Shit Show

Flooding the Zone, ICE Fitness Test

I immediately knew the video of Trump flying over major cities and releasing massive dumps of excrement onto innocent citizens below was AI generated. That kind of travel-related IBS nightmare was way too relatable to be real. Steve Bannon famously advised that the best way to deal with the media was overwhelm them with a firehose of falsehoods, or as he put it, to “flood the zone with shit.” I doubt he imagined being taken this literally. But the social media shitposter in chief has become the AI generated shitposter in chief. This particular AI video was obviously fake. But they won’t all be. We’re heralding in a new era when we are not only unable to discern what’s true, we won’t know what’s real. “After Mr. Trump posted a video that included a fictitious, A.I.-generated arrest of former President Barack Obama, a few users on Truth Social signaled that they were not sure whether the footage was real.” NYT (Gift Article): How Trump Is Using Fake Imagery to Attack Enemies and Rouse Supporters.

+ The problem isn’t just that things that are fake will seem real. It’s also that things that are real can easily be described as being fake. Consider this story from the WSJ (Gift Article): “The Treasury Department instructed employees not to share photos of the demolition of parts of the White House’s East Wing after images of construction equipment dismantling the facade of the building went viral online.” Is it hard to imagine a scenario in which the White House simply describes real photos it doesn’t want seen or shared as being AI-generated? Shit happens. Or does it?

2

Fit Happens

“Some of the fresh hires have dropped out of the academy after flunking exams on immigration law and Fourth Amendment limits on officers’ search authority.” But the academics aren’t the main thing keeping applicants from being accepted into ICE (even with its newly reduced standards and shortened training times). It’s the fitness test. “More than a third have failed so far, four officials told me, impeding the agency’s plan to hire, train, and deploy 10,000 deportation officers by January. To pass, recruits must do 15 push-ups and 32 sit-ups, and run 1.5 miles in 14 minutes.” (In fairness, it’s hard to breath with a mask on.) The Atlantic (Gift Article): ICE’s ‘Athletically Allergic’ Recruits. “The new recruits are the only ones who have to complete the fitness test. Retirees and currently employed law-enforcement officers can ‘self-certify’ without being tested.” (Most of my fitness achievements were self-certified.)

3

Are You Bot or Not?

“Amazon is so convinced this automated future is around the corner that it has started developing plans to mitigate the fallout in communities that may lose jobs. Documents show the company has considered building an image as a ‘good corporate citizen’ through greater participation in community events such as parades and Toys for Tots. The documents contemplate avoiding using terms like ‘automation’ and ‘A.I.’ when discussing robotics, and instead use terms like ‘advanced technology’ or replace the word ‘robot’ with ‘cobot,’ which implies collaboration with humans.” NYT (Gift Article): Amazon Plans to Replace More Than Half a Million Jobs With Robots. “Amazon has said it has a million robots at work around the globe, and it believes the humans who take care of them will be the jobs of the future.” (After all these years taking care of a couple beagles, taking care of a million robots ought to be a breeze.)

4

Drum and Base

“Ms. Takaichi, 64, who grew up near the ancient Japanese capital of Nara, defies easy labels. She once spoke bluntly about the challenges of working in politics as a woman in Japan, yet she is now the leader of the traditionalist, male-dominated Liberal Democratic Party. She has expressed concern about Japan’s reliance on the United States, but has also said she hopes to work closely with President Trump. She is an amateur drummer who idolizes bands like Iron Maiden and Deep Purple, yet she also wears blue suits to pay homage to her other hero, the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.” NYT (Gift Article): Japan Has a New Leader, and She’s a Heavy Metal Drummer.

+ “Japan’s parliament elected ultraconservative Sanae Takaichi as the country’s first female prime minister Tuesday, a day after her struggling party struck a coalition deal with a new partner expected to pull her governing bloc further to the right.”

5

Extra, Extra

For Whom the Mel Tolls: “Ivermectin took on symbolic power during the pandemic, despite being ineffective against coronavirus. Now, Florida wants to study it for cancer.” A headline for the time capsule from WaPo (Gift Article): How a Joe Rogan-Mel Gibson podcast inspired Florida’s cancer research focus.

+ All In: No one knows for sure if we’re heading for an AI market bubble burst. But if it happens, it won’t be hard to piece together how we got there. WSJ (Gift Article): How Sam Altman Tied Tech’s Biggest Players to OpenAI. “To achieve his vision of securing seemingly endless computing power for OpenAI, Altman has gone on a dealmaking blitz, playing the egos of Silicon Valley’s giants off one another as they race to cash in on OpenAI’s future growth. The resulting game of financial one-upmanship has tied the fates of the world’s biggest semiconductor and cloud companies—and vast swaths of the U.S. economy—to OpenAI, essentially making it too big to fail. All of them are now betting on the success of a startup that is nowhere near turning a profit and facing a mounting list of business challenges. Investors aren’t bothered.”

+ Weaponization Nation: “A group of dozens of officials from across the federal government, including U.S. intelligence officers, has been helping to steer President Donald Trump’s drive for retribution against his perceived enemies, according to government records and a source familiar with the effort.” It’s called The Interagency Weaponization Working Group. Reuters: Wide-ranging group of US officials pursues Trump’s fight against ‘Deep State.’ While targeting the innocent, we’re freeing the criminals. Pardoned Capitol rioter charged with threatening to kill Hakeem Jeffries at NYC event this week.

+ Milei Your Cards on the Table: “After promising to end foreign entanglements, the President has proposed a financial-rescue plan for the right-wing government of Argentina.” The New Yorker: Donald Trump’s Forty-Billion-Dollar Exception to America First.

+ French Connection: “The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been jailed in Paris, after a court sentenced him to five years for criminal conspiracy over a scheme to obtain election campaign funds from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.”

+ Itch, Please: “The country was until this month one of the few places in the world that did not have a mosquito population. The other is Antarctica.” Mosquitoes found in Iceland for first time as climate crisis warms country.

6

Bottom of the News

“On Wednesday, Isabella Orduna was catching some waves at Steamer Lane, a popular surf spot off Santa Cruz, Calif., when she felt a small nip on her foot. Startled, Ms. Orduna, a 21-year-old college student, rolled into the water. The moment she surfaced, she saw a ‘big, fuzzy, chunky bear of an otter’ sitting on her board, she said. ‘I was like, wow, what do I do now?’” Sea Otters Are Stealing Surfboards in California. Again.

+ For Hooters’ Original Founders, Saving The Chain Is A Higher Calling: “America Needs Us.”