Better Offline

This week’s Better Offline is the first joint episode with Riley, November, Hussein from TrashFuture, covering SoftBank’s crazy annual shareholder meeting and the general collapse of the AI bubble.

Ed Zitron and the TF Crew are on both your feeds this week to discuss the Softbank slide deck breakdown you’ve all been waiting for. It’s nothing other than the goose, and whether or not the goose was valued, and what kind of factory does a goose use to make golden eggs.

Shareholder deck for following along:
https://group.softbank/media/Project/sbg/sbg/pdf/ir/investors/shareholders/2026/shareholders-meeting_46_05_en.pdf
https://trashfuture.co.uk/
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In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through Meta’s plans to sell its AI compute, and how this is an admission to the grim fact that there isn’t really a reason for anyone to be building all these AI data centers.

Ed Zitron on CNBC: Generative AI's Business Model Does Not Work, And Tech Is Out Of Hypergrowth Ideas
https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/comments/1ulm3a6/ed_zitron_on_cnbc_generative_ais_business_model/
Bloomberg - Meta Is Planning a Cloud Business to Sell AI Computing Power
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-01/meta-is-building-a-cloud-business-to-sell-excess-ai-compute
The Information - Nvidia Says It Will Take a Cut of Some Customers’ Cloud Revenues
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/nvidia-says-will-take-cut-customers-cloud-revenues?rc=kz8jh3

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YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more.
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In this week’s Better Offline, Ed talks with the Wall Street Journal’s Caitlin Ostroff and Katherine Long about how Polymarket is working with influencers to show videos of fake bets cashing out - and how the prediction markets have grown into a large, barely-regulated operation.

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They Looked Like They Were Getting Rich on Polymarket—but None of It Was Real - https://www.wsj.com/business/media/polymarket-social-media-bets-prediction-market-441cdeb5?st=57dR12&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Caitlin Ostroff
https://x.com/ceostroff
https://bsky.app/profile/ceostroff.bsky.social
https://www.wsj.com/news/author/caitlin-ostroff
Katherine Long
https://bsky.app/profile/klong.bsky.social
https://x.com/ByKLong
https://www.wsj.com/news/author/katherine-long
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how organizations are freaking out after having to pay the real cost of AI tokens, and how the surge of competitive open weight models could lead to the post-bubble locally-run future of LLMs.
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YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. Buy our new “FUCK DATA CENTERS” shirts today!
---
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Ed's Socials:
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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how AI is the pinnacle of Silicon Valley monoculture, and a monument to the cargo cult desperation of a tech industry that celebrates mediocrity and has run out of ideas.
Newsletter: Cargo Culture: https://www.wheresyoured.at/cargo-culture/
OpenAI Exclusive: https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/
Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1 - I’d be so grateful!
YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. Buy our new “FUCK DATA CENTERS” shirts today!
---
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Email Me: ez@betteroffline.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.