A year after first being declared a billionaire, Taylor Swift’s rarely been out of the headlines or the charts. The pop superstar’s Eras tour finally came to an end, and she’s been continuing to break records. Good Bad Billionaire will be back with a new season in March, but until then, here’s a quick update on what Taylor’s been up to and another chance to hear a classic episode from the archives. Zing Tsjeng and Simon Jack uncover the huge public feuds and private legal battles that made the most famous woman in the world. She can change the economy, but is Taylor Swift good, bad, or just another billionaire?
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)
What's the Word: Geyser; News Items: Self Replicating AI, DeepSeek, PEPFAR Freeze, Chemical Looping, Giant Clams and Tiny Algae; Who's That Noisy; You Questions and E-mails: Telepathy Tapes; Science or Fiction
All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.
The Decline and Fall of the American Post Office
Nut Country Revisited feat. Steven Monacelli & Dr. Michael Phillips
They're Trying to Put Women Into Men's Prisons
How Unions Can Protect Trans Rights
Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #1
You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So, open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “Cooler Zone Media” and subscribe today!
As the only land bridge between South and Central America, the notorious Darién Gap is a lawless, unforgiving region through which thousands of people, every year, traverse in search of survival and escape. In the second chapter of this special two-part series, Ben and Matt explore the harrowing reality of making this passage. Beset with bandits, crime, corruption, cartels and danger, innocent people are hoping against hope to survive the horrors of the jungle, and arrive at a better place in the north.
We're doing engineering, what could go wrong?! Thoths! That's what. Or did Thoth go wrong? Maybe all of this is entirely how it should go, maybe Mud is a savior for all Bobkind. Join us and find out, as we parse the messy balance of raising an AGI.
The absolute man-babies who make up the anti-woke movement are always crying about some very minor thing that makes other people's lives better and is no actual burden to them, but is different than the past. This week, that thing happens to be... ASL interpreters at press conferences and such? It's hard to imagine how sensitive you'd have to be to have a problem with this, but their victimhood complex gives Dr. Jenessa Seymour a chance to teach us some really interesting science! It turns out, ASL interpreters are very necessary and closed captioning is not sufficient. There's so much here that you might not have considered before!
Are you an expert in something and want to be on the show? Apply here!
In the new APTN series One Dish One Spoon with chef Tawnya Brant (Mohawk), viewers follow her and her sister Dakota to local kitchens, farms, and waterways to expose the traditional foodways of the Six Nations.
Zach Ducheneaux (Cheyenne River Sioux) leaves his post this month as the administrator of the USDA’s Farm Service Agency where he helped direct some of the federal government’s key agriculture and faming programs and policies.
The work of Mariah Gladstone (Cherokee and Blackfeet) teaching people about Indigenous food and cooking leads her to publish an Indigenous foods cookbook for kids, Mountains to Oceans: Kids’ Recipes from Native Land.
That’s all on The Menu, our regular feature on Indigenous food sovereignty hosted by Andi Murphy.
In this new weekly series, the gang get together to speed run the first two weeks of Trump’s second term, his deluge of executive orders, and what they mean on the ground.
