edwardongwesojr.com - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

The Silicon Valley Consensus: a persistent but fragile pattern for overbuilding, overvaluing, and overinvesting in tech to enrich networks of capitalists & advance their (reactionary) political projects. 1st iteration focuses on AI capex, first half today. thetechbubble.substack.com/p/the-silico...

submitted 20 hours ago • 4 comments

The mass firing of the federal tech workers at 18F is already being subsumed by fresh hells. But it's important that we take a beat to understand what just happened—that elimination of 18F is one of DOGE's most extreme political acts yet. www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-mass-f...

submitted 20 hours ago • 10 comments

The Silicon Valley Consensus: a persistent but fragile pattern for overbuilding, overvaluing, and overinvesting in tech to enrich networks of capitalists & advance their (reactionary) political projects. 1st iteration focuses on AI capex, first half today. thetechbubble.substack.com/p/the-silico...

submitted 20 hours ago • 4 comments

Newsletter: Microsoft pulled back on over a gigawatt of planned data center capacity, suggesting that they do not think there is a growth future in generative AI. Meanwhile, SoftBank, the only company that can afford to fund OpenAI, has to take out loans to do so. www.wheresyoured.at/power-cut/

submitted 1 day ago • 46 comments

This is the most wretched campaign of deliberate, explicit persecution the United States has perpetrated against a minority group in decades. Many of the most important people in politics and journalism are busying themselves trying to figure out how little to say or do about it.

submitted 10 days ago • 253 comments

If you are a liberal in deep blue territory, one thing you could try doing right now is figuring out how to replace your Democratic member of Congress next year. With very few exceptions, the typical safe seat Dem is not meeting the moment. Find someone who will and help them.

submitted 4 days ago • 463 comments

How Elon Musk planned for DOGE: Our investigation found that he raised the idea in 2023, becoming fixated on gaining insider access to federal systems. By Dec., he chose USDS as a landing place, and future DOGE members began applying for jobs there. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/u...

submitted 4 days ago • 145 comments

nice analysis here. be aware this lumps musk companies’ revenue from federal contracts with their state level grants, contracts, subsidies & loans etc. big picture remains: musk companies would likely not have survived without government funding. now he’s pulling up the ladder so others can’t climb.

submitted 6 days ago • 3 comments

Hello! I used my esoteric knowledge gleaned from my DC years to write about how Congress could EASILY defund DOGE: www.techpolicy.press/how-congress...

submitted 6 days ago • 5 comments

worth remembering the vast personal fortunes in Silicon Valley are built on decades of publicly funded research work done largely by universities…but those personal fortunes are rarely as DIRECTLY funded by taxpayer money as Elon Musk’s www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...

submitted 6 days ago • 8 comments

This This Machine Kills Pod episode that goes into depth about the impact of DOGE's attempts to overhaul the federal government, and puts it in context of Republican and Democratic administrations slowly chipping away the remnants of the New Deal, is really good: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

Newsletter: There is no AI Revolution. Consumer adoption of generative AI outside of ChatGPT is barely 100 million people, every single company in generative AI is deeply unprofitable, Microsoft is pulling capex, and OpenAI spent $9bn in 2024 to lose $5bn. www.wheresyoured.at/wheres-the-m...

submitted 8 days ago • 152 comments

Mission accepted

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

Last week, a number of prominent UK feminists declared Donald Trump a "feminist hero" for banning trans women from playing sports. How did we get here? A new book by @reproutopia.bsky.social explores how reactionary tendencies have created Enemy Feminisms throughout the history of feminism

submitted 11 days ago • 17 comments

I am never going to forget the virulent, eliminationist anti palestinian racism that this society's elites have chosen to tolerate while pretending to care about universalist human values. I simply cannot unsee it.

submitted 12 days ago • 2 comments

today is the day! my book, stream big, is out now! it tells the story of twitch through the lens of nine different streamers large and small. it’s the product of five years of research, reporting, and writing, and I’m really proud of it www.simonandschuster.com/books/Stream...

submitted 13 days ago • 16 comments

new excerpt from stream big is up on @polygon.com. this one is about the rise of hasan piker www.polygon.com/twitch/52486...

submitted 13 days ago • 2 comments

Musk's "terrifying vision" manifests the fascistic solutionism I wrote about in 'Resisting AI - An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence' bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/resisting-ai. The entanglements go much deeper than bias and propaganda...

submitted 15 days ago • 1 comment

Couldn't be clearer that Democrats aren't a party in the way that Republicans are a party. The GOP has an ideological project. They build power to accomplish specific things. The project of the Democratic Party is getting Democrats reelected. 80-90+% of Congress is, so it doesn't take much effort.

submitted 16 days ago • 97 comments

System Crash is one of my favorite podcasts right now

submitted 16 days ago • 1 comment

I love this podcast. Paris Marx and Brian Merchant on the bizarro tech takeover of the federal government. There is no one really better to explain it. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

submitted 16 days ago • 3 comments

these are segregationists.

submitted 16 days ago • 192 comments

specifically FT Alphaville, where everything is apocalyptic

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

🚨 STREAM TOMORROW 🚨 Come hang with me and @edzitron.com! I'll explain why Republicans are claiming the IRS wants to audit you at gunpoint and Ed will (hopefully) keep me somewhat cool as we walk through Elon Musk's business interests this week. Tomorrow at 3:30 ET: www.twitch.tv/katmabu

submitted 19 days ago • 12 comments

This weekend I've decided to finally read Balaji Srinivasan's terrible fucking book, "The Network State." I've put this off for as long as I possibly could. Here goes. thenetworkstate.com/book/tns.pdf

submitted 24 days ago • 109 comments

once you strip away all of his protestations about being pro-immigration, it's clear — as this takedown makes evident — that deboer basically shares the views and assumptions of the nativists gabydelvalle.substack.com/p/the-spirit...

submitted 20 days ago • 42 comments

This piece is so good and it indicates that a big part of the strengthening of the injunction was the reporting done by Nathan, WIRED, and TPM.

submitted 21 days ago • 1 comment

Been thinking about this essay by @edwardongwesojr.com for weeks open.substack.com/pub/thetechb...

submitted 23 days ago • 1 comment

New: @propublica.org is tracking who's in Musk's DOGE crew. 20+ names so far including some that haven't yet been reported.

submitted 25 days ago • 34 comments

A good prism for understanding the United States is that white collar crime and corruption are legal.

submitted 26 days ago • 11 comments

In this month's Critical AI Report: -Stargate vs DeepSeek, -Top AI privacy risks -AI's impact on critical thinking -How artists are pushing back on the UK's AI plan -Why AI is putting our household appliance at risk and more. www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-critic...

submitted 28 days ago • 2 comments

seeing some posts celebrating the end of USAID as a strike against empire. folks, none of the bad stuff is going away, it'll be funding for refugee camps, medicine, etc

submitted 28 days ago • 103 comments

Blame the voters here if you'd like, but this is also what happens when you forfeit the immigration debate by implying Trump is right but insufficiently committed rather than actually underscoring differences for the electorate.

submitted 29 days ago • 53 comments

"A dogged accounting.... OWNED shines some much needed light into the darkest recesses to today's mediascape." — @edwardongwesojr.com My book is out on TUESDAY! More info: bit.ly/3PWnF3Y

submitted 31 days ago • 1 comment

this week's newsletter: 4,700 words on "the Zizians" and the cult lore of the Rationalist Movement maxread.substack.com/p/the-zizian...

submitted 31 days ago • 13 comments

Alex Stokes, a left-wing activist and journalist from Albany, is the sole remaining January 6 prisoner. He didn't attack Congress—he got into a fight with Proud Boys at the NYS state capitol.

submitted 32 days ago • 10 comments

I lived in China from 2007 to 2013, just as the Chinese metro and high-speed rail revolution was really starting to shift into high gear. This is a great article about living in a different world from America.

submitted 31 days ago • 2 comments

I'm going to get a jump on this by sharing this gift link to my bit about what I saw at the Consumer Electronics Show, what I learned from the Tesla Hyperloop, and the dumb, dull, demeaning future big tech types want the rest of us to settle for: defector.com/the-future-i...

submitted 31 days ago • 19 comments

🫵🏿 I know a paypig when I see one Zuck

submitted 32 days ago • 3 comments

Wrote about the gig economy ride-hail model, its metastasis across the economy, and a brilliant Roosevelt Institute report on gig nursing that came out last month. thetechbubble.substack.com/p/ubers-bast...

submitted 33 days ago • 3 comments

Newsletter: The DeepSeek situation is a moment that should fill Silicon Valley with shame, a monument to the lack of vision and herd mentality of the American tech industry. OpenAI and Anthropic have no moat, no business, no innovation, and I believe no future. www.wheresyoured.at/deep-impact/

submitted 34 days ago • 93 comments

Wrote about the gig economy ride-hail model, its metastasis across the economy, and a brilliant Roosevelt Institute report on gig nursing that came out last month. thetechbubble.substack.com/p/ubers-bast...

submitted 33 days ago • 3 comments