there's a "florida woman" tied to conservative influencers catfishing dems...
ALSO: phoebe bridgers x the immigration bond freedom fund (we love to see it), trump's attempts to get a peek into big ai, charting the rise and fall of the labubu, and more
Happy Tuesday, June 2nd! And happy return of Love Island US to those who observe.
FYSA, every Tuesday and Friday, I’ll be in your inbox with the latest in politics, tech & social media, culture, and other relevant topics – and I’ll share some notes and tips on what I’m keeping my eye on.
I’M ALSO LOOKING FOR MORE PEOPLE TO DO MINI INTERVIEWS FOR OPEN TABS :) Tips, thoughts, concerns, good jokes, bad jokes, tea, etc?
And finally, if you enjoy this newsletter and want to share it with your network (and/or your chronically online friends), or buy me a matcha, that would be so appreciated 🙏
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’ll be doing a bit of the Trending Up happy hour circuit tomorrow night – if you’re a digi pal, hope to see you there!
“No One Is Watching”: How Trump Reversed Biden’s Crackdown on Gun Trafficking
The end of zero-tolerance was, on its own, hardly a surprise for an administration elected with the strong support of gun-rights and gun-industry groups. What has differed from the first Trump term has been the wholesale shift of resources away from the enforcement of gun trafficking laws and toward the immigration crackdown, both at the ATF and DOJ. (ProPublica, 6/1)
Inside the Democratic resistance on AI
Centrists may be waking up to the reality that Democrats are not embracing AI to the extent Republicans are (though some Republicans are wary, too). California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent outreach to Warren could signal a shift, but his AI executive order flopped among labor organizations that said studying the impact on workers is not enough. California Federation of Labor Unions president Lorena Gonzalez said that Khanna’s “Work for America” proposal was “way more developed and worker- and job-centered.” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, meanwhile, is poised to sign a major AI safety bill into law. (Axios, 5/29)
‘I thought I had my future wife’: The Florida woman catfishing America’s political class
Crowder, who has nearly six million subscribers on YouTube and 2.5 million on X, is most famous for a style of video where he parks himself on a college campus and invites liberal students to debate. But over the last decade, he began to experiment with another genre — targeting perceived opponents of the right by having someone meet undercover to secure footage that could be released for public viewing. (POLITICO, 6/2)
Georgia town’s novel strategy to fight ICE jail plan impresses legal experts
The town of Social Circle’s complaint goes further than other recently filed lawsuits around the same issues, which assert that the US federal government has not carried out environmental impact assessments for proposed detention centers, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (Nepa). (The Guardian, 5/31)
Trump signs order designed to give government early look at powerful AI models
Participation in the system by artificial intelligence companies would be voluntary, according to the order, but leading firms are expected to take part. The order comes after Anthropic, the maker of chatbot Claude, developed a model called Mythos that has been shown to be effective at finding security weaknesses in computer code and hacking into networks. (WaPo, 6/2 – free version)
Here is the Contract for Palantir’s Super API for the IRS
Sections of that document are redacted, but it suggests Paragon may be used, as expected by ICE, to enforce “immigration and customs laws.” The section reads: “Paragon brings our capabilities in response to this [REDACTED] RFP [request for proposals], to support the [REDACTED] mission protecting national security by enforcing the nation’s immigration and customs laws, including criminal activities.” (404 Media, 6/1)
A new app, The Mall, is building a universal feed for online shopping
Instead of partnering with brands or using APIs, The Mall uses technology to scrape retail websites, pulling in entire catalogs, and tracking product and pricing information within its own app. This scraping is frequent enough to keep an eye out for sales, restocks, drops, and other promotions, which it then alerts users to via push notifications. (TechCrunch, 6/1)
Phoebe Bridgers announces surprise last-minute Madison Square Garden show – and tickets are just $1
Fans can choose to pay either $1, $5, $10 or $20, with some of the money to be donated to the Community Justice Exchange’s Immigration Bond Freedom Fund, which provides aid to people in immigration detention. The site clearly states that the amount fans pay will not influence their chances of being selected for tickets. (NME, 6/1)
This chart shows how much Labubus have fallen off
There are other factors that might have affected this drop — the opening of several brick-and-mortar stores in the US may have shifted sales away from the website and into physical stores (or other online retailers). The first Pop Mart store opened in 2023 in the American Dream Mall in New Jersey, and there are now over 65 stores across the US. (Business Insider, 5/28 – free version)
Lucy’s note: Love ‘em or hate ‘em, you can’t deny that Labubus lowkey changed everyone’s brain chemistry…
Inside Europe’s largest Copper Age tomb, children’s bones expose an ancient health crisis hidden for 5,000 years
Because so many complete child skeletons survived, the team could look for patterns across whole bodies rather than isolated bones. Of the 48 individuals investigated, 92% had at least one bone change associated with disease. Of those, around 67% showed signs of both porous bones, mainly in the skull and leg bones, and infection-related changes associated with respiratory diseases. (Phys.org, 5/30)
The Amazon’s ‘lost city’ has been widely misunderstood. This is its true story
However, as we learn more about these connected mounds, it’s becoming clear they were not “cities” in the classical sense we understand them today, but rather a kind of urbanism unique to the Amazon jungle: low-density and multicentric, harnessing the strengths and weaknesses of the surrounding forest. (BBC, 5/31)
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Extra Credit 🤓
Some newsletters I thought were interesting recently:
“How can Democrats break through the noise?” from Max Levy of The Short Answer
“You should worry far less” from Adam Singer of Hot Takes
There is a comforting stat in here for people who also like those!
That’s all for now – I’ll see you next week!