Yesterday, in the wake of President Trump’s decision to admit 59 white South African refugees on grounds their home state has collapsed into an oddly familiar sort of racist dystopia (though now without train tracks), he met with South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa for a little chat. Incredibly, the NYT’s South Africa desk framed Trump’s opposition to South Africa’s systemic racism as a critique of “equity” laws — an interesting euphemism for everything from legal discrimination against white-owned businesses to a policy of seizing land from white citizens on grounds they are white (but only after “judicial review,” the press helpfully fact checked). Anyway, the Times concluded, Trump seized farmland once to build his border wall. What’s the difference? An astonishing display of racism from the paper of record. But it’s nice to finally know what they mean when they say “equity.” Thanks for the honesty, I guess. And also holy shit.

Yesterday in Taipei, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said U.S. export controls on AI chips have backfired, claiming that they gave China “the spirit, energy, and the government support to accelerate their [domestic] development.” His verdict? “The export control was a failure.” Huang, of course, is incentivized to say this — he wants to sell Nvidia chips to everyone, including China — but he also is right. Chinese firms like DeepSeek are now building models which benchmark competitively against American counterparts (allegedly at radically lower costs). The days of thinking that China is nothing more than a black hole which sucks up American IP are over. They are acting with the clarity and long-term vision of a country that knows it’s in a cold war, has a population of 1.4 billion people at its disposal, and believes itself to be the protagonist of the 21st century. So. How’s that CHIPS Act coming?

Oscar-nominated director Darren Aronofsky has partnered with Google’s Veo 3 to test the company’s text-to-video capability (it’s good), joining the ranks of high profile Hollywood players dipping their toes into AI (like James Cameron’s partnership with Meta or Lionsgate’s deal with Runway). While CAA and SAG have scrambled to curb AI’s encroachment on talent (the recent lawsuit against Epic Games over Darth Vader’s voice comes to mind) these partnerships substantiate what most of us have sensed for years: Hollywood is dead. Soon, the industry will fracture into niche subfactions while a decentralized filmmaking landscape emerges, because Hollywood's problem was never technological capability — it was creativity. If AI can do both, so can everyone, which means all my fellow washed up wannabe screenwriters should dust off those scripts lurking in Google Docs (my latest, for example: “Atta’s Bane: Time-Travelling White Boyz Prevent 9/11”). We are the Hollywood now.

“What it means to use technology can change in a profound way. I hope we can bring some of the delight, wonder, and creative spirit that I first felt using an Apple Computer 30 years ago,” said Sam Altman, announcing his recent partnership with Jony Ive, the lead designer of the iPhone. At Pirate Wires, we’re excited for the platform of the future, one that will cure loneliness, beam our daily banger takes into the minds of millions, and, of course, run payroll with Warp. Warp automates payroll, handles multi-state tax compliance, and streamlines international contractor payments.

The founders running the future run on Warp.

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on april 14th, 4chan fell into chaos. the site was hacked, defaced with unprintable slur combos, and ultimately remained nuked for 11 days. but the full backstory behind this 4chan takedown? frankly, it requires the narrative autism of our very own g. b. rango, who takes you down the rabbit hole with this impressive, hilarious, absolutely insane deep dive

late last week, airports throughout the mid-atlantic failed, paralyzing travel through the region. nobody cared. in his latest banger, the bossman takes a closer look at what happened and why (aging tech, bureaucracy, a government union) before explaining that, no, america is not in danger of south african refugees... america is in danger of becoming south africa

harvard sophomore jay gupta takes a closer look at sidechat, a social app for college students, illustrating how student activists are using the app to anonymously organize protests and stoke political division on his school’s campus

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