The breaks have highlighted the decaying infrastructure criss-crossing Atlanta and many other major American cities.Of course even if there weren't "shovel ready projects" just pointing the money bazooka at bank accounts would have worked reasonably well, too, as we have recently discovered, but those smart guys knew best.
“What we have found, in digging and digging and digging and looking at pipes, we are repairing pipes from 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and our infrastructure is crumbling,” Atlanta Chief Operating Officer LaChandra Burks said at a Monday afternoon city council meeting.
Wednesday, June 05, 2024
Shovel Ready Projects
One of the excuses that Obungler and the gang made for the catastrophic choice to not support more stimulus funding after the crash was that there weren't "shovel ready projects." My retort at the time - perfectly correct - was that you had almost limitless opportunity for digging holes and filling them up again, and replacing the pipes inbetween those two steps.
Russians In Our Facebook
I remember that right after 10/7 a lot of people were claiming there was an elaborate "pro-Hamas" (or pro-Palestinian, depending) bot operation going on and I was never quite sure who was supposed to be organizing that.
Israel organized and paid for an influence campaign last year targeting U.S. lawmakers and the American public with pro-Israel messaging, as it aimed to foster support for its actions in the war with Gaza, according to officials involved in the effort and documents related to the operation.Well we'd better send more weapons, like they asked.
They Let You Put Anything In The Paper Now
Bret put his assistant to work today to provide a bunch of reasons Europe Is Bad. I thought this, in particular, was pretty hilarious:
Think of any leading-edge industry — artificial intelligence, microchips, software, robotics, genomics — and ask yourself (with a few honorable exceptions), where’s the European Microsoft, Nvidia or OpenAI?
There are only a few honorable exceptions to my point that Europe doesn't have any leading tech firms. Amazing stuff, Bret and editors. I'd bet Bret submitted it without the parenthetical, his editor came up with a few examples like, I dunno, maybe Spotify or that Ozempic making company, so Bret stuck it in there. Nonetheless his point still stands!
But this the point he is really concerned about: too many Muslims.
Europe has an additional challenge: a relatively high Muslim birthrate, along with the prospect of long-term Muslim migration. Under a “medium migration” scenario estimated by Pew, by 2050 Britain will be nearly 17 percent Muslim, France 17.4 percent and Sweden 20.5 percent. Those wondering about the ascendence of far-right European parties, who are heavily favored to sweep this week’s elections in the E.U. Parliament and who are often sympathetic to Vladimir Putin, know this is a factor. And they need to be honest that the values of depressingly notable segments of these Muslim populations are fundamentally at odds with European traditions of moral tolerance and political liberalism.Muslims, who I do not support, hate moral tolerance and political liberalism, which, as an American conservative, I also do not support.
The "intolerant Muslim" of the imagination is basically the American conservative party but brown and with a different prayer schedule (of the imagination, to be clear).
Tuesday, June 04, 2024
My Chatbot Is Bigger Than Your Chatbot
These guys are gonna spend all their money on dueling Clippies.
Elon Musk ordered thousands of Nvidia-made AI chips destined for Tesla to be diverted to his social media company X, according to emails from the chipmaker obtained by CNBC. The move has the potential to delay Tesla’s acquisition of $500 million worth of processors by months, the outlet reports.
...
Musk’s AI startup, xAI, is racing against OpenAI, Google, and others to produce useful applications for generative AI and their underlying large language models. Last month, the company announced a $6 billion funding round on the promise of advanced products and the infrastructure to support them.
Explained It Perfectly
Great stuff.
And whose fault is it that the that deal, the ceasefire for hostages has not been consummated? Is it Hamas or Israel or both?
Biden: Hamas. Hamas could end this tomorrow. Hamas could say (unintelligible) and done period. And, but, and the last offer Israel made was very generous in terms of who they'd be willing to release, what they'd give in return, et cetera. Bibi is under enormous pressure on the hostages, on the hostages, and so he's prepared to do about anything to get the hostages back.
...
Some in Israel have suggested that Netanyahu is prolonging the war for his own political self-preservation. Do you believe that?What are we doing here.
Biden: I'm not going to comment on that. There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion. And I would cite tha as—before the war began, the blowback he was getting from the Israeli military for wanting to change the constitu—change the court. And so it's an internal domestic debate that seems to have no consequence. And whether he would change his position or not, it's hard to say, but it has not been helpful.
Killing Covid
Deaths seem to be genuinely on a "heading down, way down" trend for the first time. That's good! Still there's been an unreality in the way Covid has been covered for years. I'm pretty sure almost everyone would be shocked to hear that in the weeks ending in this past January and February, about 19,000 people are recorded as having died. Since January 1, 2022 (after about a year of vaccine availability), about 324,000 have died.
The Rot-Com Bubble
There's a tendency to believe that all shitty decisions made by corporations are to "make money" but I think we have seen numerous examples where their genius business decisions are not very genius at all. Zuckerberg has set tens of billions of dollars on fire in recent years, so I don't think we should conclude that every extra bit of enshittification of Instagram is smart.
It does seem like there are some opportunities to swoop in, to make a better Instagram, to make a better Facebook. The functionality of the latter is so bad that there's certainly an opportunity to make the basics actually work. And as much as we all criticize Facebook (deservedly), a site with basic party/group organizing invitation functionality, where local businesses can have a simple web presence, niche brands can make announcements, and where you can keep up with your friends and family is useful. They just made it shit!
It does seem like there are some opportunities to swoop in, to make a better Instagram, to make a better Facebook. The functionality of the latter is so bad that there's certainly an opportunity to make the basics actually work. And as much as we all criticize Facebook (deservedly), a site with basic party/group organizing invitation functionality, where local businesses can have a simple web presence, niche brands can make announcements, and where you can keep up with your friends and family is useful. They just made it shit!
Monday, June 03, 2024
Liquidate
Do it!
Relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting are asking a bankruptcy judge to liquidate conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' media company, including Infowars, instead of allowing him to reorganize his business as they seek to collect on $1.5 billion in lawsuit verdicts against him.
Surely Conservatives Will Stop Scaremongering About This Issue
Orange man bad, blah blah.
Well he has some support from other Democrats, so maybe I am wrong.
President Biden is expected to sign an executive order on Tuesday allowing him to temporarily seal the U.S. border with Mexico to migrants when crossings surge, a move that would suspend longtime protections for asylum seekers in the United States.This will solve an undefinable problem and satisfy all the people who have good faith concerns!
Well he has some support from other Democrats, so maybe I am wrong.
“I’ve been briefed on the pending executive order,” said Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas who previously criticized Mr. Biden for not bolstering enforcement at the border earlier in his presidency. “I certainly support it because I’ve been advocating for these measures for years. While the order is yet to be released, I am supportive of the details provided to me thus far.”Wait, hold on. Computer, enhance!
Lock Him Up!
If you can't get an obstruction charge on this, what is anything for?
Former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg got a $2 million severance agreement in January 2023, four months after the New York attorney general sued Trump for financial fraud in his real estate business. The agreement contains a nondisparagement clause and language barring Weisselberg from voluntarily cooperating with investigators."I'll make you rich if you don't talk/I'll kill you if you talk" are the same thing.
Look At What You Made Us Make You Do
Not even sure what the reasoning here is: they are totally making up the threat of MAGA violence to provoke MAGA violence so they can herd us all into camps.
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