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What’s in today’s issue
🤖 AI manifesto, investigations and gender disparities
🗒 Correspondents Dinner drama
🧪 Missing scientist conspiracy theory
🇮🇹 Trump vs. the Italian PM
“No, you don’t understand. Orbs are good!”
Hi friends!
Chris Vazquez, your Friday newsletter writer here. I come bearing good news from an election, for once! Thanks to your support, Dave won a Webby for being the Best Creator, Personality or Host of 2026. Dave is the People’s Choice Winner, and shares the award with Webby winner Jimmy Kimmel. It’s kinda like Dave winning the popular vote and Kimmel winning the electoral college.
To celebrate our Webby, we’re having a flash sale. Now through midnight Tuesday take 20% off an annual local subscription. It’s our best price ever. Becoming a member is a great way to show your support for the entire team. Just use this special link to claim your discount.
Speaking of people who’ve lost the popular vote but won the electoral college, President Donald Trump is the throughline in a lot of Dave’s videos this week. He’s united Italy against him, spreading conspiracy theories about missing and dead scientists, and shaking up one of the most important journalism events of the year. Let’s dive in.
Reese Witherspoon, Palantir manifesto and an investigation into ChatGPT
In what seems like a game of Connections personally made for me, Dave listed off these three news stories in a meeting this morning and told me he was stringing them together in one video. I’m writing this before Dave has made that video, so this section of the newsletter is really me just guessing how these things tie together.
Reese Witherspoon wants women to learn AI, pissing off people of all genders. She’s since clarified that she understands concerns around how AI could impact jobs and the environment, saying that “I don’t believe computers should replace humanity.” In her initial statement about AI, she said that women’s jobs are three times as likely to be automated, and she doesn’t want women “to be left behind.” That stat comes from this International Labour Organization report.
Why might the public be upset at people like Reese Witherspoon for embracing AI? Maybe because the head of one AI company wrote a manifesto that some elected officials in the UK are calling “the ramblings of a super villain.” Palantir CEO Alex Karp and head of corporate affairs Nicholas Zamiska wrote a book that Palantir recently summarized on The Platform Formerly Known As Twitter. It calls for tech and AI companies to play a greater role in carcerality and warmongering, a draft, more US foreign intervention, criticizing some cultures as inferior to others, resisting pluralism, and a whole lot more. Palantir has drawn criticism from groups like Amnesty International for their tech and AI tools facilitating immigration crackdowns in the US and Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Another AI company has also come under scrutiny this week. Florida’s attorney general opened a criminal investigation into OpenAI. He alleges that a man accused of killing two people at Florida State University last year got advice from ChatGPT on how to carry out a shooting. The administration of Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has been critical of AI, but infamously not of guns.
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They’ve never invited me to this dinner party but they invited Donald Trump
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is an annual, fancy dinner for journalists and their (often corporate or political) guests, meant to raise funds partially for education around the First Amendment and the free press.
Trump, who hates both of those things, is showing up for the first time ever. Administration officials also working to restrict press freedom — like broadcast censorship advocate Brendan Carr and Man Trying To Restrict Press Access To The Pentagon Pete Hegseth — will also be there. Trump is reportedly planning to roast the media then immediately dip.
A comedian usually hosts the dinner. But this year, it’ll be hosted by a mentalist. The White House Correspondents’ Association fired Amber Ruffin last year after she critiqued the president and went without a comedian in 2019 after Michelle Wolf criticized the Trump administration when she hosted the previous year. The association so scared of hiring people who’ve criticized the president are, notably, tasked with holding the president accountable. (I’m also not the first to point out the weirdness of an event designed to have journalists party with the people they’re supposed to be grilling.)
There’s NOT evidence that the missing or dead scientists are connected
Ten nuclear or aerospace scientists have disappeared or died in the past few years, and conspiracy theorists are peddling theories that they’re connected. The FBI and the Republican-led House Oversight Committee are investigating possible connections.
But there’s no credible evidence that they’re connected. The US has thousands of these kinds of scientists, and any large population is going to have deaths. The daughter of one of the scientists said her father had medical issues before his death.
This leads us to this week’s media literacy topic from our friends at MediaWise! Conspiracy theories generally only cite evidence that supports them and dismiss evidence trying to debunk them.
Why is Italy mad at Trump?
Italy has a far-right prime minister named Giorgia Meloni.
After Vice President JD Vance endorsed Hungary’s far right prime minister Viktor Orbán for reelection, Orbán lost.
The Guardian reported that Orbán’s loss could be one reason why Meloni has started to distance herself from Trump.
She criticized Trump’s rant against the Pope and has distanced herself from the US’ and Israel’s war in Iran by suspending a defense agreement with Israel.
Each week, after running through the news Dave has covered in the past week, I turn things over to him for some analysis. Dave, take it away!
Your channel is my news place
Just a fun aside today to show how the sausage is made. Like Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando before me … I rarely learn my lines and often tape them to nearby walls or bulletin boards.
My toddler thinks this is normal.
The scripts I write allow for basically just saying one line at a time. To make it even easier on myself, I highlight the character I’m playing at that moment. This allows me to run through a script quickly without missing any lines.
Line?
Now, to be clear, a lot of care and thought goes into these, including what I do before and after a line. This helps me in the edit, when I’m trying to create the illusion that there are three or four people in a room (not just one person, slowly losing his mind and creating more laundry for my later self).
Here’s a sample from today’s video:
Dave: It’s why some people thought Reese Witherspoon decided to be vocal about you all of a sudden.
AI Dave SNAPS at band, who immediately STOP.
AI Dave: You mean, she just wanted me to pay for dinner?
DAVE holds up PHONE with Reese POST
Dave: Well, in her follow-up post, she said she wasn’t being paid to talk about AI.
AI Dave: So Reese is paying? How progressive.
He SNAPS back at band who resume playing.
Dave: She said she’s curious about AI and trying to keep up with her kids.
Hands over phone
AI Dave: She’s AI-curious?
It’s a weird job I have, so I’m very grateful to you all for encouraging it with your views, subscriptions, funny emails and occasional run-ins in public while I’m filming myself pretending to be an AI bot in a public airport.
If you made it to the end of this newsletter, you get two rewards. The first is a pet picture from a loyal reader. This is Toby!
Those are his tooth marks on that chair! Cute!
The second reward is the reveal for this week’s link scavenger hunt, in which I hid a non-news related link in the body of this email and wait until down here to reveal where it is. This week, I cheated by linking out to a journalism outlet — The Infatuation’s Hit List for New York City restaurants. I’ve been tasked with itinerizing a family trip to New York because, not to brag, I make a mean itinerary. If you know of any afforable and delicious dinner spots within a one-seat ride of a PATH stop, please hit me up.
Until next week!
Chris
