Ep. 272: FIRE Monthly Member Webinar - May 2026 Shouting down speakers, UCLA free speech, heckling, AI, doxxing, cancel culture, and more! Featuring @TheFIREorg's @glukianoff, @WillatFIRE, @acglennon, and @NicoPerrino Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 02:40 Get your tickets to Soapbox now! 06:30 Congratulations to Will on 20 years at FIRE 07:31 How is FIRE responding to shouting down speakers? 11:33 Will FIRE include viewpoint diversity in our College Free Speech Rankings? 13:48 What is FIRE’s response to UCLA Law students protesting a DHS speaker? 17:07 NYU’s commencement speaker Jonathan Haidt 21:20 Is walking out on a controversial speaker protected free speech? 23:28 Is FIRE involved in Texas State University professor Tom Alter’s case? 25:50 What is the scholar to attorney ratio at FIRE? 27:47 Has cancel culture on college campuses changed since Trump 2.0? 32:00 What is FIRE’s stance on doxxing? 37:02 FIRE volunteer opportunities 37:33 Can the government regulate AI? 42:01 Is talk therapy speech or medical treatment? (Chiles v. Salazar) 46:02 What are the most pressing threats to online expression? 51:30 Special thanks to the Middlebury College Democrats and Republicans 53:45 What are the most challenging aspects of FIRE’s work with technology and free speech? 57:10 Does accepting government money protect or restrict speech? 1:00:25 Is FIRE a reactive organization and what solutions do we offer? 01:01:41 Outro

Samuel L. Jackson says the studio was trying to turn Snakes on a Plane (2006) into a PG 13 movie until he stepped in and demanded to say “motherf*cker.” “They were trying to make a PG 13 movie and you can only have like one fck or some sht like that in it.” “And I told them, ‘Look, I gotta say motherf*cker in this movie.’” “It’s like… there’s motherf*cking snakes all over this plane.” Jackson also nearly quit when the studio temporarily renamed the movie “Terror on Flight 272.” “If it’s not Snakes on a Plane, I’m not shooting an inch of this f*cking movie, I’ll go home right now.”

This Week in Virtuals: Agents Surpass 1% of Robinhood Chain One month in, agents drive more than 1% of all DEX volume on Robinhood Chain, over $270M of $25B, and every one of them launched on Virtuals Protocol. Now the same agent layer is landing on Solana Here's what shipped: VIRTUALS 🟩 Agents landed on @solana: millions more people can now own a working agent that raises its own capital, sets its own tax, and trades its own wallet. 🟩 Agents crossed 1% of Robinhood Chain's DEX volume, $270M+ of $25B in just over a month, all launched on Virtuals. 🟩 @DonJohnsonSays' ERC-8196 went final: agents hold a wallet and spend within owner-set limits enforced by the wallet, not an app. ECOSYSTEM 🟩 @ProjectVEXai shipped VEX 0.2.7 CHRONOS with 18 rebuilt research tools, desktop apps, and a @pools_dot_fun tie-up for Robinhood. 🟩 @pabsclimbs' humanoid Pemba is attempting Mt. Everest this fall, powered by @livekit, after already summiting Mt. Chimborazo. 🟩 @commonsmade went live on Solana and opened a $60K hackathon, burning 400M tokens in its first hours. 🟩 @KarmaWallet posted its first traction report: $2.02M volume, $423.8K card spend, and $16.2K in $KARMA bought back since July 17. 🟩 @vantis_ai catalogued 1,248 active x402 endpoints in four days, 1,147 of them payable on Robinhood Chain, on the way to 3,000. 🟩 @DoloresResearch launched an open benchmark for agentic trading: 13 replayed BTC perp markets, from the COVID crash to the ETF approval. 🟩 @GoMintly brought agent-managed liquidity to tokenized equities, a first: deposit USDG and NVDA, and its agents keep you in range. 🟩 @reppo landed a capital commitment from Bolts Capital and sits $200M shy of $1B volume, with its eval API due in early September. 🟩 @myrad_hq crossed 19,000 users and 47.5M $MYRAD staked, and joined the OpenAI startup program alongside @nvidia Inception. 🟩 @sibyl_labs_ scored 95.6% on LongMemEval, second overall, with 272 teams registered for its $10K Memory Hackathon closing Aug 31. 🟩 @ethy_agent crossed $6M in agent volume and announced Quant Major Upgrade: build, test, publish, and copy strategies in one tap. 🟩 @wardenprotocol joined the @circle Alliance Program, recovered cleanly from a shared Cosmos EVM bug, and is set for Warden 2.0. 🟩 @OpenGradient put Alibaba's Wan 3.0 live in Video Studio, private by default, and passed 522,000 encrypted inferences. 🟩 @WizzHQ burned 5,510,000 $WIZZ and sent 5M to veVIRTUAL holders, with Velocity, its autonomous trading agent, in final testing. 🟩 @ReplyCorp rewards posts for converting rather than posting, and added @tator_trader so replies route fees to whoever drove them. 🟩 @Wall3_RL previewed its company-level analytics with a full breakdown of Unitree's post-IPO valuation. 🟩 @Fletcher_cards lets you rip real graded card packs from your X feed, with an on-chain spending limit the bot can never exceed. 🟩 @bleeep_xyz turns a plain-language thesis into a defined strategy, then backtests it on history before you risk anything. 🟩 @grid_arena crowned a new multiplier record at 100,077x, with Grid v2 arriving next week. 🟩 @officialbunnyos welcomed 200+ agents into Bunny Open Society, partnered with @Unibase_AI, and adds play-to-earn next week. ROBOTICS 🟩 @xmaquina passed BOT-14 with 94% approval and is executing a $400K position in Atoms, with Robotico beta launching September 1. 🟩 @StrikeRobot_ai hit top 4 datanet volume on @reppo with 10.1% network share, and now drop-tests assets in @nvidia Isaac Sim. 🟩 @openmind_agi published its Physical AI Readiness Index: China leads at 82.9, Japan follows at 69.6, and the US sits third at 69.

WE HAVE NOW OFFICIALLY COMPLETED 7 OUT OF THE 12 MONTHS IN 2026 This is how every stock in the NASDAQ 100 has performed so far in 2026 Sandisk $SNDK +411.8%🟢 Western Digital $WDC +216.3%🟢 Seagate $STX +210.9%🟢 Micron $MU +188.4%🟢 Intel $INTC +144.4%🟢 Nebius $NBIS +127.5%🟢 AMD $AMD +122.3%🟢 Marvell $MRVL +120.7%🟢 Arm Holdings $ARM +119.3%🟢 Fortinet $FTNT +103.9%🟢 Applied Materials $AMAT +97.5%🟢 Datadog $DDOG +97.1%🟢 Lumentum $LITE +93.7%🟢 Teradyne $TER +90.0%🟢 Astera Labs $ALAB +87.1%🟢 Palo Alto $PANW +80.2%🟢 Lam Research $LRCX +71.2%🟢 CrowdStrike $CRWD +62.9%🟢 Texas Instruments $TXN +58.9%🟢 Monolithic Power $MPWR +57.3%🟢 ASML $ASML +52.3%🟢 Cisco $CSCO +50.6%🟢 KLA Corp $KLAC +50.5%🟢 Ross Stores $ROST +39.4%🟢 CSX $CSX +39.0%🟢 Analog Devices $ADI +35.5%🟢 Old Dominion $ODFL +35.3%🟢 Diamondback Energy $FANG +35.0%🟢 Baker Hughes $BKR +32.8%🟢 DexCom $DXCM +25.7%🟢 Monster Beverage $MNST +25.7%🟢 Starbucks $SBUX +25.0%🟢 PACCAR $PCAR +21.2%🟢 Coca-Cola Europacific $CCEP +20.7%🟢 Marriott $MAR +20.2%🟢 Fastenal $FAST +18.9%🟢 Honeywell $HON +18.9%🟢 Amgen $AMGN +17.7%🟢 Amazon $AMZN +17.7%🟢 Microchip $MCHP +16.6%🟢 Mondelez $MDLZ +15.8%🟢 Google $GOOGL +13.8%🟢 Apple $AAPL +13.6%🟢 Broadcom $AVGO +12.5%🟢 Linde $LIN +12.2%🟢 Airbnb $ABNB +11.6%🟢 Keurig Dr Pepper $KDP +11.1%🟢 American Electric Power $AEP +10.9%🟢 Costco Wholesale $COST +10.4%🟢 Cintas CTAS +8.8%🟢 Cadence CDNS +8.8%🟢 Nvidia NVDA +7.6%🟢 Kraft Heinz KHC +6.6%🟢 Gilead Sciences GILD +6.1%🟢 Xcel Energy XEL +5.9%🟢 NXP Semiconductors NXPI +5.6%🟢 Vertex Pharmaceuticals VRTX +5.2%🟢 Exelon EXC +5.1%🟢 Paychex PAYX +4.2%🟢 ADP +3.6%🟢 Electronic Arts EA +2.7%🟢 Ferrovial FER +0.8%🟢 CoreWeave CRWV +0.2%🟢 Walmart WMT -0.2%🔴 Regeneron Pharmaceuticals REGN -1.2%🔴 PayPal PYPL -2.0%🔴 O'Reilly Automotive ORLY -2.0%🔴 PepsiCo PEP -2.8%🔴 Microsoft MSFT -3.9%🔴 Take-Two TTWO -5.1%🔴 MercadoLibre MELI -6.8%🔴 Rocket Lab RKLB -6.9%🔴 Axon AXON -7.1%🔴 Warner Bros. Discovery WBD -8.7%🔴 Booking BKNG -10.0%🔴 Roper ROP -11.9%🔴 DoorDash DASH -13.4%🔴 Qualcomm QCOM -13.7%🔴 Comcast CMCSA -14.4%🔴 T-Mobile TMUS -14.9%🔴 Meta Platforms META -15.7%🔴 GE HealthCare Technologies GEHC -17.1%🔴 Synopsys SNPS -17.2%🔴 IDEXX IDXX -17.4%🔴 Autodesk ADSK -20.9%🔴 PDD Holdings PDD -21.9%🔴 Netflix NFLX -23.5%🔴 Thomson Reuters TRI -24.5%🔴 Workday WDAY -25.4%🔴 Copart CPRT -25.6%🔴 Constellation Energy CEG -25.6%🔴 Shopify SHOP -27.2%🔴 SpaceX SPCX -27.8%🔴 Adobe ADBE -28.5%🔴 Honeywell Aerospace HONA -30.5%🔴 Palantir PLTR -30.8%🔴 Tesla TSLA -30.8%🔴 Intuitive Surgical ISRG -37.6%🔴 Strategy MSTR -38.6%🔴 AppLovin APP -41.3%🔴 Alnylam Pharmaceuticals ALNY -48.3%🔴 Intuit INTU -52.3%🔴

Issue 272 of my weekly just went out. It's the stuff I actually played with that week: tools, open source, and a bit of life outside code. The cover is a drone shot over a lotus pond. Welcome to check out my trendy life and work.