Reporting on startups, founders + the consumer economy for @Inc @WGAEast. Alum of @ColumbiaJournMA @BloombergTV @Business @CNN @UVA. Virginian. Wahoo.
Brooklyn, NY
Joined August 2014
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In the past 18 months, @xx_xyathletics has become a prominent and polarizing symbol, appearing at school board meetings, youth sporting events, and the U.S. Open.
Founder @JenniferSey says critics have helped her athletic brand grow even faster.
For @Inc
inc.com/ali-donaldson/appare…
Ali Donaldson retweeted
I think the fact that Marissa Mayer would voluntarily disclose this to a reporter is a pretty good demonstration of how deeply the culture of Silicon Valley has diverged from the rest of humanity
I’m going to need a @PabloTorre investigation into this asap
Ali Donaldson retweeted
Vivek Ramaswamy is a terrible candidate for many good reasons, including his recent decisions but it is very funny that “loves tennis” is so foregrounded as an insult in this attack ad against him.
Ali Donaldson retweeted
NEWS: the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders have unionized and the Cowboys have agreed to recognize the union
Ali Donaldson retweeted
Polymarket is taking bets on whether the seven Cornell students accused of raping a student will receive a felony sex crime charge.
Among the athletes endorsing Polymarket:
LeBron James, Derek Jeter, Eli Manning, Sue Bird, Reggie Bush and Richard Sherman.
“I had a Coors Light…maybe a couple…alright three.”
The mountains were definitely blue.
"I had three beers, okay!"
Piers Morgan grills Indiana Democratic candidate Jaime West on whether she had been drinking before her viral interview, where she claimed she would ‘fire all Republicans’.
📺 youtu.be/rcg4BzNXQxU
@piersmorgan
Ali Donaldson retweeted
Mic’d up Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart teaching the Cal marching band how to play Fire On The Mountain is easily the most pure thing I’ve seen this entire college football season. All of this, please!💀🌹⚡️
As an intern in the DC office, I used to do my grocery shopping in the pantry.
I took home whole avocados, kiwis, every snack you can imagine.
Everyone wants to tell me how great their office pantry is but after the Bloomberg pantry nothing can surprise me. The Bloomberg pantry is the size of a small regional airport. The Bloomberg pantry has a fresh peanut butter machine and matcha on tap. The Bloomberg pantry makes the Thrive Capital pantry look positively soviet. Its memory will drive you to tears whenever you visit another newsroom
Ali Donaldson retweeted
it's insane that the world's biggest retailer can't just figure this stuff out
Long after @kashhill and others flagged this problem, Amazon is still getting gamed by print-on-demand slop publishers. This is what the search results for The AGI Chronicles look like.
First result: real book. Second result: AI lookalike by “K. Rose.”
Embarrassing!
Ali Donaldson retweeted
Moody’s and S&P rated this company as investment grade and its debt is going to be all over retirement and annuity accounts:
SpaceX looks to raise $40bn to buy Nvidia chips in financing led by Apollo ft.trib.al/AXTvVlK
Ali Donaldson retweeted
idk who needs to hear this but facing adversity is when you like, overcome being on food stamps or have to rehab after a car accident
it’s not sexually assaulting dozens of women, settling out of court, and then continuing to play football
Tony Gonzalez said he was "proud and happy" for Deshaun Watson, citing the "adversity" the quarterback faced off the field.
awfulannouncing.com/amazon/t…
Serious question: Why would anyone use AI to check into a flight? This is already a one-click task. It’s not hard.
This is my thesis: no one uses AI. I repeat, absolutely no one. We live in a bubble.
Even among my friends who pay for it, when I ask them to open ChatGPT and show me their queries, it’s the same handful of basic things.
Most don’t even know they can upload a photo and ask questions about it. Connecting Gmail so an agent can read and send emails blows their minds. An agent opening a browser and checking them into a flight? They’ve never even heard of it.
The massive challenge right now is adoption, and then getting people who already signed up to actually use what they’re paying for. Most have absolutely zero clue what’s possible.
Imagine the compute shortage when everyone starts using AI like the top 1% of users do today.
Ali Donaldson retweeted
I would give almost anything to have been in the room to watch the guy whose job it was to convince a Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas graduate that his boss has successfully matched God and created a soul.
NEW: According to a bombshell report in the New York Times, Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah threatened to walk out of Pope Leo XIV’s AI encyclical launch in May because the pope rejected the idea that machines can be conscious.
Olah’s team then privately lobbied the pope’s advisers “to take the possibility of model consciousness seriously.” Pope Leo XIV held firm.
For months, Anthropic has wined and dined theologians and religious scholars under nondisclosure agreements, hoping they would bless the idea that Claude has moral standing. thelettersfromleo.com/p/nyt-…
