DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Gen Zers are getting fired at shocking levels. Here’s why.

It’s easy to blame Gen Zers for their reported laziness and simply tell them to do better. But attributing these failures solely to the personal shortcomings of young people these days is an oversimplification that fails to capture the nuance of the situation. Young people are being raised in a particular environment that’s leading to these worse outcomes, and that means there’s plenty of blame to go around.

One chief culprit is surely the higher education system, which is supposed to prepare young adults for the workforce, but evidently isn’t doing a very good job.

“Many recent college graduates may struggle with entering the workforce for the first time as it can be a huge contrast from what they are used to throughout their education journey,” Intelligent.com concluded in its report. “They are often unprepared for a less structured environment, workplace cultural dynamics, and the expectation of autonomous work.”

That’s right: Modern colleges often infantilize young adults, through “trigger warnings,” safe spaces, grade inflation where it’s easy to get As, and other wildly unrealistic elements of campus life. I’ll never forget one time at the University of Massachusetts Amherst when my dormitory put Care Bears up on the walls — yes, Care Bears! — reminding college sophomores and juniors to drink water, brush their teeth, and sleep eight hours a night. Have you ever heard of a workplace that remotely looks like this?

It is not surprising that college students who “graduate” from this kind of adult daycare then struggle in the real world. And frankly, it’s not even all their own fault.

Who could have seen this coming? “With all the attention being paid to college-aged social justice warriors and microagressions, one has to ask: What happens when all these delicate snowflakes enter the workforce?”

—Ashe Schow, the Washington Examiner, March 26, 2015.

And from earlier this year, our look at what happened when all those delicate snowflakes entered America’s newsrooms.

“ARSONIST RETURNS TO THE SCENE OF THE CRIME:” CNN’s Scott Jennings Has the Perfect Line for Kamala’s Disastrous Border Visit.

THIS WILL REPORTEDLY BE PRIME VIDEO’S ELECTION NIGHT ANCHOR. (Hint: ‘Spread Fake News, Get Rewarded’):

What I love about streaming video is all the memberberries it serves up:

Exit question: “Will they hire Dan Rather too?”

I hear he has prior commitments to CNN and Netflix.

Related: Mark Judge: Bezos Gets It Backwards: He Should Run Amazon Like the Post and the Post Like Amazon.

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Israel Strikes While Kamala Bombs.

JOHN NOLTE: Disney Flop The Acolyte Cost Nearly Quarter of a Billion Dollars.

The Acolyte is — er, was; it’s already been canceled — the latest Disney+ Star Wars-raping streaming series. This one was all about how lesbian witches created everything or something.

Anyway, the groomers told us the eight-episode series cost only $180 million. But now, thanks to the fact the United Kingdom does not allow studios to fudge or hide their numbers, we know The Acolyte $231 million.

That Park Place:

United Kingdom tax documents filed by the Walt Disney Company’s UK branch reveal that Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company spent over 172 million GBP (231 million USD) on the production of The Acolyte, a prequel series set in the Disney Star Wars universe.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, The Acolyte series creator Leslye Headland publicly claimed the show cost “180 million,” which was assumed by several to be stated in US dollars. It is evident that if Headland had knowledge of the series financials that she was more likely referring the the amount in Great British Pounds. Accounting for exchange rates at the time of this article, this means that The Acolyte cost almost $230 million US dollars.

That works out to about $29 million per episode.

Industrial Light and Magic certainly knows how to make spaceships explode in a spectacular fashion. But nobody sets money itself ablaze on the small and big screen like Kathleen Kennedy. Not to mention, nobody knows how to either permanently or temporarily derail the career aspirations of the actresses she casts:

But Kennedy isn’t the only producer at Disney who can set money on fire, Ace writes: Disney Is Making “Brutal” Payroll Cuts, Again. Plus: All the Woke Entertainment News I’ve Skipped for a Month.

DISPATCHES FROM FUN CITY: Eric Adams’s Turkey trot.

“Brooklyn is the Istanbul of America,”* now-Mayor Eric Adams told a pair of Turks on camera after they asked him for political favors in a cameo he made in a Turkish romcom. Now, in real life, Adams is accused of doing just that, following a sweeping indictment unsealed by prosecutors in Manhattan who allege that he fraudulently obtained $10 million in public campaign funds and accepted over $100,000 in bribes in order to facilitate a new Turkish consulate.

“In 2014, Eric Adams, the defendant, became Brooklyn borough president. Thereafter, for nearly a decade, Adams sought and accepted improper valuable benefits, such as luxury international travel, including from wealthy foreign businesspeople and at least one Turkish government official seeking to gain influence over him,” the fifty-seven-page indictment reads; it marks the first time a sitting mayor of New York City has been indicted.

The indictment includes multiple outright absurd allegations, including that Adams changed his iPhone password, only to claim he forgot “the password he had just set, and thus was unable to provide the FBI with a password that would unlock the phone” and that his staff asked a businessman to lie to the feds about obvious straw donations his employees made in return for him securing a city sponsorship for events.

For his part, Adams, who has called the charges “false,” has suggested that they are politically motivated, and based off of his opposition to the Biden administration’s open borders policies. They come after multiple members of his inner circle had their homes searched.

The hours leading up to and following the indictment saw a series of strange comments from Adams allies and enemies bubble up. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, herself a potential mayoral candidate down the road, called on him to resign — even before the indictments were unsealed. On the other hand, Liel Liebovitz took to the pages of Tablet magazine to argue that “Jewish New Yorkers have an obligation to stand up against a corrupt Democratic Party lawfare campaign that is targeting the mayor who stood up for us.”

If New Yorkers thought the de Blasio years were bad, just make AOC mayor. But then again, even she might be slightly better than Adams’ possible direct successor, Jumaane Williams.

* “We call New York City the Port-Au-Prince of America,” Adams tweeted in March in regards to the Haitian immigrant crisis, if we’re keeping track of crazy pandering stuff that only Adams says about New York.

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: RFK Jr. and star journalist Olivia Nuzzi had ‘incredible’ FaceTime sex, said they loved each other: sources.

MUST-FLEE TV: How (Not) to Study Hitler.

There are good reasons for students to learn about the madmen of history. The vices of such men contrast sharply with the heroes whose virtues we hope our citizens and statesmen might emulate; they serve as reminders of the cruelties that a flawed human nature can produce; and they can serve as warnings for where politics can occasionally descend should the better angels of our nature fail on a mass scale. Students today rightly study Adolf Hitler and the Nazis for all three reasons. This is as it should be. Indeed, conditions today are such that the need for the third reason is particularly heightened: antisemitism is growing at alarming rates; fringe fascist-sympathizers have a large following online; and the value of liberal democracy is being openly questioned all around. In such times, Hitler’s Germany can serve as a sobering reminder of just how badly things can go if we lose our heads.

To fulfill this mandate to educate, the creators of the Netflix documentary series, Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial, needed only to tell the story again, to let the narrative speak for itself. In certain respects, they do this, deploying a mix of real footage from the Nazi era, choreographed scenes with actors to fill in the gaps, and historical commentary that conveys the story of Hitler’s life and how one man directed a respectable country towards evil. But the series is handicapped by crucial flaws. Chief among these is its attempts to compare the Weimar Republic and its chief villain to contemporary American politics. Its loud dog whistles equating Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump betray a desperation of the creators that goes beyond the limits of acceptable bias in such a way as to undermine the aim of the entire project.

In some cases, the references are far too obvious to actually be considered dog whistles:

BENJAMIN CARTER HETT, Author, The Death of Democracy:

Outside of Berlin, large numbers of Germans are living in small communities, rural communities where the artistic experimentation, the innovation, the sexual experimentation of Weimar Berlin is utterly foreign to them. And indeed, they are somewhat hostile to it.

ANNE BERG, Professor, University of Pennsylvania:

It’s a group of people who feel shunned. So, if we want to make a contemporary analogy, we can see the sort of forgotten people in America, there is a sense that the system has dealt them a bad hand, and Hitler kind of taps into a fundamental disillusionment with the Weimar Republic. And this is the concept that he will return to repeatedly, even after he is in power.

As the New York Times noted:

Hitler’s project: “Making Germany great again.” The Nazis’ characterization of criticism from the media: “Fake news.” Hitler’s mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden: “It’s sort of like Hitler’s Mar-a-Lago, if you will.”

Donald Trump’s name is not mentioned in the six episodes of “Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial,” a new historical documentary series on Netflix. But it dances just beneath the surface, and occasionally, as in the examples above, the production’s cadre of scholars, popular historians and biographers can barely stop themselves from giving the game away.

Egged on by the documentary makers, of course.

NO THANKS, I’M STILL SOCIAL DISTANCING: Danielle Pletka: Meet the President of Iran.

[Masoud] Pezeshkian is a trade up from [the extremely deceased Ebrahim] Raisi: Smarter, smoother, less ranty, and more approachable. And I want especially to emphasize the heart of his messaging, because you will recognize in it the heart of the New York Times, Financial Times, and other elite intellectual bastions’ messaging on Israel. First, he didn’t waste time with the antisemitism, and uttered the word “Zionist” once, more than an hour in. He had tested his approach with his Washington friends in private meetings (yes, we know who sees Team Tehran one-on-one), and he wasn’t going to waste points with college-level trolling. Second, he wanted us to know something: Iran does not want war. Iran hates violence. If the Palestinians want to make nice with Israel, that is their call.

Israel, you should know, wanted the hardliner to win the Iranian elections, so it could tell the world it was right about Iranian intransigence. But they didn’t get their wish, and Mr. Softie, Uncle Masoud, was the victor. He is well aware Iran needs reform, and he is the man to reform it.

Israel wants to drag Iran into a wider war, but the pacifists that run Iran are too committed to their healing message: No one wins in a war. If there is a peace to be had, Iran will do nothing to risk it. So, yes, Israel killed the top Hamas terror master in Tehran, and tested the Ayatollahs. But they were strong, they did not take the bait.

Iran does not want nuclear weapons. Iran just wants to give voice to the voiceless. Iran wants only dignity. Iran would even come back to dialogue with the United States. Sure, the Supreme Leader is very, very angry about bad, bad Donald Trump pulling out of the JCPOA, but Pezeshkian believes only in dialogue. He will fight to make peace, even with the Supreme Leader.

Other stuff you didn’t know: Iran is “diverse.” Iran is committed to reform. There are Sunnis and Kurds in senior government positions. Together, this DEI meets intersectionality meets kumbaya mix wants to overcome challenges in Iran. It’s beautiful.

Why is Iran in an axis with China and Russia? Because it must survive. Why is Iran arming Russia against Ukraine? (The nutty professor answered this one for Pezeshkian.) Because NATO has trapped the Russians with its expansionist aims.

This was true alt-world stuff, uttered with complete conviction, more in sorrow than in anger. Zarif often stared lovingly at Pezeshkian, and rightly so. This guy is Mr. Smooth in addition to being Mr. Softie. I couldn’t believe they didn’t give me a stuffed Ayatollah as swag to take home.

Tucker Carlson’s guest booker must be scrambling to arrange an interview with Pezeshkian ASAP.

Related: Why Are Iran’s Thugs Free to Walk the Streets of New York?

QUESTION ASKED: Say, Has Kamala Ever Led a Prosecution?

OLD AND BUSTED: “Mile Markers on the Road to Detroit.”

The New Hotness? Mile Markers on the Road to Mad Max! Coyote-fearing locals are putting vests with spikes on their tiny dogs in San Francisco.

SOD OFF SWAMPIES: Fresh attack on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers after Just Stop Oil activists jailed.

The National Gallery said the three activists had been arrested and the paintings remain unharmed after the incident at 2.30pm.

A statement said: “The paintings were removed from display and examined by a conservator and are unharmed. We are aiming to reopen the exhibition as soon as possible.”

In a video on social media, one protester said: “Future generations will regard these prisoners of conscience to be on the right side of history.”

Holland and Plummer, both 22, were found guilty of criminal damage at Southwark Crown Court in July.

During their trial, it was heard the activists, who denied damaging the painting, caused as much as £10,000 worth of damage to the frame, which prosecutors said was “a piece of art in itself”.

The protesters, wearing Just Stop Oil T-shirts, threw two tins of Heinz tomato soup over the 1888 work in October 2022, before kneeling down in front of the painting and gluing their hands to the wall beneath it.

Visitors were escorted out by security, who then shut the doors to the room containing the painting.

Raj Chada, defending Holland, said the women “did check” that the painting was protected by a glass cover before throwing the soup.

Plummer, representing herself, told the hearing: “My choice today is to accept whatever sentence I receive with a smile.

Earlier: Joel Kotkin: Environmentalism is a Fundamentalist Religion.

RIP: Dame Maggie Smith dies aged 89: Beloved Harry Potter and Downton Abbey star passes away in hospital after 70-year acting career — as tributes flood in for ‘one of the greats.’

JANE FONDA HARDEST HIT: Three Mile Island nearly killed nuclear. Now it’s coming back. New video from Reason TV:

As Pete Townshend was quoted as saying in 1980, “I’m for nuclear power, but I haven’t told anyone because I am still hoping to f*** Jane Fonda, like everybody dreams of doing who’s involved in the No Nuke movement.”

INSURRECTION: Tim Walz’s education appointee, Macalester professor backs ‘overthrow’ of United States.

According to the National Review, Brian Lozenski, a professor of urban and multicultural education at Macalester College in the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota has called for the “overthrow” of the United States. Walz had tapped Lozenski to create an “implementation framework” for Minnesota’s ethnic studies standards.

During a 2022 Zoom recording of Lozenski discussing his book, “My Emancipation Don’t Fit Your Equation: Critical Enactments of Black Education in the US,” the professor and appointee of Walz was speaking about how the text tied into education and critical race theory (CRT).

He said that a main tenet of CRT is that the “United States as constructed is irreversibly racist. So, if the nation-state as constructed is irreversibly racist, then it must be done with, it must be overthrown.” Lozenski had said that those in favor of CRT cannot simply say that CRT is “just about telling our stories and divers[ity].”

“It’s not about that. It’s about overthrow. It’s insurgent. And we, we need to be, I think, more honest with that,” Lozenski added, later saying, “The United States needs to be deconstructed, period. Right. Like that’s, you know, and so I think, I think it’s an interesting argument there. And that’s why I’m a critical race theorist.”

As Andy Ngo tweets, “Walz’s DEI, CRT education appointee for Minnesota’s curriculum on ethnic studies advocates for insurrection against the U.S. in the name of overthrowing racism. The same argument was used to burn, loot and kill in 2020 by BLM-Antifa extremists.”

With the blessings of both Walz and Harris: Kamala Harris Lies, Claiming That She Never Promoted the Bail Fund That Bailed Out BLM Rioters As Well As Murderers and R4pists; But the Tweet In Which She Promoted that Bail Fund Is Still Up!

And: Did Tim Walz ‘Let Minneapolis Burn?’

There is one point on which everyone I spoke to seemed to agree: The destruction was orchestrated largely by agitators, not local protesters. Some of them were militant anarchists, and some were far-right groups like the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo Bois, and the “Aryan Cowboys.”

“People there with a First Amendment right to protest were being used as cover, whether wittingly or unwittingly, for the destruction,” said one officer, who asked to remain anonymous.

[Minneapolis police lieutenant Kim Voss], who went undercover decades ago to investigate Antifa, told me that “this is what trained activists do. They found a crowd that was really ripe for it. A lot of the looters were local people—ones that got caught up in it. But they were puppets. The activists were the puppeteers.”

More than anyone, though, Voss blames Walz. She recalled once hearing Walz use the line, “We don’t abandon our folks,” referring to Democrats who were calling for Biden to exit the presidential race.

“I thought, You’re so full of shit,” she said. “You did. You left us all behind.”

Related: Tim Walz’s Wife Gwen Kept Windows Open During BLM Riots to ‘Smell the Burning Tires.’ “I kept the windows open as long as I could because I felt like that was such a touchstone of what was — what was happening.”

Walz’s daughter was also apparently pro-rioters as well back then:

FACT CHECK: Interviewing Joe Biden ‘Like Having One of The Beatles at the Table.’

Joe Biden, nominal president of the United States, sat down with the ladies of The View for an interview on Wednesday. “It’s like having one of the Beatles at the table,” co-host Sarah Haines said as the audience roared and her colleagues cackled.

Haines wasn’t entirely wrong, according to a Washington Free Beacon fact check. Biden doesn’t have much in common with the Beatles, but they’re both half-dead, half-octogenarian relics who haven’t accomplished anything of substance since the 1970s. We rate Haines’s claim “mostly true.”

Since the Beatles are now in the “let’s use AI to salvage ancient footage of the band and isolate John’s voice from his mid-’70s demos to generate new product” phase of their corporate existence, and Biden is a withered holographic husk of a man in 2024, I’ll allow it as well.

IT’S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!

Listen to @algore predict an ice-free Arctic by 2014 at his December 10, 2007 Nobel prize speech.

At the annual September minimum in 2024, the Arctic had 26% more sea ice than 2012. pic.twitter.com/G2zdgb9dFt

— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) September 26, 2024

That’s nothing. Jessica Savitch told me we’d all be dead by the mid-1990s:

1983. NBC News. We are all going to die by the 1990's because of climate change. 😂 pic.twitter.com/YZvG7cvc89

— MAZE (@mazemoore) October 31, 2023

GREAT MOMENTS IN MESSAGE DISCIPLINE: Kamala Harris ridiculed after urging Americans to move on from ‘failed policies:’ ‘New Trump ad just dropped.’

—The New York Post, today.

Joe Biden yesterday on The View:

BIDEN: "As Vice President, there wasn't a single thing that I did that she couldn't do and so I was able to delegate her responsibility on everything from foreign policy to domestic policy." pic.twitter.com/Uat7jXWNrO

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) September 25, 2024

AND THERE WAS GREAT REJOICING AMONG LIBERTARIANS: Would a Second Trump Term Mean the End of the Federal Reserve as We Know It?

The ghost of Woodrow Wilson has a frown. As for everyone else:

Exit quote: “I didn’t expect to see The Dispatch give Trump an in-kind campaign contribution like this, but it’s been a weird election year.“

KAROL MARKOWICZ: Corruption allegations hit New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s inner circle.

Joseph Jardin, who was previously the FDNY’s chief of fire prevention, is suing after he and six other department chiefs were demoted for protesting the use of the DMO List. But Jardin’s suit alleges not just favoritism but also looking the other way about actual danger. As the website The City reported in November 2023, “Last spring Jardin told the FBI about an interaction in 2021, when Adams was still Brooklyn Borough President but soon to be mayor, and allegedly pressured the FDNY to reinspect a newly constructed 35-story Midtown building housing the Turkish consulate where the fire safety system had failed an inspection.”

A 35-story building in Manhattan already failing a fire department inspection and being fast-tracked for approval is more than just a political scandal.

For a long time, despite the innuendos and the gossip, the house searches and the subpoenas, no one had been arrested. That changed last Monday, Sept. 16.

Anthony Saccavino and Brian Cordasco, two high-ranking fire department officials who had resigned their posts after their own FBI home raids earlier this year, were arrested in connection with the investigation.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams held a press conference on Monday outlining the scheme. “They allegedly created a VIP lane for faster service that could only be accessed with bribes,” he said at a press conference. “That’s classic pay-to-play corruption.”

Suddenly, New York City Hall’s attempts to brush off the corruption allegations looked unlikely to succeed. In the last year, many had come to the mayor’s defense. Former New York Gov. David Paterson called the federal investigation “Orwellian” and suggested the Biden administration was coming after Adams because he had criticized the president for sending migrants to New York. The conversation about whether Adams would survive his term was no longer theoretical. If the FDNY officials were facing jail for their role in expediting the inspections, it stood to reason that someone in the mayor’s office had motivated them to do so.

What’s interesting is, according to the New York Post, “Adams’ campaign accepted a $6,000 donation from three donors who served on the board of a foundation backed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son Bilal.” A $6,000 donation hardly seems like the kind of thing to blow up your mayoralty over. And the existence of the DMO List during the de Blasio administration tells the story that this kind of, yes, corruption was often accepted and overlooked.

Exit quote: “‘I’m dyslexic. I was arrested. I was rejected. Now I’m elected,’ Adams likes to say. Yes, but can he stay that way?”

Meanwhile, get ready to return to the bad old days, Fun City: NYC could become a dystopian hellhole run by liberal activist Jumaane Williams who protested against police if Adams gets the boot: ‘Lord help us.’

Social media users have already started expressing fear about what a mayor Williams would mean for NYC.

‘Jumaane D. Williams makes AOC look like Joe Manchin. Big defund the police/bail reform guy,’ Joe Colangelo said on X.

‘To say this would be the final nail in the coffin for NYC is an understatement. JW is basically a villain from Batman,’ another X user added.

Lisa Cappiello simply wrote: ‘Lord help us.’

During 15 years in public service, Williams has stoked anti-police sentiment and pushed for criminal reform, including to end solitary confinement in city prisons. He is also a prominent pro-Palestine activist.

The failed gubernatorial candidate is a firm proponent of slashing the NYPD’s budget but lives in a US military base in Brooklyn that offers 24-hour security.

Williams was a leader of the 2020 BLM protests in NYC. In June 2020, during the George Floyd protests, he led marches to Brooklyn Borough Hall to demand NYPD budget cuts.

He also threatened to refuse to sign a warrant authorizing the collection of real estate taxes, which underpin the city’s budget.

Williams said he would not sign that warrant unless the city eliminated the next class of police officers.

‘This guy hates the cops, hates America. Wears a Keffiyeh,’ Sliwa told DailyMail.com. ‘The police will no longer be able to function….

Sliwa added that even in a temporary position, Williams’ mayorship could have lasting effects for NYC and it will spark an exodus from the city.

‘[City Council] will pass so much legislation that he will sign and will never be able to be rescinded,’ Sliwa added.  ‘New York City will become the socialist capital of the world.’

I’m pretty sure that The Dark Knight Rises wasn’t meant to be a how-to guide for calm municipal government.

JIM GERAGHTY: Eric Adams Indictment a Window into Pernicious Foreign Bribery Operations.

The name “Samuel Dickstein” really ought to be more widely remembered and loathed:

Dickstein, a Democrat from New York City who served in the House of Representatives from the early 1920s to the mid-1940s, conducted himself in public life with none of the refined elegance that his self-presentation suggested. . . .

So over-the-top as to be ineffectual — he had the poor taste to call for Noel Coward to be barred from the country because the English wit made a quip about the manliness of Brooklyn soldiers — Dickstein left Congress in 1946, and served as a state Supreme Court justice until his death in 1954. In 1963, a portion of the street grid close to where he used to live on East Broadway was christened “Samuel Dickstein Plaza.” No controversy attended the occasion. He then went about the time-honored practice of being forgotten.

That is, until 1999, when Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev published The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America — the Stalin Era, which through the use of previously unavailable KGB records went a long way toward convincing those who could be convinced that Alger Hiss and Julius Rosenberg were in fact working for the Soviet Union. The authors also revealed that Stalin had a spy in Congress, an exasperating character who once “blazed up very much, claiming that if we didn’t give him money he would break with us,” according to his Soviet contact. To this day, Sam Dickstein is the only known U.S. representative to have served as a covert agent for a foreign power. His codename was Crook. . . . 

According to Weinstein and Vassiliev, Dickstein had earned a total of $12,000 during his time on the Soviet payroll, about $200,000 when adjusted for inflation. [Emphasis added.]

(I just want to point out that if I had a corrupt representative working for the Russians with the codename “Crook” in one of my novels, readers would complain it was a little too on the nose.)

At a recent speech while accepting an award from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the legendary George Will observed, “The way you lower the temperature of politics is to lower the stakes of politics.” Similarly, if you want fewer opportunities for foreign corruption, reduce the size, power, and personnel in government. A big, sprawling government, whether it’s federal, state, or local, with Byzantine regulations and lots of staffers who can do favors or ensure paperwork gets approved, creates lots of motive, means, and opportunity for bribery and illicit favors.

Read the whole thing. As Milton Friedman once said, “It’s nice to elect the right people, but that’s not the way you solve things. The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.”

Related: “Where the hell does Eric Adams live?” We Staked Out Eric Adams’s House in Brooklyn.

UPDATE: Adams Charged With Bribery, Wire Fraud.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

TOMORROW’S POSTMORTEMS TODAY! Presidential Election Pre-Postmortem:

THE 2024 ELECTION IS OVER and [Donald Trump // Kamala Harris] has won. Or, perhaps it’s more correct to say that [Kamala Harris // Donald Trump] has lostthe election, because after [Trump’s // Harris’s] stumbling, error-ridden campaign, it seems inappropriate to describe [him // her] as a “winner.” It was obvious from August on that [Trump // Harris] would defeat [Harris // Trump], and it’s astounding how wrong the political experts’ predictions proved to be.

Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™

(Via SDA.)

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Eric Adams becomes first sitting NYC mayor to be indicted by grand jury in historic federal probe: sources. “Details about the exact accusations remained unclear, but are believed to be connected to allegations of the Turkish government illegally funneling money into his mayoral campaign, according to sources. It’s also uncertain how the indictment is related to a sweeping set of Sept. 4 raids that targeted several high-profile Adams administration officials, which sent City Hall into a weeks-long tailspin as news reports emerged of investigations focused on alleged corruption by the mayor’s inner circle.”

UPDATE: “Foreign interference in our elections? It seems like pretty small beer, especially given that the Iranian mullahs may be trying to assassinate Donald Trump. That’s what I call election interference.”

MORE: (P)resident Biden, always the last to know:

Hours before NYC Mayor Eric Adams was indicted, he was hanging with President Biden at a Metropolitan Museum of Art reception after the UN pic.twitter.com/RYIGCoRVkh

— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) September 26, 2024

IT DOESN’T FEEL PITY, OR REMORSE, OR FEAR, AND IT ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT STOP, EVER, UNTIL YOU ARE DEAD: Terminator director recruited by British rival to OpenAI in bid to woo Hollywood.

James Cameron, the creator of The Terminator franchise, has joined forces with a British start-up developing artificial intelligence (AI) technology as it seeks to win over Hollywood.

The veteran filmmaker, who once said that AI could one day do his job, has been appointed to the board of Stability AI, which develops tools for creating images and videos using algorithms.

The appointment comes amid fears among actors, writers and animators that AI bots, which can generate photorealistic videos or mimic voices, could eventually replace them.

A wave of Hollywood actors strikes last year paralysed the film and television industry amid fears their work could be replaced by machines.

Mr Cameron, who also directed Titanic and Avatar and won critical acclaim for his use of visual effects and computer generated imagery, joins Stability AI weeks after it secured critical funding and underwent a major executive reshuffle.

Having the father of the Terminator involved with AI is right up there with GE using Agent Smith from the Matrix to promote its healthcare division during the Obamacare era: