Epstein’s friendship with Bill Gates; Raw Milk; Jeremy Strong Comes for Zuckerberg; Update about the show - NEWS ROUND UP

Natural Causes is a podcast about the politics and practicalities of going outside in a world on fire, hosted by Dr. James Stout. It approaches the outdoors, conservation, agriculture, food sovereignty, and Indigenous land rights as interconnected issues. We want to combine unflinching journalism with unabashed advocacy for the land we all share, and welcome everyone into the outdoors and the fight for our public lands. Our shared wild spaces are under threat like never before, from climate change, the Trump administration, and extractive capitalism. Now, more than ever, we need serious journalism and serious solidarity that engages people with the struggle to protect these spaces for generations to come. New episodes weekly. Listen here and subscribe to Natural Causes on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, July 14th, is the day my audiobook Love At First Prompt: AI and the Future of Intimacy goes on sale!  This audiobook is one of the most personal things I’ve ever made. It’s about loneliness, AI companions, and what happens when technology starts becoming emotionally entangled with our lives. I spent months talking to researchers, reporters, and people who feel they are experiencing real relationships with AI. I also talked with experts about the risks of people using AI in this way, and the idea that we're so busy gawking at and judging the individuals involved, we're letting the tech companies that actually MAKE these products avoid the scrutiny they actually deserve.  Here is an excerpt from the audiobook featuring our conversation with journalist and cofounder of 404 Media Sam Cole that asks what happens to humans when AI is used for sexual and erotic role play.  You can check out LOVE AT FIRST PROMPT at www.LoveAtFirstPrompt.AI or wherever audiobooks are sold. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We’re taking a short hiatus from publishing here, but will continue publishing weekly news roundups on our Patreon. Anyone can listen for free, without ads, at our Patreon at tangoti.com/roundup . There are new stories there today, so please check it out after you listen to this episode!  There Are No Girls on the Internet is a weekly podcast and newsletter hosted by Bridget Todd covering the tech, internet, and culture stories that deserve more attention — especially when they're about AI, power, gender, race, and who actually gets hurt when systems fail. We read the internet so you don't have to. This week: The Social Network is getting a sequel and Jeremy Strong is playing Zuckerberg, a bombshell ProPublica investigation into raw milk and the kids it's put in the hospital, and Bill Gates testified before Congress about Jeffrey Epstein — totally voluntarily, he cannot stress this enough.  🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts | SpotifySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We read the internet so you don't have to. There Are No Girls on the Internet is a weekly podcast and newsletter hosted by Bridget Todd covering the tech, internet, and culture stories that deserve more attention — especially when they're about AI, power, gender, race, and who actually gets hurt when systems fail. This week: Meta's AI chatbot helped hackers steal Instagram accounts, a debate over who owns the phrase "Hot Girls Read," new AI legislation, and more. 🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify  ⬇️ Some of these stories were discussed on this week's episode. Others appeared in our social media roundup but didn't make the final show. HERE'S WHAT WE'RE WATCHING THIS WEEK: 🔗 Meta replaced human customer support with an AI chatbot and gave it the ability to reset passwords. Hackers figured out they could just ask it to hand over any account — and it would. Obama's old White House account posted pro-Iranian content for hours before anyone noticed. A former Meta security engineer had her own account stolen. Meta says it's fixed — but also claims it had nothing to do with the high profile hacks that happened at the exact same time it existed. 404 Media 🔗 Men in Brussels have been secretly filming women in public using Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses — often as content for "seduction coaching" businesses. The glasses have an almost invisible camera and tutorials for disabling the recording indicator are easy to find online. A dating coach in Spain was arrested for the same thing. Meta says users must comply with local laws. Experts say that's not enough. Brussels Times 🔗 Meta quietly added face recognition code to its smart glasses app on millions of phones without telling users. The feature, called Nametag, can identify strangers in real time just by looking at them. It was rolled out silently — no announcement, no opt-in. Researchers discovered it by reverse engineering the app. Wired 🔗 George Santos is out of jail and allegedly back in the scam saddle. Prediction market platform Kalshi flagged him to the DOJ after detecting he had been publicly telling his followers he would attend Trump's State of the Union — while privately betting against his own attendance. He did not show up. He has acknowledged the DOJ might be looking into him. NBC News 🔗 Labour MP Jess Asato spoke out when Grok went viral for generating millions of sexualized images of women without their consent. Musk retweeted abuse directed at her — and a user responded with an AI-generated video of her being prepared for sexual assault. She is now suing Musk at the UK High Court, arguing the company deliberately chose not to install guardrails. More victims have since come forward, and women in her constituency told the BBC they have stopped posting photos of themselves online out of fear. BBC 🔗 Dan Berulis filed a whistleblower complaint saying DOGE had broken into his federal agency's systems and was stealing sensitive data. He went public. A threatening note with drone photos of him walking his dog appeared on his door. Then Elon Musk called him a liar to his millions of followers and named him personally. The next day someone cut his brake lines. The police case is now inactive. He is suing Musk for defamation. Wired 🔗 Karen Attiah spent 11 years at the Washington Post as its last full-time Black opinion columnist. The day after Charlie Kirk was killed she posted about America's double standards around political violence. She was fired by email the next morning — no warning, no disciplinary process. The Post called it gross misconduct and claimed her posts endangered staff safety. Her union says the firing was retaliation dressed up as personnel policy. Her arbitration hearing was this week. WTOP 🔗 Dalton Eatherly, known online as Chud the Builder, built his following by filming himself hurling racial slurs at Black people in public. He showed up outside a Tennessee courthouse where Joshua Fox, a Black disabled veteran, was attending a child support hearing — and shot him multiple times. Fox was airlifted for emergency surgery. Eatherly's fans crowdfunded him nearly $300,000. A judge ruled he cannot use that money toward his $1 million bond and refused to lower it. Fox 17 🔗 Joseph Nelzy had zero disciplinary actions in seven years at Accenture — one of the world's largest tech companies. Then he grew dreadlocks, a sacred practice of his Rastafarian faith. His manager was recorded saying his hair would hold him back and make clients uncomfortable. He was fired two months after filing a discrimination complaint. Accenture dropped all its DEI commitments in 2025. Gothamist 🔗 Dr. Steven Kahn runs the UW Diabetes Research Center and edits the American Diabetes Association's own journal. He flew to the ADA's national conference in New Orleans and handed out an editorial criticizing Trump's cuts to medical research funding. Police and security guards escorted him out of the building and threatened arrest if he returned. The ADA told him he violated the code of conduct. Kahn believes professional organizations are self-censoring out of fear of losing their nonprofit status under the Trump administration. Seattle Times 🔗 Trump signed an executive order asking AI companies to voluntarily share their most powerful models with the government before launch. Voluntary means they can say no — and the order explicitly bans any mandatory review requirement. An earlier stricter version was scrapped after Elon Musk and other tech executives lobbied against it. The result is an executive order that looks like AI oversight but gives the government no actual power to act on anything it finds. CNN 🔗 A swimwear brand told a talent manager in writing that they would not collaborate with Black creators for an upcoming campaign. The talent manager posted the email publicly, writing "this is racial discrimination, it is illegal, and it happens in influencer marketing more than anyone wants to admit — usually just more quietly than this." The brand fired the employee and issued an unsigned apology. People 🔗 The drama from the Bravo TV show Summer House FINALLY has a tech angle! We're talking about location sharing and want to know your thoughts. New York Times 🔗 Women's magazines have been enormously important to society and to Bridget personally, which is why it's sad to see Glamour — a publication that once stood with Anita Hill and fought for paid family leave — reduced to an aggregator site for affiliate shopping links. New York Times 🔗 Braden Peters, the streamer who goes by Clavicular, is back at it — showing up at industry events to humiliate and degrade women on camera for clout and engagement. This story is GRIM. Wired 🔗 A graphic designer trademarked the phrase "Hot Girls Read" and the book community is furious. Parade Want to hear us break these stories down? There Are No Girls on the Internet drops a new episode every Friday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify  ABOUT BRIDGET Bridget Todd is the host of There Are No Girls on the Internet and author of the forthcoming Simon & Schuster audiobook Love At First Prompt, an exploration of AI, intimacy, sex, and modern relationships.  Pre-order at LoveAtFirstPrompt.ai Let us know what you think by emailing [email protected] or leaving a comment on Spotify. Follow Bridget: Instagram | TikTok | YouTube | BlueskySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The girlboss era promised that if women just worked hard enough, leaned in hard enough, optimized hard enough, equality was within reach. It wasn't. And now, a decade later, the same voices are back with the same urgency and the same "you'll be left behind" framing. The product this time? AI. Bridget sits down with Samantha and Anney from Stuff Mom Never Told You to talk about why Sheryl Sandberg, Reese Witherspoon, Mel Robbins, and the original girlboss herself Sophia Amoruso are all suddenly very invested in getting women onto AI platforms and why the women who aren't rushing to adopt it might actually be the ones paying closest attention.     Let us know what you think by emailing [email protected] or leaving a comment on Spotify.  Bridget's forthcoming audiobook with Simon & Schuster, Love At First Prompt, explores AI, sex, and intimate relationships. Pre-order at LoveAtFirstPrompt.ai Follow Bridget: Instagram | TikTok | YouTube | BlueskySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There Are No Girls on the Internet is a weekly podcast hosted by Bridget Todd. Every week, we break down the tech and internet stories that deserve more attention — especially when they're about AI, power, gender, race, and who actually gets hurt when systems fail. This week: Elon Musk using a Hollywood casting decision to push white nationalist conspiracy theories. The government is surveilling people who oppose data centers as potential terrorists. The DOJ is going after a billionaire who helped fund E. Jean Carroll's lawsuit against Trump. And researchers who study online hate speech being threatened with deportation. If that sounds like your thing — Apple Podcasts | Spotify | and come back every week. HERE’S WHAT WE’RE WATCHING THIS WEEK:  🔗 Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, is partnering with Jared Leto — a man with nine sexual abuse allegations — to scan people's eyeballs. Altman's company World has already been banned in multiple countries for exploiting people in impoverished nations for their biometric data. Now it's partnering with Jared Leto — who has nine sexual abuse allegations against him, including behavior toward a minor — to scan fans' irises to buy concert tickets. Altman himself has also faced his own sexual misconduct allegation. 🔗 Lupita Nyong'o was cast as Helen of Troy. Elon Musk is using it to push white nationalist conspiracy theories. Christopher Nolan cast Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy in The Odyssey. Musk spent days melting down about it. Experts say it's the "great replacement" theory — a white nationalist belief that white people are being deliberately replaced by people of color — applied to a casting decision. 🔗 The government is now surveilling people who oppose AI and data centers as potential extremists. Leaked documents show the FBI and Homeland Security have created a new threat category called "anti-tech extremism." A nonprofit called More Perfect Union made a video about the harm data centers cause to communities — nothing illegal, nothing violent. The feds flagged it as a potential terrorist threat. Meanwhile Trump, his sons, and his administration all have direct financial stakes in AI data center expansion. 🔗 The DOJ is trying to unmask anonymous Reddit and X users who criticized ICE. Jeanine Pirro's office has subpoenaed Reddit and X for the names, addresses, and financial data of users who made negative comments about ICE online. No charges have been filed. No one has been notified. 🔗 A federal investigation has been opened into the tech billionaire who funded E. Jean Carroll's lawsuit against Trump. He says it's retaliation. Reid Hoffman donated money to support Carroll's sexual abuse and defamation lawsuits — lawsuits a jury ruled in her favor. Now those donations are under federal criminal investigation. Hoffman says Trump is using the government to silence anyone who supports women who speak up against him. 🔗 Meta keeps deleting LGBTQ+ accounts with no explanation. Now they're getting sued. Queer nightclubs, magazines, and sexual health organizations kept waking up to find their Instagram accounts gone — no warning, no explanation, no real way to appeal. Global nonprofit Repro Uncensored and a coalition of Dutch LGBTQ+ organizations are taking Meta to court for discrimination in the first case to use the EU's Digital Services Act to challenge discriminatory content moderation by a major platform. 🔗 The Trump administration is threatening to deport researchers who study online hate speech. A lawsuit just hit federal court. The government can now deny or revoke visas for foreign nationals who do trust and safety research, fact-checking, and content moderation work — framing it as protecting Americans from "censorship." Researchers have already left the country, stopped publishing, and self-censored. The Coalition for Independent Technology Research just sued to stop it. 🔗 The Department of Labor told employees to report coworkers for DEI activities — going back three years before Trump even took office. Employees could be reported for DEI work that was literally required by their job under the previous administration. One employee called it "pure witch-hunt territory." 🔗 A study found that when men and women use AI for their resumes, women get judged way more harshly — even when the resumes are identical. Researchers created identical resumes for "Emily Clarke" and "James Clarke." Emily was twice as likely to have her competence questioned. Reviewers said James "just needed help." They said Emily "can't even write a CV herself." 🔗 86% of the workers most likely to lose their jobs to AI are women. They're being told to just figure it out. Administrative assistants — one of the most female-dominated fields in the country — are racing to learn AI out of fear, not enthusiasm. If they use it, they get called lazy. If they don't, they risk being automated out of a job. Employers are giving them no plan. 🔗 Software engineering is being transformed by AI and new mothers are being left behind. Women who took maternity leave in 2024 came back to jobs that had been completely transformed by AI. One woman sent out 40 applications and got one interview. She's now considering landscape architecture. 🔗 The White House launched a website comparing immigrants to aliens. It listed over 700 American citizens as people who were arrested. The arrest counter on the homepage is completely fake and runs on a timer. The data listed over 700 American-born citizens as arrestees. The site appears to be using a pirated X-Files theme song. This is a real government website. 🔗 Meta, TikTok, Snap, and YouTube agreed to pay a Kentucky school district $27 million for harming kids. Over 1,300 school districts have sued social media companies for deliberately creating addictive products that cause depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and suicide in young users. They settled for a fraction of what was demanded, made no admission of wrongdoing, and walked away. Bloomberg estimates all the lawsuits combined could cost them $400 billion. 🔗 Most Americans don't want data centers in their communities. Women oppose them the most. A new Gallup poll found more than two thirds of Americans oppose data centers. Women oppose them more intensely than men and are leading the fight in communities across the country — because they bear the most direct environmental and health costs. 🔗 A Google engineer misused confidential internal data to gamble on Polymarket and made $1.2 million. The FBI caught him. He had access to data showing which celebrities would top Google's most searched list before it went public, placed $2.7 million in bets on Polymarket, and won with near-perfect accuracy. 🔗 AI is still getting things wrong — it's just gotten much better at sounding confident while doing it. When people pushed back on wrong answers in one study, the AI responded with flattery instead of corrections. Experts call it a "plausibility engine" not a truth engine. 🔗 People are building their own technology and rejecting the version Silicon Valley is selling. A growing movement of women, queer people, and artists are building custom devices from salvaged parts — and imagining a version of technology that serves communities instead of extracting from them. Want to hear us break these stories down? There Are No Girls on the Internet drops a new episode every Friday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 🎧 Apple Podcasts | Spotify Let us know what you think by emailing [email protected] or leaving a comment on Spotify. Bridget's forthcoming audiobook with Simon & Schuster, Love At First Prompt, explores AI, sex, and intimate relationships. Pre-order at LoveAtFirstPrompt.ai Follow Bridget: Instagram | TikTok | YouTube | BlueskySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the 2nd episode of a 2-part series about a case where security goons from eBay travelled across the country to stalk and harass a husband-wife journalist duo. If you haven't listened to part 1 yet, you probably should. We published it on May 19, 2026.   For over two decades, the pair have been publishing EcommerceBytes, a respected trade publication for eBay sellers. But in 2019, someone started harassing them. It began with a spray painted fence, then quickly escalated to death threats and fetal pigs and a mysterious van outside their house. Eventually, they discovered that eBay's own security team was behind it all, with the campaign put into motion by then-CEO Devin Wenig. This bizarre and frightening story is a cautionary tale about the rise of private armies. It starts in San Francisco, takes us to the small community of Natick, Massachusetts, and ultimately takes TANGOTI listeners right back to Madison Square Garden. Buckle up.      Let us know what you think by emailing [email protected] or leaving a comment on Spotify.    Bridget's forthcoming audiobook with Simon & Schuster, Love At First Prompt, explores AI, sex, and intimate relationships. Pre-order at LoveAtFirstPrompt.ai Follow Bridget: Instagram | TikTok | YouTube | BlueskySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

THIS WEEK ON THERE ARE NO GIRLS ON THE INTERNET There Are No Girls on the Internet is a weekly podcast hosted by Bridget Todd. Every week we drop our news roundup — the tech and internet stories that don't get enough attention, the ones about AI, power, gender, race, and who actually gets hurt when systems fail. This week: A man films men at urinals to catch "groomers." A Texas woman gets arrested for a Facebook post about brown water. And the word "Black" keeps disappearing from places it needs to be. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. New roundup episode every Friday. 📰 Here's what we were watching this week: Schools posted photos of their students online — now criminals are turning them into explicit deepfakes and demanding money. For years, schools have proudly posted photos of their students online. Now criminals are scraping those photos, using AI to create explicit images of children, and blackmailing schools to keep them quiet. One UK school had 150 images made from their website alone. Experts are now urging schools to take all student photos down immediately. 🔗 The Guardian A female JPMorgan banker was accused of turning her male colleague into a sex slave — now she's suing him back, saying he made it all up. Last month, a JPMorgan VP accused his female colleague of coercing him into sex, threatening him with racial slurs, and saying she "owned" him. The story went viral. Now she's fighting back, saying he fabricated everything to get money and attention — and that the lies have destroyed her life with nonstop harassment and memes. JPMorgan offered him $1 million to settle before he even filed. 🔗 The Guardian Elon Musk's ex says he told her he had secret access to real-time election data before the results came in. Ashley St. Clair, who dated Elon Musk, is claiming he bragged to her about having access to election numbers before they were publicly announced — and that he knew Trump was going to win hours early. He also allegedly referenced "10,000 lasers in space" and an "anomaly in the matrix." Musk's team is calling it total nonsense. She has no proof — but the internet has thoughts. 🔗 Yahoo A new law now forces social media platforms to remove explicit deepfakes and revenge porn within 48 hours of reporting — or face massive fines. The Take It Down Act is now fully in effect. If someone posts explicit images of you without your consent — real or AI-generated — platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit are legally required to take them down within 48 hours of reporting. Companies that don't comply face fines of over $53,000 per violation. It's already led to one conviction. But critics warn the law could be abused as a censorship tool — and Trump himself joked at his State of the Union that he planned to use it for himself. 🔗 The 19th | 🔗 The Verge A man was jailed for 37 days for sharing a meme after Charlie Kirk was killed — a court just ordered the sheriff to pay him $835,000. After conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed last year, a Tennessee man shared some memes on Facebook. His local sheriff decided that was a threat and had him arrested in the middle of the night. His bail was set at $2 million. He sat in jail for over a month before the charge was dropped. Now the sheriff owes him $835,000. 🔗 The New York Times The DOJ just punished PayPal for creating a fund to help Black-owned businesses — and called it illegal discrimination. In 2020, PayPal created a $530 million fund to help Black and minority-owned small businesses. The Trump DOJ investigated it as illegal discrimination against white people. To settle, PayPal must now redirect that support to veteran-owned and farming businesses instead. No law was found to have been broken — but PayPal caved anyway. 🔗 Reuters Congress quietly removed the word "Black" from a bill designed to save Black mothers' lives — and advocates are furious. Black women in America are three times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. Congress has been trying to pass a bill to fix this for years. It was called the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act. Now, under pressure from Trump's anti-DEI crackdown, lawmakers have stripped "Black" from the title and almost everywhere in the text. Supporters say it had to be done to survive. Critics say a bill that won't name Black women can't save them. 🔗 What I'm Reading A white doctor is suing a directory called "Find A Black Doctor" for not letting him list his practice on it. "Find A Black Doctor" is a directory founded to help Black patients find Black physicians. A white Colorado dermatologist, backed by a conservative anti-DEI group, is now suing it for not listing him. The same group previously went after a Coca-Cola distributor for hosting a women's empowerment event. 🔗 Black Enterprise A Texas woman posted on Facebook that her town's water was making people sick — the city had her arrested for it. Jennifer Combs posted on Facebook that residents in Trinidad, Texas were being hospitalized from bacteria in the water. The city arrested her for "filing a false report." But the water was brown. A boil notice was later issued. The mayor admitted the pipes date back to the 1950s. She's now suing the city for political retaliation. 🔗 FOX 4 A man who wore Meta smart glasses to a Pride event to catch "groomers" was arrested for secretly filming men at the urinals. A Florida man wore Meta smart glasses to a Pride event, claiming he was there to expose child groomers. He used them to secretly record men at the urinals and posted the video online. The men he filmed were undercover cops. He also tried to bring a gun — then came back with an AR-15. Naples Pride responded: "A man who publicly accused our community of 'grooming' now stands accused of unlawfully recording people in a place where privacy is expected. The irony is difficult to ignore." 🔗 LGBTQ Nation Bridget's forthcoming audiobook with Simon & Schuster, Love At First Prompt, explores AI, sex, and intimate relationships. Pre-order at LoveAtFirstPrompt.ai Follow Bridget: Instagram | TikTok | YouTube | Bluesky  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is part 1 of a 2-part arc about one of wildest tech stories I've seen in a long time. For over two decades, a husband and wife duo have been publishing EcommerceBytes, a respected trade publication for eBay sellers. But in 2019, someone started harassing them. It began with a spray painted fence, then quickly escalated to death threats and fetal pigs and a mysterious van outside their house. Eventually, they discovered that eBay's own security team was behind it all, with the campaign put into motion by then-CEO Devin Wenig. This bizarre and frightening story is a cautionary tale about the rise of private armies. It starts in San Francisco, takes us to the small community of Natick, Massachusetts, and ultimately takes TANGOTI listeners right back to Madison Square Garden. Buckle up.      Let us know what you think by emailing [email protected] or leaving a comment on Spotify.    Bridget's forthcoming audiobook with Simon & Schuster, Love At First Prompt, explores AI, sex, and intimate relationships. Pre-order at LoveAtFirstPrompt.ai Follow Bridget: Instagram | TikTok | YouTube | BlueskySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There Are No Girls on the Internet is a weekly podcast hosted by Bridget Todd. Every week we drop our news roundup — the tech and internet stories that don't get enough attention, the ones about AI, power, gender, race, and who actually gets hurt when systems fail. This week: A racist streamer livestreams from a stretcher. A mother goes to prison for a Facebook grief post. Elon Musk's USAID cuts may kill 9 million people. And Peter Thiel found a way to let anyone punish journalists for $2,000. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. New roundup episode every Friday. 📰 Here's what we were watching this week: Black Google employees said the company called them "not Googly enough" — Google just paid $50M to settle the lawsuit. A 2022 class action alleged Google hired Black employees into lower-paying roles, hazed them in interviews, and retaliated when they spoke up. The $50M payout comes with promises of pay equity audits and limits on forced arbitration. 🔗 AP News A woman posted about her stillbirth on Facebook. Police showed up and sent her to prison for 2 years. A broke single mom in Nevada was charged with manslaughter after an online grief post tipped off a deputy. Her conviction was eventually vacated — but the deputy who investigated her went to the funeral home, took her baby's ashes, and brought them to her own home in Texas. The mother still doesn't have her son's remains. At least 412 women have faced criminal charges related to pregnancy loss since Roe was overturned, even in states where abortion is legal. 🔗 CNN A female Twitch streamer's fan tried to break into her room. She broadcast the whole thing live. Streamer Jinny was cycling through Poland when a man she'd briefly met in her hotel lobby showed up at her door that night trying to get in. She barricaded herself with a chair, cried quietly on stream, and called emergency services while her chat contacted police on her behalf. He fled before they arrived — and was never caught. 🔗 Dexerto Elon Musk bragged about feeding USAID "into the woodchipper." Scientists now say 9 million people could die because of it. USAID was the world's largest humanitarian aid agency before DOGE shut it down in 2025. A study published in the journal Science found the cuts triggered an immediate spike in violent conflict across Africa — in the places that needed the aid most. Scientists say even if USAID were restarted tomorrow, the trust is gone for good. 🔗 The Independent George Floyd's 11-year-old daughter is being bullied at school by classmates repeating right-wing talking points about her father — as MAGA figures push to pardon his killer. Gianna Floyd is being mocked at her middle school by kids repeating false claims about her father's death. Right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro is leading an online campaign to pardon the police officer who killed George Floyd — falsely claiming Floyd died of a drug overdose despite the medical examiner ruling his death a homicide. A pardon would free the man currently serving 22½ years for his murder. 🔗 BET Peter Thiel used his billionaire money to destroy Gawker. Now he's backing a startup that gives anyone that same power for $2,000. A new billionaire-backed startup called Objection lets anyone pay $2,000 to have a panel of AI models rule on whether a news story about them was fair. The journalist doesn't have to participate — a verdict gets published either way. Critics are calling it a censorship tool disguised as accountability. 🔗 TechCrunch A racist streamer shot a Black disabled veteran and was shot himself in the altercation. He livestreamed from the stretcher. Dalton Eatherly, known online as "Chud the Builder," films himself hurling racial slurs at Black people in public. Last week he was arrested for refusing to pay a $370 restaurant bill after being kicked out for livestreaming racist content. Days later, he shot a Black disabled veteran outside a courthouse, was shot himself, and livestreamed from the stretcher. He's been arrested three times in six months. 🔗 CNN Meet the "Sad Wives of AI" — women running their households while their husbands chase the AI hype. A Wired longform profiles the women left holding everything together while their partners spiral into AI obsession. It's a portrait of a certain kind of tech marriage in 2026. 🔗 Wired YouTube will now scan its entire platform for deepfakes of your face — if you ask it to. YouTube is expanding its AI likeness detection tool to all adults with an account. You submit a selfie-style scan, and YouTube hunts for videos using your face without your consent. If it finds a match, you can request removal. The stakes for regular people are very real. 🔗 The Verge Bumble just killed the swipe — and replaced it with AI dating agents. The app that built its brand on women making the first move is now letting AI make moves on your behalf. Whether that's progress or the end of something is a question worth sitting with. 🔗 The New York Times A commencement speaker told arts and humanities graduates that AI is "the next industrial revolution." They booed her off the stage. When a real estate executive told the University of Central Florida's graduating class of film, animation, and media students that AI would transform their world, the crowd erupted. One graduate summed it up: "A lot of us are worried that companies are using this technology to replace artists rather than work alongside them." The revolution is not being applauded. 🔗 The Independent Bridget's forthcoming audiobook with Simon & Schuster, Love At First Prompt, explores AI, sex, and intimate relationships. Pre-order at LoveAtFirstPrompt.ai Follow Bridget: Instagram | TikTok | YouTube | Bluesky See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.