THE COUNTRY IS IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Great. The FBI Is Run by a Conspiracy Theorist.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
July 25, 2024
CYBER THREATS: North Korean hacker got hired by US security vendor, immediately loaded malware. “KnowBe4 said it was looking for a software engineer for its internal IT AI team. The firm hired a person who, it turns out, was from North Korea and was ‘using a valid but stolen US-based identity’ and a photo that was “enhanced” by artificial intelligence. There is now an active FBI investigation amid suspicion that the worker is what KnowBe4’s blog post called ‘an Insider Threat/Nation State Actor.'”
ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Corpse-in-Chief Has Got to Go. “The best case is that Biden’s brain is as impaired as we thought but that maybe his physical condition hasn’t declined as rapidly as it appears.”
COLONIALISM, STRAIGHT UP:
A Liberty Bell monument (not the original) was among the federal monuments attacked and vandalized with pro-Hamas messages at the leftist “Day of Rage” yesterday in D.C. pic.twitter.com/b4wLc2D1bh
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) July 25, 2024
The lack of consequences tells you everything you need to know about who is actually running things.
IT’LL NEVER HAPPEN: 10 Questions We Dare the Media to Ask Kamala Harris.
CHANGE? The ‘Iron Lady’ of Venezuela Threatens to Unseat Its Autocrat.
Ms. Machado, 56, the newest leader of Venezuela’s opposition, has struck fear into the hearts of the country’s ruling party. In a matter of months, she has emerged from the political sidelines to build a powerful social movement capable of bringing thousands of people to the streets — and perhaps millions to the ballot box.
She is not the one running for president, but she is the driving force behind the main opposition candidate, a little-known diplomat named Edmundo González.
The mobilization Ms. Machado has catalyzed follows years of political apathy in Venezuela, where the government of President Nicolás Maduro has crushed protests and arrested dissidents, helping to spur an enormous exodus from the country.
An effort backed by the Trump administration to install a young legislator named Juan Guaidó as interim president failed, and last year Mr. Guaidó fled to the United States.
Now, Ms. Machado, a conservative former member of the national assembly once rejected by her own colleagues, has not only corralled Venezuela’s fractious opposition behind her, but has also captivated a broad swath of the electorate with a promise for sweeping government change.
Maduro won’t go quietly, that much is certain.
HMM: Elon Musk pushes back on reports that he’s donating $45M a month to super PAC backing Trump. “‘What’s been reported in the media is simply not true,’ Musk said in an interview with conservative commentator Jordan Peterson. ‘I am not donating $45 million a month to Trump.'”
The money would be nice but don’t be surprised the media got it wrong yet again.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The ‘Free Palestine’ Nazis Get More Unhinged With Each Protest. “Keeping in mind that these people are in sync with the woman who is the presumptive Democratic nominee, let us move on to just how bat**** crazy they are.”
OUCH: Google Fails to ‘Wow’ as AI Bills Mount.
Tuesday’s results also set the stage for what might be a more challenging second half of the year. For one, comparisons will be tougher as the second half of last year had Google nearly recovered from an earlier advertising slump. Google also didn’t fully ramp up its spending on AI infrastructure until well into the second half of 2023; capital expenditures in the first half of 2023 were barely half of the $25.2 billion the company has spent in the first half of this year.
That spending won’t be taking a breather any time soon, even as Google has pared back other costs and even brought its head count down by more than 1,300 positions in the most recent quarter. Alphabet said Tuesday that capex will be at or above $12 billion a quarter for the second half of the year, likely leading to a total outlay of more than $49 billion for the year—84% higher than what the company has averaged annually over the past five years.
“Look, obviously we are at the early stage of what I view as a very transformative area,” Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said during Tuesday’s earnings call when asked by an analyst about the company’s AI investments. He added that “the risk of underinvesting is dramatically greater than the risk of overinvesting for us here,” not mentioning the record amounts of capex that tech rivals Microsoft, Amazon.com and Meta Platforms are pouring into the same thing.
Maybe it is similar or maybe it isn’t. But AI right now reminds me of the late ’90s dotcom bubble — lots of corporate spending on the latest stuff that few people have any clue how to monetize.
MUSTN’T OFFEND THE DEMOCRATS OF DEARBORN: The Veep Sweepstakes: No Jews Need Apply.
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Grant For Social Justice Org For Illegal Aliens = Widespread Child Sex Abuse. “One organization that took federal money was Austin-based Southwest Key, an organization that claims to be on the frontier of social justice, and now they’re accused of allowing wildspread child sex abuse to flourish on their watch.”
THEY DON’T HONESTLY GIVE A DAMN THAT THEY’RE GETTING CAUGHT IN REAL-TIME: Here’s the Liberal Media’s Latest ‘Cheap Fakes’ Gaslighting About Kamala Harris.
July 24, 2024
WAIT A GOOD HOUR BEFORE SWIMMING: A new fossil shows an animal unlike any we’ve seen before. And it looks like a taco.
CHUCK D: Why Today’s Artists Can’t Fight the Power. “They’re all scared, man … Musicians, artists, entertainers have now been governed by fear, fear of being canceled.”
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: The Few, the Proud, the Remaining Full-Time Private Sector Workers Under Bidenomics. “The kind of switcharoo we’re seeing between full- and part-time employment is typical for a recession, not for a time of ‘robust growth’ that the media keeps assuring us is happening.”
SCHADENFREUDELICIOUS: Tiny Trump Beads of Flop Sweat Forming on Pursed Pulitzer Prize Winning Upper Lips. “What the media, Democrats, progressives – the entire lot of them fail to learn time and again from every encounter is the man’s tenaciousness.”
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: Gamechanger: Is a Trump-RFK Jr. Alliance in the Works?
XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: China’s domestic turmoil risks escalating space tensions.
Faced with an array of internal problems, state censorship has been ratcheted into overdrive. Wary of espionage, Beijing is taking ever more extreme measures to restrict the flow of information. But a more opaque China could impair decision-making about its actions within the global economy and international order. This impairment also includes decision-making ability around the development and preservation of space for the common good.
Indeed, in a lecture broadcasted during the 20th National Congress of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in October 2022, Xi Jinping warned that “external attempts to suppress and contain China may escalate at any time.” The gathering also served to showcase the Chinese leader’s consolidation of absolute control over his party. Loyal ultranationalists were rewarded with cabinet positions, sidelining any viable opposition to Xi’s policies.
By silencing moderate perspectives, hawkish voices that align with Xi Jinping’s zero-sum mindset are now shaping China’s space agenda — as well as related propaganda for domestic consumption.
Leaders living in a bubble dictating the news sounds an awful lot like America under Biden-Harris.
THE EV BUBBLE CONTINUES TO DEFLATE: Today In Our Glorious Transition to EVs: General Motors Balks.
‘MURICA: Which Countries Have The Most Olympic Medals Of All-Time?
Add up the totals for China, the Russian Federation, and the late USSR, and they still don’t come close to the USA.