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Elizabeth Lopatto

Elizabeth Lopatto

Senior Reporter

Elizabeth Lopatto is a senior writer at The Verge, where she covers how the internet is changing how we think about money: cryptocurrency, business, fintech and Elon Musk for some reason.

She joined the site in 2014, as science editor, then deputy editor running science, transportation and social media, before she got tired of being an authority figure and went back to blogging.

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JD Vance-backed startup had Kentucky workers in “grueling conditions.”

Vance, who was an investor, board member, and spokesman, claimed AppHarvest was “a great business that’s making a big difference in the world.” It declared bankruptcy last year.

Several former employees told CNN they thought Vance and other board members should have recognized and responded to warning signs that company officials were misleading the public and their own investors.


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Literary magazine McSweeney’s has some thoughts on Elon Musk’s lawsuits.

Randal Cooper imagines a response to a user trying to quit the platform formerly known as Twitter:

These actions constitute an illegal one-person boycott that infringes on our client’s constitutional right to free speech, as well as his right to monetize that speech in several ways, and has caused him irreparable harm.


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Medialab bought Imgur, Genius, and Amino. But the founders of those sites say Medialab isn’t paying up.

Medialab, started by Whisper co-founders Michael Heyward and Brad Brooks, has left a trail of lawsuits following its acquisitions. Apparently it loaded up on cheap debt — and the Genius lawsuit alleges that it’s slow-rolling its acquisition payments to service that debt.


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How online should a doctor be?

Byron Bernstein had six livestreamed conversations with Alok Kanojia, a psychiatrist. Then Bernstein died by suicide. Were those conversations ethical?


The Gamer and the Psychiatrist

[The New York Times]

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A whale joined the Olympic surfers.

Yesterday, we got a cetacean entry in the annals of photobombing. Congratulations to everyone involved, and also to me, since I have watched this clip like 10 times.


New York Times can add another seven million works to its complaint against OpenAI and Microsoft.

The newspaper will file an amended complaint by August 12. If the Times wins its suit, adding those works means those two companies are on the hook for a minimum of $7.5 billion in statutory damages alone.


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The terror machines at Elliot Management view Nvidia as overvalued and say AI isn’t going to live up to the hype.

Elliott Management, famous for targeting underperforming companies such as Twitter, says Nvidia is in a bubble, in a new letter to investors.

Many of AI’s supposed uses are “never going to be cost-efficient, are never going to actually work right, will take up too much energy, or will prove to be untrustworthy”, it said.