespread (though it should be..but that’s not my decision..I am not a leader or influencer..unlike these guys I don’t have delusions of grandeur..I just like to be left alone..it is failure to understand human nature to not grasp that basic thing that if you have nothing of value to contribute to some one leave them alone) pushback I will though and not with stories and other trash subsumed into these cancer like industries. Yasha Levine gets it.
But real pushback since these invasive bullshit jobs are killing real jobs and real life like kudzu and other invasive plants. I had a real job. This is not a source of income.
And again I am very grateful for EarlG for this forum. I am grateful to all the people who really offered me engagement I would want ..

And it is not a conversation so much as a complaint form. Leave me alone if you have nothing that isn’t creepy and awful to contribute and you didn’t. The problem with MeToo BLm etc was they didn’t result in anything concrete. Andy Rubin and Amit Singhal got hefty pay packages. Google still exploits geofences.
Till pushback about the online rot bleeding into offline life via humans and bots is stopped via draconian pushback these guys won’t learn.
I won’t blink. I am not crazy or stupid and this won’t end well for them: I will be fine from here on out. And don’t follow me you creeps or do bot or not bs. It will get worse for you if you do.

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