THE LEFT PROJECTS, ALWAYS:

B-52 FOREVER: BUFF Gets An Upgrade. “Supposedly the new engines increase fuel efficiency by 30%, the cost savings from which will actually pay for the upgrade.”

BIG BADDA-BOOM:

Still no official announcement on Flight Test 12, but the FAA published permission for May 12 and 13.

NOW THAT’S A 21ST CENTURY HEADLINE: Pentagon prepares F-35 for quantum computing threat. “The In-Line File Encryption Device is the hardware and software component responsible for encrypting and protecting the signed code inside the F-35’s systems. Modifying its software to incorporate quantum-resistant algorithms means replacing or augmenting the current cryptographic foundations with mathematical approaches specifically designed to remain secure against an adversary using quantum computing to break encryption. That threat is not theoretical — the U.S. government has been working for years through the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish quantum-resistant cryptographic standards, and the mandate to implement those standards across government systems is now reaching operational military platforms like the F-35.”

AND HE’S IN THIRD PLACE BEHIND A COUPLE OF COMMIES WHO WANT TO DO THE OPPOSITE:

OHIO FRAUD WORSE THAN MINNESOTA? Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak is making nationwide headlines with his three-part series exposing “the most egregious government waste” he’s seen in his 20 year career. Luke worked for me at the Washington Examiner and the Daily Caller News Foundation and he is one of a kind. Check out this video he’s made of the hows and wherefores of this explosive reporting series.

TOO FUN TO CHECK: Kamala Demands Release of DNC’s 2024 ‘Autopsy.’

If this autopsy confined itself to other matters, such as messaging or organization, [DNC chair Ken Martin] would have published it immediately and used it to frame the 2024 loss and distract from the corruption at the core of the Democrats’ campaign.

The most amusing part of the NBC report isn’t about the autopsy, though. It’s about Al Sharpton’s advice to Harris:

She recently asked the Rev. Al Sharpton for his advice on her next steps, according to a person familiar with their conversation. Sharpton told her that she has nothing to prove, having been the first woman and the first woman of color elected to the vice presidency, according to a person who detailed their conversation. In her 2024 bid for the White House, brought on by the late withdrawal of President Joe Biden, Harris collected more votes — 75 million — than any previous runner-up.

Her legacy is secure, Sharpton told her. But he also admonished her that she should consider the possibility that it might be diminished if she were to run and lose again.

Did I read this correctly? Did the Reverend Al, race-baiter supreme, tell a black woman to retire from politics? Time to order even more popcorn …

So she’s definitely running in the 2028 primaries. Strength through joy! Brat summer! Or whatever the next slogan her army of consultants will be generating.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE (CONT’D):

PORSCHE CRASHES:

Exit quote: “This is bigger than Porsche. It is a warning to every foreign company that built its long-term growth assumptions around China. Because the old China growth model is breaking down in real time. Consumer confidence has weakened. Property wealth has deteriorated.”

Flashback to November of 2019: How to Conduct Business with Chinese Companies That See a Dark Future.

OOPS:

SPENCER PRATT ISSUES A CHALLENGE IN LA MAYORAL DEBATE THAT NITHYA RAMAN WILL NEVER ACCEPT. “Last night, Pratt called Raman out on her alleged expertise about the homeless, issuing a challenge to her that she will never accept. Watch:”

“They’re a team:”

Related: Can AI make Spencer Pratt mayor?

It cannot really be said that videos like these lower the tone of public life. Traditional political broadcasts are already awful and people go to great lengths to avoid seeing them. The most famous spot of the 1960s showed a little girl being blown up by a nuclear bomb. AI videos are effective in politics for the trivial reason that you can create whatever scenarios you like for rhetorical purposes. In Curran’s clip Kamala Harris is drinking vodka straight from the bottle, and Mayor Bass has her face made up like the Joker – in a pre-AI age the only way to depict this would be to animate it, which would take much too long. “Storytelling” is meant to be the secret to political communications and AI lets one do this in a much more literal sense. Donald Trump’s famous 2024 ad told viewers that “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you,” but here Gavin Newsom is simply made to say that “if you were a transgender migrant I could get you a free pussy.”

No doubt the medium has its limits, some of which we can see in the video. AI-generated images and videos tend towards the style of Thomas Kinkade: every surface glistens too much, every shadow is too accented, everything seems to glow with a sort of insane light. In Curran’s video the wood-paneled walls of the dining room look like they have been covered with ten coats of varnish. The effect is dense and headache inducing; combined with the human voices that AI tends to generate, which are best described as a monotone bellow, it is easy to see how these kinds of ads could become exhausting to watch if overused – just as the spots showing a candidate dressed in plaid petting a friendly Labrador have become exhausting. It is perhaps telling that Trump, the master of all mediums, only uses AI for jokes rather than for actual communiques to the public.

I’d say “we’re witnessing the future of political advertisements,” but that future, for better or worse, is now here:

More:

Tweet continues, “in 2017, [Raman] ran for city council in 2019 on a ‘fix homelessness,’ promptly firehosed infinite taxpayer cash at other ‘homeless non-profits,’ and now suddenly says ‘it’s not okay for people to be sleeping on the streets.’ ‘We can fix this’? Yeah, we can, if the ‘we’ doesn’t include you.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: