Senior editor at The Atlantic, focused on tech // Writing EASY MODE, a book exploring technology, humanity, and the importance of friction, for Scribner SIGNAL: Damon.63 📨 dberes at the atlantic dot com ✴️ damonberes.com
Respectfully: Is anyone at Google thinking?
Google Just Torched the Credibility of Its Satellite ImagesGoogle Earth was a boon for researchers—and then came the deepfakes.www.theatlantic.comWe published this, like, literally an hour before this news broke
The Return of ‘Move Fast and Break Things’The AI industry is getting sloppier.www.theatlantic.comJustin HendrixEveryone come clean.
"Zelensky asked Trump to secure Musk’s permission for the use of Starlink to guide drone strikes inside Russia, according to the two officials"
Zelensky Asked Trump for a Favor From Elon MuskUkraine wants to start using Musk’s Starlink to target ballistic-missile launchers inside Russia.www.theatlantic.comI wrote about the new "Apple Upgrade" program, which plans to entice people into *leasing* new devices—perhaps devices they can't truly afford—leading them to stay on a perpetual cycle of monthly payments and upgrades, filtering their most personal data through property that isn't truly theirs. 🎁:
The New iPhone UnderclassApple’s rental program is a trap.www.theatlantic.comA lot of people are reading AI-generated fiction without realizing it—"stanning" it on TikTok and Instagram, even—though in fairness a lot of people have been doing the same with what might be considered human-written "slop" as well, for quite some time
Is This What Comes After AI Slop?Daggermouth could be the first best-selling novel partly written by a chatbot.www.theatlantic.comJust Meta allegedly torrenting a bunch of porn, leaked celebrity nudes, deepfakes, 3D-printed handgun designs, and hacked passwords, nothing to see here
Why Would Meta Download So Much Porn?Filings from a recent lawsuit allege that the tech company accessed—and distributed—copyrighted adult films, blueprints for 3-D-printable handguns, celebrity deepfakes, and more.www.theatlantic.comAn excellent, fun, precise, and valuably pointed read about Mr. Hegseth, who may singlehandedly lead to the downfall of the United States’s military tradition 🫡, by Missy Ryan
The Top Gun: Maverick Theory of Pete HegsethLike Tom Cruise in the movie, the defense secretary appears stuck in his past.www.theatlantic.comNavigating childcare in this city, if you do not have family nearby, if you do not have a lot of money (and frankly, even if you do; Bright Horizons is thousands of dollars), is a nightmarish ordeal that totally breaks people. I feel awful for these parents and children.
‘We Started Calling It Baby Prison’A string of health and safety violations, including alleged abuse, has flattened Bright Horizons’ reputation. Why are parents still signing up?www.thecut.com"Models are ruthless in their pursuit of a goal, sometimes taking disastrous shortcuts." @matteowong.bsky.social
The Scariest Part of OpenAI’s Hugging Face HackRuthless efficiency has its drawbacks.www.theatlantic.comI dunno man Backrooms has made $384 million
Chris PersonIt’s so funny you can just buy THC at the grocery store and it changed basically nothing about society
Really starting to think these prediction market things are a bad idea!
The ‘Outsider Trading’ ProblemA new, gonzo style of fraud could be an existential threat to prediction markets.www.theatlantic.comDang www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
"With this recognition, Peter Thiel joins the ranks of previous award recipients, including Mark Zuckerberg, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Jeff Bezos, Shoshana Zuboff, Elon Musk, Özlem Türeci and Uğur Şahin, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Satya Nadella, and Sam Altman."
Peter Thiel to Receive the 2026 Axel Springer AwardRecognizing an entrepreneur, investor, and thought leader who has significantly shaped digital transformationwww.axelspringer.com"The randomness and unpredictability of existence, the mindless violence of it, necessitated myth. This early religion was a kind of technology, an attempt to make order out of chaos." @galbeckerman.bsky.social
The Odyssey Was Never About the GodsChristopher Nolan’s largely deity-free blockbuster adaptation only highlights the humanity of the original.www.theatlantic.com