Noam and Jen did an extra long episode, because it was an extra long week. We start by discussing the tea on Tea, the vibe-coded app that was long on 2018 nostalgia but short on information security. Aside from the irony of repeating past mistakes, we discuss the shortfalls of relying on LLMs to do your heavy lifting for you, especially if you don’t have the knowledge needed to check the outcome.

We move on to discussing the Macrons suing Candace Owens over the flagrantly insane (but also defamatory) things she has said about Brigitte. While the Macrons are completely within their rights to sue Owens and are justified in doing so, it also gives her more material for her content mill. So what to do? We also take a brief detour into the Mehdi Hasan vs MAGA trainwreck that demonstrated how siloing can rot your sense of reality. 

Gaza is back in the news again, over an impending famine, and whose fault is it anyway? Also, the NYT published a piece citing one anonymous IDF source saying that they have no proof that Hamas has stolen humanitarian aid regularly, which is all some folks needed to blame Israel. Does it make sense? No, but when has that ever mattered. 

The Trump-Epstein story keeps getting further off the rails, this week with the news that Bondi informed Trump he is mentioned in the DOJ’s investigation files. And maybe Ghislaine Maxwell is getting a deal to testify that Trump did nothing wrong? Or maybe Obama will be arrested? 

Finally, we get to the movie part of the pod because we saw two movies this week, Eddington and Fantastic Four - First Steps. There is a lot to unpack with Eddington, but not as much with Fantastic Four.