A.R. Moxon:

It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.

It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.

It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.

It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.

For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest.

Yeah, this is basically why I don’t waste time anymore railing against the many hypocrisies of conservatives — they’re not gotchas that you’re catching them in, they’re part of the domination.

Tags: A.R. Moxon · politics

23andMe filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Sunday, leaving the fate of millions of people’s genetic information up in the air as the company deals with the legal and financial fallout of not properly protecting that genetic information in the first place. The filing shows how dangerous it is to provide your DNA directly to a large, for-profit commercial genetic database; 23andMe is now looking for a buyer to pull it out of bankruptcy.

23andMe said in court documents viewed by 404 Media that since hackers obtained personal data about seven million of its customers in October 2023, including, in some cases “health-related information based upon the user’s genetics,” it has faced “over 50 class action and state court lawsuits,” and that “approximately 35,000 claimants have initiated, filed, or threatened to commence arbitration claims against the company.” It is seeking bankruptcy protection in part to simplify the fallout of these legal cases, and because it believes it may not have money to pay for the potential damages associated with these cases. 

CEO and cofounder Anne Wojcicki announced she is leaving the company as part of this process. The company has the genetic data of more than 15 million customers.

According to its Chapter 11 filing, 23andMe owes money to a host of pharmaceutical companies, pharmacies, artificial intelligence companies (including a company called Aganitha AI and Coreweave), as well as health insurance companies and marketing companies. 

The filing is a devastating reminder that once you give your genetic information to a company like 23andMe, there is no way to have any clue what is going to happen to that data, how it is going to be analyzed, how it is going to be monetized, how it is going to be protected from hackers, and who it is going to be shared with for profit. Sharing your own DNA with 23andMe also necessarily implicates your close family members, who may or may not want their genetic information submitted to a company that is financially precarious and sitting on a trove of highly sensitive information.

On Friday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued an “urgent” alert to 23andMe customers telling them to ask the company to delete their data and destroy their genetic samples under a California privacy law: “Given 23andMe’s reported financial distress, I remind Californians to consider invoking their rights and directing 23andMe to delete their data and destroy any samples of genetic material held by the company.” 

Other genetic sequencing companies have shared customer information with police and governments, pharmaceutical companies, and health insurers. GED Match, a non-profit that once claimed it would protect customers’ genetic data, was sold to a for-profit company called Verogen, which works with the FBI and was later sold to a Dutch multinational conglomerate. Police now regularly attempt to identify suspects using information pulled from commercial genetic databases like the one that 23andMe has created.

23andMe’s bankruptcy means that the company will be put up for sale, and there’s no way of knowing who is going to buy it, why they will be interested, and what will become of its millions of customers’ DNA sequences. 23andMe has claimed over the years that it strongly resists law enforcement requests for information and that it takes customer security seriously. But the company has in recent years changed its terms of service, partnered with big pharmaceutical companies, and, of course, was hacked. 

In a letter to customers Sunday, 23andMe said “Your data remains protected. The Chapter 11 filing does not change how we store, manage, or protect customer data. Our users’ privacy and data are important considerations in any transaction, and we remain committed to our users’ privacy and to being transparent with our customers about how their data is managed.” It added that any buyer will have to “comply with applicable law with respect to the treatment of customer data,” which means essentially nothing because there are few laws that protect against the monetization of customer genetic data, as evidenced by the fact that other genetic databases proactively offer information to law enforcement and partner with big pharma. 

The company now could be sold to anyone, and there is no way to know what that buyer will want to do with the reams of genetic information it has collected. Customers, meanwhile, still have no way to change their underlying genetic data.

Tesla’s share price has been having a hard time of it lately. The stock has lost about half its value since its all-time high back in December, and, since Musk took office alongside Donald Trump in January, dropped for 7 consecutive weeks, rebounding only ever-so-slightly last week, after Musk got the president of the United States to turn the White House lawn into a cheesy Tesla (sorry, Tesler) dealership. Tesla stock dropped another 5 percent today, on a day when the overall market was slightly up.

I bookmarked this Bryce Elder column at the Financial Times back on January 31, and now seems like a good time to link to it:

The usual explanation for when Tesla trading resembles a Pump.fun shitcoin is: “because Elon talks a lot”. Here’s JPMorgan analyst Ryan Brinkman to expand on the theme:

It’s not clear to us why Tesla shares traded as much as +5% higher in the aftermarket Wednesday, although we have some leading theories. Perhaps it was management’s statement that it had identified an achievable path to becoming worth more than the world’s five most valuable companies taken together (i.e., more than the $14.8 trillion combined market capitalizations of Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Amazon, & Alphabet). Or maybe it was management’s belief that just one of its products has by itself the potential to generate “north of $10 trillion in revenue”. It may have even related to management guidance for 2026 (no financial targets were provided, but it was said to be “epic”) and for 2027 and 2028 (“ridiculously good”).

Brinkman, who has a long-standing “underweight” rating on Tesla, is beginning to sound a bit exasperated:

[T]he company’s financial performance and Bloomberg consensus for revenue, margin, earnings, and cash flow all keep coming down, but analyst price targets and the company’s share price keep going up. For instance, Tesla has missed Bloomberg consensus EBIT in 9 of the past 10 quarters by an average of -16.3%.

Consistently missing estimates is one thing. What Tesla has been doing is consistently missing lowered estimates. [...]

Tesla’s biggest asset is hyperbole. The more extreme the hyperbole, the more valuable it gets. Maybe after-hours market participants understand the dynamics better than Tesla bears, so are primed to park fundamentals and trade on vibes. Or maybe something else entirely is going on.

Sounds a lot like the other guy at the White House Auto Mall.

Om Malik:

I have my own explanation, something my readers are familiar with, and it is the most obvious one. Just as Google is trapped in the 10-blue-link prison, which prevents it from doing something radical, Apple has its own golden handcuffs. It’s a company weighed down by its market capitalization and what stock market expects from it.

They lack the moral authority of Steve Jobs to defy the markets, streamline their product lineup, and focus the company. Instead, they do what a complex business often does: they do more. Could they have done a better job with iPadOS? Should Vision Pro receive more attention?

The answer to all those is yes. Apple has become a complex entity that can’t seem to ever have enough resources to provide the real Apple experience. What you get is “good enough.” And most of the time, I think it is enough — because what others have on the market is worse. They know how to build great hardware; it’s the software where they falter. In the case of Apple Intelligence, they have been caught short because others’ AI products, even when flawed, are significantly better than Apple’s own offerings.

Hardware inherently keeps a company honest in a way that software doesn’t. Hardware either works or it doesn’t. The only way to “upgrade” hardware is via installing newer software, or by taking the hardware apart and replacing physical components. It’s hard to think of a company, in any field, whose software is “better” than its hardware. Maybe Nintendo? But even with Nintendo, I’d say it’s more like their software is as good as their hardware. Also, an interesting thought that popped into my head reading Malik’s post just now: part of what makes Vision Pro so fascinating is that the software is better than the hardware. The hardware for immersive VR is so early-days that even the industry state-of-the-art — which is Vision Pro — stinks compared to where it’s going to be in even just five years. The 1984 Macintosh was a shitty computer with a 9-inch one-bit display, no hard drive, and an absurdly meager 128 kilobytes of RAM. But the software was amazing!

But the bigger, better point Malik makes is that “good enough” is enough to make Apple’s software seem ahead of its competition. I tried to make this point all the way back in 2007 with “Apple Needs a Nikon”, and I think the problem is worse now than it was then. No other company is even vaguely in Apple’s league. But Apple is sliding toward mediocrity on the software side. It very open for debate how far they’ve slipped. I, for one, would argue that they haven’t slipped far, and with an honest reckoning — especially with regard to everything related to Siri and AI — they can nip this in the bud. You might argue that they’ve slipped tremendously across the board. But what I don’t think is arguable is that their competition remains below Apple’s league. That’s what gives credence to the voices in Cupertino who are arguing that everything’s fine. Apple’s the only team in the top tier for UI design.

The best thing that could happen to Apple would be for Google to ship an Android Pixel experience that actually makes iPhone owners insanely jealous. Google is incapable of doing that through UI design. They’re incapable of catching up to Apple on hardware. But maybe on the AI front they can do it. Apple needs a rival.

I had the honor of another short segment on NPR’s Marketplace this morning. I spoke about the state of cyber crime, and the impact of US government changes on cyber defense.

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Dear Atlas,

Route 66! The completist in me wants to do every inch of it, but the realist in me knows that I can’t afford a vacation of that length. If I want to get the Route 66 feel without doing the whole thing, what parts are not to be missed?

As much as Route 66 is an icon of Americana road tripping, the reality today is that a continuous route no longer exists in its entirety. Sections of the highway were gradually replaced with other interstates over the years, until the official Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985.

That doesn’t mean you can’t still experience the nostalgia of the automobile journey—its ghostly impressions are still scattered across pit stops, small towns, and lonely swaths of desert. You’ll just want to head to specific sections in order to capture the feel from the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, when the route was at its peak. And luckily I-40 runs pretty much exactly along the old highway for nearly 1,000 miles, from Oklahoma City to Barstow, California.

Our first suggestion for a more Atlas Obscura experience? Skip the biggest cities. Of course many urban areas within the route—from the start in Chicago to its end in Los Angeles—have their own worthwhile hotspots, including notable plaques and museums commemorating the historic highway. Yet going through a major metropolis with over a million residents feels more like a hunt for hidden Easter eggs rather than a fuller immersion into the past.

If you want a more transportive journey, it’s the liminal spaces in between the skyscrapers that have remained the most unchanged, where dreamlike muffler men wave at passersby and abandoned gas stations are scattered like old pop bottles tossed out the window.

To capture that feeling, head to the stretch between Tulsa, Oklahoma and Flagstaff, Arizona. Rather than simply zipping from point A to point B, you’ll want to give yourself a few hours each day to take detours off the highway, since pit stops are what capture the nostalgic feel. In terms of choosing a direction, we’d say start with what’s most familiar.

If you live on the West Coast, head east, and vice versa. That’s not just for convenience, it’s also to capture the authentic historical feeling of people starting from their own driveways and being more and more wowed as they witnessed changing landscapes the further they got from their homes.

Oklahoma

On the Oklahoma end, start (or end) in Foyil at the monument to Andy Payne, a Cherokee Nation citizen who ran and won a 3,400-mile race—like a real-life Forrest Gump—as part of a campaign to promote Route 66. Then walk through the mouth of the famous Blue Whale and jump off its tale into the Catoosa swimming hole.

Next, catch sight of your first muffler man at the legendary Buck Atom’s Cosmic Curios, which is as attention-grabbing as it was intended to be to broadcast auto shops, restaurants, and stores to road travelers. The 21-foot-tall fiberglass statue sits near two other Route 66 treasures in Tulsa: the Meadow Gold Sign and Blue Dome.

Then get out of town. The original 66 highway zigzags along with I-44 before disappearing in chunks around Oklahoma City, and then reemerges intertwined with I-40. On your way, stop by a motorcycle museum, an old counterfeiting filling station, a giant milk bottle, and a 66-foot-tall neon soda statue. Before leaving the state, check out a museum dedicated to the Mother Road and a Ferris wheel that once signaled the route’s end in Santa Monica, so you don't even have to fret about making it to California.

Texas

The highway then enters Texas, where quite a few Route 66 stops have been restored. Detour to U-Drop Inn, an Art Deco cafe that was once a crowded must-visit for road trippers, including Elvis. Then drive with a full tank to a restored 1929 gas station just for its retro vibes, as it’s no longer functioning, as well as the severely tilted water tower, meant to scare nervous drivers into a long-gone shop.

On the way, pop in to the Devil’s Rope Museum for its display of Route 66 artifacts in addition to the extensive barbed wire collection. And of course don’t skip Cadillac Ranch, an automobile art installation that inspired others around the country.

Before fully leaving the state, make sure to stop by the ghost town of Glenrio straddling the border of New Mexico, which dried up when the Mother Road was decommissioned. Make a similar detour to the ruins of a western-themed amusement park. On your way there, do like the original tourists and visit the Blue Hole oasis, then chow down at the Route 66 Diner.

New Mexico

Since Native American culture was often appropriated and exploited along Route 66 with inaccurate stereotypes, local Indigenous tribes have been working to reclaim stretches with their own representation.

On your way through Albuquerque, stop by Indian Pueblo Kitchen, a Route 66 hotel, and the Gaits’i Gift Shop that sells pottery, textiles, and jewelry, as the Acoma people often did to Route 66 tourists in the 20th century.

Arizona

The longest stretch of preserved Route 66 spans through Arizona, as if preserved by the dry desert air. Get a warm welcome into the state at the Petrified Forest National Park and Painted Desert, full of colorful fossilized trees that have long attracted Route 66ers. On your way out, pass the rusted 1932 automobile stationed at a pullout overlooking the park as an ode to America’s Main Street. Continuing to several abandoned sites, see the remains of violent Wild West towns at Bucket of Blood Street, Canyon Diablo, and Two Guns.

Pass more ruins of old trading posts at Ella’s Frontier and Twin Arrows, or visit the still-functioning trading posts at Jack Rabbit and Historic Peach Springs. Skip any appropriating Wigwam hotels and instead enjoy an Indigenous-owned experience at Hualapai Lodge. Spend some time in the revived town of Winslow and end in Flagstaff. There you can visit a historic taxidermy-museum-turned-bar, continue onward to more ghost towns before hitting California, or wrap up your trip by heading to the nearby Grand Canyon.

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Danielle Hallock is a former senior editor at Atlas Obscura, Thrillist, and Culture Trip, as well as a writer for National Geographic, Well+Good, and Time Out. She's been working in travel since 2018, after four years as a managing editor at Penguin Random House. As a Chilean-American, crossing cultures and mountains is in her nature, and she continues to grow her collection of books, bagged summits, and passport stamps. Though she has a hard time sitting still, Brooklyn has become her base camp.