From me this week
Pardon Me, Trump, No Pardon Me, and Me, and Me and Me, Too! — Naked Capitalism, 16 Sep.
AI Doomer Hypeloop Suspiciously Serves to Support OpenAI & Anthropic’s Agenda — Naked Capitalism, 14 Sep.
Joe Biden’s Three Genocides in Four Years: Ukraine Part 2 — Ian Welsh, 16 Sep. (Cross-posted at NWT.)
From me at the Let It Roll Podcast
Vernon Dalhart: The Forgotten First Superstar of Country Music: Let It Roll From the Beginning… 3.5 — Let It Roll, 18 Sep.
Ed Ward on Rock Pre-History the 1920s & 30s: Let It Roll From the Beginning… 3.4 — Let It Roll, 16 Sep.
The Holy Trinity of Texas Gospel and a Devilish Businessman: Let It Roll From the Beginning… 3.3 — Let It Roll, 14 Sep.
Ted Gioia: Every Great Musical Revolution Started With Outsiders — YouTube
From me as Nate Wilcox — The MMA Draw
Who Really Made the UFC Political? – A Conversation with Luke Thomas, Sep 18
Billion Dollar War Pains for Turki — The MMA Draw, 8 Sep.
Me Elsewhere
SAUDI ON FIRE As Oil Prices SKYROCKET — YouTube. “We been trying to tell y’all dumbasses, me and FightOpinion, but no one listened. The Saudis are broke and about to be broken.” Same day as “Saudi is not open for business and will never be the same again”.
Guest spot on @TIRShowOakland with @J_Myles_TIR and Mike McGuinness — YouTube. 12 Sep
Reunion show with @alexeiauld and @heynottheface — YouTube. RT of Alexei Auld’s post, 12 Sep.
AI Bubble
Could rogue agent swarms take over the entire internet in the next six months? — Gary Marcus. “For now, we don’t find Dario’s claim particularly plausible. The six-month part is silly.
”But it’s all still more reason to restrict any AI that cannot be closely monitored, and more reason to ask why we are allowing all these hard-to-control agents out onto the internet in the first place.”Is the AI Apocalypse for Real? — Ken Klippenstein. “For the appistocracy, there’s profit in all of the attention — literally. We have a new generation of technologists who generate publicity warning of everything from bioterrorism to the machines taking over. Thus AI is turned into a “national security” issue; and as such, it is elevated to the same status as nuclear weapons, deemed too important for interference from a meddlesome public.
“The reality though? Listen to the spy agencies. Though they’re far from immune to threat inflation, these agencies echo none of the hysterics dominating the news. As the U.S. intelligence community sees it, AI simply magnifies threats that are already there. And that’s basically right. (More on this in a moment.)”5 lessons from the OpenAI / Hugging Face incident — Gary Marcus. Gary Marcus and Zack Korman on the Hugging Face breach. Quoted in Coffee Break: AI Doomer Hypeloop, NC 14 Sep 2026.
Dwarkesh Patels’s wildly popular but dangerously misleading account of the OpenAI Hugging Face incident — Gary Marcus. Marcus taking apart the “agent civilizations” account. Quoted in Coffee Break: AI Doomer Hypeloop, NC 14 Sep 2026.
Hot take on GPT-6 Astra — Gary Marcus. Marcus on the Astra release. Quoted in Coffee Break: AI Doomer Hypeloop, NC 14 Sep 2026.
No, Anderson Cooper, AI is not going to kill all humans by 2030 — Gary Marcus. Marcus answering the Anderson Cooper / Coxon interview. Quoted in Coffee Break: AI Doomer Hypeloop, NC 14 Sep 2026.
Two cheers (out of three) for Dario Amodei — Gary Marcus. Marcus on “We Must Pace the Frontier.” Quoted in Coffee Break: AI Doomer Hypeloop, NC 14 Sep 2026.
CoreWeave Is A Time Bomb — Ed Zitron. Ed Zitron on CoreWeave’s debt. Quoted in Coffee Break: AI Doomer Hypeloop, NC 14 Sep 2026.
AI Is Already In Dangerous Hands — Ed Zitron. Ed Zitron on the doomer narrative and the Matt Shumer precedent. Quoted in Coffee Break: AI Doomer Hypeloop, NC 14 Sep 2026.
The AI Bubble Is About to Burst And We’ll All Pay | Cory Doctorow — YouTube. The Doctorow video — the five timecodes I pulled quotes from. Quoted in Coffee Break: AI Doomer Hypeloop, NC 14 Sep 2026.
Inside Project Lily: the humans reading your ChatGPT chats — 404 Media. 404 Media, via my RT of @josephfcox — OpenAI contractors reading real user conversations.
Here Lies The Motive: AI Leaders’ Cunning Plan Exposed — ZeroHedge
Washington’s AI anxiety Sacked — Politico. Odd feeling to be in agreement with David Sacks about something, but he’s right on this.
ps AI ‘Doom Loop’: OpenAI and Microsoft Admits LLMs Are Destroying the Web and Built on Theft — 404 Media
Liability, regulation, and AI’s new false dichotomy — Gary Marcus
Lina Khan’s Cure for Dem AI Doomers — Politico
Big AI’s Favorite Democrats Are Writing The Party’s AI Plan — The Lever. Hakeem Jeffries’ five-member AI commission is stacked with lawmakers backed by industry super PACs seeking to shape federal policy.
AI Bubble: ‘They’re coming to the end of this’ | Eli the Computer Guy — YouTube
‘Big Short’ investor Steve Eisman on AI: The companies are trying to manufacture a crisis — YouTube
Iran War
Steve Jermy: End of U.S. Military Primacy – New Strategic Thinking Required — YouTube
Republican launches impeachment effort against Pete Hegseth over Iran war — USA Today. “Frances Farmer will have her revenge on Seattle/She’ll come back as fire to burn all the liars/Leave a blanket of ash on the ground”
Experts Declare Fuel Crisis Imminent as Global Wars Choke Out Supply — Simplicius. “This type of short-sighted, bumbling diplomacy is like haphazardly putting out random fires one at a time, all while inadvertently starting new ones. Trump thinks the US can act recklessly hostile against the entire world, unscrupulously supplying weapons to Ukraine to destroy major sectors of Russian infrastructure, ruthlessly attacking Iran, etc., and then wonders why the blowback is starting to poison the domestic economy.”
The Collapse of American Hegemony and Global Nuclear Risks — The Unz Review. “Raised in a family of Iranian exiles, Trita Parsi came from a background that was less than friendly towards the Islamic Republic. A few years ago, he became co-founder and vice president of the very respectable Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. That organization advocates realism and restraint in foreign policy, with its major donors being leading American foundations, including Open Society, Koch, Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller.
“And as Parsi explained in a recent interview, “The United States and Israel threw everything they had at Iran and they failed. As a result, the Iranians are far more confident in their capabilities than they were before.” Meanwhile, regional trust in America had completely collapsed, with the GCC countries recognizing that America could not protect them against Iranian retaliation.”The End of the American Middle East — Foreign Affairs. “The American Middle East is finished. The regional order that has prevailed since 1991 has been one of the many casualties of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. The American and Israeli failure to dislodge the regime in Tehran has proved the bankruptcy of decades of sanctions and violence. The inability of the United States to protect its Gulf allies from Iranian attacks or to keep the Strait of Hormuz open has fatally undermined the core security bargain that justified its network of military bases in the region. And Israel’s increasingly threatening posture and abandonment of any pretense of interest in reaching an accommodation with the Palestinians have ended Washington’s decades-long mission of bringing its Arab allies and Israel together into an enduring security partnership.”
Maximum Pressure on Iran Will Fail — Foreign Affairs. “Trump’s War Has Brought American Strategy to a Dead End”
Alastair Crooke: West Asia Is Incubating a New Era of Revolutions — “A Decisive and Historic Stage” — YouTube
Ukraine
Ukraine: “It’s not a tragedy it’s a crime” — YouTube. “I’ve lived in Ukraine for 5 years. I’ve had a lot of Ukrainian friends, even if I’ve probably lost all of them because we see things very differently now. But still, I actually take Ukraine very seriously. I know the language. And it’s it’s not a tragedy. It’s a crime how ordinary Ukrainians are being sacrificed by their puppet regime and by Western governments who have a sick dream of inflicting a geopolitical setback on Russia. It’s a sick dream under any circumstances. What makes it even more insane is it’s totally futile. In the end, hundreds of thousands, maybe over a million Ukrainians will be dead and they on top of it will lose the war. And this is what von der Leyen wants to go on for even longer. Unbelievable. And in this case, Lavrov made some extraordinary statement about the legitimacy of the Ukrainian statehood itself.”
Ukraine Will Be a Cancer on Europe and Russia. Iran a Quagmire for the USA | Amb. Chas Freeman — YouTube. Ambassador Freeman is one of the few wise men left.
Saudi Oil Crisis
In Praise of the Houthis — Norman Finkelstein
Gaza
Israel
U.S. Makes, Israel Takes: The Real Story of U.S.-Israeli Military Cooperation — Drop Site. “The Iron Beam laser and Arrow anti-ballistic missile systems are touted as examples of Israeli military ingenuity. But they were largely developed and financed by the U.S.”
Palestine
The Loneliness of a Long-Distance Pro-Palestine Israeli — Alon Mizrahi. “We are not the victims here, the story is not about us, and we by no means can replace Palestinian voices. Still, the truth is what it is, and you pay a price for being an anti-Zionist Israeli/Jew”
US Politics
Karl Rove says he’d vote for a Democrat for the first time — Texas Tribune. Texas Tribune, via my RT of @MWatkinsTrib — said at a private luncheon after Bo French’s post.
British Slave Traders: register of investors and profiteers — British Slave Traders. Via my RT of @BobbyVylan — a comprehensive register of those who took part in British enslavement.
Rick Perlstein: Greatest Hits, Vol. I — Rick Perlstein. I posted it bare on 13 Sep, no comment.
Ted Cruz got booed so loudly during ‘College GameDay’ interview you couldn’t hear a thing he said — Fox News. “Cruz, a Texas senator, got booed so loudly during the entirety of the interview — which took place on the Longhorns’ Austin campus — that you could barely hear a word he said.”
Texas Politician Ignites a Hideous Firestorm Against UT-Austin Students — Evil MoPac. “The Republican candidate for Railroad Commissioner is a disgusting canary in a deeply racist coalmine”
Meet the Gen-Z GOP political consultant helping lead the Texas comptroller’s office — Texas Tribune. “Appointing a deputy comptroller who graduated from Texas A&M three years ago is just one of numerous shake-ups at an agency responsible with some of the state’s most important business.”
Economy
The Structural Incentives Of Western Capitalism Make Competing With China Impossible — Ian Welsh. “The reason VW and other German firms made so much money in China for so long is that they had, brace for it, better cars. More technologically advanced. Better handling.
“But …they didn’t try and keep that lead. They let the Chinese beat them by refusing to properly re-invest their profits.
“This is a constant problem in the West: our elites don’t want to compete on price. They don’t want to compete on quality. They want “moats” — they want monopoly profits just for existing.”
Ari Emanuel
First look at Ari Emanuel’s memoir, ‘Roll the Calls’ — Puck. Puck. My five-tweet thread off it, 15 Sep: Ari on Trump — “what he didn’t mention is he mobilized all of the UFC to support Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024. And does POTUS really need an agent? #kayfabe”; the WME takeover as the pivot point; Ari and Egon Durban; Ari palling around with Whitesell; and Endeavor going private.
Sports Business
Alt Media
Jim Webb & Due Dissidence: Why Everything You Know About Policy is Wrong — YouTube. Interesting left-right convergence; being alt-media is the common bond
Predictive markets
From X
AI Bubble
. “When companies go public they must file paperwork disclosing their financials.Doing so would expose the massive cash burn OpenAI is using. Therefore, Sam Altman can’t go public but he also has run out of money.Enter “whistle blower” Jacob Coxon.It made no sense how an obscure nobody got 165 million views on his first X post saying AI could kill us all. Then he was on every news station within 48 hours, scaring the public.This was a psyop to “regulate” the AI companies… aka give them government funding to ‘protect the public from the dangers of AI.’”
Gary Marcus on the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act. Marcus’s tweet on the Sanders/Casar bill. Quoted in Coffee Break: AI Doomer Hypeloop, NC 14 Sep 2026.
“Forget the Doomers this is the real AI disaster scenario”. My quote of @HedgieMarkets: Wall Street banks lobbying rating agencies to give OpenAI and Anthropic investment-grade ratings. Source: @HedgieMarkets.
Ellison scrapping the $7.5B Oracle sale. I quoted @jtoonkel twice inside twenty minutes — “What the actual fuck?” and then “Apparently not.” The first one. Source: @jtoonkel.
@RealJimChanos and @rdd147 on neocloud circular financing. Chanos on the $25–40M per MW claims — “from whom, and how big is that contract?” — quoting rdd147’s list of eight companies in circular deals with CoreWeave. I also RT’d rdd147 on H100 rental economics. My RT.
@econcallum: datacentre buildout stocks 25% off highs. RT. Goldman’s index of Nvidia, HP, Qualcomm and the rest. My RT.
@Amanda_Goodall: Oracle layoffs. RT. Double-digit percentage cuts on some teams, against what Oracle is still hiring for. My RT.
OpenAI and the stolen proof. My line: “It’s interesting that OpenAI could steal the whole of journalism and content creation and no one cared, glad people care about math.” I also RT’d Gary Marcus on the same @ValerioCapraro thread — “one of the greatest intellectual scandals in the history of science.” Source: @ValerioCapraro.
@BedoyaUSA: AI will not eradicate humanity. RT of the Bedoya thread, and separately Matt Stoller quoting it — “Former FTC commissioner here….” My RT.
@MorePerfectUS: Anthropic building a “pre-crime” activist monitoring system. RT. My RT.
“This thread fucking bangs”. My quote of @brianchau57 claiming a single Israeli Effective Altruism firm is behind the OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta cyberattacks. Source: @brianchau57.
@HedgieMarkets: fast food kiosks aren’t replacing counter staff. RT citing the WSJ — the automation-doesn’t-pay counterexample. My RT.
Iran War
“What utter dumbfucks….or is there a fix in?”. My quote of @HormuzLetter: the Royal Saudi Air Force bombed its own Yemeni allies, the Saudi-backed Giants Brigades. Source: @HormuzLetter.
@WeTheBrandon: friendly-fire incidents in Yemen. RT. Saudi Air Force bombing its own proxies — pairs with the @HormuzLetter item above. My RT.
“The Saudi mercenaries are getting no help from the mercenaries on the UAE payroll”. Two quotes of @DD_Geopolitics the same day on the collapse of the mercenary front; the second asks where His Excellency Turki Alalshikh is. Source: @DD_Geopolitics.
“Slaves running to their master and getting no help”. My quote of @warfareanalysis on Israel Hayom reporting Saudi Arabia indirectly asking Israel for help against the Houthis. Source: @warfareanalysis.
“The Houthis are choking off the Red Sea”. My quote of @FirstSquawk: Saudi oil production at its lowest level since 1990. My read — higher prices are saving their bacon, but a tanker war catches the Saudis, UAE and Kuwait. Source: @FirstSquawk.
@travisakers: both Straits closed was the Pentagon’s unimaginable case. RT from a retired officer — the scenario war-gamed as worst case before 2024. My RT.
@gbrew24: the downed F-15 crew and the standoff-munitions shift. RT. Since early April the US has relied on standoff munitions — the detail he thinks matters most in that story. My RT.
@CallaWalsh on the 60 Minutes rescued-pilot segment. RT questioning the account — hit the ground at 70–100 mph and only broke his back and shoulder. My RT.
“Dems always support stupid evil wars”. My quote of @kenklippenstein on Pelosi’s Iran War comments — “we always root for our country under any circumstances.” Source: @kenklippenstein.
Saudi Oil Crisis
@HormuzLetter: Yanbu oil loadings suspended. RT. Saudi Arabia’s main Red Sea export port halts loadings after the East-West pipeline attacks. My RT.
@capitolhunters: the 4% cut is 1973/1979 scale. RT, quoting Reuters’ Idrees Ali that Saudi Arabia runs out of export stocks if it can’t restart the pipeline. The sizing argument — 4% of global production is OPEC-embargo scale. My RT.
@MerruX: Saudis cancel oil shipments to Europe. RT. Self-quoted thread notes Saudi production down to 6.2m bbl/day against 3.6–4m in domestic need. My RT.
@BrettErickson28: diesel crack spreads hit an all-time high. RT, quoting Rory Johnston — US diesel refining margin above $111/bbl. My RT.
@HormuzLetter: Costco rationing motor oil. RT. First time ever — one transaction, two units per 7 days. My RT.
“This is quickly becoming a loss of confidence situation in the MBS system as a whole…”. My line, posted twice the same morning — once over @EGYOSINT’s footage of fires at Aramco’s Abha bulk plant, once over @BrettErickson28 on a Saudi sovereign crisis. Second post here. Source: @EGYOSINT.
“The Al-Saud crime family is cooked”. My quote of @RnaudBertrand on the Saudis confirming the pipeline attack came from Iraq. Source: @RnaudBertrand.
@alon_mizrahi: months before MBS escapes to London. RT. Revising his own one-year estimate downward, over reports of Yemeni operations reaching Mecca. My RT.
@DavidLe76335983: Saudi Arabia is parting with the US. RT. Argues the remaining US lever is tying the Saudis to 9/11 and freezing assets. My RT.
@Dr_Ulrichsen: the plight of Rami Naimi. RT linking the FT on the son of Ali al-Naimi, Saudi oil minister 1995–2016. My RT.
Ari Emanuel
“Ali works for Hunter who works for Mark Shapiro who works for Ari Emanuel”. My line on the chain of command — “they are not freelancing this kind of bullshit.”
“The name that cannot be spoken….Ari Emanuel”. My offer to go on @LTGetsPolitical and name him, quoting my own “I’ll bring receipts” post. Followed 13 Sep by the Rahm-for-Ari correction.
Fight Business
@FightOpinion: nobody is watching Ted Cruz mark up the Ari Act. RT. The Muhammad Ali Act rewrite moving with no attention in the fight press. My RT.
@Boxing_Flamingo: background on the Muhammad Ali Revival Act. RT quoting my own post — an explainer for why the bill is controversial. My RT.
Don King demands TKO/Zuffa cancel Opetaia–Mikaelian. RT of @heyitsmarcosv on the email; I quoted @DanRafael1 on the cease-and-desist with “And some of us thought he was dead”. My RT.
@lthomasnews: on belts taken off champs outside the cage. RT, over @Home_of_Fight noting none of the last three UFC heavyweight champions lost the belt in a fight. My RT.
US Politics
@20committee: Elaine Chao and the UFWD. RT. Claims McConnell’s wife held positions tied to the CCP’s united-front influence apparatus, off a Daily Caller story. My RT.
@matthew_sigel: “I resigned from Bloomberg today”. RT. Three years “turning routine market volatility into existential crises” at Bloomberg and Reuters. My RT.
@kennardmatt on the death of the author of ‘Who Paid the Piper?’. RT. She was 60; the book covers the CIA’s covert manipulation of culture. My RT.
@BenObeseJecty: US Marines raid on British soil. RT alleging a seizure outside US jurisdiction. My RT.
Venezuela