WELL, GOOD: Chick-fil-A CEO Regrets ‘Inadvertently’ Discrediting ‘Outstanding’ Groups Like the Salvation Army.

WHAT USED TO BE A CONSPIRACY THEORY IS NOW LOOKING LIKE A TRUISM: Footage outside Jeffrey Epstein’s cell during suicide attempt erased, say prosecutors.

The revelation comes after Assistant US Attorney Jason Swergold told White Plains federal Judge Kenneth Karas in December that the footage was missing — and then backtracked the next day, claiming it had been preserved.

In a Thursday filing, Swergold admitted that the Metropolitan Correctional Center had preserved footage amid the investigation — only it was the wrong cell in the Lower Manhattan jail.

“The Government has learned that the MCC inadvertently preserved video from the wrong tier within the MCC, and, as a result, video from outside the defendant’s cell on July 22 – 23, 2019 (i.e. the requested video) no longer exists,” the letter reads.

Sure were a lot of “inadvertent” mistakes here.

UPDATE: More here:

Even worse, there was a backup system for the video footage, but that wasn’t working, either.

“The requested video no longer exists on the backup system and has not since at least August 2019 as a result of technical errors,” the prosecutors wrote.

Plus, I didn’t know this about Epstein’s cellmate:

“It is stunning that a video which we asked to be preserved and which the jail should have saved without a request was destroyed. More troubling are the various and inconsistent accounts of what happened to the video. We believe that the video would have strongly corroborated our client’s assertion that he acted appropriately that evening and are deeply disturbed it has disappeared,” Barket wrote in a text.

Tartaglione, a former Briarcliff Manor cop, is facing the death penalty for the murders prosecutors allege were linked to a drug deal gone bad with a Mexican cartel. The footage could potentially be useful to Barket if he must argue to a jury Tartaglione does not deserve the death penalty.

So Epstein was put in a cell with a dirty cop linked to Mexican cartels? Really?

I IMAGINE TRUMP ISN’T TIRED OF WINNING YET: Appeals court rules Trump can use nearly $4 billion in military funds for border wall.

OUT ON A LIMB: Iran believed to have shot down Ukrainian plane by mistake.

EXPECT A PARTY LINE VOTE: That is, if there ever is a tally for and against Rep. Bradley Byrne’s resolution censuring Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s delay in delivering impeachment articles to the Senate.

HMM: Lower indoor temperatures linked to high blood pressure.

Which is weird because just the other day The Atlantic was telling us to turn down the thermostat.

USB IS TERRIBLY UNSECURE: Here’s why you should never use a public phone charger. “You could be the victim of ‘juice jacking’.”

FIRST PIG FLU, NOW THIS: SARS legacy haunts race to identify mystery illness in China.

Related: First possible mystery pneumonia case reported in South Korea.

I REALLY ENJOYED HIS WORK: Mike Resnick, RIP.

‘THE DUMBEST ATTEMPT AT JOURNALISM I’VE SEEN IN 2020 SO FAR:’ WaPo firefighter busts GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik for tweeting ‘altered photo of Pelosi.’

Attacking Republican clip art is apparently what the Washington Post does in January.

CHEAP FUN: Syma S107/S107G R/C Helicopter with Gyro- Red. (Bumped.)

PRIVACY: Judge Orders Google to Turn Over a Year’s Worth of Jussie Smollett’s Data to Special Prosecutor.

WHAT A TRULY AWFUL IDEA: Why You Shouldn’t Throw Coins at Planes (Yes, People Do This).

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Israel unveils breakthrough laser to intercept missiles, aerial threats. “Technology expected to take down a variety of aerial threats including rockets, drones, anti-tank missiles.”

The one target it doesn’t have: Flying cars.

KINDA LOOKS LIKE IT: Did Iran Intentionally Avoid Killing U.S. Soldiers in Last Night’s Missile Attack?

HMM: Israeli officials believe U.S. may release peace plan before election.

MAN DRIVING ALONE IN CARPOOL LANE INFORMS OFFICER HIS PREFERRED PRONOUN IS ‘THEY.’

From the Babylon Bee, America’s Newspaper of Record.

WEIRD, THAT’S NOT THE IMPRESSION YOU GET FROM TWITTER AND THE MEDIA: Gallup: The U.S. Remained Center-Right, Ideologically, in 2019. “As Americans continued to lean more Democratic than Republican in their party preferences in 2019, the ideological balance of the country remained center-right, with 37% of Americans, on average, identifying as conservative during the year, 35% as moderate and 24% as liberal.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Student at Center of ‘Napping While Black’ Furor Lashes Out at Yale Officials and ‘Woke Intersectional Feminists.’

The student whose complaint to the Yale Police Department ignited the 2018 “napping while black” controversy tore into administrators, the campus police, and fellow graduate students in an essay published late last month on the social-media website Medium. Sarah Braasch wrote that she had been “vilified on a global scale as something akin to a genocidal villain” as a result of the incident.

In the early hours of May 8, 2018, Braasch, a philosophy graduate student, called the campus police after finding Lolade Siyonbola, a black graduate student in African studies, asleep in a dormitory common room. The incident, which received national media attention after the black student posted viral videos of the women’s encounters, prompted the university to hold listening sessions and reaffirm its commitment to inclusivity.

Backlash from the episode has essentially ruined Braasch’s career prospects, she writes in the Medium essay. Her lawyers filed a legal brief on Friday asking the police department to release body-camera footage of the incident, which, she writes, “exposes them as liars.”

Braasch filed a request for the release of the footage last summer. The police department initially denied her request, claiming that the video includes uncorroborated allegations. Braasch then filed a Freedom of Information Act request, which led to a review by Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Commission. That body plans to decide by July whether the police must release the footage, the Yale Daily News reported.

Braasch wrote the essay in response to a widely read Medium piece by James Hatch, 52-year-old Yale freshman and U.S. Navy veteran. While he arrived at the university expecting to find liberal “snowflakes,” Hatch wrote in the December 21 essay, he instead discovered curious, tolerant classmates.

In contrast, Braasch refers her Yale peers as “woke intersectional feminists” who “tried to destroy me.”

I’m sure there are both kinds of students, but I know which variety feels safe in attacking others, knowing it will be supported by Yale’s terrible administration.

VIDEO: Ilhan Omar says prospect of US-Iran conflict gives her ‘PTSD,’ but discussion of US casualties in Iraq apparently gives her the giggles.

She seems nice.

EVEN SARGENT SHRIVER’S CONDESCENSION TOWARD THE RUBES WAS CHEERFUL. Little Mikey, not so much.

He’s looking kinda ‘joylessly accusatory.’

BREAKING: Pentagon says Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was struck by a Russia-built Tor-M1 surface-to-air missile system.

SKYNET AND HAL SMILE: Warner Bros. Signs Deal for AI-Driven Film Management System.

Resistance is futile. Warner Bros. has become the latest studio to publicly embrace artificial intelligence.

The movie division, headed up by chairman Toby Emmerich, has signed a deal with Cinelytic to use the latter’s AI-driven project management system that was launched last year.

Under the new deal, Warners will leverage the system’s comprehensive data and predictive analytics to guide decision-making at the greenlight stage. The integrated online platform can assess the value of a star in any territory and how much a film is expected to make in theaters and on other ancillary streams.

Founded four years ago by Tobias Queisser, Cinelytic has been building and beta testing the platform for three years. In 2018, the company raised $2.25 million from T&B Media Global and signed deals with Ingenious Media (Wind River) and Productivity Media (The Little Hours). STX, which endured a number of flops in 2019, including Playmobil and Uglydolls, became a Cinelytic client in September.

While the platform won’t necessarily predict what will be the next $1 billion surprise, like Warners’ hit Joker, it will reduce the amount of time executives spend on low-value, repetitive tasks and instead give them better dollar-figure parameters for packaging, marketing and distribution decisions, including release dates.

There are an increasing number of movies being made starring synthetic thespians, so it was only a matter of time before film executives were similarly replaced by digital technology. And based on the last 15 years or so of Hollywood product, it’s not like the computers can do any worse than their human predecessors counterparts…

YOU KNOW, IT’S REALLY GOING TO BE HARD TO TRUST THE FBI IN THE FUTURE: New Details About Meeting FBI Source Suggest Carter Page Was Set Up.