Forbes Prediction Market Gamifies Story About Mass Shooting of 8 Children Forbes launched ForbesPredict in January as part of an effort to reverse declining traffic from search engines and keep users on its website longer.

Forbes magazine was never my cup of tea, due to its founder's nutty right-wing economic views, but at least it did real journalism for a long time. The descent from then to now is sick.

Issue 104 – World Tyranny Financial As the Trump family’s crypto dealings raise more alarms, crypto enforcement is falling to new lows

The Trump family cryptocurrency corruption escalates. It is endless, massive, and protected by the (by far) most corrupt administration in American history.

Five Trump Scandals You’ve Probably Missed Swirling scandals—from the Pentagon to DHS to the IRS to the Labor Department—that represent basic betrayals of public office, trust, and confidence-in-leadership that should be the table stakes of good government.

All corruption, all the time in Trump world, Exhibits 64,354-64,358:

www.doomsdayscenario...

If the Democrats had even a tiny bit of political common sense, they would be making an issue of the (by far) most corrupt administration in American history.

The scumbags running Twitter just kicked out journalist Gil Duran -- one of the best in the business -- who dared to call a fascist Silicon Valley manifesto what it is.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s old firm pumps $10 million into super PAC led by Tether executive Cantor Fitzgerald, the Lutnick-tied financial services firm that owns a stake in and custodies reserves for the stablecoin issuer, is bankrolling a super PAC led by a Tether executive.

All corruption, all the time in Trump world, Exhibit 62,903:

Is AI the greatest art heist in history? New technologies of reproduction are plundering the art world – and getting away with it

Molly Crabapple on the tech industry's appropriation of art, and profiting by regurgitating it.

Trump's lawyers are in talks with the IRS to resolve president's $10B lawsuit The Trump administration says it’s in talks with the IRS to resolve a $10 billion lawsuit over leaked tax information.

Yet again the Associated Press normalizes the most corrupt presidency, by far, in American history. This story about Trump's kabuki-theater shakedown of the government he controls barely mentions that until the very end.

apnews.com/article/t...

All corruption in Trump world, all the time.

The Killing That Won't Let Go | Defector Grief has no expiration date, and there’s no statute of limitations on murder. Twenty-one years ago this summer, Steve Cornejo was shot in the back and died in the courtyard of an apartment complex in Fairfax, Va. Cornejo was unarmed. Brandon Gotwalt, who shot him in the back, initially told police he wasn’t on the…

Extraordinary journalism from Dave McKenna at Defector about a long-ago killing in Virginia, where local authorities refused to follow the obvious evidence, engaged in an ongoing cover-up, and left a victim's family endlessly damaged in the wake of undone justice.

Heartening news from one of America's reddest states: Citizens in a data-center-invaded town tossed out city council members who voted for the disruptive project that was a secret until it was too late to stop.

This issue crosses party lines.

www.politico.com/new...

Jon Stewart on Trump’s Jesus photo denial: ‘Do you even care about lying to us any more?’ Late-night hosts discuss Trump posting an AI-generated image of himself as Christ amid his feud with Pope Leo

One of the most disheartening aspects of today's political journalism is the total normalization of Trump's lying. Even when they note that it's bullshit, they feel obliged to quote Trump/apparatchik excuses/denials. Here's one TV commentator who's fed up.

I understand but lament the choice so many thoughtful people have made to publish their newsletters on the odious Substack. Surely they recognize that they are, at least indirectly, helping some of the worst people in the world spread and monetize malignant views.

Trump family deal spree could open door for future presidents to profit from office For the Trump family, business is booming. Whereas the Trump Organization didn’t do a single deal overseas in Donald Trump's first term as president, it did eight in the past year.

Shameful "journalism" from the Associated Press, which normalizes the Trump family's rampant and unprecedented corruption.

apnews.com/article/t...

This quote, near the top, is a sickening example of how the news outlet handles things:

"President Donald Trump is taking a different approach."

Liberals Gain Seat on Wisconsin Supreme Court, Adding to Firewall in Voting Cases Chris Taylor’s win on Tuesday expands liberals’ majority on Wisconsin’s high court and locks it in through the next presidential race, when new lawsuits could challenge voting access.

Democracy gets a big win in Wisconsin:

OpenClaw gives users yet another reason to be freaked out about security The viral AI agentic tool let attackers silently gain admin unauthenticated access.

OpenClaw hackers hackers are having open season on OpenClaw users.

arstechnica.com/secu...

Not even slightly interested in putting this crap on my PC.

Big Banks Seeking a Piece of SpaceX’s I.P.O. Must Subscribe to Elon Musk’s Grok Mr. Musk is requiring Wall Street firms to purchase subscriptions to his A.I. chatbot if they want to advise on one of the largest initial public offerings in history.

Hey lawyers, how close is this to an outright kickback? Musk demands that investment banks spend tens of millions on Grok's craptastic "AI" if they want to be in on the SpaceX IPO.

They’ve Been Accused of Running a ‘Covert’ Operation in Greenland. It’s No Secret. Members of President Trump’s circle, working in plain sight, have caught the eye of Denmark’s intelligence services for trying to make friends and cut deals on the Danish territory.

All corruption, all the time in Trump world.

The Pentagon’s AI Gatekeeper Holds Stock In Anthropic’s Rival As the Pentagon moves to blacklist Anthropic for pushing AI safeguards, the official leading the charge holds millions in a competing firm.

All corruption, all the time in Trump world, Exhibit 64,330:

Blocking earned military promotions, top Trump Pentagon apparatchik Hegseth flaunts the regime's racism and sexism, with no real pretense otherwise. www.npr.org/2026/03/...

A California sheriff seized 600,000 ballots. The judge who approved it? One he endorsed. Judge Jay Kiel approved warrants for California governor candidate Chad Bianco to seize 600,000 ballots. Bianco endorsed Kiel in 2022; Kiel praised the sheriff.

This California sheriff should be in jail, not running for governor.

Bluesky has tens of millions of users. Mastadon has (at most) a couple of million.

I post the same stuff on both, and 50 times the genuine engagement there that I get here.

OpenAI drops AI video tool Sora, startling Disney, sources say On Monday evening, Walt Disney Co and OpenAI teams ​were working together on a project linked to Sora, OpenAI's AI video tool. Just 30 minutes after that meeting, the Disney ‌team was blindsided with word that OpenAI was dropping the tool altogether, a person familiar with the matter said.

That supposed $1 billion Disney investment in "Open"AI was a mirage all along, as so many things related to the AI industry have come to be.

Trump appeared to have business motive for keeping classified documents, Jack Smith finds The special counsel’s office found that Donald Trump held on to documents so secret that only six people could legally review them — and the team believed his reason for doing so was financial gain.

All corruption, all the time in Trump world. In any other time in American history, a president stealing super-sensitive documents on his way out of the White House -- almost certainly to profit from them -- would have gone to prison.

Iran war prediction market bets draw heat: 'Insane this is legal' Wagers were placed over the weekend about the fate of Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the bombardment of Iran.

The gambling industry has successfully persuaded journalists, pet economists, captured regulators, and wholly owned politicians to use its preferred labels, e.g. "gaming" and now "prediction markets" -- and as always, people who should know better go along with it.

Volume in stock and oil futures surged minutes before Trump's market-turning post The timing of the earlier volume spikes — across both equities and crude — caught the attention of traders.

All corruption, all the time in Trump world, exhibit 56,703:

This Wisconsin City Ditched AI Surveillance Cameras. Now Activists Want to Keep Going. Some cities are opting out of camera networks like Flock’s, concerned about abuse by police and immigration authorities. Organizers hope Dane County is the “next big domino” to fall.

Communities are realizing that Flock surveillance cameras are most useful not for locals, but for ICE and other unaccountable spies.

boltsmag.org/verona-...

-- from Bolts, an excellent nonprofit news org covering issues and institutions from the "local up".

"Prediction markets aren't good at producing information, but they're *amazing* at producing corruption."

Cory Doctorow on the Trump-connected "markets" that take gambling to new depths of depravity.

pluralistic.net/2026...

Confronting the CEO of the AI company that impersonated me Superhuman CEO Shishir Mehrotra responds to the Grammarly “expert review” controversy, and whether AI is extracting more value than it creates.

Nilay Patel's interview with the CEO of Grammarly's parent company is a master class in how to confront a tech executive with facts and skepticism. Strongly recommended.

Google Search is now using AI to replace headlines Let us know if you see more.

Google's profound contempt for journalists is on display as it rewrites publications' headlines in search results, sometimes altering the meaning and intent of the original. www.theverge.com/tec...

The company calls it an "experiment" -- as if that makes it OK.

‘Trump is aiming for dictatorship’. That’s the verdict of the world’s most credible democracy watchdog | Martin Gelin Sweden’s V-Dem Institute warns that the US is no longer a liberal democracy. And autocracy is creeping across Europe too, says writer Martin Gelin

As the U.S. sinks into dictatorship -- malevolent rule by corrupt politicians and oligarchs -- the institution I know the best has almost completely failed to recognize, much less counter, the threat. Big Journalism will be remembered for its cowardice and capitulation.

Why Knight Foundation Invested in Bluesky - Knight Foundation John Sands explains our bet on a social web that protects speech, creates opportunity for publishers and creators, and enables research on the information ecosystem.

So the Knight Foundation is one of the investors in Bluesky, via the $100 million funding round led by a crypto fund almost a year ago but only just announced.

knightfoundation.org...

It's a bad move. The logic is, to put it mildly, unpersuasive. I'll be writing about this soon.