OH: Alec Baldwin Was ‘Distracted’ on His Phone During ‘Rust’ Gun Training, Prosecutors Say. “Alec Baldwin “was not present” for a required firearms training before filming started for Rust, prosecutors said in documents officially charging the actor and producer with involuntary manslaughter on Tuesday. He was then provided on-set training, during which he was ‘distracted and talking on his cell phone to his family.'”
Archive for 2023
February 1, 2023
DARPA EXPLORING HOW TO fly satellites at a low altitude.
HMM: Study examines association between sleep medication use and risk of dementia. I’m not convinced that they’ve established a causal relationship. Anxiety is an early sign of dementia, and people with that anxiety are more likely to use sleep aids.
DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: Hulu’s 1619 Project Docuseries Peddles False History.
SOON WE’LL ALL BE EATING THEM IF SOME PEOPLE HAVE THEIR WAY: Zoos making cockroaches a Valentine’s tradition.
FOR OUR PJ MEDIA/TOWNHALL VIPS: You Won’t Believe Who Google Laid Off (Or Maybe You Totally Will). “So who is Google trimming, the meat or the fat? Maybe a bit of both.”
Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
DEAL OF THE DAY: RAK Magnetic Wristband for Holding Screws. #CommissionEarned
#JOURNALISM: Greenwashing the News for Fun and Profit.
If a prominent media outlet takes money from liberal philanthropies to report on “climate change,” and then attributes all weather-related problems to that climate change, and never fact-checks how normal these weather phenomena actually are, what would you call that? Is it not the definition of corruption?
You’d also call it the new normal for the Associated Press – and several other outlets, all of which take funding from donors with agendas. Not surprisingly, they faithfully ascribe to “climate change” all manner of occurrence. In fact, it turns out that there are plenty of grants to go round if a media company wants to write about the climate.
Every institution has been corrupted. Some grudgingly, some joyfully.
CHANGE: Iran, Russia integrate banking systems.
A top Iranian official announced on 30 January that Iran and Russia had integrated their interbank communication and transfer systems to help enhance trade and financial operations in an effort to bypass strict economic sanctions on their financial infrastructure.
With the signing of the agreement, 52 Iranian and 106 Russian banks are connected through the Russian Financial Message Transfer System, which will facilitate economic relations between the two countries, said Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Iran Mohsen Karimi.
“This system is immune to sanctions as it is based on the infrastructures of both countries,” Karimi said, according to Iran’s Mehr news agency.
It’s more like tying two dinghies together because they’re no longer allowed on the ship.
WELL: Texas Governor Abbott: election irregularities in Harris County may necessitate new elections.
Abbott hasn’t said the “F” word…yet. Although he certainly implied it by suggesting that Harris County elections officials will have to be forced to conduct fair elections through the force of law.
At issue? Harris County officials didn’t provide enough ballot paper to 121 voting centers to cover the needs of the precincts. Not due to a surge in voting at the polls–that wasn’t the issue at all. Nor was it due to a shortage of available paper. There was plenty of it to go around.
They simply chose to deliver about half as many ballots to some voting centers as were needed in previous years.
Guess which ones. Plus:
Abbott is hardly a firebreather or conspiracy theorist, and he isn’t making wild accusations without evidence of actual wrongdoing.
But the religious article of faith that nobody ever cheats in elections only developed after 2020, when suddenly it became forbidden to question the integrity of an election–because to do so would be to add fuel to the fire of Donald Trump’s narrative.
But of course in reality election fraud is as American as Apple Pie, and has been more common in history than 100% fair elections. Why do you think that everybody jokes about dead people voting in Chicago? It’s because dead people have voted a lot in Chicago. Political machines are about winning, and the incentives to do so are high. In the history of the universe elections would be the first thing of immense value that nobody tried to steal, were elections always clean.
Usually, elections don’t turn on the margins of cheating, and usually, the integrity of elections is sufficient to ensure an outcome that reasonably reflects the “will of the voters.” But when elections are close, irregularities can matter a lot.
And that’s when they’re most likely to happen, of course.
RON DESANTIS IS NOT FOOLING AROUND: New College President Okker terminated by Board of Trustees.
The New College Board of Trustees has voted to terminate the contract of President Patricia Okker.
Trustees also voted to appoint former Florida House speaker and Florida Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran as interim president. . . .
The vote came after a tense meeting in which new conservative board members moved to terminate Okker’s contract. The new board members insisted they were here to change the board’s structure.
The board offered to hold off on abolishing the school’s Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence, instead opting to terminate four positions within the office.
Okker made remarks prior to her removal saying the school educates and does not indoctrinate, “You can not ask me to go forward and argue that we are indoctrinating students here.” She also described the newly appointed trustees as a “hostile takeover.”
By the people of Florida.
Reminder: Just a few days ago, New College provost Suzanne Sherman tried to block an event with new trustees Chris Rufo and Eddie Speir. I wonder how long she’ll be around.
SUCH A CHARMER: Hunter Biden Withheld Employee’s Pay Until She Let Him Watch Her Shower.
What is it with the Bidens and showers?
SOCIAL JUSTICE RESTRICTIONS ON RESEARCH HARM ALL OF US. Implemented to prevent another Tuskeegee Experiment, they now restrict things like outcomes that might “stigmatize,” even if helpful. But at least they prevent widespread and dangerous medical experimentation on people…. right?
ENERGY: BP’s CEO Plays Down Renewables Push.
Chief Executive Bernard Looney plans to dial back elements of the oil giant’s high-profile push into renewable energy, he has said in recent discussions with people close to the company.
Mr. Looney has said he is disappointed in the returns from some of the oil giant’s renewable investments and plans to pursue a narrower green-energy strategy, according to people familiar with the discussions. He has told some of the people that BP needs to do more to convince shareholders of its strategy to maximize profit in areas where it has a competitive advantage, including its legacy oil-and-gas operations.
In some of the conversations, Mr. Looney has said he plans to place less emphasis on so-called ESG goals—a catchall term for environmental, social and governance—to help clarify that those aren’t distracting the company from its ability to deliver profits, the people said.
Mr. Looney, the people said, is casting the moves as a modest short-term course correction rather than a major strategic pivot for the 114-year-old company.
Since this ought to put BP in a better position than its rivals, I wonder how long the “correction” will remain “modest.”
NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT: Suddenly Domestic Terrorism Charges Are a Problem Now That Atlanta Is Using Them Against Antifa.
BOTS FIGHTING BOTS: OpenAI released its AI-written text identifier. Here’s how to use it.
OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, have clearly heard the critiques about its AI chatbot. Namely, those from educators who have voiced concern regarding students using ChatGPT to do their homework or write their papers for them.
On Tuesday, OpenAI released(Opens in a new window) a new AI classifier tool aimed at directly addressing those concerns. The free web tool was created by OpenAI in order to help users determine whether a block of text was written by a human or a computer.
The tool is simple to use. Simply visit the AI classifier(Opens in a new window), log in, and copy and paste the block of text you want to check. The classifier will then rank the text on a scale as either likely to be AI-generated, possibly, unclear, unlikely, or very unlikely.
We were promised flying cars. Instead we got algos spotting lazy students using algos.
NOW SHE’S SET HERSELF UP FOR A POSSIBLE FELONY CHARGE: Kari Lake Is Too Reckless to Run for Office Again.
CALIFORNIA: McDonalds President Says It Might Be ‘Impossible’ to Operate in These Key States.
While discussions around the tech exodus took place throughout much of 2020 and 2021, a new discussion has begun around an industry that exists in every state in the country: the fast food business.
In the fall of 2022, the state passed what shortens to the FAST bill — the Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act could require fast-food restaurants to pay workers up a minimum wage of $22 an hour with an annual raise of 3.5%.
While initially passed, the law has faced significant pushback both from the industry and local voters. A referendum vote has been set to November 2024 and implementation is blocked until that takes place.
Industry leaders have predictably been very vocal against the law. In an open letter from January 25, McDonald’s USA President Joe Erlinger wrote that it “makes it all but impossible to run small business restaurants.”
That’s a feature not a bug.
J.D. VANCE: Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars.
Bipartisan foreign policy consensus has led the country astray many times. Leadership in both parties supported the invasion of Iraq, the decadeslong nation-building project in Afghanistan, regime change in Libya and guerrilla war in Syria. All of these policies cost a lot of money and killed many. None of those conflicts has served the nation’s long-term interest. Very few were ever challenged by a leader of national significance.
That is, of course, until Donald Trump came along. American partisans view Mr. Trump’s record primarily through a domestic lens. To my fellow Republicans, Mr. Trump lowered taxes and worked hard to deregulate the federal bureaucracy. To Democrats, Mr. Trump was a corrupt narcissist who earned his two impeachments. Yet neither party acknowledges perhaps the most important part of Mr. Trump’s legacy: his successful foreign policy.
My entire adult lifetime has been shaped by presidents who threw America into unwise wars and failed to win them. I had just started high school when George W. Bush was elected president, and his presidency is the first I remember with any detail. Mr. Bush allowed a just war in Afghanistan to turn into a nation-building quagmire and then started an unjust war in Iraq. His successor, Barack Obama, doubled down on nation building in Afghanistan and launched a new war of his own in Libya, with the enthusiastic support of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In Mr. Trump’s four years in office, he started no wars despite enormous pressure from his own party and even members of his own administration. Not starting wars is perhaps a low bar, but that’s a reflection of the hawkishness of Mr. Trump’s predecessors and the foreign-policy establishment they slavishly followed. But Mr. Trump did more than simply keep the peace. He brokered the Abraham Accords, a historic agreement between Israel and Sunni Arab states providing the best hope of a long-term counterbalance to Iran. He began the long, slow process of decoupling the U.S. from its economic reliance on China. He opened diplomatic talks with North Korea after a half century of stagnation. And he pushed hard—to much derision—for Europe to take more responsibility for its own defense, precisely so that the U.S. wouldn’t be drawn so deeply and dangerously into a conflict like the one in Ukraine.
A common critique of Mr. Trump, even from his ideological allies, is that he lacks “statesmanship.” Even people who like his policies wish he exercised more verbal restraint. Fair enough. But there’s an implicit critique of America’s leaders hidden below the surface of that accusation. Why is it that the people the U.S. trains for leadership are so careful with their words yet so reckless with their actions? Why does America devote billions of dollars to recruiting and training its best young minds for leadership, only to have those minds orchestrate one foreign-policy disaster after another?
One possible answer is that for them, these aren’t disasters. But I do find it revealing that, after endless searching for peace in the middle east, when Trump went and actually cut a successful peace deal nobody seemed to care. And in fact the Biden Administration started working to undermine the deal from day one.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Dems Might Be in the Market for a Bus to Throw Kamala Harris Under. “Given the fact that the Dems live, eat, and breathe diversity, getting Harris out of the way will be no easy task. She’s a double HISTORIC FIRST, they can’t just unceremoniously push her aside. It’s not impossible, but it’s going to take a lot of effort.”