Sam Altman wants your eyeballs

The Orb Will Not Save You From AI

Last Week, OpenAI head Sam Altman’s other dystopian project, World, launched properly in the US. World used to be called Worldcoin and it’s a blockchain-based verification company that asks users to scan their retinas to get added to an authentication database called World ID. Basically, they have like a weird orb that scans your eyeball and you get a bunch of $WLD crypto tokens. There’s a whole universal basic income angle to this, as well, but let’s ignore that for now.

I first saw the World retina orbs in a Lisbon train station back in 2021. I had not really gone outside much that year because of, well, you know, and traveling internationally for the first time in a while and being confronted with some kind of orb that wanted to scan my eyes in exchange for cryptocurrency was extremely disorienting. I have, admittedly, mostly ignored the project ever since. The way World has recently rebranded itself — or, more accurately, revealed its true purpose — has clarified some things for me, however.

Over the weekend, Orb announced the Orb Mini. A portable device that makes “human verification accessible.” Something I, perhaps naively, thought could still be accomplished by using my five senses and asking someone their name.

And I’m not the only person who was a bit confused about why you would need a standalone device to scan someone’s eyes to verify who they are. Thankfully, World has explained why.

The team published a blog post last week titled, “A Pivotal Moment for the Internet,” arguing that World’s true purpose is ensuring “genuine human presence and trust online.” AI has become so pervasive now, they say, that the only way to communicate online — and, I guess, also at coffee shops and at the beach, according to the ad — is to use a universal authentication system like World. It’s Altman’s spin on “they make you sick to sell you the cure.” Create a machine that turns the internet into unreadable shit, spend years trying figuring out how to make it too addicting to quit, and then when we’re hooked, argue we need to kill anonymity online to fix it. And not only does Altman own the internet enshittifier company, look at that, he also owns the anonymity killing company too.

By this point, you’re probably realizing that World verification would not actually fix most of the problems posed by AI adoption. There are plenty of “verified” human beings publishing AI content online right now. Hell, I’d bet a large chunk of the emails you’re getting from your technically work-email-verified coworkers are full of AI content. Also, before you ask, yes, World has been also wildly exploitative in how they launched in beta in the Global South and they’ve already been hacked at least once.

Anyways, World’s big launch this month coincided with some fascinating advertising, beyond the weird coffee shop spot. They appear to have duped ardent anti-AI and anti-crypto comedian Adam Conover into promoting them. He has since deleted the post, which I figured he might, which is why I screenshot it.

An embarrassing misfire for a guy who has spent years railing against this stuff? Sure, yes, absolutely. But I think it’s more indicative of how similarly insidious World’s launch is to OpenAI’s was at the start of the AI boom. They’ve got the funding — about $250 million — to wait out everyone dunking on them while they fine tune the perfect way to worm their way into your life.

But here’s where we get to the part of all of this that is going to make you uncomfortable. And I can’t believe I’m going to say this lol, but I agree with the new pope, that “artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice, and labor.” Whether you think it’s a bubble or not, it is causing real problems now. And none of the very real problems that are already are going to be magically fixed even if the AI industry suddenly goes bust, no matter how many Bluesky users tell you otherwise. Thanks to open source models like DeepSeek, Llama, and Stable Diffusion, you don’t even need an internet connection to generate AI content. So, you know, take the time you need to grieve, but you will never live in a world without generative AI again. We can quibble on what AI will do to social trust, the economy, and just life, in general, but it’s here. And what should worry you most of all is that, at this point, the only people who seem to be offering any kind of solutions to the problems caused by AI are the companies that caused them in the first place. And if something doesn’t change fast, you will absolutely find yourself in the near future either using an AI or paying the company that owns it to protect yourself from it.

The following is a paid ad. If you’re interested in advertising, email me at [email protected] and let’s talk. Thanks!

A colorful narrative history

In 1993, the World Wide Web launched, the Dallas Cowboys won their fifth championship and Power Rangers premiered. All those things are mostly dead now but my book is about the last one. Morphenomenal: How the Power Rangers Conquered the World is the definitive retrospective of a global entertainment franchise that generated: 

⚡ Nearly 1,000 episodes

⚡️ Three feature-length films.

⚡ Billions in revenue and even more memories over 30-plus years.

Through over 100 original interviews, dozens of photos, ample research and a lifelong love of this goofy show, I tell a story that any fan of Power Rangers or TV history will get a kick out of. Pre-order it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.

A Good Post

Kanye West And Appraising Fascist Art

Kanye West released the third single from his upcoming album Cuck. The first one, “WW3,” debuted via an interview with DJ Akademiks where West dressed up like a klansman. The second one, “Cousins,” features West describing some kind of sexual relationship he had with his cousin when they were kids. And the newest one is called “Heil Hitler,” which is also the main lyric of the chorus. In other words, it’s an absolute fucking mess.

It is impossible to discuss West’s current output without first addressing his mental health, which is clearly deteriorating. But plenty (all?) fascists are mentally ill and this new batch of music is, yes, unequivocally fascist. But it’s also created by West, who, beneath the haze of nitrous and untreated bipolar disorder symptoms, is in theory still Kanye West. Which does make “Heil Hitler,” a fairly incisive portrait of America’s current fascist movement. Which is especially useful amid all the post-election soul searching happening in the mainstream media and among establishment Democrats. You want to understand what’s happening? Well, West makes it pretty clear.

As one X user wrote, “Unlike most fascist art today, [‘Heil Hitler’ by Kanye West] is blisteringly honest. It contains lyrics about his kids being taken away, being a cuck. It's sexual frustration, painfully pathetic, and drenched in self-destructive loathing at the world and himself.”

And this all adds to a theory I’ve had for about a decade now. That the last parts of what you could call “mainstream America” are incapable of ever fully addressing the country’s far-right radicalization because to do so would mean accepting how embarrassing it all is. It would require admitting that our country is being dismantled by men so psychosexually resentful that they want to send us back to the stone age.

The only real punchline here, if you can call it that, is that fascists on X really like West’s new song and don’t seem to understand how badly its lyrics are telling on their whole deal. Which is how we ended up with this:

The Catholic Hangover

Last week, the internet swarmed the conclave and, you know, considering how things could have gone, the Vatican ended up electing a fairly decent pope. Though he doesn’t come without some serious baggage. It’s all fun and games until you remember that the pope is, unfortunately, Catholic.

Chicagoan cardinal, Robert Francis Prevost, is now Pope Leo XIV and he was ordained with pre-existing beef with Vice President JD Vance, which is nice. Let’s see if we can get the church to excommunicate Vance at some point.

The “old man yaoi” Catholic fandom world has died down, as well, now that the conclave has wrapped. Well, it’s still going just a bit tbh. But the most interesting arc has been Pope Crave and its admin Susan Bin, who, over the weekend, posted and deleted a statement standing up for LGBT Catholics. A stance they reiterated in an interview last week with New York Magazine. Which is about as good a use of a pope-themed Pop Crave parody as you could ask for.

One last fun Pope Crave bit though. This is not the first time they’ve had a big impact on the fandom world:

Is Andor Popular? Or Profitable?

Andor wraps its second, phenomenal season this week. If you aren’t watching, you absolutely should. You don’t need to be super caught up on Star Wars lore either. It’s a hell of a show and, considering the political story it’s trying to tell, a miracle that it exists at all. What is less clear, however, is whether Andor is a success or not.

The first season of Andor was not very popular. And while this season has been better received by audiences, it’s still not a smash hit, even compared to other Star Wars media. A French-language newsletter called Netflix & Chiffres (Netflix and numbers) put together a bummer of a chart using US viewership data from Nielsen, Luminate, and SambaTV. Ahsoka beat Andor far and away. Which does make a some logical sense. Ahsoka is a massively popular character, especially with younger Star Wars fans, making it an easier sell than a… TV show… prequel… for a character introduced… in the modern prequel side story… to A New Hope.

All that said, Andor has brought in $300 million in subscription revenue for Disney+, which is reportedly more than Ahsoka did. So what gives? Well, by pivoting to streaming, Hollywood has now found themselves having to deal with the same confusing network effects that every other internet creator has to contend with. And there’s no real clear answer here. Source: I’ve been trying to figure it out every day for six years lol.

New Weird Internet Man Dropped

@andrewmaxxer

Grow your Jaw with jawcko

This is a “jawmaxxer” that goes by @andrewmaxxer. Though, I’ve seen a lot of users calling him “Temu Quagmire,” for reasons that should be apparent. I have a tough time understanding if he’s doing a bit or not, though I do think his face just looks like that and it’s not because he’s doing any kind of weird incel jaw training. Though, I could be wrong. Either way, he does a lot of branded content about apps for fasting, so it’s sort of immaterial in the end if he’s serious or not.

A Good Video

@postysdaughther

she’s just like me fr

Some Stray Links

• “Becoming aware of online chess videos is like discovering an entire subterranean city that’s existed beneath you all your life”

• “Genshin Impact Creator Dives Into AI for Growth Beyond Games”

• “Meet the Alpha Male Bros Influencing Your Sales Team”

P.S. here’s shawties on squad mode.

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