Author Archive: Stephen Green

ANY PORT IN A STORM: Wanted Criminal Migrant Caught Posing as Statue in Nativity Scene. “The bizarre scene unfolded in the small town of Galatone, in southern Italy’s Puglia region. Mayor Flavio Filoni noticed the imposter while observing the outdoor holiday exhibit. At first, he thought the life-sized setup looked so realistic that he considered praising the organizers—until one of the ‘figures’ suddenly shifted.”

Up next: Lefties suddenly reverse course and defend the sanctity of Nativity displays.

IT’S THEFT ALL THE WAY DOWN:

IT’S THEFT, ALL THE WAY DOWN: Shocking unearthed footage shows parents pretending to drop kids off at a Minnesota day care center.

Shocking unearthed video from a 2018 state fraud case shows Minnesota parents dropping their children off at a day care center and then leaving with the kids moments later — as authorities probe a rampant billion-dollar fraud scheme in Minneapolis.

In the surveillance footage, dated 2015 and obtained by Fox 9, parents are seen signing their kids into the facility so providers could bill the state for full days of care for children who didn’t actually attend.

On some days, no families would even show up at all, but the day cares would still claim reimbursements from the government, the outlet reported at the time.

The alleged phony day care centers also gave kickbacks to parents involved.

The clips — which were recorded in 2015 but only came to light in 2018 — resurfaced amid outrage sparked by a viral video from independent journalist Nick Shirley that showed multiple child care centers in Minnesota that had received millions in state funding despite appearing inactive.

US Education Secretary Linda McMahon called the alleged fraud a “breathtaking failure.”

Not until they got caught — and maybe not even then, depending on what, if anything, happens next.

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

I DON’T KNOW IF HE CAN DO THAT, BUT I’M ALREADY LONG ON POPCORN, SO GO FOR IT: Trump threatens to sue Fed Chair Jerome Powell for ‘gross incompetence.’ “The president hinted that the lawsuit would be connected to the increasing cost of renovations to Federal Reserve buildings, stating that the chairman has allowed the expected cost to skyrocket.”

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

SPACE IS HARD, BUT SO IS CLEANLINESS: ‘Stop and re-check everything’: Scientists discover 26 new bacterial species in NASA’s cleanrooms. “Earlier this year, scientists identified more than two dozen previously unknown bacterial species lurking in the Kennedy Space Center cleanrooms in Florida, where NASA assembled its Phoenix Mars Lander in 2007. The discovery showed that despite constant scrubbing, harsh cleaning chemicals and extreme nutrient scarcity, some microbes evolved a suite of genetic tricks that allowed them to persist in these punishing environments.”

IS THERE ANYTHING IN MINNESOTA (ASIDE FROM JAMES LILEKS) THAT ISN’T BASED ON FRAUD?

HEY, BIG SPENDER: OpenAI offering over half a million a year salary for ‘stressful’ job.

ChatGPT’s parent company OpenAI is looking to hire a “Head of Preparedness.” According to a job posting on the company website, the role is focused on leading “technical strategy and execution” around OpenAI’s “approach to tracking and preparing for frontier capabilities that create new risks of severe harm.”

“This role requires deep technical judgement, clear communication, and the ability to guide complex work across multiple risk domains,” the job posting continues.

It also pays over half a million dollars a year, $555,000 to be specific.

OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman calls the job a “critical role at an important time.”

He goes on to say that “models are improving quickly and are now capable of many great things, but they are also starting to present some real challenges.”

Those problems, according to Altman include AI’s potential impact on mental health. The job posting also mentions mitigation of other major risk factors, including cyber and bio attacks.

“If you want to help the world figure out how to enable cybersecurity defenders with cutting edge capabilities while ensuring attackers can’t use them for harm, ideally by making all systems more secure, and similarly for how we release biological capabilities and even gain confidence in the safety of running systems that can self-improve, please consider applying,” Altman said in a post on X.

Maybe those guardrails work on LLMs, but if Artificial General Intelligence is self-programming, what’s to stop it from removing puny human guardrails?

IT’S THEFT, ALL THE WAY DOWN:

Related:

The scale of fraud in this county might just be the biggest story since 9/11 or the West’s victory in the Cold War — and the Complicit Media is largely uninterested.

Is their studied disinterest purely ideological, or are they somehow in on the theft?

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Mamdanigeddon Is Almost Here — Time to Take Bets on NYC’s Survival. “I’ve expressed my affinity for New York City many times. It’s played a huge part in my stand-up career. My daughter got both her undergrad and law degrees there, and still lives in Brooklyn. I would greatly prefer that the leftists not be able to wreak any more havoc there. Unfortunately, they’re about to get their best shot yet at doing so.”

IRAN: Protests erupt in Iran over currency’s plunge to record low.

Iran’s largest protests in three years erupted Monday after the country’s currency plummeted to a record low against the U.S. dollar, and the head of the Central Bank resigned.

State TV reported the resignation of Mohammad Reza Farzin, while traders and shopkeepers rallied in Saadi Street in downtown Tehran as well as in the Shush neighborhood near Tehran’s main Grand Bazaar. Merchants at the market played a crucial role in the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ousted the monarchy and brought Islamists to power.

The official IRNA news agency confirmed the protests. Witnesses reported similar rallies in other major cities including Isfahan in central Iran, Shiraz in the south and Mashhad in the northeast. In some places in Tehran, police fired tear gas to disperse protesters.

There’s also this from the report: “The rapid depreciation is compounding inflationary pressure, pushing up prices of food and other daily necessities and further straining household budgets, a trend that could worsen with a gasoline price change introduced in recent days.”

Developing…

YOU’VE BEEN ROBBED: