The alternative reality of Lauren Sanchez Bezos
There were two stories published in recent days that offered an arresting juxtaposition of Jeff Bezos, his riches, and the human toll of his extreme wealth.
On Saturday, the New York Times published a lengthy profile of Lauren Sanchez Bezos. In it, the wife of the Amazon founder shared that she and her husband spend every morning reciting 10 gratitudes as they sip coffee in the sunroom of their $230 million island compound in South Florida. Speaking with a Times reporter, Sanchez estimated that she is 20% happier than the average person, complained about mean comments she has received on Instagram, and insisted the public doesn’t understand how she and her husband actually live. “What you see is 5 percent of my life,” she said, claiming that her happiness is not related to her relatively newfound wealth. She also described Amazon, where Bezos is the executive chairman and largest shareholder, as “the family business.”
Two days after the profile was published, Western Edge reporter Ryan Haas released a story describing how Amazon employees at a warehouse in Troutdale, Oregon, were forced to work alongside the dead body of one of their coworkers. From the Western Edge:
The man who collapsed on the floor died Monday, April 6 on the second level of the Amazon warehouse as machinery filled the cavernous loading dock with a dull hum.
In 911 calls, obtained through a public records request, one employee called for an ambulance at 1:55 pm. The dispatcher coached a confused employee over speakerphone on how to use a defibrillator.
Meanwhile, during a second call, another employee described a horrific scene: “We have an associate here who I believe is probably dead.”
“This person does have extensive blood coming from their head,” he said. “They are very blue looking.”
For more than an hour, several employees said, workers in the facility were instructed to continue fetching totes, picking items off shelves and loading them onto trucks for delivery as the man lay dead, and management figured out their next steps. News of the fatality quickly spread through the building, but workers say top managers did not call operations to an immediate halt. A week later, several workers said they still do not know what caused the man to die. Amazon said in a statement Tuesday that the man died from a “pre-existing medical condition.” Records indicate he was 46 years old.
One employee at the warehouse said they offered to perform CPR on the collapsed worker but were rebuffed by a manager, who said, “It has to be management or safety team. Please get back to work… Just turn around and not look. Let’s get back to work.” Another employee said that the man who died worked as a “tote runner,” tasked with carrying tall stacks of yellow bins around the warehouse. The already physically demanding job had been made more difficult after Amazon opted to lay off warehouse staff, “which means the few people in those positions work harder and stay in the roles longer than they have in the past,” per the Western Edge.
In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson said the company was “deeply saddened by the passing of a member of our team” and had “provided onsite grief counselors and additional support” to employees who work at the warehouse in question.
This Week in Bezos:
Bezos and Sanchez, who lead a $10 billion climate philanthropy together, drove their $500 million superyacht into the fragile biome of Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands for a vacation this week. (Daily Mail)
Marc Thiessen, a columnist for the Bezos-owned Washington Post, published an op-ed last week calling for the murder of “Iranian officials who had been spared for the purpose of negotiations.” (Washington Post)
Amazon has agreed to acquire satellite operator Globalstar for $11 billion. The acquisition appears to be Amazon’s latest effort to compete with Starlink. The Globalstar satellite network provides limited direct-to-device service for newer iPhone and Apple Watch models, while Starlink has a partnership with T-Mobile to offer similar services. Amazon said it has an agreement to continue providing satellite connectivity to Apple devices, and the two companies are also planning to collaborate on future services via the Amazon Leo satellite network. (Wall Street Journal)
In a post on X last week, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr poured cold water on Amazon’s plan to buy the broadcasting rights for the Super Bowl. “Amazon wants the NFL to sell them the right to take the Super Bowl off of free broadcast TV and put it on Amazon’s streaming service. What do you think?” wrote Carr, referencing comments from an Amazon executive who said the company would stream the Super Bowl at some point in the near future. Carr has previously argued that NFL games appearing exclusively on streaming services violate the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. (Awful Announcing)
In an internal memo on Sunday, OpenAI executive Denise Dresser indicated that the company is moving away from its partnership with Microsoft and toward a new cloud infrastructure alliance with Amazon, which the ChatGPT-maker believes will help bolster sales of its models to corporate clients. “Our Microsoft partnership has been foundational to our success. But it has also limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are,” Dresser wrote. (CNBC)
“Bribery in plain sight”
That’s how Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren described Amazon’s $40 million payment to license Melania Trump’s vanity documentary. The lawmaker had previously accused the company of engaging in a “pay-to-play arrangement” with the Trump administration, which the company denied, claiming it had purchased the film for “the access, the story, and its cultural and historical relevance.”
Warren, in turn, asked Amazon to “explain why it reportedly paid three times as much as the next highest bidder” to license the documentary.
“The logical explanation is that Amazon is trying to buy the President’s favor by dumping millions into the Trump family’s pockets,” the lawmaker wrote, adding, “Amazon must give Congress — and the American people — answers now.”
Meta creates an AI version of Mark Zuckerberg.
Meta is building and testing an AI simulacrum of Mark Zuckerberg that will appear as an on-screen digital avatar, mimicking his mannerisms, speech patterns, and opinions. The company wants to use the AI version of its chief executive to hold meetings and interact with employees, believing the model might make them feel more “connected to the founder through interactions with it,” according to the Financial Times.
The newspaper also reported that Zuckerberg is personally involved in training his AI duplicate, which is part of Meta’s broader effort to develop “photorealistic, AI-powered 3D characters that users can interact with in real time.”
The project appears to be the latest outgrowth of Zuckerberg’s obsession with digital avatars and the metaverse, a concept coined by cyberpunk author Neal Stephenson that refers to a virtual reality so immersive that humans live most of their lives inside of it. The company previously created a digital version of Zuckerberg to advertise its virtual reality “Horizon Worlds” project in 2022, which ultimately flopped, costing the company tens of billions of dollars.
Zuckerberg, meanwhile, has become a more active participant in Meta’s research and development, according to Dina Powell McCormick, the company’s president. “Mark has actually moved his desk and is seated in the AI lab with Alex Wang and Nat Friedman, and he’s coding all day long,” Powell McCormick said this week while speaking at Semafor’s World Economy Summit.
This Week in Zuck:
Meta has installed new user speech guidelines limiting the sharing of some “Antifa” — shorthand for antifascism — content on Facebook and Instagram. The change, which includes restricting posts that mention antifascism alongside “references to historical or recent incidents of violence,” appears to be the company’s latest effort to curry favor from the Trump administration. (The Intercept)
A Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling on Friday cleared the way for the state’s attorney general to proceed with a lawsuit accusing Meta of intentionally building addictive features into Facebook and Instagram that target young users. (CNBC)
$243.46 billion
That’s how much revenue Meta is projected to generate from its advertising business this year alone, according to the research firm Emarketer. The firm’s projections, if borne out, would result in Meta surpassing Google’s parent, Alphabet, as the top digital advertising company globally.
xAI’s Grok continues to generate nonconsensual sexual deepfakes
A report from NBC News on Tuesday found that Grok, the chatbot created by Elon Musk’s xAI firm, is still generating sexualized images and videos of real women without their consent. The photos are often automatically shared by the Grok account on X after users request them. They depict the likenesses of real women whose faces are placed on top of partially nude bodies.
In response to NBC’s reporting, the safety team at X said the platform prohibits “users from generating non-consensual explicit deepfakes and from using our tools to undress real people,” adding, “xAI has extensive safeguards in place to prevent such misuse.”
Musk, meanwhile, has sought to deflect concerns about AI-powered nudification software onto Apple and Google. “Well, how about that … ? 🤔” he wrote on X on Wednesday while responding to a story on how both of the leading app stores direct users to AI “nudify” applications.
In other xAI news, the NAACP filed a lawsuit against the company on Tuesday for illegally operating more than two dozen methane gas turbines to power its data centers in Memphis, Tennessee. The turbines are known to produce ground-level ozone and emit dangerous pollutants such as formaldehyde.
This Week in Musk:
In the latest example of Musk using one of his businesses to help bail out another, SpaceX purchased more than 18% of the Cybertrucks that Tesla sold in the final quarter of last year. Companies within Musk’s business empire have continued to buy Cybertrucks this year as Tesla faces ballooning inventory. (Bloomberg)
A Defense Department official in charge of the military’s AI efforts made up to $24 million in profits selling an ownership stake he held in xAI. The AI company is also a significant Pentagon contractor. (The Guardian)
On Sunday, Musk reshared a post on X that read, “I do my standard ‘Jews can be good friends of the Anglos, actually, or at least align with their cosmic project’ and then some random Israeli or Angl-Disapora Hebrew retard decides that it’s going to be really helpful to say ‘Utter racial entropy is awesome as long as it’s not for the Jews!’ and I have to facepalm a little.” He also shared his agreement with another post from a white supremacist user on X who praised Rhodesia’s apartheid rule, describing it as “paradise.” (X)
Musk is now sharing promotional materials for Tesla and SpaceX on TikTok, his first public use of the video-sharing platform. A verified account for Musk was also recently created on Instagram. His use of the platforms — which directly compete with X, the social media platform he owns — could be part of his effort to promote SpaceX ahead of its initial public offering this summer. (New York Times)
X announced it will reduce revenue-sharing payments to users who are “flooding the timeline” with aggregated content. (The Guardian)
xAI sued Colorado last week over the state’s AI antidiscrimination law. Lawyers for the Musk-owned company have argued that the law, which seeks to prevent algorithm-based discrimination, would force xAI’s Grok chatbot to “abandon its disinterested pursuit of truth and instead promote the State’s ideological views on various matters, racial justice in particular.” (The Colorado Sun)
Oligarch Roundup
Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison to host dinner “honoring” the Trump White House. The April 23 event was announced at the same time that Ellison is awaiting the Trump administration’s approval for his acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The private dinner will be held at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a federal organization that the State Department plans to rename in Trump’s honor. Ellison’s CBS News has also asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller to be its guests for the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on April 25. (Variety)
Star actors and directors sign letter opposing Warner’s sale to Paramount. “We have witnessed a steep decline in the number of films produced and released, alongside a narrowing of the kinds of stories that are financed and distributed,” read the letter that was signed by Denis Villeneuve, JJ Abrams, Bryan Cranston, Joaquin Phoenix, and roughly 1,000 other directors, actors, and writers. “Increasingly, a small number of powerful entities determine what gets made — and on what terms — leaving creators and independent businesses with fewer viable paths to sustain their work.” (New York Times)
A Molotov cocktail was thrown outside Sam Altman’s home. A 20-year-old man from Texas has been charged with arson and attempted murder related to the incident, which occurred late last week. The suspect, who authorities accused of authoring an anti-AI manifesto, allegedly sought to burn down OpenAI’s headquarters in San Francisco after leaving Altman’s home. (San Francisco Standard)
JD Vance and Scott Bessent held an AI cybersecurity phone conference with Musk, Altman, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. The call reportedly focused on potential cybersecurity threats posed by new AI models, particularly Mythos, a model from Anthropic that the company has delayed releasing amid claims it could be used to commit cybercrimes. It remains to be seen whether that concern is substantive or another example of AI marketing. (CNBC)
I don't think a shitty workplace counts as a pre-existing medical condition. So because Bezos donates money to environmental charities he gets to continue growing a company that destroys the environment and treats workers like slaves all while destroying democracy? When Democrats get back in power, they must all follow Mamdani's example and tax the rich back into their senses.
Is there even ONE tech bro who's not so consumed with wealth that they've lost whatever soul they even had? Maybe these guys (including Thiel) are all the anti-christ!?
And the bimbo bezos - stocked with big lips and boobs - every photo of her she falls out of whatever "dress" she has on!