Taylor Lorenz’s Power User

Inside the Case That Could Change Protesting Forever
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This week on Free Speech Friday, I sat down with independent investigative journalist Andrew Fedorov, whose bombshell Mother Jones piece reveals the horrors of the Prairieland case, which was one of the harshest protest sentencing outcomes in modern U.S. history. 
Activists who gathered outside a Texas ICE detention center on July 4th are now facing sentences ranging from 30 to 100 years, with combined sentencing for the group reaching over 580 years.
 Andrew sat in the courtroom for the entire trial, interviewed the defendants' friends and families, and pieced together a detailed timeline of what actually happened that night. We break down the real story of how these activists were persecuted and how the government built its case using Signal chats and iCloud backups.
 
We break down:
Who the Prairieland activists actually are and how they got involved

What really happened outside the ICE facility on July 4th

How the government used signal chats, iCloud data, and TikTok activity as evidence

Why one man is facing 30 years and deportation for moving a box of zines

What these sentences mean for the future of protest and free speech in America

Why big tech companies are complying with government subpoenas targeting anti-ICE accounts

This is a case everyone should understand because prosecutors are already calling it a successful blueprint, and similar cases are emerging in Minnesota, Washington, and beyond.
Read Andrew Fedorov's full investigation, "How Anti-ICE Protesters Became Prisoners in Trump's War on Antifa," linked below.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/07/prairieland-texas-antifa-trial-ice-protesters-terrorism-conspiracy/

The Wild Rise and Fall of Leopold Aschenbrenner
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Until a week ago, Leopold Aschenbrenner was hailed as the "Nostradamus of AI". A 24-year-old former OpenAI researcher whose 165-page manifesto, Situational Awareness, convinced Silicon Valley and Wall Street that superintelligence was coming faster than anyone expected, his hedge fund ballooned to over $20 billion. Then, it came crashing down. 
In this episode of Power User, WSJ reporter Berber Jin joins me to break down the meteoric rise and fall of Leopold Aschenbrenner, from his early days in the effective altruism movement and FTX's Future Fund, to his controversial exit from OpenAI, to the margin calls, Citadel bailout, and chaos that unfolded the very same week he got married
 We discuss what Aschenbrenner's spectacular blowup tells us about Silicon Valley, AI hype, and the rush to bet billions on AI.
Follow Berber Jin (Wall Street Journal): https://twitter.com/berber_jin 
Read Berber's story: https://www.wsj.com/finance/leopold-aschenbrenner-situational-awareness-ai-fund-597633d3

Everyone got this viral lawsuit totally wrong.
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This week, a viral story claimed Elon Musk's xAI is suing Minnesota so that he can create AI-generated CS*M. That false claim exploded across social media, but it leaves out the most important part.   
 
In this episode of Free Speech Friday, I sit down with First Amendment scholar Jeff Kosseff to break down Minnesota's new AI law, why xAI is challenging it, why major civil liberties orgs like the ACLU are also against the law, and why free speech advocates across the country say the law raises serious concerns.
This convo is NOT defending Elon Musk. It is about understanding how AI regulation can produce unintended consequences and why even laws that claim to do good can do immense harm to us all. 
 
We discuss:
The $500,000-per-image penalties facing AI companies

How the law could affect image generators, creative software, and indie developers

Why First Amendment scholars are sounding the alarm

The risks of strict liability for AI platforms

The chilling effect on online speech and creative expression

Whether AI-generated content deserves First Amendment protection

How this compares to Section 230, FOSTA-SESTA, and the Take It Down Act

Why regulating platforms instead of bad actors may have unintended consequences

Is AI destroying human literature? 
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You might have seen the viral videos of a "book guillotine" slicing the spines off thousands of books in a massive warehouse. Last week, the internet exploded after videos surfaced showing Anthropic cutting the spines off thousands of books to train AI models. Social media quickly filled with claims that AI companies were destroying rare books, erasing human knowledge, and building a future where artificial intelligence replaces libraries.
 But is that actually what happened?
In this episode of Power User, I sit down with tech policy expert Derek Slater, who worked on the original Google Books project, to explain why Anthropic is actually scanning books and destroying physical copies afterward, how decades of copyright law (not just AI) created this bizarre situation, and how we can actually save the books!!
 
We discuss:
Why Anthropic buys books by the pallet

Whether rare books are actually being destroyed

How Google Books handled digitization

Why copyright law incentivizes destroying books

The Internet Archive lawsuits

Fair use and AI training

The future of libraries in the AI era

Why the viral outrage missed the bigger story

Nantucket's "No Influencers" Sign Started a Gender and Class War, Here's What It's Really About
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Last week, the internet exploded after a small Nantucket shop posted a simple sign reading "No Influencers." What started as a local controversy quickly became a national debate about influencer culture, old money, quiet luxury, class, authenticity, and the future of social media.
In this bonus episode of Power User, I'm joined by freelance reporter Andrea Domanick, co-host of The Culture Journalist podcast and newsletter, to unpack the most cursed discourse of the summer. We get into why this fight is not actually about one sign or one influencer, and who gets to define status, taste, and authenticity in America's most exclusive spaces. 
We explore:
The Four Winds Craft Guild controversy

Paige Lorenz and Dairy Boy

Quiet luxury and the old money aesthetic

The rise of influencer culture

Why "influencer" has become a loaded word

The history of influencer bans

Social media, class, and cultural capital

Why privacy has become the ultimate luxury