Chuck Darwin<p>In February, <a href="https://c.im/tags/Marc" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Marc</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Andreessen" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Andreessen</span></a> described the <a href="https://c.im/tags/Chatham" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Chatham</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/House" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>House</span></a> group chats to the podcaster <a href="https://c.im/tags/Lex" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Lex</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Fridman" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Fridman</span></a> as “the equivalent of [Soviet era] <a href="https://c.im/tags/samizdat" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>samizdat</span></a>” <br>“The combination of encryption and disappearing messages really unleashed it,” he said. The chats, he wrote recently, helped produce our national “vibe shift.”<br>They have rarely been discussed in public, though you can catch the occasional mention in, for instance, a podcast debate between <a href="https://c.im/tags/Mark" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Mark</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Cuban" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Cuban</span></a> and the Republican entrepreneur <a href="https://c.im/tags/Vivek" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Vivek</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Ramaswamy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Ramaswamy</span></a>, which started in a chat.</p><p>But they are made visible through a group consensus on social media. <br>Their effects have ranged from the mainstreaming of the monarchist pundit <a href="https://c.im/tags/Curtis" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Curtis</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Yarvin" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Yarvin</span></a> to a particularly focused and developed dislike of the former Washington Post writer <a href="https://c.im/tags/Taylor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Taylor</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Lorenz" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Lorenz</span></a>.</p><p>They succeeded at avoiding leaks (until, to a modest extent, this article) in part because of Signal’s and WhatsApp’s <a href="https://c.im/tags/disappearing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>disappearing</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/message" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>message</span></a> features, <br>and in part because the groups had formed out of a mix of fear and disdain for journalists they believed were “out to get us,” as one member put it.<br>“People during 2020 felt that there was a monoculture on social media, and if they didn’t agree with something, group chats became a safe space to debate that, share that, build consensus, feel that you’re not alone,” <br>said <a href="https://c.im/tags/Erik" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Erik</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Torenberg" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Torenberg</span></a>, an entrepreneur who was the first employee of the tech community hub Product Hunt. <br>As <a href="https://c.im/tags/Krishnan" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Krishnan</span></a> was setting up a set of tech group WhatsApp chats at a16z, <a href="https://c.im/tags/Torenberg" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Torenberg</span></a> independently founded a group of tech chats on WhatsApp and some more political Signal chats.</p><p>“They’re having all the private conversations because they weren’t allowed to have the public conversations,” Andreessen told Torenberg on a recent podcast, <br>after claiming in the name of secrecy that he’d never heard of such groups. <br>“If it wasn’t for the censorship all of these conversations would have happened in public, which would have been much better.”<br>Their creations took off: <br>“It might not seem like it, because of all the sh*t that people still post on X, but the internet has fragmented,” <br>the Substack author <a href="https://c.im/tags/Noah" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Noah</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Smith" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Smith</span></a> wrote after my inquiries for this story spilled into public Saturday. <br>“Group chats are now where everything important and interesting happens.”</p><p><a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/04/27/2025/the-group-chats-that-changed-america" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">semafor.com/article/04/27/2025</span><span class="invisible">/the-group-chats-that-changed-america</span></a></p>
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#Vivek
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Chuck Darwin<p>On the last Friday of September 2023, <a href="https://c.im/tags/Elon" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Elon</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Musk" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Musk</span></a> dropped in about an hour late to a dinner party at the Silicon Valley mansion of the technology investor <a href="https://c.im/tags/Chamath" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Chamath</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Palihapitiya" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Palihapitiya</span></a>.</p><p>Musk’s visit was meant to be discreet -- Still skittish about getting involved publicly in politics, he told the guests he had to be careful about supporting anyone in the Republican nomination fight. </p><p>And yet here he was <br>— joined by Claire Boucher, the singer known as <a href="https://c.im/tags/Grimes" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Grimes</span></a> and the mother of three of his children<br> — at a $50,000-a-head dinner in honor of the presidential candidate <a href="https://c.im/tags/Vivek" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Vivek</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Ramaswamy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Ramaswamy</span></a>, who was running as an entrepreneur who would shake up the status quo.</p><p>As the night wore on, Musk held forth on the patio on a variety of topics, according to four people with knowledge of the conversation: <br>his visit that week to the U.S.-Mexico border; <br>the war in Ukraine; <br>his frustrations with government regulations hindering his rocket company, SpaceX; <br>and Mr. Ramaswamy’s highest priority, the dismantling of the federal bureaucracy.<br>Musk made clear that he saw the gutting of that bureaucracy as primarily a technology challenge. </p><p>He told the party of around 20 that when he overhauled Twitter, the key was gaining access to the company’s servers</p><p>Wouldn’t it be great, Musk offered, if he could have access to the computers of the federal government?</p><p>Just give him the passwords, he said jocularly, and he would make the government fit and trim.<br><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/us/politics/musk-federal-bureaucracy-takeover.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">nytimes.com/2025/02/28/us/poli</span><span class="invisible">tics/musk-federal-bureaucracy-takeover.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare</span></a></p>
⚯ Michel de Cryptadamus ⚯<p>vivek just got fired from <a href="https://universeodon.com/tags/DOGE" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>DOGE</span></a>.</p><p><a href="https://universeodon.com/tags/vivek" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>vivek</span></a> <a href="https://universeodon.com/tags/uspol" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>uspol</span></a> <a href="https://universeodon.com/tags/trump" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>trump</span></a> <a href="https://universeodon.com/tags/Uspolitics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Uspolitics</span></a> <a href="https://universeodon.com/tags/donaldtrump" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>donaldtrump</span></a> <a href="https://universeodon.com/tags/VivekRamaswamy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>VivekRamaswamy</span></a></p>
Europe Says<p><a href="https://www.europesays.com/1775991/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="">europesays.com/1775991/</span><span class="invisible"></span></a> DeWine Names Lt. Gov. Jon Husted to Fill JD Vance’s Senate Seat <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/BROWN" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>BROWN</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/DeWine" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>DeWine</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/elections" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>elections</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/GovernmentEfficiencyDepartment" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>GovernmentEfficiencyDepartment</span></a>(US) <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Governors" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Governors</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Governors" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Governors</span></a>(US) <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Husted" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Husted</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/JonA" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>JonA</span></a>(1967) <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/mike" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>mike</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/ohio" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ohio</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Politics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Politics</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/PresidentialElectionOf2024" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>PresidentialElectionOf2024</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Ramaswamy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Ramaswamy</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Senate" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Senate</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Sherrod" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Sherrod</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/UnitedStatesPoliticsAndGovernment" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>UnitedStatesPoliticsAndGovernment</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Vivek" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Vivek</span></a>(1985)</p>
Kriszta Satori<p>Cracks appear in future Trump admin over foreign worker visas<br><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyv7gxp02yo" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">bbc.com/news/articles/clyv7gxp</span><span class="invisible">02yo</span></a><br><a href="https://journa.host/tags/Vivek" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Vivek</span></a></p>
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