Christopher Allbritton

25 Aug

Dolly. Man. Just no. I can’t accept it.

5 Aug

America has the Greatest Health Care in the World® Part LXVIII: I’m doing the patient portal for PT and they just asked me to review the patient rights notice or whatever, and this is what I see when I click the link:

5 Aug

You can't click it, enlarge it, or otherwise interact with it at all. So, consider it reviewed!

21 July

In the annals of businesses doing good work, last night I accidentally bought 7 extra tickets for the Odyssey at the DC @alamodrafthouse.bsky.social. I filed for a refund, not really expecting much. They just called me ON THE PHONE and cleared it up, no problem. And the woman was so nice.

21 July

Just wanted to counter some of the negativity in the world with a story of a company doing the right thing, being responsive and being nice about it. Well done, Alamo Draft House!

substack.com/@christopher...

25 Apr

substack.comKurds shut out of new US-Iran talks: a retrospectiveFor the largest, stateless people in the world, an exhausting deja vú.

worldpoliticsreview.comIraq’s Kurds Are Caught in the Crossfire of a War They Didn’t StartIraqi Kurdistan, once an oasis of hard-won stability, must navigate complex security challenges stemming from the war in the Middle East.

27 Mar

For the 1st time, Iran hits Iraqi Kurdistan's Peshmerga with ballistic missiles — 6 dead, 30 wounded. The KRG has no air defenses, no seat at negotiating table, and no way to stop a war they didn't start from rolling over everything they've built. www.worldpoliticsreview.com/iraq-kurds-c...

iranwar.newsWhat Iranian New Year, end of Ramadan feel like as war ragesBy coincidence, the Iranian New Year of Nowruz and the celebration marking the end of Ramadan, Eid-al-Fitr, arrived on the same day. Learn about how Kurds celebrate these dual milestones not far from

21 Mar

Two holidays, one city. How wartime Eid-al-Fitr and Nowruz are seen in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan. www.iranwar.news/p/what-irani...

open.substack.comAmerica’s friends in Iraq pay the priceThe fighting next door to the Kurdish region of Iraq is freezing Erbil’s economy, as grounded flights, power shortages, and a dollar crunch leave business with little fiscal room to maneuver.

19 Mar

Drones overhead. Airport closed. Gas fields dark. Dollar scarce. I spent an evening with Kurdish businessmen in Erbil doing the math on how long they can last. America's most reliable allies in the region are paying for a war they didn't start. New: open.substack.com/pub/irandisp...

27 Feb

DoD to Anthropic: drop AI safeguards or lose your $200M contract. Anthropic: no. First Silicon Valley vs. Trump AI showdown, and it landed on a Friday deadline. https://open.substack.com/pub/trulyback/p/when-the-ai-company-said-no?r=13e6w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

13 Feb

Should the companies building the most powerful technology in human history get to choose the people who regulate them? h̲t̲t̲p̲s̲://t̲r̲u̲l̲y̲b̲a̲c̲k̲.s̲u̲b̲s̲t̲a̲c̲k̲.c̲o̲m̲/p̲/w̲h̲y̲-a̲i̲-g̲i̲a̲n̲t̲s̲-a̲r̲e̲-b̲u̲y̲i̲n̲g̲-t̲h̲e̲-m̲i̲d̲t̲e̲r̲m̲s̲

12 Feb

Alex Bores quit Palantir over its ICE contracts. Now Palantir's co-founder is spending some of those ICE profits to fund attack ads against Bores's congressional campaign because Bores wrote NY's AI safety law. https://trulyback.substack.com/p/why-ai-giants-are-buying-the-midterms

12 Feb

Of the Best Picture nominees this year, I've seen F1 and Frankenstein, and they were ... fine? I am working my way through the rest as quickly as I can, but neither F-entries struck me as Best Picture material. Not horrible, not great.

trulyback.substack.comWhy AI Giants Are Buying the MidtermsThe AI industry is spending more than $400 million to pick its own regulators.

12 Feb

The AI industry is spending more than $400 million to pick its own regulators in the 2026 midterms. Anthropic just dropped $20M on one side. OpenAI's backers have $100M on the other. More at Truly Back. Free to subscribe.

Loved contributing to this series. Thank you for the opportunity!

The Niskanen Center@niskanencenter.bsky.social

We've recruited Jennifer Burns, @christopherallbritton.com, Brink Lindsey, and Adam Garfinkle to weigh in! hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/taming-big...

The Gilded Age robber barons were ruthless. They bought legislators and hired strikebreakers. But they couldn't control what farmers thought about them. Tarbell exposed Standard Oil. Sinclair's Jungle changed federal law. The media was too diffuse to control. That's no longer true.

youtube.comAndor | Luthen Rael’s Monologue | Disney+YouTube video by Star Wars

When the monopolist owns the megaphone, the playbook breaks. Today, the tools we'd use to organize resistance are controlled by the forces we need to resist. We're forced onto digital terrain owned by the people we're trying to rein in. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3RC...

hypertext.niskanencenter.orgThe fragmentation flywheelWhy the Fourth Industrial Revolution resists political response

The system needing reform is the same system that prevents reformers from organizing. Super pumped to publish a new essay for @niskanencenter.bsky.social on why the fourth industrial revolution resists political response… and why we should build capacity anyway.

nypost.comInstacart caught using shady algorithm to charge different prices to individual customers — in the same stores, bombshell study revealsGroundwork, a consumer advocacy group, said Instacart’s pricing algorithm could lead to shoppers forking over an extra $1,200 on groceries each year.

10 Dec 2025

This is enraging, and you should be VERY VERY pissed off about it. But I'm happy that my lovely partner is part of the organization that did the study that revealed this shadiness!

bloomberg.comManhattan Luxury Apartment Market Surges in Month After Mamdani’s WinReal estate brokers say there has been no slowdown in demand from wealthy buyers.

5 Dec 2025

Told you so… '“Yes, there is a new mayor, and there are a lot of worries, but our clients are saying, ‘We love New York,’” Naftali said. “There is no slowdown in demand.”'

The AI industry is growing up and honestly it's a little weird

but the weird one: anthropic confirmed a 11k-word "soul document" describing Claude's values is actual training data. not a prompt. training data. the values are baked in.

open.substack.comThe AI Industry is Growing UpOpenAI declares “code red,” Anthropic heads for IPO, and open-source models close the gap. The chaos of invention is giving way to the cold logic of consolidation.

I wrote about it all:

The AI industry is growing up and honestly it's a little weird

openai: "code red" internally, bought a company to monitor their own models

mistral: 675B parameter model, apache 2.0, just ... download it

The AI industry is growing up and honestly it's a little weird

anthropic: $1B revenue in 6 months, acquired Bun, $200M snowflake deal, IPO incoming

If you get bored at Thanksgiving and there are people you've just met, come up with a totally made-up job when they ask you what you do. E.g., "I manage sovereign AIs that agentically run pirate anti-regime broadcasts for resistance cells around the country. I'm a thorn in the side of The Man."

long silence...

"So... <long pause> ... do you make a living at that?" "Well, not in fiat currency, of course."

Christopher Allbritton reposted

Jonathan V. Last

@jvl.bsky.social

26 Nov 2025

If the Nuzzi blast radius doesn't impact both the new editor of VF and the NYT profiler, then something wrong. Holy shit.

(FULL DISCLOSURE: I used to work with Nuzzi at The Daily Beast and edited several of her stories. She was fine. Talented, driven, but hardly a generational voice.) After Lizza's Part III, I'm convinced neither he nor Nuzzi should ever work in journalism again. But Lizza might be the greater villain

Nuzzi's sin is cardinal. She allegedly burned sources, colluded with a subject and betrayed confidences. Lizza's sin: He knew a journalist was committing these sins and sat on it because it benefited him to wait.

Both should be finished. Nuzzi corrupted journalism. Lizza commodified that corruption and let it continue for profit. She's a disgrace. He's an accomplice. (fin)

Nuzzi corrupted herself. Lizza watched the corruption happen, documented it, and decided his Substack subscriptions were more important than the integrity of political journalism

He timed this to destroy her book and maximize his platform. Not when the PUBLIC needed to know. Not when it could have mattered. When it would drive the most clicks to his newsletter.

Every piece Nuzzi published after Lizza knew was journalism fraud. And he LET IT HAPPEN. Why? Because he was planning his big Substack reveal? He valued his newsletter drama over stopping an active corruption of the press.

He had a moral and professional obligation to expose this immediately. Instead, he sat on it like it was a dollops of gossip item he was saving for sweeps week.

But here's what makes Lizza WORSE: He knew. He KNEW. And he did nothing to stop it. He let her maintain her authority and platform while knowing she was corrupted.

Perhaps he's got a book to promote. Or he's just driving subs. I don't know. And yes, journalism needs a business model to survive. But holding back information that a prominent journalist was actively working to elect a candidate? That's not a business plan. That's complicity.

That's not a mistake. That's not getting too close to a source. That's premeditated betrayal of everything journalism is supposed to be. She burned down the credibility of every political reporter in America for her own purposes.

(And I don't even want to get into what she's done to the image of female reporters, who have had to battle the idea that they sleep with sources. The ones I've known have been tremendous, tenacious reporters who have been truly unfairly maligned by all this. They deserve better.)

Let's be clear about Nuzzi first: If Lizza's allegations are true, she didn't just cross a line, she engaged in sustained, deliberate corruption. She weaponized her access and platform to influence an election while posing as an objective reporter.

5 Nov 2025

Live photo from NYC of all the billionaires fleeing

5 Nov 2025

(J/k. No one’s going to leave. Billionaires don’t live in nyc because of the low tax rate. They live there because it’s the greatest city in the world. And if they leave, good riddance. You couldn’t cut it anyway.) l

28 Oct 2025

squadron of six fighter jets just flew over DC. Any idea why?

28 Oct 2025

And again

open.substack.comThe Washington Post and CBS News are dying. The Bulwark is the future.We drink their milkshake.

7 Oct 2025

Thanks @thebulwark.com for one of the clearest distillations I’ve ever read of how we got to the this crisis in journalism. The moment you mention Craigslist and how it decimated classifieds I knew it was going to be good.