The Supreme Court will deliver a final decision on TikTok’s future this week, and while Trump opposes forced divestiture of the wildly popular gyrating teen hooker dance / Chinese spyapp, it doesn’t seem there’s anything he can do to stop it. Meanwhile, the gyrating teen hookers? Are pissed. In fact, they are so pissed that thousands of them have migrated to another Chinese spyapp, which is actually geared towards Chinese citizens. Americans call it “Red Note,” but it more accurately translates to “Little Red Book,” a plucky reference to notorious communist dictator and historic mass murderer Mao Zedong’s manifesto. Migrating TikTokers have framed this as a protest, and promise to continue finding new Chinese apps to move to if future anti-Chinese spyapp rulings follow, to which I say: why stop there? Just migrate to China. Then let’s run an experiment. Try protesting your new government, and watch what happens.

Scientists from Singapore and Japan have developed a breakthrough in controlling swarms of live Madagascar hissing cockroaches — strapping little backpacks on them and using “tiny electrical stimulations” to direct their concerted movements. The key innovation here is the Tour Group Inspired (TGI) algorithm — a name which is quintessentially and beautifully Japanese — that uses a leader-follower system, with one “leader” roach guiding nineteen others. As a swarm, the roaches are apparently capable of “collaborative problem-solving” like righting overturned members. While this may seem like just a horrifying novelty, or an excellent prank opportunity, the technology apparently has a utilitarian bent: these nasty little guys may reinvent search-and-rescue missions that necessitate secrecy or involve extremely tight spaces. Scale this up, I say. Tens of thousands of artificially networked cockroaches, all working together toward some unknown end goal, ready to be hacked by foreign adversaries — what could go wrong?

This week, a viral story about a scammer who allegedly used AI images of Brad Pitt in a hospital bed (??) overlaid with text like “I love you so much my wife” to convince a wealthy old French lady that Pitt was in love with her — and ultimately scam her out of €830,000 — revived the ever-nascent AI doomer discourse. This was incontrovertible evidence we’re on the verge of an AI information apocalypse, posters on X concluded. And look, I’m also worried irresistible AI-powered scams will one day be ubiquitous. But much like climate change isn’t responsible for the gross government negligence that just brought LA to its knees, this story is the portrait of a scapegoat. AI didn’t fail this woman, her family did. By declining to take control of her finances many years ago, when it became apparent she was capable of falling in love with a digital Brad Pitt.

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new banger from solana on the government failures that led to la’s recent wildfires, how calling out these failures is now becoming more prevalent in the online discourse, and why this vibe shift is perfectly represented in zuck’s recent content moderation pivot

a bizarre online trend has emerged of people “grounding” — literally, touching grass — claiming a host of purported health benefits. the crazy part? science suggests they might have a point

this week, the crew is back to talk devastating fires hitting los angeles, meta’s content moderation policy overhaul, the h1b feud on 𝕏, and the new age of american manifest destiny (gulf of america has a nice ring to it)

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