It's going to be a noisy summer

It’s All Kicking Off

Last week, the simmering tension between President Donald Trump and former other President Elon Musk finally came to a head. The feud went public after Musk started attacking the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which would slash Medicaid along with other important federal programs, and generate trillions in debt. Things got so nasty between the two that Musk posted and then deleted an accusation that Trump is in the Epstein files. And Trump threatened to cut the federal subsidies that prop up Musk’s businesses.

The rift also caused a huge tidal wave of discourse among pro-Trump influencers, who weren’t sure who to side with, the president or the guy who dangles money in front of them to post. Jack Posobiec went for a more centrist approach, writing on X, “some of y’all can’t handle two high agency males going at it and it really shows.” Similarly, Dinesh D’Souza posited that all of this was all just a “perverse scheme” to convince Democrats to actually release the Epstein list, which would prove Trump wasn’t on it. Ah, yes, the classic “publicly call each other pedophiles as a way to expose the real pedophiles” strategy. Steve Bannon, however, immediately demanded that Trump deport Musk, which, yes, would be pretty funny. They should do that. Oh, also, Catturd and Alex Jones are fighting if you even care.

As @annaghughes.bsky.social wrote on Bluesky, “This is like Drake and Kendrick Lamar but they're both Drake.”

The timing of Trump 2.0’s coalition of Silicon Valley reactionaries, Christian white nationalists, and misogynist podcasters semi-seriously falling apart right now couldn’t have come at a worse moment for the right. The alliance between all these factions was never an easy one and they’re starting to tear each other apart right as anti-Trump activists have settled on a single issue to focus on: ICE raids.

Cities across the country this month mobilized against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, leaking their movements on sites like Reddit and blocking officers from arresting their neighbors. Last week, a citizen journalist on TikTok confirmed that Reddit users had raced to disrupt a ICE blockade in Minneapolis after a photo of it was shared to the city’s subreddit. As one X user wrote, “When the Reddit bros leaves their home, you know shit's getting real.” You also know shit is getting real when the people of Los Angeles get involved.

Forty-four people in LA were arrested by ICE agents on Friday, kicking off a weekend of protests. It turns out Dr. Phil McGraw was embedded with ICE during the raid. Which makes sense. Because we live in hell.

As protesters hurled bricks and electric scooters at law enforcement, Trump decided to send in the National Guard, a move that California Governor and chaotic neutral Patrick Bateman cosplayer Gavin Newsom has called illegal. As the protests wore into Sunday, many protesters started lighting self-driving Waymo cars on fire. And while, yes, Waymo does collaborate with the Los Angeles Police Department, it’s also just as likely that people realized you can call them in and easily light them on fire and because they’re an electric vehicle there’s basically no simple way to put them out. Which is a pretty good bit. Waymo eventually had to suspend service in the area. And the vandalized Waymos bothered the Silicon Valley set so much that Andreessen Horowitz employees are now generating AI videos of the self-driving cars “defending themselves,” i.e., shooting protests with machine guns.

As for who is actually shooting people at the protests, that would be the LAPD, of course. Journalist Taylor Lorenz, who attended the protests, reported that many protesters were being fired upon directly by law enforcement. And an officer was caught on live TV aiming directly at Australian reporter Lauren Tomasi and firing rubber bullets at her leg as she was filming. The LAPD were also filmed riding a horse over a protester.

So here we are 140 days into Trump’s second presidency. The political and cultural alliance he built up during his campaign is fractured. And activists have finally figured out how generate attention. So it’s safe to expect more direct action against ICE raids across the country this summer. And it’s also safe to expect they’re going to escalate in intensity, on both sides. Because right now, thanks to our broken media landscape, the only battle worth fighting is for attention. The Trump administration has consolidated power extremely quickly and our opposition party is more interested in viral stunts and book deals. There isn’t much that can be done other that protesting and mutual aid. But now, with Trump’s influencer army in disarray, there’s an opening, at least for eyeballs. Which is why there’s no point debating the ethics or optics of violent or non-violent protest. The only thing anyone average person can do is make as much noise as possible. And it’s going to be one hell of a noisy summer.

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Hasan Piker Attends The LA Protests

Predators Fighting Over The Carcass Of Our Privacy

—by Adam Bumas

Like many lucrative, buzzy new tech companies, OpenAI is currently in a protracted legal battle over its fundamental business model. In 2023, the New York Times sued them, both for using paywalled training data and for the models recreating that data verbatim. This is a landmark case, one that’s dragged on for years, been combined into a copyright Voltron with similar cases, and cost tens of millions just in legal fees.

Last week, in response to the latest ruling in the case, OpenAI announced that they were retaining all user data, including ChatGPT chat logs, indefinitely, rather than deleting them after 30 days. The announcement strikes a surprisingly smol bean tone for the most-funded tech company ever, saying the data isn’t even relevant to the case, and concluding, “We will fight to protect your privacy at every step.” What it doesn’t say is that the judge gave the order after OpenAI accidentally deleted important data for the case last year — for the second time.

What no one involved needs to say is that this isn’t a crusade for users’ rights — these are predators fighting over the carcass of our privacy. Just last week, we wrote about how the weird, personal things we say to AI chatbots are fair game for the social media panopticon. The tech companies won this battle long ago. OpenAI’s other announcement last week was that free ChatGPT users would now have access to full conversational memory. Do you really think they want to delete your data?

The All-In Dorks Are Also Fighting

I don’t listen to the All-In Podcast because I have experienced love before. But the Trump/Musk feud is causing a lot of issues for the pitiful LinkedIn incels that use it as a virtual friendship replacement. Over the weekend, one of the hosts, investor Jason Calacanis, seemingly announced that he wouldn’t do an episode commenting on the feud. His post on X about it is actually so cringe it feels exploitative to even quote it, but in followup replies he wrote, “My choice is to take a beat, which is the right decision for me,” referring to his co-hosts Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, and David Friedberg. (Calacanis is 54 years old, in case you were curious.) Palihapitiya hasn’t commented either, possibly because he’s busy on X bragging about how big his dick is.

Calacanis did post a link to a Substack over the weekend called The Responsible Party, however. Which, if I had to guess, is some kind of new centrist political project that Silicon Valley reactionaries are going to try and launch in the wake of the Trump/Musk breakup. Like everything these guys do, it will almost certainly end up being a bunch of posts no one reads. But, also, seeing as how stupid everything is right now, it’s also possible it becomes a new wing of the Democratic party.

Did The Menswear Guy Finally Have A “Bad Take”?

—by Cates Holderness

The protests in Los Angeles and across the US over the weekend lead to a different kind of fall out on X, where notorious poster and fashion aficionado Derek Guy, aka the Menswear Guy, shared his thoughts which in part read, “I admire the courage of people protesting the ICE raids in California. I'm against violent protests and think they're counterproductive.”

He continued on to encourage people to support immigrants through volunteering, offering aid, and by getting into immigration law. Which, honestly, sure, yeah that’s all well and good and we as a society need to do all of that. But the protests are happening here and now, law school takes a lot of time and money, and sometimes you have to take direct action to combat fascism, you know?

The backlash to Guy’s post started immediately, with Taylor Lorenz calling it a bad take and “the end of an era.” Instead of logging off and walking away, Guy doubled down and kept posting through it — including digging into and criticizing Canadian musician Dan Boeckner’s relationship history. Everything culminated in a very long and heartfelt post from Guy laying out his own personal history as an undocumented immigrant brought from Canada as a baby, wherein he calls the ICE sweeps inhumane, supports the protestors offering “non-violent resistance,” and advocates for a systemic change to the US immigration system. Vice President JD Vance is now implying that he plans to investigate Guy. And Guy, as he is wont to do, has already dunked on Vance.

It’s clear that Guy’s life has been shaped by his previously-undocumented status, and advocating for using the current momentum to create meaningful changes and a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants is great. We need that, desperately. But if that’s going to happen, it’ll take time and a commitment from politicians on the local, state, and federal level — and right now, it feels like time is running out for millions of undocumented immigrants.

Or, put another way, as X user @prettycritical wrote, “I disagree with menswear guy, but the reaction feels like some of you were projecting more radical politics on him than he ever expressed in the first place.”

A Good Way To Test Out Your New Nintendo Switch 2

Last week, X user @blackbe38744062 posted a screenshot of the new Nintendo Switch 2’s web browser displaying the website for Japanese actor Hiroshi Abe. You can check out Abe’s personal website here, it’s a trip. It basically looks like a website from the 90s, but it’s still being updated. It also was apparently designed by a fan initially and Abe just made it his official website.

According to X user @Vamplosion, there’s a big meme in Japan where you use Abe’s website to test out different browsers. As another user commented, “The meme is that the site is extremely lightweight, so it loads quickly even when your mobile data is throttled.” Basically, it’s like the Japanese version of “does it run DOOM?” Neat!

A Beautiful Tribute To Chili’s

Some Stray Links

• “He’s a Master of Outrage on X. He’s Also Broke.

• “The 4chan-Coded Ideology Behind Elon Musk’s War on Normies”

• “World’s Biggest TikToker Detained By ICE”

P.S. here’s a good Instagram comment.

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***