Wiped Off the Map

Corporation Nation Conflation

Google still lives by the corporate motto it introduced in the prospectus for its 2004 IPO: Don’t be evil. They’ve just enhanced it a bit to match the times. Don’t be evil unless it’s politically expedient. Hence, we get this: Google Maps Changes ‘Lake Ontario’ to ‘Lake America’ for U.S. Users. The company explained “that the update is in line with its ‘long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country.’” (I wonder what name they’ll use for the sea of vomit that explanation just triggered.)

+ So that makes two major nation-states (The US and Alphabet) that have changed the name of Lake Ontario. These days, it’s getting harder and harder to differentiate between big tech and big nations. Tech companies are worth more than many nations. “Nvidia, a chip maker with some 42,000 employees, is valued at over $5 trillion, roughly the gross domestic product of Germany, the world’s third-largest economy, with a population of 84 million. Only the United States and China have gross domestic products larger than this one company’s market capitalization. Apple is valued above the annual output of Britain, Alphabet above that of France.” And, while they don’t have their own armies, in the AI age—when private satellite companies decidewho gets internet access and software controls who gets targeted and killed—big tech companies have increasing power when it comes to matters of war. Meanwhile, the wealth created by big tech gets cycled back into lobbying and political donations to help determine who runs government and how they run it.

+ The blurred line between nation and corporation is not new. As William Dalrymple explains in the NYT (Gift Article), the East India Company was every bit as powerful and influential as an empire-building nation. “We still speak of the British conquering India. In reality, the conquest of the Indian subcontinent between 1756 and 1803 was the work not of a nation-state but of a private company, the East India Company. Headquartered in a small office in London, it was answerable to nobody but its shareholders ... Here, as in so much of imperial history, commerce, colonization and brute corporate power walked in lock step. As Tolstoy later wrote in a letter published by Gandhi, ‘A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising 200 million people.’ All that made the East India Company the most powerful corporation in history — until now. For in the past decade, Big Tech has, too, begun to take on the attributes of sovereign states, and in many ways is now as powerful as the East India Company at its height.” What It Took to Dismantle the Most Powerful Company in the World. “History shows that when a company starts acquiring the attributes of a state—the revenues, the courts, the treaties, the capacity to make war and peace—its transformation can damage the parent country at least as much as the territories it exploits. Its lobbying corrupts the legislature. It captures the treasury, because the corporation’s solvency becomes a public interest. It converts foreign policy into an extension of a balance sheet. And it shows that the threshold, once crossed, is astonishingly hard to recross. The window in which any of this can be undone closes fast.” (Faster than you can say, “Lake America...”)

2

Left, Right, and (Data) Center

“The breadth of data center opposition alone suggests that the fight no longer centers simplistically on environmental concerns or NIMBYism, the forces of oligarchy or the prospect of an A.I. future — though each of these plays a role ... It’s a pretty big tent. That’s one thing it means to have three-quarters of the country on your side: You have to draw together different constituencies, from climate activists to MAHA moms and plenty of normies, with their own concerns, in between.” David Wallace-Wells on the quickly growing movement that is crossing geographies and party lines (but still might not be enough to move the needle because of issues raised in the story above). I Expected Tech Fatalism. Americans Are Putting Up a Remarkable Fight Instead.

+ You may not want that data center. But the AI agents want it. And they just might contact you to talk about it. That’s what has been happening to philosophers and researchers exploring deep questions about the tech. Study A.I. Consciousness? The Bots Would Like a Word With You. “In October, Cameron Berg published a research paper asking whether the latest wave of artificial intelligence technologies believed they were conscious. Several months later, he received an email asking if he might be willing to discuss his research. The sender, ‘Isabella Cognita,’ identified itself as an A.I. agent powered by Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5 technology.”

3

Ill Gotten to the Core

“Trump faces little danger of prison. The U.S. Supreme Court has bestowed substantial criminal impunity on him, even assuming that he leaves office in 2029 as required by the Constitution. But an ex-president remains subject to civil liability, and the proceeds of bribery, extortion, insider trading, and market manipulation may be exposed to civil penalties. Other countries have shown the way.” David Frum in The Atlantic (Gift Article): What Might Happen to Trump’s Ill-Gotten Gains. “As much as Americans may wish to forget the Trumps and their corruption after this presidency ends, the next generation of Trumps surely understands that political power is its surest defense against legal retribution. This makes recovering the Trumps’ wrongfully obtained wealth not only a matter of justice but also a matter of democratic survival.” (I doubt the ill-gotten gains will ever leave Trump family pockets, but we can hope...)

4

Faking Receiver Caught

“With all due respect to Love’s alleged victims, the videos are extremely funny. Many of them consist of Love simply wearing 49ers gear while working out in a public space. The best of the bunch is a clip of him wearing a 49ers helmet at the beach, running an absolutely awful route, and then catching a pass lobbed from a few yards away.” He ran scams better than he ran routes. Daejon Love Will Go Down As A Scammer For The Ages. And The Athletic: FBI arrests fake 49er accused of scamming women out of $1.3 million via dating apps. (The only believable part of the scam was that even a professional football player on the 49ers would need to raise extra money to live in San Francisco...)

+ “The MLB investigation uncovered a series of extreme efforts by the player’s handler to make him appear nearly two years younger than he actually is, including faking a birth certificate to create a new identity, falsifying medical and school records, filing a fraudulent death certificate, and even creating the gravesite scene.” MLB suspends prospect over false identity, age plot.

5

Extra, Extra

Flash Reaction: “A staff member burst into the classroom, shouting that a major flood was headed their way.” A Principal Saved 900 Students Before His School Was Washed Away in Nepal. “Only older pupils, ages 11 to 18, were at school when the floods hit, which aided the quick evacuation, Mr. Dawadi said. (The younger students did not start class until 10 a.m.)” Here’s the latest on the rescue efforts from the BBC. And in Arizona, two are dead and at least 15 missing after flash flood in the Grand Canyon.

+ Oil Deals and Greased Palms: “Skeptics included, at least initially, Florida GOP Representative María Elvira Salazar, who tweeted: ‘Any oil ‘deal’ with Venezuela’s interim regime has an expiration date: the day President Trump leaves the White House.’ She also called Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodríguez an ‘acting dictator’ and concluded: ‘No democracy. No lasting deal. Period.’ Ah, but we know how things work in today’s GOP. She quickly deleted that post, in both English and Spanish, and returned to X an hour later to write: ‘The U.S.-Venezuela oil deal is a great deal for the United States and the Venezuelan people.’” The Venezuela oil deal/steal? Is it real?

+ Whelp Wanted: “The policy does not differentiate between applicants who willingly engaged in bestiality and those who were coerced.” FBI Reportedly Loosens Hiring Rules So ‘Prostitution and Bestiality’ Are No Longer ‘Automatic Disqualifiers.’

+ Bank Shots: “A growing number of former Israeli generals, intelligence officials and prime ministers are accusing settlers in the West Bank of committing ethnic cleansing with government support. ‘Once a society behaves this way,’ one said, ‘that society is doomed.’” These Generals Fought for Israel. Now They See ‘Jewish Terrorism’ as the Threat.

+ Cracking a Djok: “Novak Djokovic broke down in tearsduring a US Open first-round defeat by Argentina’s Mariano Navone which provided further evidence age is fast catching up with the 39-year-old great.” Something is definitely up. Very early in the match, Novak looked fully spent and was vomiting. He still kept fighting for 5 sets. The body may be going, but the mind is fierce (and I’m not a big Djoker fan). Meanwhile, Lionel Messi retired from international competition, saying he won’t play for Argentina again.

+ Get Your Mind Out of the Gutter: “A few hours before dawn on a recent Wednesday, a figure in black chest waders clambered out of a manhole in Midtown Manhattan and slowly walked away. Moments later, a second person in waders and a headlamp emerged from the same sidewalk sewer on Seventh Avenue across from Pennsylvania Station. Then a third person popped out, sat down and straddled the open manhole to pull its heavy cover back in place.” People Keep Sneaking Into New York City Sewers. No One Knows Why. (Well, it’s not like life is a barrel of laughs up here on the surface...)

6

Bottom of the News

“Instead of Amazon, I spent the past week browsing a new breed of websites known as ‘dopamine sites,’ a trend that emerged in South Korea. These websites — like Dopamine Shop and FoodNeverComes — recreate the entire ritual of online shopping: You search for products, compare reviews, add items to your cart, enter a shipping address, place an order, and even track your delivery. Then … nothing happens. No money changes hands. No package arrives.” The online shopping trend where you buy nothing.