I think it was last week.
Although honestly it’s getting harder to remember when exactly things happen, because “happy apocalypse” has kinda become my default greeting.
In general, I think most of us can agree that things are looking… less than rosy out there.
And for whatever reason, keeping a sense of humor about it helps me enormously.
So: happy apocalypse, everyone.
Last week I watched an interview with the CEO of Anthropic about their conflict with the current administration over how AI is being used.
I hated the interviewer almost instantly.
She kept asking questions like:
“Do you really think a private company knows better than the government what’s best for American safety?”
Which, on the surface, sounds reasonable.
But it’s actually a ridiculous question.
In the before times, the obvious answer would have been no. Governments are supposed to protect the public interest. Corporations are supposed to pursue profit.
But we are not living in the before times.
We’re living in a moment when a private company happens to be building an emergent technology that is evolving exponentially faster than almost anything humanity has ever seen. A technology with the capacity to reshape reality as we know it.
In that sense, it’s actually not so different from magic.
So the whole line of questioning felt like comparing apples and oranges.
Anyway.
What actually impressed me was the CEO himself.
I thought he handled the situation beautifully.
He stayed completely in his lane. He calmly explained why they would not cross certain ethical lines around how their technology is used. He articulated what was acceptable and what wasn’t.
And somehow he managed to do all of this without trash-talking the other side.
Which, frankly, is almost impossible.
The administration involved in the dispute is… extremely easy to critique. Most people I know would not have been able to resist pointing out the incompetence, cruelty, or short-sightedness involved.
But he didn’t do that.
He simply said that the government’s approach felt retaliatory and punitive.
And left it there.
Fucking hero.
A few days later something poetic happened.
Anthropic’s AI assistant, Claude, became the number one app in the App Store, beating their evil arch-rival ChatGPT (whose parent company Open AI seems totally willing to sell their soul for a buck to the military).
Righteousness prevailing. A small moment of justice.
Will that moment translate into anything meaningful in the long term? I have no idea.
It may not stop governments from expanding mass surveillance on their citizens.
It may not stop the deployment of fully automated weapons systems that can make killing easier, faster, and frighteningly detached from human judgment.
But for a moment, it gave me hope.
Because what Dario Amodei did was the last thing I expect from tech bros:
He articulated his values, explained why they were not up for negotiation, defined his boundaries, and somehow managed to do it without descending into hostility or pettiness, even when hostility and pettiness would have been completely understandable.
Also worth noting: Mr. Amodei is not some dazzling public speaker. He stutters a little. I thought his eye contact with the interviewer was somewhat awkward.
But his message was fire, and it sent his company through the heights of success and public support.
He was genuine, and when something is genuinely true, people can feel it.
In a world that is increasingly chaotic, manipulative, and loud, that kind of clarity is rare.
And deeply needed.
May we all learn to speak our truth that clearly.
Courage, truth, and infinite love,
P.S. Moments like that interview are a good reminder that clarity is a skill. Staying centered when things get chaotic, knowing what you stand for, communicating your truth without getting dragged into someone else’s framing… none of that happens by accident. It’s something you can learn and practice. That’s a big part of what we do inside Liberation Magic. The next cohort starts March 25.
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I don’t believe in magic, but I know that it works!
Magic is not a belief system, it’s a practice that works. Don’t believe me? Come try it out. If it doesn’t work, you lose nothing. But if it does… your dream life is about to begin!
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“El poder está en la acción.”
— Maritza Schafer