Good morning from my office stashed between the two stadiums in Seattle. It is a Seahawks Sunday — the Green Bay Packers are in town and we are sold out.
This is typically our slow time of the year. You would think that Christmas would bring more travelers — and it does — just not to the SODO area of Seattle. Our other properties do well this time of the year, the Stadium property is the exception. This is our slowest time of the year.
But this is also the time of the year when we start doing some remodeling and revamping, and as soon as this Christmas shit is over, we will be working overtime to get $2.6 million of work done in less than three weeks. Busy busy busy…
Let’s do some news today.
First, let me consult my Stephen Colbert “Meanwhile” generator I created with ChatGPT:
“Folks, if you watch the show—and Sunday is a great day to do it while you’re doomscrolling in your pajamas—you know I spend most of my time right over there in the news atelier, carefully refining the most topical stories into a bouquet of journalistic clarity. I arrange them in a vase blown from the molten opinions of Pulitzer winners and top it all with the fresh-cut lilies of investigative rigor to create the exquisite Sunday centerpiece that is my monologue. But sometimes, just sometimes, folks, after wading into the murky swamp of right-wing blogs on a Sunday afternoon, I fashion a raft out of conspiracy theories and tape together fragments of Tucker Carlson sound bites to escape the algorithmic whirlpool, delivering you the soggy, half-sunken life preserver of news that is my segment, Meanwhile.”
I think my generator is better than the actual…
A Conspiracy Theory in the Making
OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment
SAN FRANCISCO — A former OpenAI researcher known for whistleblowing the blockbuster artificial intelligence company facing a swell of lawsuits over its business model has died, authorities confirmed this week.
Suchir Balaji, 26, was found dead inside his Buchanan Street apartment on Nov. 26, San Francisco police and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said. Police had been called to the Lower Haight residence at about 1 p.m. that day, after receiving a call asking officers to check on his well-being, a police spokesperson said.
The medical examiner’s office has not released his cause of death, but police officials this week said there is “currently, no evidence of foul play.”
Information he held was expected to play a key part in lawsuits against the San Francisco-based company.
Balaji’s death comes three months after he publicly accused OpenAI of violating U.S. copyright law while developing ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence program that has become a moneymaking sensation used by hundreds of millions of people across the world.
Its public release in late 2022 spurred a torrent of lawsuits against OpenAI from authors, computer programmers and journalists, who say the company illegally stole their copyrighted material to train its program and elevate its value past $150 billion.
Open AI whistleblower’s Role in legal proceedings was ‘crucial’
A former OpenAI researcher turned whistleblower was found dead in his San Francisco just months after making damning claims about the company.
Suchir Balaji, 26, was found dead on November 26, three months after he accused the company of violating copyright laws in their development of ChatGPT.
Mercury News reported that there was no foul play determined in the circumstances of his death which has been ruled a suicide.
San Francisco Police Officers were called to the home to conduct a wellness check when they found him.
Balaji had been a researcher for the artificial intelligence research company for four years after joining in 2020..
After the AI system was released in 2022, Balaji began to question if the data that was gathered was an infringement on copyright.
In August, he left OpenAI because he ‘no longer wanted to contribute to technologies that he believed would bring society more harm than benefit,’ reported the New York Times.
‘If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company,’ he told the outlet.
MY TAKE:
He fell victim to his own actions.
He chose to ‘come forward’ and complain about something that he personally had a problem with, and by doing so pretty much shit on any future prospect he might have had in the industry.
No future employer is going to hire someone who has just shit on his prior employer in the way that he did. Whether he was right or wrong, he probably should have kept his fool mouth shut and just moved on to some other company. But no, he went public against a major player in the Artificial Intelligence arena and any future he might have had in that arena was now forever locked away from him.
So he took his life.
Drones, Drones, Drones…
CHATHAM, N.J. (AP) — That buzzing coming out of New Jersey? It’s unclear if it’s drones or something else, but for sure the nighttime sightings are producing tons of talk, a raft of conspiracy theories and craned necks looking skyward.
Cropping up on local news and social media sites around Thanksgiving, the saga of the drones reported over New Jersey has reached incredible heights.
This week seems to have begun a new, higher-profile chapter: Lawmakers are demanding (but so far not getting) explanations from federal and state authorities about what’s behind them. Gov. Phil Murphy wrote to President Joe Biden asking for answers. New Jersey’s new senator, Andy Kim, spent Thursday night on a drone hunt in rural northern New Jersey, and posted about it on X.
More drone sightings have been reported in New York City, and Mayor Eric Adams says the city is investigating and collaborating with New Jersey and federal officials. And then President-elect Donald Trump posted that he believes the government knows more than it’s saying. “Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!!” he posted on his social media site.
But perhaps the most fantastic development is the dizzying proliferation of conspiracies, none of which has been confirmed or suggested by federal and state officials who say they’re looking into what’s happening. It has become shorthand to refer to the flying machines as drones, but there are questions about whether what people are seeing are unmanned aircraft or something else
Fed-up NJ sheriff sends own drone to follow mystery flying objects — what happened left some ‘stunned’
https://nypost.com/2024/12/14/us-news/nj-county-sheriff-sends-own-drone-up-to-follow-mystery-flying-objects/
A fed-up New Jersey sheriff said he tried to track the mystery drones swarming the skies above his county — but they “easily” evaded the effort.
The Ocean County Sheriff’s office sent its own “industrial grade” drone into the air Thursday in a bid to follow one of 50 unmanned aerial vehicles a local cop saw “coming off the ocean,” Sheriff Michael Mastronardy said.
The officer alerted the state police, the FBI and the US Coast Guard. Coast Guard officials then reported 13 drones, with wingspans of eight feet, following one of their vessels.
The mysterious drones, which don’t give off heat like more typical versions, swiftly maneuvered out of their clutches, Mastronardy told News Nation reporter Rich McHugh.
McHugh told the story Friday night to anchor Elizabeth Vargas, explaining he originally thought the drone hysteria might be a result of “pranksters” until he saw them himself.
“If this is not our military, then it’s even more scary,” McHugh said. “These things look like they are fixed-wing and they have multiple lights. I’m not really sure how to process what I saw last night. Both the photographer and I were kind of stunned.”
MY TAKE:
Let’s try employing some basic logic here, shall we?
If these are clandestine drones, why would they all be lit up like they are? Wouldn’t a ‘bad actor’ want to stay as hidden as possible?
Another clue is how the military and the FAA are not all that concerned about them.
I suspect that because the first reports of these drones were around a New Jersey military base, that these are more than likely military drones being tested. Otherwise, the military wouldn’t be playing them down like they have been.
But it sure sounds more newsy to make this all seem like it’s some conspiracy or foreign actor…
I have figured it out…
SOLVED:
I guess this will be the ONLY way Trump will have a “library”
ABC News will pay $15 million as a charitable contribution to a Trump presidential foundation and museum
ABC News and its top anchor George Stephanopoulos have reached a settlement with Donald Trump in his defamation suit, which will result in the news network paying the president-elect $15 million.
The settlement was publicly filed on Saturday, revealing that the two parties have come to an agreement and avoided a costly trial. According to the settlement, ABC News will pay $15 million as a charitable contribution to a “Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for Plaintiff, as Presidents of the United States of America have established in the past.” Additionally, the network will pay $1 million in Trump’s attorney fees.
Stephanopoulos and ABC News also had to issue statements of “regret” as an editor’s note at the bottom of a March 10, 2024, online article, about comments made earlier this year that prompted Trump to file the defamation lawsuit. The note reads, “ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements regarding President Donald J. Trump made during an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 2024.”
ABC News said the network was “pleased” to have concluded the case.
“We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing,” an ABC News spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
Trump filed a defamation suit against Stephanopoulos after he asserted that Trump was found “liable for rape” in a civil case during a contentious interview with Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., last March.
After playing a clip of Mace discussing being a victim of rape, Stephanopoulos asked her, “How do you square your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony we just saw?”
“You’ve endorsed Donald Trump for president. Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape,” Stephanopoulos said, alluding to the legal victory by Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll.
Stephanopoulos repeated that claim ten times during his spat with Mace, despite the fact that a jury actually determined Trump was liable for “sexual abuse,” which has a distinct definition under New York law.
MY TAKE:
This is nothing more than an argument over semantics, and I suspect that ABC probably would have prevailed over time, but chose not to make it a bigger story over a lawsuit.
Trump was, in fact, found to have ‘sexually abused’ E. Jean Carroll. He wasn’t convicted of ‘rape’, because he wasn’t facing a criminal trial — and ‘rape’ is a criminal charge, not a civil finding. (Legalese can be a tricky bitch sometimes)
In most laymen terms, a sexual assault or sexual abuse can be equivalent to a ‘rape’. But in legal terms, ‘rape’ is a specific action that can include, but is not limited to ‘sexual abuse’.
So technically, Trump is correct in that the Court did not find Trump to have ‘raped’ E. Jean Carroll, but instead found that he had ‘sexually abused’ her.
For me, it’s a distinction without a difference. For the law, there is a difference.
Is Xitter heading for the Shitter?
Twitter’s Traffic Appears to Be Falling Off a Cliff
Over the past few months, traffic to the site formerly known as Twitter has taken an absolute nosedive as competitors like Bluesky and Threads continue to bring in more and more users.
According to the traffic-estimating service Similarweb, visits to the Elon Musk-owned social network now known as X have plummeted drastically over the past three months.
As the data shows, global traffic to the site has fallen from roughly 706 million visits in September to just 586.6 million by November — a 10.5 percent drop in the past month alone.
The numbers reflect repeated mass exoduses from X. Soon after a wave of exits that followed Donald Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris, November again saw users fleeing in droves after the site updated its terms of service to allow Musk’s AI venture xAI to train on its user data.
Naturally, that change had many users looking for greener — or bluer, as it were — pastures, and Bluesky was happy to reassure X refugees that their data was safe on its site.
“A number of artists and creators have made their home on Bluesky, and we hear their concerns with other platforms training on their data,” the company said in a November 15 post on its own social network. “We do not use any of your content to train generative AI, and have no intention of doing so.”
Similar web data also suggests that while Twitter’s traffic has fallen, it’s skyrocketed on Bluesky, likely reflecting many of the same users switching services.
MY TAKE:
I don’t hang out on Xitter. I have an account there, but that’s just to control my handle. I also have an account on Truth Social, and I don’t hang out there, either. I have an account on Bluesky — but again, I don’t hang out there.
Xitter (pronounced ‘shitter’) has an owner that will promote himself over any and everything else. He has screamed loud and hard about ‘censorship’, but is the very first to censor or block anyone who disagrees with him.
Floriduh “Hooligans” and “Miscreants”
Hooligans terrorize motorists, target car with baby on board in chaotic Florida street takeover
Hooligans in Florida terrorized motorists, including one with a baby on board, and set a fire in a chaotic street takeover last month, according to shocking footage.
Sportscar drivers accompanied by dozens of belligerent spectators took over the intersection of the South John Young Parkway and Central Florida Parkway on Nov. 30, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said — turning the roadway into a hellscape for innocent passersby
Video posted by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office shows fire set to the road right outside the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, with flashy coupes performing smoke-laden donuts and fiendish hangers-on attacking cars as they attempt to escape the madness.
“There’s a baby in the car,” one woman desperately yelled at the individuals who were pounding and jumping on her car.
In another instance, a cretin jumped up and down on a car windshield in an apparent attempt to break the glass — all while others filmed the violence on their phones.
MY TAKE:
Well, it’s Floriduh.
It’s a family affair…
Trump wants his daughter-in-law in the Senate. DeSantis may defy him
President-elect Donald Trump has communicated to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that he wants his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, to become the Sunshine State’s next senator — but it’s far from clear that DeSantis will acquiesce and appoint her, people familiar with the matter said.
Lara Trump’s interest in replacing Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) — who is set to become secretary of state — complicates an already fraught relationship between Trump and DeSantis, who waged harsh campaigns against each other in the GOP presidential primary. DeSantis is tasked with filling Rubio’s seat and could boost his standing with the president-elect by appointing Lara Trump, who announced this past week that she will step down as co-chair of the Republican National Committee.
DeSantis is seriously considering Lara Trump and cares about the president-elect’s view, according to one person familiar with his thinking who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations. But the person believes DeSantis is more likely to pick someone who has held public office in Florida and said other contenders include the state’s attorney general, Ashley Moody, and former statehouse speaker Jose Oliva.
MY TAKE:
Who does the people of FLORIDUH want to represent them? Should they be subjected to a Trump just because the father-in-law wants her to fill that position? Shouldn’t the governor be the one to make that appointment without being under pressure by Trump to appoint a family member?
Wake up, you’re too Woke
Hollywood’s great unwokening has been unleashed
What connects Inside Out 2, Twisters and Civil War? Evidence that cinema has finally entered its post-woke era
Here is the plot of one of the more popular studio movies released in 2024. A lissom New York liberal academic and a chiselled Red State outdoorsy type find themselves improbably brought together in the workplace. After a brief period of friction, they start to get along: romance blossoms and common ground is found. She shares his yearning for the American heartland; he learns to embrace his secret scholarly side. Together they don’t just make a beautiful couple, but a vision of a nation strengthened by difference. Anything else? Oh, yes – lots of tornadoes.
This summer’s Twisters might have played like a throwback to the 1990s, but it could also prove to be the year’s most commercially prescient film. Last time the US elected a certain Ronsealed former TV-show host as head of state, Hollywood overtly sided against him, styling itself as the pop-cultural wing of the resistance.
A fat lot of good that did. Popular studio franchises grew shrill and hectoring, and the publicity tours to promote them even more so, giving the populists an easily mockable enemy against which to rally. As for audiences in Europe and elsewhere, we found ourselves caught in the middle of a national domestic, in which ideological point-scoring took precedence, no matter how witless or cheap.
What was so striking about Twisters, though, was that the progressive talking points you might have been braced for in a film about extreme weather – the perils of climate change, perhaps, or the gullibility of good old Republican-votin’ country folk – were nowhere to be found. Instead, the film hymned ordinary human ingenuity and courage, and emphasised the necessity of co-operation in extremis. Very aptly, this squally blockbuster sensed which way the wind was blowing – and with the then impending presidential election shaping up as a sequel to 2016’s, suggested an alternative, conciliatory tack.
Loath as I am to give the w-word an airing, there’s no avoiding it here: 2024 was the year in which Hollywood began to move into its post-woke era, though some parts pivoted more nimbly than others. The contrast between the old and new approaches was never more vivid than in Disney’s Moana 2 and Universal’s Wicked, the two family-friendly musicals currently duking it out at the multiplex. Both center on – and are arguably primarily aimed at – young women. But their heroines could hardly be more ideologically opposed.
MY TAKE:
“Woke”. Meaning that someone is aware, or has knowledge of something that has been overlooked or ignored.
Is the #MeToo movement over?
The Trouble Began When #MeToo Became #ChurchToo
When did we know that the #MeToo moment was truly over?
At its most compelling, #MeToo tried to change a culture that both concealed and enabled the illegal abuse of women and imposed hypocritical double standards, holding women to one standard of behavior while celebrating and elevating unscrupulous men.
But events in 2024 have told us loudly and clearly that the moment has passed.
Perhaps it was when reports emerged that Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s choice to be the next secretary of defense, had paid an accuser to settle a sexual assault claim. He denies wrongdoing, but his defense — that he had consensual sex with a married woman — was still dreadful. His philandering and mistreatment of women have been so egregious that his mother called him an “abuser of women,” in an email to him (she has since disavowed her statement) — and yet somehow his chances of being confirmed by the Senate appear to be increasing.
Perhaps it was when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who is married to the actress Cheryl Hines, allegedly had an improper “personal relationship” via smartphone with Olivia Nuzzi, a political reporter who is much younger, and she lost her job while he was picked to run the Department of Health and Human Services.
But I think it happened earlier, when a jury found Donald Trump responsible for sexual abuse, and he was ultimately re-elected to the presidency. After years of rightfully arguing that combating sexual assault and sexual abuse can’t override due process, many conservatives not only disregarded the jury verdict, they actually reveled in how little his voters cared about the scandal, or just dismissed it as another instance of “lawfare” against Trump.
I distinctly remember the mood on the right when the #MeToo movement got going. There was a sense of schadenfreude. The morally bankrupt, sexualized culture of Hollywood and the liberal media had finally been exposed. For all their talk about feminism and respecting women, many famous liberals proved to be dangerous hypocrites — or much, much worse.
Yes, there was leakage into right-wing media. Roger Ailes was pushed out at Fox News in 2016, and Bill O’Reilly suffered the same fate after my Times colleagues Emily Steel and Michael Schmidt reported that O’Reilly or Fox had paid $13 million to settle claims of sexual misconduct made by five different women against him.
You are going to have to read the rest…
MY TAKE:
Men have been abusing women since the first day.
I’m exhausted by anything to do with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle…
Netflix ‘Exhausted’ by Meghan Markle As Her and Prince Harry’s Polo Show Bombs
Amidst the apparent unfolding failure of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s five-part documentary about Polo, sources have told the Daily Mail that Netflix executives are “exhausted” from working with Markle and her future at the streaming giant now rests on her “make or break” cookery show, which still has no premiere date.
The Daily Beast has reported that the Sussexes—once heralded as Netflix’s golden duo who promised “content that informs but also gives hope” through a “truthful and relatable lens”—and Netflix appear keen to move on from Polo, which was lambasted by critics.
One called it a “tedious inside look” at the sport and a “dull indulgence” while another reviewer suggested the series seemed designed as a spoof to play in the background of Succession episodes.
Expand article logo Continue reading
There have been no media or promotional events scheduled to support the series. As Sean McNulty, the producer, writer and Hollywood veteran who is also the creator and writer of newsletter The Wakeup told the Daily Beast earlier this week: “The lack of a proper, visible press campaign for a series from Harry and Meghan raises an eyebrow to say the least.”
One source told the Daily Mail: “It’s make or break. People say Netflix are exhausted. It’s so much work with her and, bluntly, the ‘deliverable’ does not seem to be worth it.”
MY TAKE:
This is just like the Obamas and Netflix. I don’t know why either family have been given the job of providing content on Netflix. It’s not like either has any history or expertise in providing entertainment content.
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