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Evan Engel

@evanengel.bsky.social
714 followers 562 following 1.1K posts

Here to learn & help. Currently producing podcasts for @theatlantic.com. Probably listening to someone rock out on a B3. linktr.ee/evanengel

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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Since 1962, the longest we've ever gone without a new Bond film is 6 years. It's now been 5 years since the last one and they haven't even announced a new Bond. We did it. We killed James Bond.
medium.com
No One Should Play James Bond
There’s a wonderful moment in the opening of GoldenEye, the 1995 Bond film that brought Pierce Brosnan into the series. The scene finds…
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Laura Bassett @lebassett.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
“If you don’t like public executions just don’t watch it” says the crowd trying to ban drag shows and books
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Blaise Boo-lysse Bernard Collins @wittywebhandle.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Excellent example on just how insular, contaminated, and unreliable the Modern Internet as constructed by Silicon Valley is.
youtube.com
Charity Nye Doesn't Exist
YouTube video by STRANGE ÆONS
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No Escalators @noescalators.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Growing increasingly concerned that my mutuals are not actually going to see Digger. I urge you to reconsider. This is not a bit. It’s excellent.
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Alamo forces customers to use their phones to order food. Now Nitehawk is inching closer. At this rate, if you want to do a dine-in movie without a phone, you're better off sneaking a burger & a beer into a Regal nygroove.nyc/nitehawk-qr-...
nygroove.nyc
Nitehawk is the latest ‘anti-phone’ theater to fall to the QR code
The Nitehawk Union is putting up a fight against this latest front of digital enshittification
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
*subpoena, but like c'mon
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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 05/10/2026
One thing all New Yorkers can agree on? It’s time to get your flu shot! Go to nyc.gov/healthmap to find all the free locations.
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Are Trump's conversations with AI chatbots protected by executive privilege, or could a Democratic legislature supoena these logs?
gizmodo.com
Trump Asked Grok About Potential Blowback Before Kidnapping Venezuela's President: Report
It's horrifying to imagine Trump asking AI for advice.
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
god bless clickhole
clickhole.com
Big Relief: The Way You Use AI Is Merely Supplemental To Your Already Incredible Intelligence And General Capabilities, Which Is Far Different From The Feeble-Minded Who Use It Slightly More Than You ...
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Midway through this interview, as Nicholas Thompson & Sherry spoke about one of the mind-blowing case studies, our Production Assistant turned to me and asked, "Is the book fiction?" I had to tell her: nope. It's all real. That's just where we're at now.
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
On top of (or perhaps lurking beneath) all the things AI does/could do to our politics, businesses, and national security, there's a risk that feels closer to home: What's it doing to our relationships? I got to read Sherry Turkle's new book in prep for this interview, and it's great
youtube.com
Why Chatbots Shouldn't Be Your Friends - With Sherry Turkle
YouTube video by Nicholas Thompson
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 18/09/2026
Remember folks, take notes here: ✅ When your company hacking another one helps with marketing, its "OMG rogue models gone wild hacking other companies." 😱 ❌ When a hacking incident doesn't raise your valuation but shows you to be massive thieves, it's an internal "ah nice"


Matt Stoller
@matthewstoller
OpenAI's President Greg Brockman, when told his company had hacked the NYT paywall to scrape the site, responded with "ah nice."

That's a straightforward criminal violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. OpenAI executives in jail.

quote tweeting Jason Kint @jason_kint



Jason Kint
@jason_kint
·
8h
woah. Court just unsealed Summary Judgment motions in New York Times v OpenAI / Microsoft. 
Easy to see why the AI companies had so many redactions (pink). Their own people wrote the lede for NYT, the "largest theft of labor in human history"... "more and more substitutive..." /1
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Jason Kint
@jason_kint
·
8h
Straight from OpenAI's Brockman and Microsoft's Nadella - 'doom loop' for the entire web [as they vacuum up and substitute the work of journalism and threaten their economic foundations]. /2
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Jason Kint
@jason_kint
·
7h
Not good, OpenAI. "Read this NYTimes" article.. "Summarize" this NYTimes article... (NYT content in red). /3
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Jason Kint
@jason_kint
Blood boiling. Not a good look for OpenAI or Greg Brockman here:
 "ah nice" in response to "a hack to get around nytimes paywall" in his efforts "to scrape" The Times website. After many points on his bragging about OpenAI's substitution for news. /4

Screenshot 
mil
The character of Defendants' conduct weighs further against fair use.
The transgressive and deceptive nature of Defendants' efforts to acquire Plaintiffs' content confirms that their purpose in doing so was fundamentally to avoid the cost of acquiring lawful
copies. OpenAI employees devised and implemented strategies to circumvent paywalls without
detection when scraping websites. For example, when Nick Ryder informed Mr. Brockman about
, hack to get around nytimes paywall" to help with Mr. Brockman's efforts to "scrape[]" The
Times's site, Mr. Brockman responded "ah nice." SF791. OpenAI's corporate representative on
the subject was unaware of any "method for detecting paywalled content" in its da…
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Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
“why are all the ai ceos all of a sudden saying this weird thing?” burning man was last week and this may actually just be the explanation
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Rude1 Haunted Badness. ⁂ @rude1.blacksky.team · 12/09/2026
Come help me build a new kind of internet that puts communities at the center. #ATHiring blackskyweb.xyz/about/jobs/f...
blackskyweb.xyz
Founding Engineer
Systems, protocol, infrastructure and product About Blacksky Blacksky helps communities create virtual third places where members democratically govern the recommender algorithms and moderation policies that shape their space and soon will also pool funds as groups and send money peer-to-peer. Our behind-the-scenes infrastructure, built on the AT Protocol (the open protocol behind Bluesky), lets those […]
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Did this end bc Ghostbusters sued them? That costume on the right looks pretty familiar
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
An interesting discrepancy w/ Ox Alpha: Is it running on chips in China or the US?
Via Bloomberg: 
GLM-5.3-Flash ran entirely on made-in-China AI chips during its Ox Alpha testing phase, Z.ai said in a blog post. Z.ai has completed construction of a major data center with only domestic chips that is designed to train and run its models. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-26/china-s-z-ai-made-ox-alpha-stealth-model-that-rivals-deepseekvia @niklasdev on X:
OX Alpha is hosted in America!! 🇺🇸

I sent 49 identical one-token requests from 7 Cloudflare regions, rotated the order to control for load and matched every response to OpenRouter’s per-generation server timing. 

This isolated the geographic network floor:
ATL: 57 ms
DFW: 76 ms
Europe: 125–132 ms
Asia: 202–340 ms
Australia: 279 ms

A robust 6-of-7 fit converged at 43°N, 73°W, with the plausible band covering the US East Coast into southeastern Canada.

Best interpretation: OX Alpha’s serving path is anchored in eastern North America, most likely US East. 

The only potential remaining caveat: this could be @OpenRouter backend handoff rather than the physical GPU rack.

I tested three unrelated OpenRouter models. They didn’t reproduce OX Alpha’s US-East curve: Cohere and GPT-OSS were nearly flat globally, while AtlasCloud showed a different pattern. So this isn’t a universal OpenRouter backend signature; OX’s route appears provider-specific.

https://x.com/niklasdev/status/2090782305488892273
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
why does this have better rear window visibility than the stock Prius
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Nov. 2024 headline
Trump Says ‘I Don’t Mind’ if the Media Gets Shot
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
Oh that was Ebola, the scary story for 2014 midterms. Here's caravan: qz.com/1467663/the-... And don't forget violent crime from last time: www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
qz.com
The media coverage of the migrant caravan nearly stopped after the US midterms
The caravan of Central American migrants making its way to the US-Mexico border saw a notable decrease in media coverage after the US midterm elections, according to a Quartz analysis.
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
If the past is any guide it should peak around October 15 www.mediamatters.org/msnbc/report...
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Die Another Day's infamously awful "ergonomic" suit. They never show the body + headgear in a full shot bc it looked so cheesy
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
And more to that list: fashion & beauty ads contributed to the disordered eating of the 00's But of course ads still exist, they just look more like Nomadland & Top Gun
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
someone made a data center noise simulator and it's actually kinda fun datacenter.fm
datacenter.fm
DataCenter.FM 🤖🔊 The sound of AI
Experience the real-world sounds of AI with this interactive audio generator.
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
How will this impact the Bed Stuy koi pond
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
You'll never see a movie this lovely: THE TREE (2027)
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
how do I get on this list
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Omg
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
"Carini had a lumpy head" doesn't exactly fit here but I'm throwing it in anyway
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
just checking in w the ol' AI beat
The Verge headline: Ford had to hire back former engineers to fix mistakes made by its automated systems  //Business Insider headline: Software engineers are facing an 'identity crisis bordering on depression,' Menlo Ventures partner saysHaystackNews poll: Majority Express Concerns Over Potential AI Industry Bubble 

[Chart shows 54.93% of American are "Very Concerned" about a bubble in the AI industry]Futurism headline:
DuckDuckGo’s AI Feature Is Telling Users That Trump Died of Rabies Earlier This Month
"The infection was linked to a sequence of events involving Vice President JD Vance, who passed away shortly before Trump."
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
OK but what's actually happening here???
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Christopher Mathias @letsgomathias.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
the trump official — who led the siege & occupation of Minneapolis — admitting to having an ongoing dialogue/rapport with Martin Sellner, a straight-up Nazi who influenced the Christchurch shooter, while speaking at a conference about remigration (read: ethnic cleansing) is a pretty big deal!
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U.S. Press Freedom Tracker @pressfreedomtracker.us · 30/05/2026
Journalists covering Delaney Hall protests: We want to hear from you! Our team has already identified 19 apparent DHS aggressions against press in Newark, NJ, this week. Contact us if you can provide insights or evidence, including photos and videos at: tips@pressfreedomtracker.us
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
So I'm glad that in the 2020s, I get to produce conversations like this one with privacy advocates like Carissa Véliz. The questions Carissa raises— about whether some of AI's capabilities are fundamentally at odds with our democratic values— couldn't be more important.
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
The Dobbs decision illustrated how privacy can play a role in maintaining basic rights like bodily autonomy. And today, as masked federal agents address protestors by name while drones hover over our cities, we're reminded once again that privacy is a democratic value.
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
in the years since then, we've seen that you don't *have* to be the leader of a tech company to feel the impacts of digital privacy invasions. The Snowden disclosures revealed how most of us will be caught up in mass surveillance...
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Rather than go on about the nature and value of privacy, I tried to lean on an example that I knew would land. "Zuckerberg does it," I said, "and if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me." My friend scoffed. "You're not Zuckerberg." That's true (thankfully). But...
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
I remember a conversation I had with a co-worker back in the 2010s, when they noticed I had put a piece of tape over my webcam— which, back then, was uncommon. "What's the point?" they asked.
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Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Scene from Twilight Zone episode, How to Serve Man, which shows a bigheaded alien at the bottom of a set of stairs to a spaceship. A man is screaming and trying to get down.
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
surely the free market would do a better jo- oh
Headline:
 Thousands of baby and kids’ items sold on Amazon recalled—here’s what parents need to know
Amazon recalls

Credit: USA Today

Amazon and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced a wave of recalls affecting thousands of baby and kids’ products.

By Himanshi Bahuguna Updated Sep. 25, 2025
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Still waiting for Phish to cover Gin & Juice as was foretold
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
Closest I could find glaad.org/trump-accoun...
glaad.org
Trump Accountability Tracker | GLAAD
GLAAD is monitoring Donald Trump’s LGBTQ record and history including executive orders, legislative support, nominations and statements.
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Jeffrey Sens @jeffreysens.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
FB friend passed this Ai tidbit to me. No "Manual connection" for the wife on LinkedIn.
I built an automation in one night because I was tired of staring at my wife across the breakfast table at 7am trying to come up with "feelings."
Here's what happened:
Last Tuesday, I sat down with coffee trying to write an anniversary card. 45 minutes later, I had three words ("Happy anniversary, Susan") and a migraine. That's when it hit me - why am I loving my spouse manually?

By Wednesday morning, 1 had a complete romance pipeline running.

Every day at 8am, ChatGPT generates three
"spontaneous" compliments based on my communication style and are texted to my wife automatically.

Total build time? One evening.

This is the exact system running the household right now.

The "thinking of you, beautiful" text she read today was approved from my phone while I was crushing a deadlift.

Here's what I learned: Most husbands are grinding on emotional labor that could be automated in a night. We're so busy working IN the marriage that we forget we can build systems to work FOR the marriage.

You don't need to be a couples counselor. You don't need a massive emotional budget. You just need to stop accepting "manual human connection" as an answer.

What's one relationship milestone you're experiencing manually right now that you could automate this week?
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
There's tons more in here, so I suggest checking out the full interview here:
youtube.com
Can We Trust AI? Sam Altman Hopes So | The Most Interesting Thing in AI
YouTube video by Nicholas Thompson
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
3) He's tired of defending AI. Here's our host, Nicholas Thompson, asking him about young people's fears of AI. 1 year ago, we would have expected him to talk about new social programs, UBI, & all the ways that AI will change society for the better. But today? He simply says their fear is misplaced
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
2) The criticism seems to be getting to him. Here's his latest response on the environmental question. TL:DW: he thinks everyone is being disingenuous. (Really???)
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Maybe it's the realities of a looming IPO. Maybe it's the standard tick-tock of the tech hype cycle. Or maybe it's bc we filmed this just days after an attack on his home. When I watch this, it seems (to me, at least) that for Sam, the stakes have become very, very real.
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
The team at Atlantic Re:think & I prepped for this Sam Altman interview *a lot* and I was still surprised by a few things. 1) He tones it down. Gone are the warnings of AI-caused extinction and the promises of UBI. Altman's going more moderate when it comes to AI's future. Why? Well...
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
not news, but a gorgeous short film about the winter solstice by my friend Matthew Farrell, who consistenly puts out some of the best designed films. This one rocks.
youtube.com
WINTER SOLSTICE (Part 1)
YouTube video by Unlearned Eye
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
Born to be wild?
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Evan Engel @evanengel.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Possible that all 4k followers are part of the samw botnet?
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