Matt Dragon
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mattdragon.com
Matt Dragon
@mattdragon.com
690 followers 1.2K following 710 posts
Dad, Husband, Principal Engineer Nava PBC, State Comm. ORNJ. New Twitter, now with less Nazis and oligarchy. Opinions mine, idiots.
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mattdragon.com
But this isn't toxic debt repackaging, this isn't a bubble, don't you worry your silly little brain about it.
Quote from piece: "Action is happening up-and-down the LLM stack: Nvidia is making deals with Intel, OpenAI is making deals with Oracle, and Nvidia and OpenAI are making deals with each other. Nine years after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang hand-delivered the first Nvidia DGX-1 AI computer to OpenAI, the chip giant is investing up to $100 billion in the AI lab, which OpenAI will, of course, spend on Nvidia AI systems."
September 23, 2025 at 12:48 PM
mattdragon.com
Before reading from her book, Jenan Matari noted that in every reading some page makes her cry. Re-reading this paragraph I wrote while preparing to publish it made me cry. Maybe your writing needs to be so evocative that it moves you, b/c writing serves to convey emotions as much as information.
Screenshot from piece: "It’s women’s rights, because of the dead mothers, the dead children, so many dead children. Girls murdered who will never grow up to become women. Fathers kidnapped off the street, held for decades without formal charges, never getting to meet their unborn daughter before they grow to become mothers themselves, or are vaporized before they can escape childhood. Mothers who must mourn multiple children all at once, after collecting bits and pieces in a bag to bury. And those are the “lucky” ones, because they didn’t die in childbirth because of a blockade on medical supplies, or see their babies killed before they could even get a birth certificate."
September 22, 2025 at 11:45 AM
mattdragon.com
Seeing my daughter's friends gathering for her birthday party and the recent anniversary had me thinking of this piece.

How can anyone who is a parent ever be ok bombing children?

www.publicsq.org/latest-artic...
Screenshot from piece: "The blue sky overhead seemed to stretch forever, as any mid-September day often serves up. The four girls gathered as they usually did, noisy and chaotic but with a stillness and calm that signified their closeness—a bond forged by energy and ease that only the deepest friendships can deliver. It was another day to chat, preen, and share joy conveyed with a simple word, an effortless gesture, and a knowing look between such close friends. They broke away from other friends and relatives, eager to spend time in their small, close-knit group."
September 20, 2025 at 7:42 PM
mattdragon.com
Just to be 100% clear. Charlie Kirk was, among many other terrible things, the antisemite empowered by all the false accusations of antisemitism. www.vanityfair.com/news/story/c...
Screenshot from piece: "“Jewish donors,” Kirk claimed, were “the number one funding mechanism of radical open-border, neoliberal, quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions, and nonprofits.” Indeed, “the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country.”"
September 17, 2025 at 11:02 AM
mattdragon.com
Coates is the Rogan of the humanity.
www.vanityfair.com/news/story/c...
Screenshot of piece: "More than a century and a half ago, this country ignored the explicit words of men who sought to raise an empire of slavery. It subsequently transformed those men into gallant knights who sought only to preserve their beloved Camelot. There was a fatigue, in certain quarters, with Reconstruction—which is to say, multiracial democracy—and a desire for reunion, to make America great again. Thus, in the late 19th century and much of the 20th, this country’s most storied intellectuals transfigured hate-mongers into heroes and ignored their words—just as, right now, some are ignoring Kirk’s." Screenshot of piece: "Words are not violence, nor are they powerless. Burying the truth of the Confederacy, rewriting its aims and ideas, and ignoring its animating words allowed for the terrorization of the Black population, the imposition of apartheid, and the destruction of democracy. The rewriting and the ignoring were done not just by Confederates, but also by putative allies for whom the reduction of Black people to serfdom was the unfortunate price of white unity. The import of this history has never been clearer than in this moment when the hard question must be asked: If you would look away from the words of Charlie Kirk, from what else would you look away?"
September 17, 2025 at 10:59 AM
mattdragon.com
62 years ago a church was bombed in an act of political violence. It's not new, and it's not a political issue, it's a white, right-wing issue.

"There are many people individually responsible for those girls’ deaths.

We are among them."

www.publicsq.org/latest-artic...
Screenshot from piece. Photo of the 16th St Baptist Church sign and building: "The 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church might have been initially celebrated or at least condoned as advancing the cause by supporters. Still, history and humanity have universally disowned and disavowed both that violence and any justifications for it."
September 16, 2025 at 10:52 AM
mattdragon.com
One of these is an issue of antisemitism, the other is a sham to suppress free speech in support of humanity. Worst timeline, literally and figuratively.
Screenshot of Blue Sky timeline where a story about an actual antisemite who murdered kids in a high school stacks on top of a headline about a university submitting "antisemitic" names to the Trump Administration
September 12, 2025 at 12:57 PM
mattdragon.com
Appreciate @bobby-brier.bsky.social covering this important story for @njspotlightnews.org
www.njspotlightnews.org/2025/09/why-...
Screenshot of article with dark blue NJ Spotlight News banner across the top: "“I don’t understand how a prosecutor could go with any of these body-cam videos and tell a story to a grand jury that somehow does not end up with them having any sort of qualms about what happened to these people at the hands of police,” Dragon, a member of the statewide coalition, said in a recent interview with NJ Spotlight News. The Seabrooks-Washington Community-Led Crisis Response Act increased state funding to nonprofits that provide de-escalation and follow-up support in nonviolent behavioral health and substance use emergencies, but advocates are dissatisfied with the implementation of the legislation."
September 11, 2025 at 11:25 PM
mattdragon.com
@mikiesherrill.bsky.social a heads up since you've only run in a rich, white district before. You will actually have to engage with the Black community and meaningfully take up their issues into your platform or you will lose. Ask @govmurphy.bsky.social about 2021.
Screenshot from email: "QUOTE OF THE DAY: “I have not heard from the Democratic nominee. … And I know a lot of the people who are working on her campaign, and they know — they’ve come to me, they’ve called me. Her legal counsel, others working with her. And they were somewhat shocked that they had not reached out to me. … And so I think she’s taken our vote for granted, and I can’t just sit by and allow that to happen and say nothing.” — Rev. Steffie Bartley, Northeast regional director of the National Action Network, who’s hosting Jack Ciattarelli at his church in Elizabeth on Sunday"
September 11, 2025 at 12:35 PM
mattdragon.com
As I wrote the last time a prominent right-wing supporter of gun violence was affected by gun violence at a political event:
newsletter.mattdragon.com/archive/ther...
Screenshot from piece: "A political rally where shots are fired from an assault rifle and people die is the Republican Party’s vision for America. It’s where their political project has been steering us for the last 50 years. An America where women die due to pregnancies that were never viable is the Republican Party’s vision for America. An America where religious schools are locked down like military bases using public tax dollars via vouchers while public school students face daily gun violence is the Republican Party’s vision for America. An America where the rich escape their tax burden while children starve and families must live in the street is the Republican Party’s vision for our country. The Republican vision for our country is violence across the entirety of our society, in all its forms, and all its manifestations."
September 10, 2025 at 10:25 PM
mattdragon.com
newsletter.mattdragon.com/archive/from...
Screenshot from piece: "Words are free, words can often be put into the world without consequence, words can be everywhere all at once. While protests can be funneled, kettled, or shut down, words cannot. Words, once spoken, or written, float on the breeze. They reach all corners of a room, a town, or a country. They cannot be bombed, run over with tanks or police cruisers, or imprisoned without charge. Words are bombs. But they are bombs that are free to obtain, bombs that can be used over and over, bombs that hurt, scar, or mar, but don’t cause devastating “collateral damage” or outrage against those that drop them. Words are a super weapon. Words can be seen by children. Children who might discover them and actually read them, not knowing that the oppressors have decided these particular words are not permitted. They could change minds. Children’s minds. Even the oppressors’ childrens’ minds. So words must be stopped at all costs. Words cannot be destroyed. They cannot be unwritten, unheard, unread. This makes words incredibly dangerous, especially when those words may be used to document your oppression of others."
September 9, 2025 at 9:26 PM
mattdragon.com
Yeah, doesn't @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social know that only white male politicians are allowed to be condescending and arrogant. He is of course neither of those things. Famously so. His charisma and ability to connect with every day New Yorkers rocketed him to the Democratic nomination.
Screenshot from article "Charles Lavine, a Nassau Democrat who is chairman of the Assembly Judiciary Committee and close to Mr. Heastie, said the speaker was sensitive to how his political decisions affect members in swing districts on Long Island, in the Hudson Valley and upstate New York. Mamdani “has produced nothing and has been entirely devoted to galvanizing a small group of socialists to be his backers. That’s been his modus operandi,” Mr. Lavine said. He said he believed Mr. Mamdani harbored antisemitic views, and sensed “from him a sense of condescension and arrogance.”"
September 6, 2025 at 2:26 PM
mattdragon.com
www.nj.com/opinion/2025...
Screenshot of piece: "“An examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. In other words: Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”  If one were to take IHRA’s definition of antisemitism seriously, then the above statement would be considered antisemitic. The irony is that, this statement, part of the Our Genocide publication that came out on July 27, is from the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories or B’TSELEM. This follows a similar call of genocide on the occupied territories by Physicians for Human Rights, another Israeli organization."
September 5, 2025 at 10:41 AM
mattdragon.com
This is a cool project
pca.st/podcast/3efe...
Signal Hills podcast page in Pocketcast
August 30, 2025 at 3:41 PM
mattdragon.com
Perfect, @zeteo.com nails Booker on this. open.substack.com/pub/zeteo/p/...
A fake but dead on Booker 2028 sign "Words! Are Louder! Than Action!" With a picture of angry Booker yelling into a megaphone and the slogan coming out the other side.
August 30, 2025 at 1:41 PM
mattdragon.com
open.substack.com/pub/lukewsav...
Screenshot from piece: "In recent years, among (many) other things, he has variously argued: that US imperial competition with China is a more urgent priority than fighting climate change; that the 2021 social media de-platforming of Donald Trump had seemed to vanquish him without consequence; that the soon-to-be convicted charlatan and corporate fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried was “for real” and motivated by altruistic concerns; that the Joe Biden of 2024 was cognitively sharp as a razor and fit to stand for reelection; that Kamala Harris was running a model presidential campaign built around centrist patriotism, support for Israel, and economic common-sense; that Kamala Harris lost because her campaign was successfully captured by progressive interest groups; that the Democratic leadership should get on the phone with Elon Musk to talk about solar panels and deficit reduction amid his falling out with Donald Trump; that critics of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, despite being technically correct, are somehow more politically implicated in its destruction than elected liberal politicians who helped facilitate it. (And so on and so on.)"
August 29, 2025 at 12:41 PM
mattdragon.com
It's not fun being right... www.publicsq.org/news-poems-1...
Screenshot from poem: "Speaking on Gaza, Omar El Akkad said "But I can't even begin to conceive, of a set of actions, that will somehow absolve me, of the reality that I killed those kids.” But it’s not just THOSE kids Because killing kids is the “American” way Kids who have cancer, who will now die because we canceled the research to save them " And the last line of the screenshot highlighted in yellow: "Kids who face fewer restrictions on access to assault rifles than books or abortion"
August 28, 2025 at 12:44 PM
mattdragon.com
Screenshot of poem: "Kids who were Jewish, marked return to sender, back to a Holocaust that strove to kill them Kids who we allowed a “Western nation” to starve to death, while we watched the light leave their eyes. Or if they’re lucky we just ruin their lives, make them rue every morning they awake A kid waiting outside a school for a parent who is not coming, will never come again. A kid going to bed hungry because SNAP was cut, or new burdensome requirements kicked their family off the rolls A kid who isn’t allowed to read a book because it represents them, and that makes the white kids uncomfortable A kid who is now one of the largest population of amputees ever A kid who hasn’t quite starved, yet" Screenshot of poem: "How do we absolve ourselves? Maybe that’s an overly personal question Marches? Rallies? Protests? Arrest? Writing? Calling? Confronting? The lifeguards wrest people from the grip of the ocean But who saves us, saves humanity, from all that we’ve done, from all the kids we’ve killed? Can we be saved?"
August 24, 2025 at 11:41 AM
mattdragon.com
My latest news poem in @publicsq.bsky.social
Screenshot of poem: Lifeguards of morality Photo of a blue beach flag with two sea gulls looking out over the ocean "As the sun sets, birds keep watch and await swimmers afar. Photo credit: Josie Gonsalves for Public Square Amplified" Screenshot of poem: "I’ve always been scared for the kids with parents that let them swim at the beach with no lifeguards Maybe they think “It looks calm,” “we did this as kids,” “they’re strong swimmers,” “I’m a strong swimmer“ Maybe the parent can save the kid or will lose their own life trying or the ocean will take both as a dolphin leaps in front of a rainbow But very few survive by banking on the idea that they are smarter or stronger than the ocean which has no morality and contains the depths of depravity What else do those parents think they know better on seatbelts, vaccines, doctors appointments, fire safety? But probably not food" Screenshot of poem: "Speaking on Gaza, Omar El Akkad said "But I can't even begin to conceive, of a set of actions, that will somehow absolve me, of the reality that I killed those kids.” But it’s not just THOSE kids Because killing kids is the “American” way Kids who have cancer, who will now die because we canceled the research to save them Kids who face fewer restrictions on access to assault rifles than books or abortion Kids who had their health insurance ripped away, so that a billionaire can keep an extra million dollars they “earned” Kids who are Trans and are bullied into suicide, because they can legally be told they’re broken Kids who we bombed in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Somalia, Iraq again, Afghanistan, Gaza, Yemen, among others Kids who grown men shot to death, because they were “afraid,” often with a state issued gun"
August 24, 2025 at 11:41 AM
mattdragon.com
Real mystery why this guy mis-read DEI
Photo of Brian Cornell a generic mediocre white dude
August 20, 2025 at 12:47 PM
mattdragon.com
Omar El Akkad is an amazing writer and has a moral clarity that so many have lost over the last few decades. Here, he reads from the Introduction to "One day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This" but you should listen to the entire interview pca.st/episode/59b1...
Share image from Pocketcast with the Between the Covers logo with books stacked above and below the words.
August 14, 2025 at 11:10 AM
mattdragon.com
It's unfortunate that in trying to highlight how dangerous Republican policies and supporters are, Matt also felt the need to spread the propaganda against a generational candidate. Even more unfortunate that propaganda is being spread by both parties.
Screenshot from piece: "They left no stone unturned. He’s a communist. He’ll bankrupt the city. Residents will flee. Corporations will flee. They added in a sizable serving of racist white supremacy tropes: He’s not white. (In case you hadn’t noticed) He’s “foreign born.” He’s Muslim, so he’ll impose Sharia law. He's Muslim, so he's a terrorist. He’s Muslim, so he’s anti-Semitic. He’s Muslim, so he was involved in 9/11. (He was 9-years-old) He’s Muslim, … (silence so your own worst Islamophobic fears have room to resonate and grow)." Screenshot from piece: "He didn’t campaign on Palestine, because he was running for Mayor of New York City, not US Senate or President. But he’s Muslim and has an actual conscience (a rarity in political candidates); he was asked non-stop about Israel and anti-Semitism (which, yes, are two completely separate and distinct issues, no matter how much the propagandists try to convince you otherwise). It was in those answers that his campaign accelerated into top gear. Yet it was precisely because they were not campaign answers that they resonated, they were deeply held, deeply informed personal values, that he refused to discard to benefit a candidacy. His calls for equity and equality in representation and under law, yes, even in Israel, should have been Democratic Primary kryptonite. We have John Federman wearing an Israeli flag as a cape for f–ks sake. But in the end it worked. It worked because it was about humanity, and humanity resonates in an era when we can pick up our phones and see the worst of humanity in an infinitely scrolling feed"
August 12, 2025 at 12:14 PM
mattdragon.com
Disappointing to see @mattfriedmannj.bsky.social helping spread racist disinformation about @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social in @politico.com

He attempts to call out that folks Republicans are actively campaigning with are disgusting racists, and are on the record behaving as such.
Screenshot from newsletter: "Like with so many other contests, Republicans have been pressing Mikie Sherrill on whether she supports Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist they accuse of anti-semitism over his criticism of Israel, since he won the New York mayoral primary. That’s fair enough. Mamdani has said he supported or refused to condemn some pretty controversial sentiments, like “globalize the intifada,” even if he’s lately been gently walking some of that back. And if Sherrill is going to be New Jersey’s governor and Mamdani the mayor of New York City, they’re going to have to deal with each other and policies that come from the furthest reaches of her party’s left flank. Sherrill has been cagey about her support for Mamdani, giving mushy answers on whether she supports him. And big-name Democrats have done the same, uncomfortably avoiding formal endorsements."
August 12, 2025 at 12:14 PM
mattdragon.com
Whether or not American Eagle knew they were blowing the Nazi dog whistle, the Nazis heard it. Everyone should be aware enough of Nazi rhetoric to feel uneasy when someone pitches a blonde blue eyed person as being "ideal" or having "good genes." This is why we must teach, not destroy, History.
DOD Rapid Response Tweet: ".@secdef has great jeans" With a picture of Pete Hegseth getting off a plane wearing jeans a giant belt buckle and a blue sport coat over a white shirt
August 6, 2025 at 10:07 AM
mattdragon.com
newjerseymonitor.com/2025/07/28/l...
Screenshot from piece: "Your chamber leaders will hate you, your committee chairs will despise you, but voters will support you. You have to reestablish trust, or election turnouts will continue to dwindle and more and more residents will, rightfully, feel like they’re on the outside, and that you’re not interested in representing them. Your chamber and committee leadership are not your bosses; your constituents are."
July 30, 2025 at 10:26 AM