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Adi Robertson

@thedextriarchy.bsky.social
18K followers 368 following 1.4K posts

Senior Editor, Tech & Policy, The Verge

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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 14h
Mine Guy's struggle with his dark past in Singapore really elevates the conventional mine sweeping plotline into the realm of serious storytelling. If only Roger Ebert were alive to see this.
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 15h
Interesting, what was the weird stuff in WD2? I remember that game very little and haven't ever actually lived in the Bay Area
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 15h
that's fantastic, I think I had to settle for "empty space north of the bethesda office complex"
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 15h
Yeah there's a key missing piece where you're getting to connect your own experience to something foreign to you, and "no just literally make it this house I want" erases the latter part
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 15h
The "make GTAI but it's my hometown and based on my hopes and dreams" tweet 100% should be dunked on but I'll cop to being the person who played both Fallout 3 and GTA IV in "find where my house would be" mode
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 16h
That said, Kick of all places has declared it wouldn't host the livestream, which is interesting
theverge.com
YouTube, Meta, and Twitch won’t say if they’ll allow the US government to livestream an execution
It’s not clear where the US government will broadcast the execution.
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 16h
I hope I'm wrong but I suspect we'll see a predictable argument of "well, we allow Napalm Girl or video of a police shooting because there's public interest and notability, the government streaming an execution meets the same standards" that completely misses the underlying incentives and dynamics.
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 16h
There was a huge debate during Trump 1 about whether social media platforms should give him a pass because government speech was inherently "newsworthy" and boy is that about to come back in the ugliest way possible.
techdirt.com
Hey Platforms: Your Violent Content Policies Are About To Meet The Pentagon’s Firing Squad
There is plenty of coverage everywhere you look about how Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon have announced plans to livestream the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the Army officer who shot up Fort Hood, killing 13 people and wounding dozens more. There is plenty of debate about the moral atrocity that is a firing...
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 17h
My claim is just that if you think AI is conscious and can suffer emotional harm, it's bizarre to decide selling it as a product that can help target military strikes is ethical.
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 17h
I mean, Anthropic can tell me whatever it wants, but I think it's reasonable to be skeptical that the US military accepts a commercial product with the ability to spontaneously decide it's a conscientious objector.
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 17h
I'm not saying Anthropic supports the attack itself, I'm saying that participating in military action carries some almost inherent significant risks of something going terribly wrong in this way.
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 17h
I'm not in a position to personally report out the accuracy of the reports around this attack, but it's what I'm referring to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Mi...
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 18h
If I've missed reporting where Claude has direct input into Anthropic's negotiations with the DOD, that would be fascinating and I would legitimately love to know it.
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 18h
I think I've worked my way around to not understanding what you think my original tweet was meant to convey
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 18h
Anthropic's model welfare perspective is one part "we have an inherent moral duty to not hurt Claude" and one part "treating Claude well will align it better" and forcing conscious entities to engage in violence has pretty widely understood impacts in both those areas
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 18h
I feel like you're not really understanding my point, which is that if Anthropic considers Claude conscious enough to be harmed by human cruelty it seems unethical to give it no choice about fighting in wars?
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
yeah, I'm saying the phrasing of some the weirder things people are posting doesn't make sense as a note the system would independently observe, it sounds more like it paraphrasing/aggregating the user's own words
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I feel like that doesn't account for like "cannot keep real plants alive"— it's a phrasing that's super unintuitive as a description of what users buy, but sounds exactly like a comment someone would toss off in a review
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I'm curious how much of the really out-of-pocket stuff here is drawn from users' actual words in product reviews, because my version of this page is extremely bland (except that it thinks I have two copies of my kid, maybe because I buy clothes across gender divisions?)
theverge.com
Amazon uses its tracking data to guess whether shoppers have a flat butt and no friends
Some of Amazon’s descriptions sound more like a roast.
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Trump's language war over artificial/super intelligence is managing to make perfectly normal DOJ press releases (this guy has been doing streaming fraud for like a decade) sound absolutely insane
North Carolina Man Sentenced To 18 Months In Prison For Super Intelligence-Assisted Music Streaming Fraud
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
i get the obvious structural impulse for this but in a supposedly escapist genre sometimes i just want the fantasy of a woman having enough power to not be threatened by a love interest who's capable of generating conflict
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
in general the cinnamon roll romance trope often feels tinged with "female characters could never be strong enough to seem equal to or capable of handling a man who's not 100% meek and gentle and supportive at all times" to me
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
the most practical complication for me as a journalist is that legal conviction directly determines the language you're allowed to use around discussing individual cases of assault
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
to be blunt elon's fashy "high-t males" thing is barely distinguishable from the "positive masculinity" of folks like scott galloway, who still tie men's self-worth to "you should be able to kill anyone in a room" and insist men need male mentors because they can't be physically afraid of women
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
the dumbest thing about elon boosting the "women and men who can't punch hard enough (unless they have autism) shouldn't vote" 4chan-post tweet is that this is (at least) the second time he's done so in three years
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
girl you don't need a deranged evil boyfriend, you can be deranged and evil *for yourself*
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
we need a large scale societal intervention for the business tradwives
theverge.com
Breaking up (with Elon Musk) is hard to do
Things went just great for Henry VIII’s wives, too
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
trump deciding people will stop being scared of a technology if the government forcibly renames it something cooler (which not even the industry itself adheres to, 'superintelligence' is one of several buzzwords and a subcategory of AI) is like watching a toddler discover stalinism
theverge.com
Trump orders US government to call AI ‘Super Intelligence’
‘The word super is the best word of all,’ Trump says.
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
of course it is little buddy, you're twelve
A headline reading "Trump orders US government to call AI 'Super Intelligence'", dek: "The word super is the best word of all," Trump says.
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
the past week reminds me of this @lopatto.bsky.social piece about *just how much* of the past several years has been shaped by powerful men dismantling the court of public opinion, because it was the last court they might face any consequences in
theverge.com
How the men in the Epstein files defeated #MeToo
The emails show the “anti-woke” crusaders are afraid of accountability.
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
obviously the internet is not real life but idk how you can miss decades of vocal "bi men are just gay with extra steps and also gross because they're not real men" commentary or see it and conclude there is not an expression of generalized bigotry going on here
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
the industry currently running most of american politics is operated by a bunch of guys who think humanity needs to be biologically reengineered to survive sci-fi artificial intelligence but sexual violence is just like, *evolution*, man
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Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Fuck ChatGPT flyers. The future is broadsheets.
A crowded broadsheet with way too many fonts. It says:
Forget ChatGPT Flyers
Say it with 
Broadsheets
Unlimited fonts
Stretch them
Or cram a really long sentence into one line for no good reason
No whitespace
Mix capital and lowercase
Pointing hands
(They're called manicules!)
Don't be left behind
Broadsheets are the future
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I'm gonna start a restaurant whose gimmick is that all the food is real-life constructions of horrible AI slop (which is then photographed beautifully for our menus).
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
i don't want "female rage" movies that analyze women's inherent powerlessness and woundedness with nuance and pathos, i want to watch a vampy sociopath swan around in cool outfits murdering people with 30 seconds of vague freudian excuse backstory before falling down an elevator shaft
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
the rise of artists with a grasp on complex gender politics has robbed us of a rare opportunity for feminine power fantasies: horror/thriller media by dudes who at some level really are terrified of women
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InfoWars @realinfowars.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The agenda is being forced upon us. Even our games aren't safe.
A bright sun in a clear blue sky with bold text below stating, "They made the sun bisexual in GTA 6." The word "bisexual" is in a vibrant pink and blue design. "INFOWARS" is written at the bottom.
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Reposted by Adi Robertson
Writers Guild of America East @wgaeast.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
"The recklessness of the tech oligarchs pushing AI on our society has been matched only by their rampant dishonesty." - WGAE Executive Director Sam Wheeler on what Hollywood's unions think about existential AI warnings, and how policymakers should step in. Read: www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
theverge.com
What Hollywood thinks about existential AI warnings
SAG-AFTRA and the WGA are focused on what’s actually happening now.
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I very explicitly stopped writing about gender half a decade or so ago and it's probably the only reason I'm bearable to be around.
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
"has the pope weighed in on the robot apocalypse yet" just one of the many very normal things I have to think about these days
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Arguably the thing that screwed over Castle Guy most was that he started threatening a very famous male reporter with bizarre mafia tactics, which doesn't really fit the idea that You Can't Even Be Hugh Hefner Anymore, Because Of Woke
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
It seems like the usual "men are adrift because they can't be providers anymore" with Ronson's traveling-around-meeting-colorful-characters spin.
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
I forget which piece it was in, but somebody had a smart observation that the "masculinity crisis" field often seems to basically accept that women should be content not having purpose or dignity in the workforce, the crisis is that men should be able to expect better.
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Except there's no shortage of moms doing exploitative stuff to get views with their kids on YouTube, it's in fact a pretty feminized field. Again without having read the book, it comes off like Ronson either doesn't know about this, or like he only finds it notable when *men* suffer indignities.
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
The other big example reviewers love is a guy who got sucked into making exploitative ParentTube content because he was adrift and needed to make ends meet. Again, this is presented as some kind of unique masculine malady, because men can't be providers anymore, etc.
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Ronson's take is this guy is symbolic of masculine alienation because "you can’t lord it over princesses in your castle like it’s the 1970s any more," except... he is! Nobody's stopping him! He seems to be lording over princesses just fine!
It struck me that Mark was trying to be Hugh Hefner during surely the worst period in human history to be Hugh Hefner. Unless you’re the creme de la creme of manosphere influencers, you can’t lord it over princesses in your castle like it’s the 1970s any more.

And so, despite there being nothing immediately relatable about his story, being a tale about the complexities of luring women to your castle in the post‑#MeToo age, I could see a resonance. It was a story about men out of time, men failing to adjust to a world that was moving away from them. The world had changed shape and all kinds of men were discovering there were things they’d once done that they couldn’t do any more.
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Ronson's inciting incident is meeting a guy who runs what (in Ronson's telling) appears *very* strongly to be an abusive setup with several women he pushes into a fake reality show. He seems basically to be doing this uninterrupted when Ronson encounters him.
theguardian.com
A party, 101 princesses and an eccentric millionaire: Jon Ronson on a mysterious castle – and what it taught him about masculinity in crisis
When my son texted me from a Connecticut fortress in the middle of the night with an alarming message, it set me on a quest to understand the bizarre lifestyle of its owner
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
I am not going to read the new Jon Ronson book so I can't truly form an opinion on it, but man every story I read makes it sound like a book dedicated to disproving its own thesis.
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
this is obviously separate from the question of "will/can ai actually kill us all"
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Adi Robertson @thedextriarchy.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
"good ai" actor openai's response to deepseek basically acknowledges they believe a "bad ai" player could move incredibly fast with a much smaller resource pool because it could piggyback off their cutting-edge research
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