YOU DON’T SAY: School did nothing wrong when it punished student for using AI, court rules. “The incident occurred in December 2023 when RNH was a junior. The school determined that RNH and another student ‘had cheated on an AP US History project by attempting to pass off, as their own work, material that they had taken from a generative artificial intelligence (‘AI’) application,’ Levenson wrote. ‘Although students were permitted to use AI to brainstorm topics and identify sources, in this instance the students had indiscriminately copied and pasted text from the AI application, including citations to nonexistent books (i.e., AI hallucinations).'”

WELL, THEN:

The most entertaining outcome, especially if ironic, is most likely 😂 https://t.co/YX2EznXfoF

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2024

History repeats itself. pic.twitter.com/ZNwTQnVccZ

— Liberacrat™️ (@Liberacrat) November 22, 2024

IT’S VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™ — Still Drinking the Kool-Aid.

READER FAVORITE: Snailax Shiatsu Neck and Shoulder Massager. #CommissionEarned

THE 21^st CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: $749 million ‘treasure hunt:’ Crypto miner fights to retrieve Bitcoin fortune he claims was accidentally thrown in landfill.

An early Bitcoin miner says he lost a fortune worth more than $700 million after his partner accidentally threw a hard drive containing 8,000 coins in a landfill dumpster more than a decade ago.

James Howells of Newport, Wales, has asked his local council if he can dig through its rubbish site to find the discarded hard drive—but he has been denied so far.

Howells is now taking Newport City Council to court, saying it either needs to give him access to his property or settle the damages for the value of the drive.

Howells, 39, says he mined the coins himself in 2009—drawn to the world of cryptocurrencies in the wake of the financial crisis a year prior.

The Bitcoin were stored on a private key within Howells’s computer hard drive, which was placed in a drawer while Howells—a systems engineer by trade—updated his PC.

In 2013, Howells said he placed that hard drive in a plastic bag, which his former partner then erroneously took straight to the dump, depositing it in a large waste bin.

With the price of Bitcoin sitting at an all-time high of $93,637 at the time of writing, the buried drive would potentially be worth more than $749 million.

And you thought switching from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 was a challenge.

TRUTH:

If Newsom had just winked into existence this year, everyone would assume it was an AI render of a sleazeball. https://t.co/wOKZqnuui2

— Stephen Green (@VodkaPundit) November 22, 2024

BLACK FRIDAY DEAL: Wrangler Authentics Men’s Relaxed Fit Stretch Cargo Pant. #CommissionEarned

SELF-DEFENSE: Understanding Fine Motor Skills: Simple things become really hard to accomplish under stress.

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Worst Elon Musk Impersonator EVER. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news and this week we have the world’s worst Elon Musk impersonator, how to get caught at shoplifting without even trying, and Louisiana Man’s Ulta-mate mugshot.”

WE LIVE IN ROBERT HEINLEIN’S WORLD: Elon Musk Wants to Save the World — and More.

WHERE DID THE MONEY GO?

March 2023: Gavin Newsom promises to build 1,200 tiny homes by Fall

Fall: Newsom's Senior Advisor on Homelessness offers a word salad explanation for the nonexistent tiny homes

August 2024: $750 MILLION gone & not a single tiny home constructed pic.twitter.com/rI6wwNFnKC

— BAY AREA STATE OF MIND (@YayAreaNews) November 20, 2024

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: The Popular TV Plots That Won’t Make Sense in an AI World.

TV writers, it’s time to up your game. AI is about to wear out your most well-worn plotlines.

Don’t get me wrong: I like formulaic TV as much as anybody. Many of my favorite TV moments unfolded around classic tropes like the legal precedent uncovered at the 11th hour, the shocking paternity revelation or the prolonged dance of will-they-or-won’t they. Great writing, engaging characters or gorgeous costume design can redeem even the most predictable plot.

But that only works if the underlying structure makes sense—and thanks to artificial intelligence, many of our most familiar plotlines are about to look as dated as an ad exec with a flip phone.

Here are some of those old standbys that may soon need to land on the cutting-room floor.

The last-minute courtroom reveal

There is little more satisfying than the sudden and dramatic discovery of an obscure legal precedent or a little bit of fine print that allows the underdog to win a class-action lawsuit. Our legal star saves the day, again.

Nothing, though, is obscure to an AI. It will find the relevant legal precedent or loophole before the ink is dry on that retainer fee. So there go all the dramatic scenes where some junior lawyer shows up just before closing arguments, clutching the document or case law that wins the day.

AI is poised to do what the introduction of the smart phone has done in recent years, and render so many old movies and TV series anachronisms in a high-tech age.

RESURGENS: Notre Dame rises from the ashes in behind-the-scenes photos.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

CHRIS QUEEN: The Human Side of Tom Homan. “As tough and uncompromising as Homan comes across in front of a podium, the border crisis and the heartbreaking tragedy it has wrought has taken its toll on him. He appeared on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show to talk about it.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:

Gotta know how to ask: pic.twitter.com/Erd5KGUKVv

— Grand Admiral Nemo (@GrandAdmNemo) November 22, 2024

IS A NEW COLLEGE RACISM STUDY ‘PEAK WOKE?’ If not, it’s probably not for lack of trying…

ANALYSIS: TRUE. “Far from Representing a Powerful Avant-Garde Leading the Way to Political Change, the politicized class of professors is a serious political liability to any party that it supports.”

TRUTH IN ADVERTISING: Trump advisers in talks to replace Biden term ‘undocumented immigrant’ with ‘illegal alien.’

One of the first actions that President-elect Donald Trump could take come Jan. 20, 2025, is rescinding the Biden administration’s ban on the term “illegal alien.”

Advisers to Trump’s transition team on homeland security matters told the Washington Examiner this week that there have already been discussions on doing away with the Biden administration’s politically correct immigration language to talk about illegal immigrants at the border and within the country.

“In this [present] administration, we used ‘undocumented immigrants,’ right?” said a former high-ranking immigration official who now is involved in advising the transition team on policy. “Expect all of that to change.”

A second official involved in advising transition officials confirmed that talks on returning to “illegal alien” were true.

“I don’t see anyone at [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] or [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] using any euphemisms for illegal aliens after Jan. 20,” the second official said.

Administration guests on news programs should correct the anchors when they use anything other than “illegal aliens” to describe illegal aliens.

FEDS SPENT $273 MILLION RESEARCHING ‘MISINFORMATION:’ Another way of describing what Open the Books found in their analysis of federal grants in which the word “misinformation” appears at least once would be “laying censorship groundwork.” It’s my latest PJMedia column.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Gladiator 2 Gets the Bloody Job Done.

Age has been kind to both director Ridley Scott and his 2000 epic “Gladiator.”

Scott’s film earned Best Picture honors at the turn of the century, and it’s remained in the cultural conversation. (Can you say the same about “Moonlight,” “Crash” or, gasp, “The Shape of Water?”

That meant a sequel wasn’t just a possibility but a coup despite the franchise missing its two key attractions.

No Russell Crowe. No Joaquin Phoenix.

No problem, apparently.

“Gladiator 2” delivers a textbook sequel, unable to match the original but hardly a wasted affair. Scott may be 86, but he choreographs the mayhem like a 20-something hopped up on Fortnite and Rockstar.

It helps that Denzel Washington carries the film on his legendary shoulders.

The Critical Drinker isn’t as impressed:

Anachronisms be damned, I’m still looking forward to seeing it next week.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Short-term menopausal hormone therapy found to have no long-term cognitive impact.

BLUESKY IS HELL ON EARTH:

‘Blue days, all of them gone’, Al Jolson sang, almost a hundred years ago. ‘Nothing but blue skies from now on!’ Mr Jolson’s sunny sentiments seem to have been oddly prescient. For 97 years later, the great and the good of the public sphere – well, at least the ones who never stop telling themselves and us how great and good they are – are decamping en masse from X (formerly Twitter) to rival social-media site Bluesky.

Bluesky aims to recreate the previous iteration of Twitter, before that awful, vulgar Elon Musk got his filthy mitts on it two years ago. Those were the good old days when the people who ran Twitter colluded with the FBI and suppressed any opinion slightly to the right of Hillary Clinton’s. In this alleged golden age, an army of faceless moderators would chuck users off for having the temerity to express hateful Nazi slurs like ‘there are two sexes’. Bluesky is the new go-to site for people who like peace, brotherhood and dobbing their neighbours in to the authorities. For people whose feelgood movie is The Lives of Others.

Having discovered that they are massively, disastrously out of touch – thanks to the Trump landslide – their solution has been to self-isolate, and to make themselves even more out of touch.

And thus, behold, the perfect Bluesky user:

More from Gareth Roberts of Spiked:

So, how are things over the wall, in the place where the skies are blue? Well, the sudden surge of users on Bluesky (though we must remember that X is also reporting all-time usage highs) hasn’t quite created the promised paradise. It turns out that snitchers love to snitch, wherever they go. Simple statements of fact like ‘sex is not a spectrum’ are, on Bluesky, swiftly labelled with the single warning word: ‘Intolerance.’ Intolerance of what, exactly? Delusion?

The sofa Stasi are certainly busy over there. ‘In the past 24 hours’, the Bluesky safety team posted last week, ‘we have received more than 42,000 reports (an all-time high for one day). We’re receiving about 3,000 reports [per] hour. To put that into context, in all of 2023, we received 360,000 reports.’ Then, in marvellously pompous language, they added: ‘We’re triaging this large queue so the most harmful content such as CSAM [child sexual abuse material] is removed quickly.’ What a great advert for your own site – the place is full of informers and child molesters. Grasses galore and nonces by the score – roll up, roll up!

Live look at the Bluesky trust and safety team in action:

UPDATE: Allan Lichtman, the man, the myth the legend, is back from his visit to the “Smugularity:”

LAME DUCK: Biden’s Last Gasp Effort to Forgive Student Loans Is Just as Illegal as All His Other Attempts.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Researchers develop skin patch to measure blood pressure.