SpongeBob Did 9/11

“SBF was reckless from the start,” argued Matt Levine yesterday in a post that’s much more sympathetic to Michael Lewis’s book than most people have been, but still does exactly the thing you read Matt Levine for by carefully analyzing an anecdote from Bankman-Fried’s early Jane Street internship days. And Molly White pulled out another amazing excerpt from “Going Infinite” where SBF makes a pros and cons list for dating Alameda Research CEO and crypto-nerd polycule partner Caroline Ellison that begins: “In a lot of ways, I don’t really have a soul.” Meanwhile in court, Liz Lopatto wonders if SBF is even trying to win his fraud case.

Experts still believe his defense will be that he’s just a little guy, with glasses. And it’s his birthday. You wouldn’t put a little guy in jail wouldja? A little guy with glasses? On his birthday? C’mon.

Also reckless is Microsoft’s Bing Image Creator which, far from innocently creating images of bing, can be used to fabricate evidence that SpongeBob did 9/11, according to 404’s Samantha Cole. Microsoft may be trying to keep up with Facebook, who just rolled out an AI sticker generator that will happily give you several options for ”Waluigi rifle” or “big breasts Karl Marx.” But “Something's off in tech journalism,” warns our youngest Andy Rooney Ian Bogost, when tech reporters are out there reporting on the kind of products that tech companies are… releasing. I guess?

What won’t be off is your cheese, reports Jaya Saxena, if you get a home cheese grotto. “America still doesn’t have a great cheese culture,” Saxena writes, but at least America’s bad cheese culture matches the rest of America’s bad culture. Our social media culture is so bad that my friend @business is publishing “The Moral Case for No Longer Engaging With Elon Musk’s X.” Advertisers are no longer engaging with Musk’s X in droves, according to Reuters’ Sheila Dang, who reports that U.S. ad sales on Musk’s X dropped more than 50% year-over-year every month from November, 2022 to August, 2023. The only bright spot for Musk’s X is successfully bullying the ADL back onto the platform, which should provide plenty of new engagement from the kind of users that only post fourteen words at a time.

The ADL may be returning to Twitter but Drew Barrymore’s writers won’t be returning to her show after Barrymore attempted to restart the show without them during the WGA strike. Once bitten, twice shy I guess, unless you’re Commander Biden, who has reportedly bitten people more than eleven times and doesn’t seem shy at all. Here’s why that’s a big problem for Joe Biden writes Matt Bai, who is apparently for real right now? At least Matt Novak ran down the viral screenshot claiming that Commander Biden has been “wandering the White House halls at night, sounding out a bizarre ‘clicking’ noise,” which is not for real unfortunately.

Intern Meggie found out that far from ending Trump’s bad immigration policies, the new President has merely been Biden… his time. But now he’s ready to:

Joe Biden previously promised to halt wall construction along the Rio Grande, but he’s now going back on his word and going forward with the wall in order to woo “independent voters”1 before the impending election, yet again proving how truly deplorable his immigration policies are. The move will effectively bypass twenty six federal laws in Southern Texas including the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and Endangered Species Act, and the continued construction will not only fuel already unfavorable public opinion amongst both Democratic and Republican voters, it will also come at a cost to the environment. The decision comes after a wave of migrants sent by Texas Governor and human maxi pad Greg Abbott to blue states California, New York, and Illinois pushed officials to ask for federal funding to help the migrants find employment and housing. I wish this post was funnier but I'm pretty pissed, and it truly feels like men across all fields—politics, technology… politics again—are proving how unnecessary their presence is this week.  

—Meggie Gates is extremely for real right now, take some notes Matt Bai.

Max Tani reports that The New York Times has bugs in the coffee machine. Bret Stephens sought for questioning. Zombie bread: “The Last of Crust.” Kevin Nguyen: “Evil Does Not Exist review: it does.” Wow, spoiler warning? In this review Kevin puts forward a “Loose Hamaguchi / Tight Hamaguchi” critical framework, and asserts that this movie “has the polish and patience of a Tight Hamaguchi but also the subtle motions of a Loose Hamaguchi.” 😳

Today in Identity: Patreon launched a “brand new identity,” with a frenetic Pomplamoose of a Jack Conte video explaining it. Banksy’s old identity might have been revealed in a U.K. defamation lawsuit. The Daily Mail reports that he is indeed Robin Gunningham but Artnet says not so fast. It’s like, probably Robin Gunningham though, come on. Robin Banks? Banksy? Absolute lads. And with the release of iOS 17, you don’t have to say “hey” before summoning Apple’s virtual assistant Siri to fail at whatever task you had in mind, forcing Edinburgh “personal trainer Siri Price… to change her name.” From now on she’ll only answer to: Alexa.

Finally: New girl dropped. ”Say goodbye to the girlboss: The 'snail girl era' is here.”

Today’s Song: Hum, “Stars”

Another week in the bag, and it feels like we fell down the discourse stairs and hit every step on the way. I hope you take the rest of this Gentleman’s Friday to care for your agonies. Perhaps a nice bath? But if you crave a little hair of the dog tomorrow, please subscribe. I gotchu.