Saturday, in a horrifying moment watched by the world, President Trump narrowly averted an attempted assassination. Even this morning, we’re still in the fog of war, with any number of details emergent, redacted, reworked. It could be weeks or months before we fully understand what happened. But given mainstream anti-Trump rhetoric this was certainly inevitable. Not because Biden, in the context of fundraising, said “it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye,” a metaphor common to both parties and probably innate to the English language. But because of the virulent left’s actual argument: Trump, they say, is genuinely trying to dissolve democracy and ascend the throne as dictator. If you really believe this, then you believe your life is in danger, and violence is justified in self-defense. Now, do the screaming MSNBC cat moms really mean it? I guess we’re about to find out, and if they do we have bigger problems than violent rhetoric.

Last week, WIRED published a breathless account of islamophobic oppression at Meta, in which a Muslim employee group was disallowed from giving out watermelon-themed cupcakes at an internal event (the watermelon emoji is somehow now a symbol of Palestine). A fraught issue, but WIRED’s “reporting” really just uncritically repeated talking points from its source — the person who couldn’t distribute the cupcakes — leaving out the fact that she’s clearly a toxic activist employee who not only revealed potentially confidential information about Meta, but runs a website, Instagram, X account, and TikTok account dedicated to criticizing the company she works for. Here’s the deal: you’re entitled to your political opinions, but your employer doesn’t have to care. Workplace activism is over. We are retvrning. If you want employment in tech in 2024, you have to do your job. And if you don’t like it? Go to grad school (come on, you know you want to).

Lyft’s second safety report, which covers incidents between 2020 and 2022, was released Thursday, and the data is a mixed bag: motor vehicle deaths and “fatal physical assaults” are up (yikes), while “most serious types of sexual assault” are down (yay). The unsurprising upshot is that humans remain woefully imperfect stewards of 2,000+ pounds of moving steel and metal, which begs the question: where are those flying, robot-driven cars we were promised back in the 50s? If you live in California, they might be down the street; Waymo, after protracted legal battles, is fully operational, and Southwest Airlines just announced a deal with an air taxi service to ferry its passengers around terminals at 14 California airports. The future is, actually, here — despite some state politicians (cough, Scott Wiener) doing their best to regulate it to death. Next task? High-speed, low-cost, autonomous national rail, please.

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the european commission wanted 𝕏 to hire a team of people in the eu that would unilaterally oversee the removal of ‘misinformation’ on the platform, a source with knowledge of the issue told us

this week, we’re joined by jason calacanis, the man who predicted the biden hot swap. the crew also discusses the meltdown over project 2025, the save act in congress, aoc’s supreme court articles of impeachment, and more

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