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mandilindner.bsky.social
Mandi Lindner
@mandilindner.bsky.social
810 followers 200 following 200 posts
Haudenosaunee (Onyota'a:ka) | Former @USDS at White House and VA | Currently @UNHCRUSA | @Packers Fan
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mandilindner.bsky.social
Public libraries are the best. Exhibit 276 www.popville.com/2026/01/psa-...
This is cool: “a brand-new service at the MLK Library: Notary Services” - PoPville
Nice. From the DC Public Library: "We’re thrilled to announce a brand-new service at the MLK Library: the Notary Public Commission! Whether you're finalizing a Power of Attorney, verifying copies of y...
www.popville.com
January 9, 2026 at 8:43 PM
mandilindner.bsky.social
Everything once again going swimmingly in the world of generative AI 🫠 Zero reasons to be concerned please continue with your regularly scheduled scrolling.
www.yahoo.com/news/article...
‘Whata Bod’: An AI-generated NWS map invented fake towns in Idaho
At first glance, there was nothing out of the ordinary about Saturday’s wind forecast for Camas Prairie, Idaho. “Hold onto your hats!” said a social media post from the local weather office in Missoul...
www.yahoo.com
January 8, 2026 at 8:11 PM
Reposted by Mandi Lindner
evangreer.bsky.social
if your headline ends with "Feds say," you are not doing journalism you are doing stenography
January 8, 2026 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Mandi Lindner
hollyanderson.bsky.social
If I could rip the defensive talking mechanism out of the brains of every writer I have ever worked with I would, and install this operating chip instead ⬇️⬇️⬇️
sorenspicknall.bsky.social Soren Spicknall @sorenspicknall.bsky.social · 3d
There's an old tweet of yours that I used to revisit often - about how platforms like Twitter train us to try to build perfect fortresses of statements that preemptively address any interpretation, but that inevitably fails, so why not just say what you mean to people who want to understand
January 6, 2026 at 2:10 PM
mandilindner.bsky.social
This is incredible. Research funded by NIH. Our tax dollars at work (past tense).
slack2thefuture.bsky.social David Slack @slack2thefuture.bsky.social · 10d
Wanna see real-life miracles? Fund scientific research.

A team of US scientists just cured Alzheimer’s in mice — and there is now hope that the disease can be reversed in humans.
futurism.com/health-medic...
Alzheimer's Fully Reversed in Mice, Scientists Say
A new compound has been shown to reverse late stage Alzheimer's disease in lab mice, which gives millions of sufferers new cause for hope.
futurism.com
December 31, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Reposted by Mandi Lindner
edzitron.com
My final newsletter of 2025: We're in The Enshittifinancial Crisis, the fourth stage of enshittification, where companies turn on their shareholders. Unprofitable, unsustainable AI threatens future of venture capital, private equity and the markets themselves.
www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshitti...
The Enshittifinancial Crisis
Soundtrack: Lynyrd Skynyrd — Free Bird This piece is over 19,000 words, and took me a great deal of writing and research. If you liked it, please subscribe to my premium newsletter. It’s $70 a year, ...
www.wheresyoured.at
December 29, 2025 at 5:14 PM
mandilindner.bsky.social
Thread
edzitron.com Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 18d
Blue Owl is in every high-profile multi-billion dollar data center. If they are pulling out, it means the banks behind them - JPMorgan, Mitsubishi, and so on - are getting worried about data centers. This is potentially apocalyptic for AI.
www.wheresyoured.at/premium-how-...
The End of Stargate Michigan — And Why The Banks Are Out Of Money To Build Data Centers So, before we go any further, a little detail about how a data center campus gets funded. A BDC or private equity firm (say, Blue Owl) creates a joint venture (a new company) that it then invests some money in. This company then raises money from banks like JPMorgan in the form of debt. In the case of a company like Oracle, Blue Owl can lean on the creditworthiness of the counterparty to say "hey, these guys are definitely gonna pay you, don't you worry" while negotiating terms. As you've probably worked out, that's not going so well at the moment. That money is then used to pay for construction and buy GPUs, unless a partner (like Oracle) offers to buy the GPUs itself. Think of Blue Owl as a fixer of sorts — a Michael Clayton for private equity — that uses its relationships with various financiers to pull together these deals, all while getting paid fees by its investors based on the value of its investments. They're also somewhat unique. Nobody else appears to do data center deals this big, in part because there are really no other data center projects this large outside of those built by hyperscalers. In simpler terms, Blue Owl is the only entity with the experience to put together a data center debt package this big. This will become relevant later. On October 30 2025, OpenAI, Oracle and data center developer Related Digital announced Stargate Michigan, which would begin construction "early 2026." Stargate Michigan Fell Apart Because The Bankers Are Tired of Data Centers — And Blue Owl Is The Only Company With Any Experience In Doing So Based on my research, I see no compelling evidence that Blackstone is a more (or even equally) proficient data center developer than Blue Owl. Remember: Stargate Michigan is $10 billion, which makes it one of the largest data center deals in the world, beaten only by other Stargate data centers. Blackstone's biggest data center deal was its acquisition of QTS Realty Trust in 2021, and its part in the $16.1 billion acquisition of AirTrunk, a portfolio of Asian data centers. Otherwise, Blackstone doesn't appear to get involved in this kind of deal, because nobody else (outside of hyperscalers) wants to build data centers this large using debt, because they're terrible fucking deals and nobody should be doing them anyway. And even then, is Blackstone intending to fund the entire thing itself? Because if it isn't, it’s going to be calling the same banks as Blue Owl, because most deals involving data centers are priced in the hundreds of millions or low-single digit billions. Which gets us to the conclusion: that this is the canary/owl in the coal mine for the AI data center "boom."
December 23, 2025 at 7:29 PM
Reposted by Mandi Lindner
evangreer.bsky.social
i don't see how Section 230 protects Google on this one, am i wrong?
joshokane.bsky.social josh o'kane @joshokane.bsky.social · 17d
New from me: The storied fiddler Ashley MacIsaac wanted to play a show at a Nova Scotia First Nation. It got cancelled because Google's AI search summary incorrectly called him a sex offender. Now he's worried for his safety www.theglobeandmail.com/culture/arti...
Fiddler Ashley MacIsaac has show cancelled over Google AI-generated misinformation
Cape Breton musician was set to perform in Nova Scotia before a search summary incorrectly described him as a sex offender
www.theglobeandmail.com
December 23, 2025 at 7:19 PM
mandilindner.bsky.social
This might be the funniest case of AI chaos I've seen yet.

Thread: x.com/moorehn/stat...

WSJ gets AI vending machine: www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anth...
We Let AI Run Our Office Vending Machine. It Lost Hundreds of Dollars.
An AI agent ran a snack operation in the WSJ newsroom. It gave away a free PlayStation, ordered a live fish—and taught us lessons about the future of AI.
www.wsj.com
December 19, 2025 at 3:06 PM
mandilindner.bsky.social
Prefacing to say this is more a media criticism than political... it's disheartening to see CNN, with this headline, frame working across the aisle for the benefit of the American taxpayer as "choos[ing the] nuclear option."

www.yahoo.com/news/article...
GOP centrists choose nuclear option in fight with Mike Johnson over Obamacare
A bloc of House GOP centrists just made the ultimate hardball play against Speaker Mike Johnson — agreeing to help Democrats effectively seize control of the Republican agenda by forcing a vote on the...
www.yahoo.com
December 17, 2025 at 7:37 PM
mandilindner.bsky.social
OMG I've been WAITING for this all season!
December 17, 2025 at 3:16 PM
mandilindner.bsky.social
Not gonna lie, a part of me welcomes this kind of thing because it gets us closer to all abandoning social media for real world interaction and community.
404media.co 404 Media @404media.co · 23d
NEW: A hacker gained control of 1,100 mobile phones powering covert, AI-generated ads on TikTok. Then, he shared details of the operation with 404 Media.

A look inside how startup Doublespeed, which is backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), is creating AI spam pages on TikTok to promote products.
Hack Reveals the a16z-Backed Phone Farm Flooding TikTok With AI Influencers
A hacker gained control of a 1,100 mobile phone farm powering covert, AI-generated ads on TikTok.
www.404media.co
December 17, 2025 at 3:12 PM
mandilindner.bsky.social
Y'all, why are we doing this for a technology nobody wants that has, so far, failed to provide a level of value in our lives that would even be worth all of this?
www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...
Analysis | Supersized data centers are coming. See how they will transform America.
These AI campuses consume more power than major U.S. cities. Their footprints are measured in miles, not feet.
www.washingtonpost.com
December 17, 2025 at 3:02 PM
Reposted by Mandi Lindner
lesleyryder.bsky.social
From the princess bride: a grandpa is wearing a gray cardigan and skinny neck tie. He reads to his grandson. Top panel: all right now, let’s see where were we? Bottom panel: oh yes, in the pit of despair
December 15, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Reposted by Mandi Lindner
jamellebouie.net
and i’ll use @donmoyn.bsky.social’s post here to make the point that the other piece of the unitarian view seems to be that the purpose of the executive branch is to be an extension of the president’s will, rather than a tool to execute the commands of the legislature.
At will? Whose will?
Removing independent agency heads is part of a broader assault on a nonpartisan government
donmoynihan.substack.com
December 9, 2025 at 2:00 PM
mandilindner.bsky.social
Mind-boggling
sports.yahoo.com/soccer/artic...
Trinity Rodman free agency: NWSL commissioner reportedly vetoes Spirit's multimillion-dollar offer
The deal would have reportedly the Spirit star more than $1 million per year.
sports.yahoo.com
December 4, 2025 at 3:33 PM
mandilindner.bsky.social
More aggressive driving from robo-taxis?

As a pedestrian, no thank you
www.wsj.com/lifestyle/ca...
Waymo’s Self-Driving Cars Are Suddenly Behaving Like New York Cabbies
Autonomous vehicles are adopting humanlike qualities, making illegal U-turns and flooring it the second the light goes green.
www.wsj.com
December 3, 2025 at 4:21 PM
Reposted by Mandi Lindner
hyperallergic.com
Each December, thousands of art world denizens descend on Miami for a weeklong extravaganza anchored by fairs like Art Basel Miami Beach. This year, two museums hope locals and tourists alike will also spend time with art by some of the region’s original inhabitants.
Florida’s Indigenous Artists Take Center Stage at Miami Art Week
An exhibition organized by the HistoryMiami Museum and the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum is an ode to Seminole creativity and resilience.
hyperallergic.com
December 1, 2025 at 7:19 PM
Reposted by Mandi Lindner
fixcircle.bsky.social
DDOT continues to publish before/after analyses of safety projects. The numbers for the 9th street NW bike lanes suggest that we should be doing these projects everywhere we can. Crashes plummeted, pedestrian and bike traffic skyrocketed, and vehicle travel times dropped.
December 2, 2025 at 2:39 PM
mandilindner.bsky.social
Can't help but think it's pretty bad that we're willingly outsourcing what it means to be human to the point where we, as a collective, forget how just so a handful of companies can make tons of money for a short period of time.
sarannmcd.bsky.social Sara McDougall @sarannmcd.bsky.social · Nov 30
“Based on the available evidence, the skills that future graduates will most need in the AI era—creative thinking, the capacity to learn new things, flexible modes of analysis—are precisely those that are likely to be eroded by inserting AI into the educational process.”
thiagokrause.bsky.social Thiago Krause @thiagokrause.bsky.social · Nov 30
“When you allow a machine to summarize your reading, to generate the ideas for your essay, and then to write that essay, you’re not learning how to read, think, or write.“
November 30, 2025 at 3:58 PM
Reposted by Mandi Lindner
karoline.bsky.social
"All of this falls apart if humans don't adopt the tech. This is why you've seen Meta cram its lame chatbots into WhatsApp and Instagram. This is why Notepad and Paint now have useless Copilot buttons on Windows. This is why Google Gemini wants to "help you" read and reply to your emails."
Analysis: OpenAI is a loss-making machine, how can it survive?
Don't call it a bubble! Loss-making monster OpenAI is on the hook for $1.4 trillion (with a T) in compute commitments. How can this go on?
www.windowscentral.com
November 29, 2025 at 11:30 PM
mandilindner.bsky.social
Reason #674 why I moved to a place where I wouldn't be dependent on a car for transportation
joshuajfriedman.com Joshua J. Friedman @joshuajfriedman.com · Nov 27
They did it again! NYC subway Thanksgiving 2025, via @scootercaster.com!
November 27, 2025 at 6:03 PM
Reposted by Mandi Lindner
tyleraking.com
Slop Evader is a tool from artist and researcher Tega Brain that lets you search the web for results exclusively before November 30, 2022—the day that ChatGPT was released to the public.
'Slop Evader' Lets You Surf the Web Like It’s 2022
Artist Tega Brain is fighting the internet’s enshittification by turning back the clock to before ChatGPT existed.
www.404media.co
November 26, 2025 at 3:59 PM
mandilindner.bsky.social
This is your annual reminder to check your bills like TV/internet and see if you can save money with any service deals they've got going on. Just saved $20/month with Verizon Fios and they gave me Netflix and HBO for my troubles.
November 14, 2025 at 8:17 PM
mandilindner.bsky.social
I love absolutely everything about this story as reported www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...
Who is ‘fedora man’? Dapper French teenager in viral Louvre heist photo unmasked
Fifteen-year-old Pedro Elias Garzon Delvaux was captured looking suave in a picture outside the Paris museum on the day of a crown jewels heist
www.theguardian.com
November 10, 2025 at 7:15 PM