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Brian Merchant
@bcmerchant
author: BLOOD IN THE MACHINE and THE ONE DEVICE editor: TERRAFORM formerly: LA Times tech columnist, Motherboard, etc NEWSLETTER ----------v
Los Angeles, CA
bloodinthemachine.com
Joined August 2008
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  • user avatar
    Brian Merchant
    @bcmerchant
    Sep 17, 2023
    Fahrenheit 451 was never my favorite Bradbury/dystopian fiction because it felt a little too blunt, too far-fetched in its metaphor— the state deploying high-tech 'firemen' to burn books to maintain its censorship regime? A bit on the nose. Currently reevaluating that assessment
    user avatar
    Jonathan Riley
    @realJonRiley
    Sep 17, 2023
    Missouri Republicans at a literal book burning. They think flamethrowers should be legal but history books should be destroyed.
    Jake Jackson
    00:00
    Jake Jackson
    Readers added context
    The video show two Republican state senators incinerating a pile of empty boxes they said symbolized "woke liberal agenda" "leftist policies" One of the senators (William Eigel) also stated that he will burn woke books too - "on the front lawn of the governor's mansion" snopes.com/fact-check/sta…
    7M
  • user avatar
    Brian Merchant
    @bcmerchant
    May 25, 2022
    At least try. Call it the No More Dead Children Act. Ban every automatic and semiautomatic weapon from consumer sale. Generous buybacks for banned guns and ammo. Extensive background checks, minimum age to purchase 21 for hunting rifles. At least try
  • user avatar
    Brian Merchant
    @bcmerchant
    Dec 1, 2021
    Every so often you get numb to living in generally dystopian times, and then a new wave of the global pandemic hits, a school shooter kills his classmates with a gun his dad bought on Black Friday, and a theocratic court moves to throw out reproductive rights all on the same day
  • user avatar
    Brian Merchant
    @bcmerchant
    Apr 20, 2021
    extremely cool to be so relieved that the man filmed in HD video murdering someone was found guilty of murder
  • user avatar
    Brian Merchant
    @bcmerchant
    Nov 6, 2024
    The consultants behind Harris’s campaign — reigning in the ‘weird’ line, bringing in the Cheneys, completely spurning Uncommitted and all the student protestors — should never work in Washington again (they will)
    1M
  • user avatar
    Brian Merchant
    @bcmerchant
    Jul 1, 2024
    Good thing we dodged that bullet
    user avatar
    AmericanTruckSongs9
    @ethangach
    Jul 1, 2024
    1M
  • user avatar
    Brian Merchant
    @bcmerchant
    Dec 5, 2019
    Uber didn't want its white collar employees to have to wash their hands in the same sink as its gig worker drivers. This really tells you everything you need to know about Uber. Every single thing.
    Uber Office Had Separate Bathrooms for Drivers and ‘Employees’
    From vice.com
  • user avatar
    Brian Merchant
    @bcmerchant
    Aug 11, 2021
    the font change is whatever, but changing the Follow button from filled in if you follow to filled in if you don't, the precise opposite of the design expectation you taught users for years and years, is the kind of pointlessly confusing nonsense we've come to expect here. bravo
  • user avatar
    Brian Merchant
    @bcmerchant
    Mar 26, 2025
    It's profoundly depressing seeing all the Studio Ghibli-styled AI output tacitly being used to promote OpenAI's latest product. Miyazaki famously called AI-produced art "an insult to life itself"—and this in turn is an insult to one of our greatest-ever animators and artists
    658K
  • user avatar
    Brian Merchant
    @bcmerchant
    May 30, 2020
    The symbolism of a billionaire-owned, for-profit space company launching astronauts high above the heads of thousands of people protesting state brutality and oppression amid a global pandemic and economic collapse should not be lost on anyone
  • user avatar
    Brian Merchant
    @bcmerchant
    Oct 2, 2024
    What Ta-Nehisi Coates is doing, using his standing in the liberal mainstream to enter rarefied mainstream spaces to speak out on behalf of Palestinians, even though those spaces will be invariably hostile and even perhaps subsequently foreclosed to him, is incredible
    689K
  • user avatar
    Brian Merchant
    @bcmerchant
    Jun 19, 2024
    This Australian data scientist has some thoughts about AI and the current state of his industry ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fu…
    1.5M
  • user avatar
    Brian Merchant
    @bcmerchant
    Sep 13, 2023
    this is the funniest thing anyone could ever say about the left at literally any point in history
    user avatar
    TheBlaze
    @theblaze
    Sep 11, 2023
    Tucker: "The Left, to their great credit, are masters of organizing. They are willing to put aside their differences for the sake of achieving a common goal. They don't argue with each other in public. They know there's strength in numbers. Organizing is the path to power."
    00:00
    1.3M
  • user avatar
    Brian Merchant
    @bcmerchant
    Jan 23, 2019
    So far in Davos -a room full of billionaires laughed tauntingly at @AOC’s 70% marginal tax prop. -Bill Gates scoffed at notion the system was broken, hinted critics were communists -Tony Blair laughed at idea his cohort was responsible for any global malady Uh, keep it up guys