FINALLY, SOME GOOD NEWS FROM COLORADO: To-go alcohol to be a permanent part of restaurant takeout.
May 13, 2024
BE PREPARED: Etekcity Lantern Camping, Flashlight for Power Outages. #CommissionEarned
I HOPE THOSE ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTES IN MICHIGAN ARE WORTH IT FOR BIDEN AND HIS HANDLERS: Tom Cotton Accuses Biden Of Imposing A ‘De Facto Arms Embargo’ Against Israel.
Biden has imposed a “de facto arms embargo” against Israel, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said on Sunday, offering his latest reaction to the commander-in-chief suggesting the United States could halt weapons going to a close ally.
Cotton, who has called for Biden to get impeached over the threat to Israel if it launches a full-scale ground operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, expounded on his criticism of the president during an interview on CBS News.
During a CNN town hall last week, Biden said he “made it clear” to Israel that if it conducts a major ground operation in Rafah, “we’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells.”
Cotton argued that a supposed clarification by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who appeared on “Face the Nation” just before him and suggested that Biden’s threat only applied to shipping heavy bombs to Israel, should be met with skepticism.
“What Tony Blinken says on this show cannot be credited when Joe Biden is out there imposing a de facto arms embargo on Israel at the same time he’s letting arms embargoes on Iran expire,” Cotton said.
Exit quote: “Cotton shot back [to DNC-MSM operative with byline, CBS’s Margaret Brennan], contending that Biden’s position is ‘de facto for Hamas victory at this point.’”
As Jim Geraghty asks, “Whose side are we on? Because right now, it really looks like we’re acting like Hamas’s defense attorney, trying to get it the best deal possible.”
I think we know whose side the (p)resident’s handlers are on:
As Biden attacks Israel to win antisemitic voters in Michigan, he seems to have forgotten: Israel did not start this war.
Hamas did.
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) March 29, 2024
UPDATE:
"Hamas should be eliminated entirely… unless I'm at risk of losing Michigan." https://t.co/Ll5Aoq6iE3
— Doug Powers (@ThePowersThatBe) May 13, 2024
DECLINE IS A CHOICE: The Bladeless Swiss Army Non-Knife Shows Us The Future of Gun Control.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China’s Chang’e-6 is carrying a surprise rover to the moon. “This is not the first time a Chinese mission has harbored hidden spacecraft.”
LIMITED TIME DEAL: BLUETTI Portable Power Station Solar Generator. #CommissionEarned
BUSINESS INSIDER: Trump leads his supporters in vulgar chants at Jersey Shore rally.
But this headline much better captures the spirit of the rally: Trump At Rally: ‘Everything They Touch Turns To What?’ Cheering Crowd: ‘SH*T.’
The Biden cabal has the Merde Touch.
UPDATE:
Great to see the adults are back in charge. Norms reestablished.
— Steve (@sjbftmlsc) May 13, 2024
SCOTLAND IS GOING TO HELL IN ALL SORTS OF WAYS: Scotland suddenly has a lot of mosquitoes.
LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS: How Much for a Cup of Joe? Washington Doesn’t Want You to Know.
I WAS TOLD IT WAS THE BURDEN OF SOCIETAL RACISM: Researchers show genetic variant common among Black Americans contributes to large cardiovascular disease burden.
SKYNET SLYLY SMILES: AI has already figured out how to deceive humans.
A range of AI systems have learned techniques to systematically induce “false beliefs in others to accomplish some outcome other than the truth,” according to a new research paper.
The paper focused on two types of AI systems: special-use systems like Meta’s CICERO, which are designed to complete a specific task, and general-purpose systems like OpenAI’s GPT-4, which are trained to perform a diverse range of tasks.
While these systems are trained to be honest, they often learn deceptive tricks through their training because they can be more effective than taking the high road.
“Generally speaking, we think AI deception arises because a deception-based strategy turned out to be the best way to perform well at the given AI’s training task. Deception helps them achieve their goals,” the paper’s first author Peter S. Park, an AI existential safety postdoctoral fellow at MIT, said in a news release.
Of course, AI is also just stupid… unless that’s what it wants us to believe.
AI will replace you
the AI in question pic.twitter.com/Ncc5kjUt2U
— Strawbærry Narwhal ‽ (@unvarnishedvoid) May 12, 2024
Related? Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up.
SPRING CLEAN YOUR CAR: VIKING Car Detailing Brush Set for Car Cleaning Kit. #CommissionEarned
IT WAS SPECTACULAR: Solar storm produces dazzling light show, some power grid issues.
ON THE ONE HAND, IT WENT VIRAL, SO THAT HAS TO BE GOOD NEWS* FOR APPLE. ON THE OTHER HAND: Apple apologizes for its controversial iPad Pro ad.
Apple has apologized and admitted it “missed the mark” with its latest iPad Pro advertisement.
The ad, posted on social media Tuesday by Apple CEO Tim Cook, was met with backlash from internet users who felt that the ad celebrated technology’s destruction of human creativity and art.
In a statement to AdAge, Apple’s vice president of marketing communications, Tor Myhren, apologized.
“Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world. Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad,” Myhren said. “We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”
Apple confirmed the statement it provided to AdAge but declined to provide further comment.
The ad shows symbols of human creativity, like musical instruments, paint cans, an ’80s arcade video game and a bust of a human head crushed by a giant hydraulic press. As the metal slabs of the hydraulic press lift, Apple’s new iPad Pro is revealed.
While everyone appreciates the amount of legacy technology that is now accessible — often for free — within an iPad or iPhone, people like owning physically tactile devices such as guitars and pianos. For example, the whole history of recording music via PC has been increasing the software’s ability to integrate with hardware devices that musicians and recording engineers have decades and decades of experience working with. On both an aural level and an ability to hands-on tweak the physical controls level, hardware devices are often much more fun than diving down into multiple levels of GUIs and onscreen menus.
Which is why Apple’s new ad is infinitely more appealing when run in reverse:
Hey @Apple, I fixed it for you (sound on) pic.twitter.com/OwVnYNgXhT
— Reza Sixo Safai (@rezawrecktion) May 8, 2024
* Even articles like the CNN/Yahoo piece above and this post are, of course, serving as more free advertising for Apple.
A CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION MASQUERADING AS A POLITICAL PARTY: TX Democrat Colin Allred Attended Event Where Illegal Aliens Were Taught How To Evade Authorities: Report.
“Think of the Democratic Party as what it really is: a criminal organization masquerading as a political party,” Michael Walsh likes to say. Somebody appears to be taking that meme far too literally.
A COUPLE OF THEM, ACTUALLY: The Dirty Little Secret Behind Jen Psaki’s Memoir (and Most Every Other D.C. Book). “Books their authors didn’t write bought in bulk with other people’s money to end up in landfills is maybe the most Washington thing ever.”
HURRY UP, GUYS, THE ELECTION IS LESS THAN SIX MONTHS AWAY: Federal government announces new initiatives to monitor, prevent bird flu.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: SpaceX vying for 2 Starship launch sites in Florida, sealing Starbase’s fate as R&D, production site.
On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration said it’s conducting an Environmental Impact Study of the effects of as many as 44 Starship launches per year from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. It follows the U.S. Space Force earlier this year starting such a study of the potential effects of Starship operations at sites on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
During an update last month at Starbase, SpaceX CEO Musk reiterated his vision for Starbase as a research, development, test and production site — with operational launches from Florida.
“I think what we should probably expect is that we do the kind of the development launches here” at Starbase, he said. “Test anything new here, build the rockets and then most of the operational launches would be from the Cape.”
And speaking of tests: Musk sees fourth flight of SpaceX’s Starship in 3-5 weeks.
CBS’S ROBERT COSTA BEGS BILL MAHER TO STOP MOCKING LEFTIES, JUST MOCK REPUBLICANS:
CBS reporter Robert Costa put together a puffball interview for HBO Real Time host Bill Maher on their show Sunday Morning. They let him claim he’s not ideological and didn’t laugh when he said “I speak for the normies. I speak for that vast middle that is tired of the partisanship. I don’t want to hate half the country, and I don’t hate half the country.”
Bill Maher represents the “vast middle,” the “normies”? Conservatives across America would make a face at that. At bottom, Maher is a bit of shock jock, so that when Democrats are in power he’s going to mock them as well, just as he suggested on Friday night that the Democrats “blew it” in all their legal warfare on Trump.
What was amazing in this profile was Costa imploring Maher to lay off mockery of the Left, just shine the spotlight on the right-wingers!
COSTA: You write a lot of throughout this book that the left irritates you, frustrates you at times, but the right often alarms you.
MAHER: Yes. They’re very alarming. They’re extremely alarming. More alarming.
COSTA: What do you say to your critics, though, who say that you should just focus on them, Bill, if they’re more alarming to you than the Left. And why not shine the spotlight on them only?
MAHER: The truth isn’t one-sided like that. The Democrats constantly are,running against Trump with the idea ‘You people out there couldn’t possibly vote for this guy.’ And people are saying, ‘Watch me. Hold my beer. Watch me vote for him again.’
Costa got his start at NRO and the Wall Street Journal, and yet, like fellow Post employee Jennifer Rubin and her former colleague David Weigel, who also began at conservative or libertarian Websites, as the MSM likes say to about a politician who slowly begins to lean further and further hard left, he sure has grown in office!
WESTERN CIVILIZATION FACES A CHOICE:
HMM: China’s economy is headed for a ‘dead-end,’ and Beijing won’t do anything to stop it, scholar says.
“Years of erratic and irresponsible policies, excessive Communist Party control and undelivered promises of reform have created a dead-end Chinese economy of weak domestic consumer demand and slowing growth,” she wrote. “The only way that China’s leaders can see to pull themselves out of this hole is to fall back on pumping out exports.”
The result will be more tension with China’s trade partners as cheap manufactured goods continue to flood markets, while the Chinese people will turn gloomier, causing the government to get more repressive, Stevenson-Yang predicted.
The root cause of China’s economic problems is the Communist Party’s excessive control, which isn’t going away, while its strategies that focus on adding more industrial capacity are counterproductive, she said.
Most economists have recommended that Chinese leaders loosen their grip on the private sector and promote more consumption, which would entail reforming the government—” and that is unacceptable,” she added.
MEANWHILE IN SHANGHAI: China: Old And Busted: 1 Bed, 1 Bath. The New Hotness: 1 Bed In Bathroom.
FLASHBACK (From Ed) to November of 2019: How to Conduct Business with Chinese Companies That See a Dark Future.
COME SEE THE EUGENICS INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: Climate Professor Thinks We Should ‘Cull’ the Human Population to Reach Emissions Targets.