Archive for 2023
November 3, 2023
CURIOUSLY, JEFF BEZOS HAS A VERY DIFFERENT OPINION ABOUT RON DESANTIS THAN THE NEWSPAPER HE OWNS: Jeff Bezos Says He Is Leaving Seattle for Miami.
Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon out of his Seattle garage in 1994 and plowed billions of dollars into transforming the city into a tech boomtown, said on Thursday that he was leaving his home of three decades and moving to Miami.
Mr. Bezos, 59, announced his move in an Instagram post on Thursday night. He said his parents had recently moved back to Miami, where he attended high school, and that he wanted to be closer to them and to his partner, Lauren Sanchez.
Another factor, he said, was that operations for his rocket company, Blue Origin, are increasingly shifting to Cape Canaveral, Fla., just over 200 miles by road north of Miami along the state’s Atlantic coast.
Why, it’s as if: Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Biden Is Living In A Different Reality Than His Progressive Base, Daily Caller Reporter Explains.
Over 30 student groups at Harvard University wrote a joint letter to the school’s administration affirming their support for Palestine and blaming Israel for the attack. Harvard University President Claudine Gay said the student groups’ view does not represent the position of the university in an Oct. 10 statement, without explicitly taking the side of either Israel or Palestine.
More than 70 faculty members at the university called on Gay to condemn critics of the pro-Palestine protesters and argued Palestinian students are the most marginalized on campus.
I think you misspelled “Biden Is Living In A Different Reality Than His Progressive Boss,” Daily Caller.
NOT EXACTLY HAL 9000: Microsoft Shamelessly Pumping Internet Full of Garbage AI-Generated ‘News’ Articles.
We’ve known that Microsoft’s MSN news portal has been pumping out a garbled, AI-generated firehose for well over a year now.
The company has been using the website to distribute misleading and oftentimes incomprehensible garbage to hundreds of millions of readers per month.
As CNN now reports, that’s likely in large part due to MSN’s decision to lay off most of the human editors at MSN over the years. In the wake of that culling, the company has redirected its efforts toward AI, culminating in a $10 billion stake in ChatGPT maker OpenAI earlier this year.
And if MSN presents a vision of how the tech industry’s obsession with AI is going to play out in the information ecosystem, we’re in for a rough ride.
Beyond republishing stories by small, unknown publishers — like the one that infamously called former NBA player Brandon Hunter, who passed away unexpectedly at the age of 42 in September, “useless” in its headline — Microsoft using a variety of tactics to shoehorn AI into its MSN.
Sometimes it’s even generating AI content itself, like when it published and then deleted a bizarre travel guide to Ottawa, Canada that recommended visiting a food bank “on an empty stomach.”
I had to stop using DuckDuckGo for research because it generates so many results from Microsoft’s Bing, whose results are weighted towards MSN’s craptaculent AI-generated “news.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Georgetown School of Foreign Service Hires Vicious Antisemite.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Demonetized, Angry, and Ready to Tell Big Brother to Get Stuffed.
SHOCKER: New State Business Tax Climate Index: Blue States Are Worst, Red States Are Best. “One great benefit of America’s federalist Constitution is policy competition among the states. Voters in Florida don’t have to live under New York’s laws, and Americans and businesses can vote with their feet by moving across state lines. That truth came into focus again last week when the Tax Foundation released its annual ranking of state business tax climates, and there’s a yawning gap between the winners and losers. The best performers ease commerce by forgoing major taxes. The worst stack up punishing rates, making new business much more difficult and costly. A gang of Democratic-run coastal states make the bottom of the list.”
IN CASE YOU CAN HELP, ROBERT BIDINOTTO IS NOT ONLY AN EXCELLENT WRITER, HE’S ALSO A FRIEND AND A GENUINELY NICE MAN. MORE IMPORTANTLY A GOOD ONE: Consider donating to the fundraiser to help him care for his wife: Please Care for Cindy: the love of my life.
As you know, writers, particularly indie ones, have no safety net. And those on the right don’t have philanthropists with deep pockets to fund them either. All we have is each other. We have to be enough.
ROBERT BECAME AWARE OF THE CHANGES IN GOFUNDME, AND HAS ARRANGED FOR ALTERNATE MEANS OF DONATING. THIS IS FROM HIS FACEBOOK PAGE:
GoFundMe has unfortunately gone politically “woke,” and they’ve been de-platforming or promoting various fundraisers accordingly. They also charge transaction fees on donations. So, despite the platform’s huge visibility and effectiveness, some prospective donors understandably won’t contribute through them. But there are options:
1. ZELLE or VENMO: These money-transfer apps will send your donation quickly and directly into Cyn’s bank account. If you don’t yet use them, just go to their respective websites and sign up for free to use either of them. You can then transfer money from your linked bank account to Cyn’s in seconds, for free! All you need is her email address:CSGracenote @ AtlanticBB (dot) net2. PAYPAL: This popular money-transfer service took me a bit of time to set up after some initial glitches, but now it’s also ready to use for person-to-person donations. You sign up on their website, just like Zelle or Venmo, then similarly use Cindy’s email address (above) to transfer money from your account to hers.3. WRITE A CHECK: Low-tech and slow, but cheap and reliable. Just make out your check to “Cynthia Bidinotto-Slate.” Then mail it to:“Care for Cindy”c/o Robert BidinottoP.O. Box 555Chester, MD 21619Any of those methods can be used as an alternative to GoFundMe. But if you do prefer to contribute through that platform, just go to the GoFundMe website, then use the “search” tab at the top of the page to search on the words: Care for Cindy. That will take you to her page.
Once more, a big THANK YOU goes out to the scores of you who have donated so generously. Besides helping to fund Cyn’s care in a nurturing environment, you are buying me months of precious time — time that I am now using to get back to WRITING. The more of that work I can do, the less I’ll have to worry about raising money to pay the bills. And the more BOOKS you’ll get out of me. You are giving BOTH of us our lives back, my friends . . . and I’ll never forget you for it.
THE LEFT IMPINGES ON WOMAN’S BODIES. ALWAYS: So pro-choice only matters when they approve of the choice.
THIS IS THE STUPIDEST TIME LINE: Iran, Backer of Hamas, Chairing the U.N. Human Rights Council Social Forum.
THIS MUST BE PUNISHED HARD ENOUGH THEY NEVER EVEN THINK OF DOING IT AGAIN: Audio – Hamas terrorists describing playing with decapitated Israeli heads during October 7 massacre.
THAT SEEMS A RATIONAL CONCERN: Woman who hid under dead bodies to survive Hamas attack says she’s terrified of pro-Palestinian protests on US campuses.
I DON’T THINK THAT MAKES WHAT THEY DID OK … Couple accused of drawing Stars of David in Paris claim they acted on orders from Russia.
CONSEQUENCES? WE WERE NEVER TOLD THERE COULD BE CONSEQUENCES!! White-shoe law firms tell law schools they won’t hire antisemites amid Israel-Hamas war.
DOESN’T KEEPING YOUR IDENTITY PRIVATE CONTRADICT THE MESSAGE OF A PUBLIC PROTEST? Columbia class in protest after anti-Israel students exposed by ‘doxxing trucks’.
OH NOT JUST THEM, ALL INFIDELS. JUST JEWS FIRST: The goal of Hamas (and its supporters) is to kill all Jews.
WE CAN LEARN TO LAWFARE: Gadsden flag kid sues school and its officials for violating his first amendment rights.
THERE IS NO SUCH PATH: You Can’t Get There From Here.
November 2, 2023
LOL: Democrats Unable to Acknowledge Why They are Struggling. “The Democrats know they really should be killing Republicans in the polls right now, except they aren’t for reasons they seem unable to fully understand. I don’t mean that as an insult of their intelligence. It’s probably closer to the opposite actually. It takes a lot of brain power to create the kind of insulated partisan bubble that many progressive live in these days.”
OUT: BRAGGING ABOUT GOING TO HARVARD; IN:
OPEN THREAD: Happy Thursday.
GETTING AHEAD OF THE CURVE, HE DID NOT COMMIT SUICIDE NEXT YEAR: Sam Bankman Fried Convicted in Fraud and Conspiracy Trial, Faces 110 Years in Prison.