🇺🇸 The Cruel Kids’ Table Among the young, confident, and casually cruel Trumpers who, after conquering Washington, have their sights set on America.

They are not disenfranchised or working class or anti-elite or many of the other adjectives used to describe Trump supporters since 2016. Rather, they are young, imposingly well connected, urban, and very online. They are rebels once again storming Capitol Hill, though without the pathetic scariness of the January 6 rioters.

Few of them would call themselves Republican, lest they be tarred RINO. They refer to their political affiliation, almost always, as the “movement.” Some are the black sheep at their own family Thanksgivings, yet they project confidence that they’re the relevant ones now. Many are hot enough to be extras in the upcoming American Psycho remake.

A joke about Puerto Ricans or eugenics or sleeping with Nick Fuentes could throw a pack of smokers outside Butterworth’s into a gigglefest. Recounting her time at one of the balls, a woman tells me she jumped the velvet rope into a VIP section “like a little Mexican.” Then she lets out a cackle. This is the posture that has attracted newcomers to the cause. “Six months into Biden being president, I was like, I can’t fucking do this anymore,” says a 19-year-old New Yorker who once quite literally had blue hair and attends Marymount Manhattan, which he describes as “75 percent women and 23 percent trannies.” He had supported Biden, but “I hate watching the things I say.

“MAGA is MTV for Gen Z. This isn’t the fringe. This is youth pop culture. I’ve been saying this for years,” said Mitchell Jackson, a publicist and crisis consultant who works with conservative podcasters.

The room also made all too clear just how big the party’s tent had become. Posters around the room read CONSERVATION IS CONSERVATIVE, over an image of Trump riding a buffalo.

A frat boy from Georgetown, lording over a table, told me he’s here because he’s Catholic. “I really don’t like abortion. I hate abortion,” he said. At the bar was the DJ 3LAU, in town to spin at Trump’s ball. “I voted for Big D because of crypto, free speech, and the Constitution,” he said.

After a few hours of club classics, like Kesha’s “Tik Tok,” Waka Flocka Flame performed, and McDonald’s was served.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/inauguration-trump-supporters-conservative-movement-post-maga.html

https://archive.ph/yGCKI

🇨🇳🇺🇸 American AI firms are scrambling after a Chinese hedge fund released an impressive and uber-cheap AI model.

Meta has set up 4 "war rooms" to dissect the DeepSeek model to see what insights it can apply to its Llama AI.

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/meta-scrambles-after-chinese-ai-equals-its-own-upending-silicon-valley