Month: February 2025

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This Machine Kills - 392. Deep Freak Out

Ed and Jathan are together in the San Francisco Bay Area huddled over a single mic like a fire keeping us warm as we record an episode about DeepSeek before running off to our book launch event at City Lights (thanks all the wonderful TMK fans who made it a packed house!). DeepSeek, the disruptive new LLM from a Chinese startup / hedge fund, is being hailed as Silicon Valley’s “Sputnik moment.” We dig into how DeepSeek challenges the fundamental economics of the AI industry, while casting a skeptical eye on claims that DeepSeek solves any of the real problems of AI—financial, social, or political. ••• Deep Impact | Ed Zitron https://www.wheresyoured.at/deep-impact/ ••• DeepSeek sends a shockwave through markets https://www.economist.com/business/2025/01/27/deepseek-sends-a-shockwave-through-markets ••• The real meaning of the DeepSeek drama https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/01/29/the-real-meaning-of-the-deepseek-drama ••• OpenAI targets $300bn valuation in SoftBank-led funding round https://www.ft.com/content/2c697ff8-dfe9-4c42-a328-d21216293aa3 Standing Plugs: ••• Order Jathan’s new book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite ••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble ••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)
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Consider This from NPR - Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?

Most presidents want as much power as they can get. And it's not unusual to see them claim authority that they don't, in the end, actually have.

We saw it just last term, when former President Biden tried to unilaterally forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in federal student loans.

Or when he announced, days before leaving office that the 28th Amendment, on gender equality, was now the law of the land.

So are the opening moves of Trump's presidency just a spicier version of the standard playbook or an imminent threat to constitutional government as we know it?

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Consider This from NPR - Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?

Most presidents want as much power as they can get. And it's not unusual to see them claim authority that they don't, in the end, actually have.

We saw it just last term, when former President Biden tried to unilaterally forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in federal student loans.

Or when he announced, days before leaving office that the 28th Amendment, on gender equality, was now the law of the land.

So are the opening moves of Trump's presidency just a spicier version of the standard playbook or an imminent threat to constitutional government as we know it?

For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org

Email us at considerthis@npr.org

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Consider This from NPR - Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?

Most presidents want as much power as they can get. And it's not unusual to see them claim authority that they don't, in the end, actually have.

We saw it just last term, when former President Biden tried to unilaterally forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in federal student loans.

Or when he announced, days before leaving office that the 28th Amendment, on gender equality, was now the law of the land.

So are the opening moves of Trump's presidency just a spicier version of the standard playbook or an imminent threat to constitutional government as we know it?

For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org

Email us at considerthis@npr.org

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The Daily Signal - The Role of the US Military at the Southern Border

President Donald Trump is surging resources to America’s southern border, including military personnel, and has every right to do so, according to Robert Greenway. 

“It is not unprecedented for the military to be called in [to the border] when the capacity of our law enforcement agencies is exceeded, and that’s almost certainly the case now,” said Greenway, director of the Center for National Defense at The Heritage Foundation.

In a new Heritage report titled, “How the President Can Use the U.S. Military to Confront the Catastrophic Threat at the Border with Mexico,” Greenway, who is also a former member of the National Security Council, Greenway breaks down the specific ways the military can step in to secure the border. 

The military can help in three general capacities at the border, Greenway explains. First, the military can help with transportation and housing of illegal aliens in the deportation process. Second, the military can provide assistance with the physical security of the border through increased personnel, surveillance, and assistance in the construction of the border wall. And finally, the military can work outside of the U.S. with other countries to help them police their own borders more effectively. 

“I think there’s a huge role for the military to play, and advise, equip, support, and assist our partners and allies south of the border,” he said. “The military is uniquely capable of doing that.”

Greenway joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss past cases in which the U.S. deployed the military to the U.S. border, and why it is an effective strategy for stopping the flood of illegal immigration. 

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Everything Everywhere Daily - How Hawaii Became a State (Encore)

The United States consists of 50 states, each of which is represented by a star on the American flag. 

Most of those states consist of some section of North America divided by lines on a map that separate them from other states, Canada, or Mexico.

But there is one state that is not like the others. It isn’t located in North America. It doesn’t have a land border with anything, and its route to statehood was unlike that of any other state in the union. 

Learn more about the long and controversial way Hawaii became a state on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.


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NBN Book of the Day - Blessin Adams, “Thou Savage Woman: Female Killers in Early Modern Britain” (HarperCollins, 2025)

Early Modern Britain was awash with pamphlets, ballads, woodcuts broadcasting bloodthirsty tales of traitorous wives, greedy mistresses, cunning female poisoning lacing the supper with deadly substances; of child killers and spiteful witches, stories of women wholly and unnaturally wicked. These were printed or sung, tacked the walls of alehouses, sold in the streets for pennies and read voraciously to thrill all. But why? When the vast majority of murders then (and now) are committed by men.

In this bold, page-turning new history Thou Savage Woman: Female Killers in Early Modern Britain (HarperCollins, 2025), former police officer and historian Dr. Blessin Adams tells stories of women whose violent crimes shattered the narrow confines of their gender – and whose notoriety revealed a society that was at once repulsed by and attracted to murderous female rebellion. Based on detailed research in court archives, each chapter explores murders that thrilled and terrified the British public; the crimes that caused the most concern and provoked the most debate. Women in this period killed rarely, and when they did it was usually within the context of extreme provocation or domestic violence. Adams has the ability of the best crime novelists in recreating the setting in which each case occurred as well as the motivations of each perpetrator.

Thou Savage Woman reminds us that women in the past had voices, that they sought to control their bodies and their environments and that they also had the capacity for committing acts of unspeakable violence.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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Up First from NPR - Time to Leave

The recent wildfires around Los Angeles are just the most recent example of how extreme weather driven by climate change is affecting housing across the country. Millions of homes are at risk of flooding, fire or drought. Increasingly, local municipalities are facing hard decisions about whether to tear homes down or ban new construction altogether.

Today on The Sunday Story, we share an episode that originally aired last year in which reporters Rebecca Hersher and Lauren Sommer visit three communities in the US trying to balance the need for housing with the threat of climate-driven disaster.

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What Next | Daily News and Analysis - TBD | The DeepSeek Panic

The artificial intelligence industry was thrown for a loop when the Chinese start-up DeepSeek rolled out a product that was more energy efficient, cheaper to produce, and open source. Where did DeepSeek come from, and are Silicon Valley and Washington right to be panicking? 


Guest: Zeyi Yang, senior writer at WIRED.


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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Patrick Fort, and Cheyna Roth.

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