I’ve been playing around with DeepDreamGenerator’s newish “text prompt” artificial intelligence image creator. This image was generated from the prompt “A baby kangaroo stole my right shoe while we were watching the guitarist.”

Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, and Debt:

Binance Is Trying to Calm Investors, but Its Finances Remain a Mystery

Fusion Breakthrough?

I’m not sure what to make of this but The Financial Times is reporting that scientists at the Livermore laboratory in California believe, according to preliminary results, that they have achieved a net energy gain with a fusion reaction. Though the practical immediate impact would be very limited, the historic impact of such an achievement is great. In theory a controlled fusion reaction holds the promise of essentially limitless clean energy.

Twitter: when the village idiot buys the village.

— Middle Age Riot (@middleageriot) December 11, 2022

ChatGPT:

Why Google Missed ChatGPT

The tech giant believes the future of search is conversational. How did it let OpenAI’s ChatGPT take the lead?

Is ChatGPT a ‘virus that has been released into the wild’?

The End of High-School English

I’ve been teaching English for 12 years, and I’m astounded by what ChatGPT can produce.

Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:

Severe COVID Looks Scarily Like Old Age in The Human Brain, Study Finds

‘The situation in the hospitals is grim’: States face brutal virus fallout

While public health experts say this winter’s Covid-19 surge may be more mild, they worry whether hospitals — already dealing with staffing shortages — can handle the increased caseload from Covid on top of the strain they’re experiencing with RSV and the flu.
Nearly 30,000 people currently in the hospital have tested positive for Covid-19, according to the CDC, up 30 percent since Thanksgiving — with New York, Arizona and New Mexico among the hardest hit.

Politics:

Special Counsel Speeds Ahead on Trump Criminal Probes

Newly-appointed special counsel Jack Smith is moving fast on a pair of criminal probes around Donald Trump that in recent months have focused on the former president’s state of mind after the 2020 election, including what he knew about plans to impede the transfer of power.

Elon Musk Is a Far-Right Activist

In five words, Musk manages to mock transgender and nonbinary people, signal his disdain for public-health officials, and send up a flare to far-right shitposters and trolls.
Beyond its stark cruelty, this tweet is incredibly thirsty. As right-wing troll memes go, it is Dad-level, 4chan–Clark Griswold stuff, which is to say it’s desperate engagement bait in the hopes of attracting kudos from the only influencers who give Musk the time of day anymore: right-wing shock jocks.

Saying the quiet part out loud:

“I want to tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, we would’ve been armed.” — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), on the January 6 riot.

She does seem to like to hear herself talk: Marjorie Taylor Greene Laments Butt Plug Availability

Bolsonaro breaks his silence and not in a good way.

Said Bolsonaro: “Who decides which way the armed forces go are you.”

What’s More Important for This Town: A Library or a Police Station?

The question no one seems to be asking is How did the library folks manage to do periodic maintenance and keep their building in decent condition while the police seem to have let that slide?

Was Paul Whelan Punitively Discharged from the Marines?

Latino Voters Stuck with Democrats

In Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, Latinos have stuck with Democrats, and that has helped power the party’s gains across a region where Latino population growth has exploded. It belies a conventional narrative that Democrats were universally ceding Latino voters to the Republican Party, a storyline repeated throughout the run-up to the Nov. 8 midterms. Instead, indicators show the GOP in danger of losing Latino voters in this region, a prospect that could mean being boxed out of the Southwest for the long term.

Amid coup, countercoup claims – what really went down in Peru and why?

Biden Faces Pressure to Drop Charges Against Julian Assange

Whether the US justice department continues to pursue the Trump-era charges against the notorious leaker, whose group put out secret information on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, American diplomacy and internal Democratic politics before the 2016 election, will go a long way toward determining whether the current administration intends to make good on its pledges to protect the press.
Now Biden is facing a re-energized push, both inside the United States and overseas, to drop Assange’s protracted prosecution.

I’d like to see the charges dropped, but by the DOJ recognizing it’s the right thing to do, not because of pressure from the White House.

Elon Musk Gets Viciously Booed by Stadium Crowd

Serendipity:

How do floating wind turbines work? 5 companies just won the first US leases for building them off California’s coast

The Dead Sea is dying. These beautiful, ominous photos show the impact

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