Though Truth Social has lost $3.5 billion in value, its shareholders say they aren’t worried. “This isn’t just another stock to me. … I feel like it was God Almighty that put it in my lap,” says Jerry Dean McLain, who’s invested “$25,000 — pretty much his ‘whole nest egg.’”
[The Washington Post]
Investor funding for AI startups fell for a second year, according to Stanford. Sounds like the reckoning is here!
Several things could be in play: recognition of AI’s challenges, less spending on expensive foundation models, and “the rapid rise and fall of certain marquee name startups in AI.” 👀
The accounting is “more of an art than a science,” anonymous sources tell Bloomberg. But on an operational and ongoing basis? No, not profitable, according to those sources.
Previously, The Wall Street Journal reported Starlink fell short of expectations in 2022. Hm!
Here’s a profile of the guy who created the long-running website where people make visual confessions. Twenty years in, it’s still going — and this profile reveals the surprising religious roots of Frank Warren’s community art project.
[Hazlitt]
Forget the Humane AI pin, what you want is a dumbphone. One advantage of a flip phone, by the way, is slamming it shut as a very satisfying way of hanging up.
[The New Yorker]
Kraken founder Jesse Powell wanted to contribute to a recall campaign for Gavin Newsom without having his identity exposed. It didn’t work out that way, and he was publicly listed as one of the top donors to the recall. Now he’s suing, saying he was deceived.