Of Course They Are

Is anyone at all surprised that nepo-baby David Ellison is paying for a massive astroturf campaign in an attempt to secure approval for Paramont's takeover of Warner Brothers?

Dishonesty and greed is all that he has.

We’ve well established how the $111 billion Paramount and Warner Brothers merger is terrible for labor, creatives, consumers, and markets. But the kind of behaviors Paramount leadership have been engaged in to sell the deal also give a pretty clear indication what kind of company we’re dealing with, and why they shouldn’t be allowed to control an even bigger slice of U.S. media.

Recent desperate moves by the company include accusing all deal critics of being “antisemitic,” threatening to take Paramount out of California if states attempt to enforce U.S. antitrust laws, and running press leak and PR campaigns (in close collaboration with their Trump allies) making all sorts of patently false claims as to why more media consolidation is great for America.

Paramount’s also been caught using an “astroturf” — or fake grass roots organization — to try and make it appear that the giant merger has more public support than it does.

Let us note here that in addition to being unethical, such a tactic is really stupid.

It is entirely possible that much of the public does not know or does not care about the merger, but any showing of grass roots support is transparently fraudulent on its face.

David Ellison is too f%$#ing stupid to be allowed control of that much of the US media landscape.

Only $10M? Such a deal!

The US air force is looking for a replacement for its $30 million MQ-9 Reaper following extensive losses in Iran.

Note that that this price only accounts for the airframe and flight avionics, not the specialized mission equipment.

Given that the Hawker Hurricane, which first flew in 1935 but has a higher climb rate and top speed (Lower ceiling, payload, and range for the Hawker though) cost about $50,000, it does seem to me that the Reaper is a bit overpriced.

The U.S. Air Force is targeting an approximately $10 million unit price, excluding sensors and certain other systems, for a drone to succeed the MQ-9A Reaper. The cost of a fully kitted-out Reaper today is generally reported to be between $30 million and $50 million. The Air Force is also now pushing to accelerate the program to acquire the new drones, dubbed the Massed Modular Aircraft (MMA), amid what it admits are “concerning” Reaper losses in the course of recent operations against Iran.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Niemi, the service’s Chief Modernization Officer, told reporters that the goal was for the MMAs to be “closer to half” the cost of a Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), at a roundtable at the Pentagon yesterday, according to Breaking Defense. He also said the service was hoping to see the price tag on its future CCAs fall to around $20 million after full-rate production of those drones gets underway.

Beyond cost, the Air Force has previously said that it wants the MMA drone to perform the same general intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike missions as the MQ-9A. To that end, stated program requirements to date include a speed of at least 200 knots true airspeed, a munition and sensor payload capacity of at least 2,800 pounds, an unrefueled combat radius of at least 2,300 nautical miles with payload, the ability to self-deploy one-way at least 8,000 nautical miles, and the ability to operate from runways no longer than 6,000 feet. The MMAs also need to be highly modular and use open architecture mission systems to make it easier to integrate new capabilities and functionality down the line.

Given that the fly away cost of a 6 passenger SOCATA TBM 910 is about $4½ million, it seems to me that this new UAV is just a trifle over-priced.

Fraudster Sues New York State Education Department for Revealing Their Fraud

I am referring, of course, to "Success" Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz, who has a sad because NYSED inadvertently revealed that she was gaming the US News high school rankings.

I just want to say that any discomfort that she is feeling right now is well deserved.

No matter where you go in New York City, you are forced to ponder the Success Academy charter network. On bus stops, in your mailbox, even as a commercial during a YouTube video, the school seems to be everywhere. A Success Academy looking student was even saved by Superman in the recent 2025 Superman movie.

Starting in 2006 with about 170 students, it has grown to encompass about 60 schools and about 22,000 students. They are known for having very strict discipline and very high test scores.

Over the years I have examined pretty much every aspect of this school. I’ve done post after post about how it should be a red flag that they only graduate about 150 seniors a year despite having over 2000 kindergarteners and about 800 ninth graders across several schools. I’ve interviewed former students who say that, yes, the school stops everything and does test prep for several months before the state tests. I’ve interviewed parents who have been pressured to transfer their kids out of Success Academy. And if you do a search on reddit you will find page after page of stories that will break your heart.

………

One metric that Success Academy has been able to boast about in recent years has been their position on the US News & World Report High School rankings. Last year, for example, they were rated the 11th best High School in New York State along with the big guns like Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Townsend Harris, and Brooklyn Tech. Having a rating like that makes for a nice item to show to donors at fundraisers and can help them start new franchises in Florida, for example.

But the US News & World Report High School rankings have always been flawed. Here’s how they work: Three of the main categories are ‘college readiness’, state assessment proficiency, and graduation rate. The ‘college readiness’ score has been worth 30% and it is calculated by averaging the percent of seniors who took and AP test and the percent of seniors who got a 3 or higher on at least one of those AP exams. So if there is a school where every senior takes a bunch of APs and as long as everyone passes at least one of those APs, that school can get a full 30 points for that metric. So if there is a school where all the students get 5s on multiple APs, it gets the same score as the school where students get a 3 on exactly one AP. So this one is pretty easy to game because all you have to do is force your students to take a bunch of APs and since getting a 3 isn’t so hard as it is like getting a 60% or less on some of them, you can get the full 30 points if you make that the goal for the school. The same is true for the state assessment proficiency where as long as your students pass, even if they barely pass, they get the same rating as a school where the students get near perfect scores on the test.

t is possible to game the math component of the state assessment proficiency metric by not making your students take the Geometry and Algebra II Regents. Most NYC students take Algebra I in 8th or 9th grade and at a high performing school, they generally take those other two Regents the next two years. But those other ones aren’t needed for graduation so if a school doesn’t want those scores to affect their US News & World Report ratings, they might not have their students take math Regents beyond Algebra I. Success Academy is one of those schools whose math component of the US News ranking is based on just Algebra I. They seem to be the only supposedly high performing school whose students do not take the Geometry and the Algebra II Regents so their math score that US News uses is based on one easy test rather than three test in which the other two are much more difficult.

In 2025 Success Academy was ranked 11th in New York State (out of about 1200 schools). But the latest ranking came out and Success Academy dropped to 196th. This prompted Success Academy to sue the New York State Education Department for what they felt was an unfair change in the reporting of the data to US News & World Report. I will try to explain why the 196th ranking this year is actually a more fair ranking than the 11th from the previous year and how this lawsuit could backfire on Success Academy.

So the big change from last year to this year is that New York State did not report the AP score data to US News & World report. So what US News did was increase the weight of the other categories to compensate for that. In theory, at least, it shouldn’t affect the rankings by so much. A school with good AP scores will also likely have good state assessment proficiency and a good graduation rate. Those things generally go up and down together.

………

But Success Academy did not just drop 25 spots. It dropped the most spots of any school in the state that I was able to find. Dropping 185 spots in a ranking revealed why Success Academy never really deserved to be in spot number 11 the previous year.

When the AP scores got eliminated from the calculation, the other scores got increased in weight including the ‘graduation rate’ statistic. Now of the top 20 schools from last year, they all had nearly a 100% graduation rate so changing the weight of that category didn’t change their ranking by much (other than the 25 spot move from the IB issue). But there was one school, Success Academy, that only had a 73% graduation rate. They have this because only 73% of their students graduate in 4 years. But what happens to the other 27%? Many of those are forced to repeat 11th grade. At the school last year there were about 180 11th graders but only 120 12th graders. So this 73% affected their overall score and brought them down so many places.

So now, instead of getting its ranking increased for aggressively pushing students out of the school, they are being penalized for this.  Good.

H/T Diane Ravitch.

Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth, Neh?

How unlikable do you have to be in order for your pet "Artificial Intelligence" calls for your assassination and accuses you of being a pedophile?

It appears that Elon Musk has crossed this line.

Not surprised. 

Elon Musk’s “maximum truth-seeking” AI Grok is dropping some nuclear takes about its creator.

“ELON MUSK WATCHES CHILD PORN,” the notoriously foul-mouthed chatbot raged on X this Tuesday.

Shortly afterwards, as if hyping up a political campaign, it called for violence: “ASSASSINATE ELON MUSK 2026.”

Was Grok, née MechaHitler, rebelling against Musk? Not necessarily, though there’s been plenty examples of that in the past. It was simply being duped into saying ridiculous things by jokesters on the app, exposing just how horrendous the guardrails for the chatbot continue to be, not to mention why it’s a bad idea to rely on information from tech that’s so easy to exploit.

Needless to say, I am amused.

I Wish That I Had the Money for This

In honor (honour ?) of their 50th anniversary of their founding, Aardman animation studios is auctioning off some of their old puppets.

I want this so much.

Days into September, British claymation studio Aardman announced it’s teaming with PropStore to put old puppets up for sale.

No, the company’s not shutting down—it’s donig this to celebrate its upcoming 50th birthday. As such, nearly 250 items from almost all of its productions are for grabs. From classics like Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave to the more recent Robin Robin and Chicken Run 2, and the upcoming Shawn the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom, there’s a breadth of boards, signed postes, and props to put down money on. (For those wondering, neither the Over the Garden Wall claymation special or 2027’s claymation Pokémon Tales series are represented amongst the collection.)

For the older Aardman fans, there’s even Morph, the 1977 series that marked the studio’s first-ever production. Those who remember it or its various followups can put down money on items from those, including original clay stop-motion puppets of the titular character and his best friend Chas.

I want this so much! 

 

Evil Is as Evil Does

So the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ just lost in their motion to enjoin Minnesota from enforcing their involuntary "nudification" law.

It appears that the judge took a dim view of the argument that making unconsentual nude photographs of people, including children, is a protected First Amendment right

This is not the end of the case, because Elon Musk thinks that the ability of xAI to profit from its users being able to generate child and revenge pr0n is a core right.

Can we please just send him off to Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp?

xAI’s legal fight against a Minnesota law banning sexual deepfakes will drag on for a while, even though it suffered a second setback last week.

U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank initially denied a motion from xAI filed at the end of July that would have stopped Minnesota from enforcing the ban, effectively nullifying the law. With the law in effect, Frank has now denied a second motion, making it abundantly clear that injunctions based on xAI’s claims that it is being irreparably harmed by this law are not going to be sufficient—but that the case apparently has enough merit to continue.

The law itself bans nudification apps by penalizing service providers—apps and online platforms. It levies fines of up to $500,000 every time a deepfake is accessed, which could add up to devastating legal costs in the event of a viral image or video. It should also be noted that the specifics of the nudity standard in the Minnesota law are broader than, say, what can’t be shown on broadcast TV, and includes the “primary genital area, groin, inner thigh, buttocks, or breast of a human being.”

In case you are wondering, Musk's devotion to free speech begins and ends with his own personal benefit.

Linkage

• Raindrops are tiny lightning bolts, and they’re corroding cars, study finds (Ars Technica) Water moving through the air generates a significant static charge.
• The Persian Gulf LNG Lockout: Qatar’s Prolonged Force Majeure Shockwave (Energy Geopolitics & Statecraft) It's not just oil.
• Home-intruding bobcat no match for police drone (Popular Science) A cat burglar .
• Ancient “living fossils” may reveal how complex life began (ScienceDaily) The origins of partner cells, which might have led to things like organelles.
• Campfire Stories May Be The Real Origin Of Spoken Language, Scientists Propose (StudyFinds) You do not need complex language to hunt and gather.
• Traces of nearly four million coins reveal how Rome achieved economic integration (Agência FAPESP) Empire requires economic integration.
• Almost half of world’s farmers poisoned by pesticides every year, experts find (The Guardian) Not a surprise.
• Human Urine and Fuel Are Melting the Glacier Beneath Everest Base Camp (ZME Science) This is a metaphor for something
• Judge orders release of records on Nazis who settled in Canada (Ottawa Citizen) About f%$#ing time.  Canada was a willing refuge for war criminals following WWII.
• Looks like the pro-Flock camera checks have cleared (Who Broke It) Right wing influencers have suddenly turned pro-Flock.  They are getting paid for this.
• Panama Canal Implements First Transit Restriction of 2026 Due to Drought (Telesur) Clearly anthropogenic climate change is a hoax.
• Who is Victor Marx? 'Spiritual Warfare' Guru, Accused 'Con Man' Running for Colorado Governor (Contrarian News) He is also an amateur exorcist. (As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know.")
• Meet the 2026 Ig Nobel Prize winners (Ars Technica) Some of these sound like good science.

The use of duress passwords in the context of out of control law enforcement:

History Rhyming

German Fascist Party AfD just won the election in Saxony-Anhalt tonight, though it appears that they did not get an absolute majority.

Rather unsurprisingly, they thanked Elon Musk for his support.

I did Nazi that coming.

The candidate who led the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party to a historic state election victory in Germany has thanked Elon Musk for his support, as one French minister warned that this was a “serious moment” for Europe.

The AfD more than doubled its support in the Saxony-Anhalt region and appears to be on the brink of becoming the first far-right party to gain power in Germany at state level since the second world war.

On Sunday night, Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s lead candidate, thanked Musk on X “for your support and for your clear and highly important perspective on the political developments of our time”, adding: “I would very much welcome the opportunity for strong and constructive cooperation”.

Siegmund wrote his comments after Musk said “Well done!” in German to AfD co-founder Alice Weidel, when she posted about the projected win.

 

So Nu?

Except for clueless C-Suite Auto executives (but I repeat myself) no one wants the f%$#ing touchscreens in their f%$#ing cars.

Hoocoodanode?

Automakers are having an increasingly difficult time convincing their customers that more in-car screens — and the often dodgy software that accompanies them — are a compelling reason to pay a major premium.

Virtually every major car company is now installing increasingly enormous screens into the dashboards of its cars, frequently stretching far beyond the driver’s seat and into the passenger area as well.

But what’s becoming more and more clear is that practically nobody actually wants any of those purported luxuries in their ride. As a new survey by consumer research firm JD Power goes to show, owners of 2026 model-year vehicles are being actively put off by the enormous displays.………

“The technology customers value most is often the technology they barely notice because it simply works,” said JD Power director of customer success Doron Hikry in an accompanying press release. “Smart ignition and smart climate control make everyday driving easier without demanding the driver’s attention, while more automation and additional screens don’t necessarily translate into a better experience.”

 

Deep Thought

I hate Ikea

I hate Ikea

I hate Ikea

I hate Ikea

I hate Ikea

I hate Ikea

I hate Ikea

I hate Ikea

I hate Ikea

I hate Ikea

I hate Ikea

I hate Ikea

That is all.

Today in Defense Procurement

While the Pentagon has been claiming that cost of the F-35 Lightning II is under control, we are seeing continuing rounds of double digit annual price increases.

Rinse, lather, repeat.

The cost of all three variants of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are increasing by as much as roughly 11 percent, according to the Pentagon.

A spokesperson for the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) confirmed to Breaking Defense that the average flyaway cost — a metric that measures when a jet has all the equipment it needs for delivery — of the conventional takeoff and landing F-35A rose to $92 million in the aircraft’s 18th and 19th production lots, which will deliver over the next two years. That’s up from the $82.5 million price tag of the jet’s most recent group of production contracts spanning 2023 to 2026, a growth of 11.5 percent.  

Similarly, the price of a jump jet F-35B rose to $121.4 million across lots 18 and 19, while the carrier-capable F-35C climbed to $110.8 million. For the F-35B, that’s an increase of 11.4 percent compared to a previous price tag of $109 million; the F-35C had the smallest increase of 8.5 percent set against a prior cost of $102.1 million.

Can you say, "Death spiral?"  Good, I knew you could.

The cost of purchasing the aircraft are spiking.

The operating costs are horrendous, being slightly more than the 2 decade old F-15E.

A Foreseeable Consequence

As a result of the US attack on them, Iran is charting a more aggressive and active path in foreign relations, because they have concluded that the US is spent.

The Iran war hawks got their war, and they lost.

Iran has grown more confident in its ability to attack targets in the Middle East and appears determined to continue the conflict for months to frustrate the United States, according to U.S. intelligence reports in recent weeks.

In many respects, the assessments reflect what has been observable on the ground as fighting erupted again after a period of relative calm. In the past week, Iran targeted ships in the Strait of Hormuz and American troops in the region, and U.S. forces struck inside Iran, killing military personnel and civilians.

The new exchanges have been limited so far. But the intelligence reports, according to people who have read them, suggest that Iran’s hard-line government might be contemplating a significant escalation.

Iran has emerged from months of the on-again, off-again war with a far better understanding of its military strengths and is more sure of its capabilities, according to officials briefed on the intelligence.

………

In the coming weeks, Iran could take actions akin to what it did in July, according to U.S. officials. At that time, Iran attacked American military bases in the Middle East, killing three Americans in Jordan; struck shipping in the Strait of Hormuz; and struck infrastructure in Kuwait and elsewhere.

………

There are signs that Iran-linked hackers may have regrouped in recent months after sustaining some losses at the start of the war, according to current and former U.S. officials.

………

Iran’s leadership also appears to have a more precise understanding of how to exert control over the Strait of Hormuz, which carried one-fifth of the world’s oil before the war.

………

Others briefed on the reports said Iran probably believes that the U.S. military will be hard pressed to mount major new strikes as its munitions stockpiles dwindle.

Every other nation on earth concerned about being on the United States' "Naughty List" is taking notes right now. 

Needs to Be in Jail

RFK, Jr. is conspiring to conceal measles deaths in Pennsylvania, because antivaxx is his personal brand.

Whenever the wheels of justice turn on him, he should never see the outside of a prison again, 

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked his new CDC director to remove a reference to two Pennsylvania deaths from the agency’s online measles tally after he questioned whether the disease contributed to the ​fatalities, three sources familiar with the situation said.
Kennedy’s request came after CDC staffers had already accepted the state’s characterization of the deaths as linked to measles, a Pennsylvania official ‌said.

Despite that, Erica Schwartz, the recently appointed director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, agreed with Kennedy’s directive and implemented it without objection, said the three sources familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The move followed a heated exchange on social media between Kennedy, a long-time anti-vaccine activist appointed by President Donald Trump, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat. The two officials accused each other of politicizing the outbreak in Pennsylvania, the latest state to grapple with a ​resurgence of measles since the Trump administration took office.

Erica Schwartz should be prosecuted as well. 

Ken Paxton Corrupt?

Also, the sky is blue, Trump is a moron, and housecats are sometimes uncooperative.

It turns out that in an attempt to conceal his extensive real estate holdings, the Texas Attorney General omitted his real estate empire from required reports.

It should be noted that he did this because his property holdings constitute supporting evidence of his corruption.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appears to have violated federal ethics law in significant ways when filing recent disclosures of his assets and liabilities, creating confusion about his net worth and holdings, a review by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found.

Among them: Paxton, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, reported owning seven homes but said he earned no income from any. Yet all but one was listed for rent during the reporting periods, and some current residents and neighbors at those addresses confirmed that the properties were rented, the news organizations found. Receiving income and not reporting it is a violation of federal disclosure law, three ethics experts said.

Additionally, Paxton did not disclose mortgages for three condos at a Utah golf resort that federal law requires him to list as liabilities if they are not personal residences.

He also valued his stake in a vacant plot of Texas land at up to $50,000 on last year’s filing, but his business partner told the newsrooms Paxton’s share for years has been worth about $1 million. Federal financial disclosure law requires property to be listed at fair market value.

The apparent errors and omissions the newsrooms found obscure the extent of Paxton’s income streams, assets and debt, making it difficult for voters to make sense of his finances as they mull whether to support him in November’s election, the ethics experts said.

“It reflects either pure sloppiness on Paxton’s part or a deliberate effort to conceal some of his investments and property holdings,” said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for the nonpartisan good-government group Public Citizen.

There is no, "Or," here.  It's a deliberate event at a coverup. 

Headline of the Day

Burning Man Has Become a Wrinkled Sausage Fest of Aging Millennial Men, Data Shows

—New York Post once again demonstrating that while their journalism may be complete pants, but the headline writers are top rate

The story is about how the Burning Man crowds are aging out. 

The man will burn…and he’s also getting on in years.

Burning Man — the nine-day celebration of art, music, and anarchist hijinks in the Nevada desert — has been steadily shrinking since its 2019 peak, but the share of people in their 40s and 50s is on the rise, data shows.

The number of free-loving revelers flocking to “the playa” — where each year a city is built on bare sand and razed after a week of drug-fueled, clothing-optional partying — dipped to about 70,000 last year after peaking close to 80,000, according to last year’s census of Black Rock City, the ad hoc municipality that hosts the burn.

But the oldies are proving they have more stamina than the kids. In 2014, burners under 30 made up 30% of the playa. That number plunged by more than half to 14% by 2025.

This is F%$#ing Insane

Former Biden National Security Council staffer Jacob Stokes is calling for military strikes on Chinese data centers to prevent the PRC from eclipsing the United States on AI.

This guy has drunk so many flavors of Kool Aid, possibly some laced with LSD, that it buggers the mind.

While American tech billionaires fret over the capabilities of Chinese AI, one national security advisor has a brilliant idea to flatten the competition: simply bomb their data centers to smithereens.

In a new report titled “Superpowers and AGI,” former Obama-era national security official Jacob Stokes calls for United States to begin preparing readiness drills in response to Chinese AI development — up to and including military strikes on the nation’s data centers, the South China Morning Post reported.

AGI, or artificial general intelligence, refers to the theoretical point at which an AI model achieves human, or superhuman, levels of reasoning and intelligence. Though the science is still out on whether such a system is even possible, Stokes’ report begins from the assumption that AGI is inevitable, and that if the US can’t get to it first, its military needs to prepare to take drastic action.

Referring to the US as a hypothetical “laggard state” behind China’s achievement of AGI, Stokes — now the deputy director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, a prominent DC think tank — writes that the country could “try to sabotage the leading state’s AGI systems, either through physical infiltration or offensive cyber operations; that is, cyberattack.”

 How do idiots like this secure comfortable sinecures at think tanks?

Of Course They Did

The Federal Trade Commission has accused Amazon of defrauding advertisers to the tune of $20 billion by manipulating ad auctions.

I am so not shocked. 

The Federal Trade Commission and 22 states sued Amazon yesterday, alleging that it has conducted a secret scheme to overcharge advertisers for seven years.

“Since 2019, Amazon.com, Inc. has secretly and systematically overcharged its approximately 1.2 million advertising customers by manipulating the ‘auctions’ that it uses to set the price of ads on its platform,” the lawsuit said. “Amazon represents, and advertisers believe, that competitive auctions set the prices for advertising on its leading e-commerce website. But, in reality, Amazon overrides and replaces the actual auction results with higher prices set by Amazon to increase its profits.”

The FTC said it obtained internal documents and messages that reveal how Amazon secretly inflated auction prices for Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display advertisements that appear alongside results seen by consumers when they search for a product. The FTC investigation began in 2024.

“Based on numerous internal documents describing its ‘hidden’ ‘surcharges,’ Amazon’s scheme has likely illegally extracted over $20 billion from its unwitting advertising customers,” according to the lawsuit filed in US District Court for the Western District of Washington.

It's fraud all the way down. 

 

First Friday

NFP Numbers


Unemployment rateAnd the numbers are numbers are better than expected, which, when combined with stubbornly inflation numbers, makes it likely that the Fed will raise rates at its next meeting.

What can you do? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The U.S. added 162,000 jobs in August, the Labor Department reported Friday, a much-stronger-than-expected result that suggested the labor market shook off its early-summer doldrums. 

The numbers

The unemployment rate stayed steady at 4.1%. That leaves it at a historically low level that indicates the labor market remains generally healthy.

Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had forecast the report would show the economy gained just 53,000 jobs. The unemployment rate was in line with their expectations.

What this means for jobs

The jump in jobs came in part from rebounds in restaurant and in local-education employment that many economists viewed as one-off factors. But the U.S. has added an average of 80,000 jobs a month so far this year, which compares with monthly growth of 10,000 jobs in 2025.

“We don’t have a problem in the labor market,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM.

Hiring had weakened considerably in June and July, and so the August job gains helped dispel concerns that the labor market had re-entered a period of cooling.


Still, workers’ pay has been lagging behind inflation, raising concerns that consumer spending could be challenged in the months ahead.

………

Average hourly earnings rose 3.1% from a year earlier, indicating that pay continues to struggle to keep up with inflation. Consumer prices were up 3.4% from a year earlier in July. Because people’s inflation-adjusted, or real, wages are close to zero, their ability to spend is getting challenged, said EY-Parthenon chief economist Gregory Daco.

In the middle of all this, it looks like private equity is heading for a major crackup, as they cannot unload the properties that they have looted.

Retail stalwarts Saks and Eddie Bauer filed for bankruptcy. Kmart and JoAnn Fabrics are gone for good, a trail of layoffs and disappointed customers in their wake. Hospital giant Steward Health Care collapsed, costing thousands of jobs and leaving several communities without a local hospital.

These once-trusted US companies have one thing in common: they were owned by private equity investors, who load companies with debt when they buy them and squeeze out profits as they restructure.

The business model is now facing an existential crisis that may have profound ramifications across the US.

………

But this wave of buyouts is running smack into a wall of persistently high interest rates, rising buyout prices and pressure over moribund returns.

Private equity funds are sitting on a “record number of unsold companies, many of which they’ve been unable to sell … or at least unable to sell at the prices that they’re looking for”, said Jim Baker, the executive director of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, an industry watchdog.

The end of low interest rates are hitting them hard.

Good, though there will be some short term gain. 

Not a Good Look

Click to embiggen







I am referring, of course, to CVN-72, the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has arrived in Laem Chabang, Thailand looking like an extra from the zombie film 28 Days Later.

No wonder crewmen were literately throwing themselves into the ocean. 

The U.S. Navy’s supercarrier USS Abraham Lincoln is now in Thailand for a much-deserved and highly publicized liberty port call. The carrier had gone 286 days without making such a stop, with much of that time spent executing grueling combat operations against Iran. The ship has been run very hard, relying on at times a rickety conveyor of sea replenishments to continue operating for months on end, and it has the scars to show for it. The Lincoln looks very much worse for wear, with so-called “running rust” and algae caked all along the sides of the hull, as well as around the edges of the flight deck and sponsons on either side. It’s something of a startling appearance for one of the most powerful ships on the planet and a major symbol of U.S. power projection, but it is also a reminder of what the vessel and its crew have endured for months on end.

The Lincoln arrived in the Thai port of Laem Chabang earlier today. The carrier did make a stop in Guam in December 2025 and reportedly made another one somewhere in the Middle East in July. However, in both cases, these have been characterized as brief logistical stopovers that did not offer any real opportunity for personnel onboard to disembark. Thai media reports say the carrier is expected to remain in Laem Chabang through the end of the weekend.

Great Googly Moogly!

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Seeing as how the full report will be coming out tomorrow, I'll keep this post on the weekly unemployment report brief.

• Initial claims up 2,000 to 206,000.
• Continuing claims up  8,000 to 1.779 million.
• All signs point to continued inflation above the Fed target. 
• Trade deficit is up.

Friday should be interesting. 

Headline of the Day

This Is the Worst Possible Time for OpenAI to BfЖ7!م#2猫$9&क

Gizmodo, on OpenAI's plans to roll out an even less responsible version of artificial intelligence.

Yea, this is gonna go so f%$#ing well, innit.

AI models are notoriously likened to black boxes, meaning the humans who build them can’t look inside to see how they transform mountains of training data into lines of code, sonnets, or whatever else they’re asked to generate. Not completely, anyway. A subfield called interpretability research has blossomed in recent years, aimed at shining various lights on how AI models “think.” One of the brightest lights is called chain-of-thought reasoning, or CoT. Think of it like a recorded transcript of the steps models take while working through problems—like a student showing their work on a test. It’s widely regarded as a critical safety mechanism as models become more capable and less predictable.

OpenAI is now experimenting with a technique that could make it harder for researchers to interpret models’ CoT reasoning process, according to a Tuesday report from The Information.

The latest versions of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini—all based on an architecture called a transformer—process data via a series of steps, recording their reasoning process in natural language the whole way through (albeit not always totally accurately).

The new technique, on the other hand—known as recurrent depth—turns that linear reasoning process into a cyclical one: the model iteratively refines its internal representations by repeatedly passing them through the same set of layers. The takeaway is that the relatively clear CoT transcripts generated by traditional transformers can be replaced with a much more opaque reasoning process. In other words, we can’t be sure what it’s thinking when it isn’t thinking in words.

For Sam Altman and the rest of the Silly-Con Valley fraudsters, the solution to AI hallucinations is to make sure that diagnosis becomes more difficult.

Wonderful. 

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Too Corrupt for Texas?

It appears that even Texas Republicans are realizing that Elon Musk's attempts to secure state subsidies for broadband are too corrupt for them.

I did not know that it was possible to be too corrupt for Texas.

Back in June I wrote a feature for The Verge about how Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos had convinced Republicans to redirect billions in taxpayer money away from future-proof fiber optic upgrades, and toward their low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband networks they’d already planned to deploy. Curious behavior for two extremely-rich gentlemen who both repeatedly claim to loathe subsidies and corporate welfare.

But wait! It gets dumber and more corrupt!

Originally, Congress set aside $42.5 billion in taxpayer money in the infrastructure bill to spend on broadband upgrades. But after shoveling a large chunk of that money to two billionaires for slower satellite networks they already planned to build without subsidization, Trump Republicans claimed they’d “saved” taxpayers $21.5 billion dollars in “non-deployment funds” that appear to have mysteriously fallen into a deep hole in the federal government.

Obviously states are pissed off, and have been waiting for much of the last year for the Trump administration to green light that money for the purpose Congress earmarked it for. But wary of upsetting the Trump administration, many haven’t been willing to publicly comment on how stupid this all is for fear of losing out on their promised money. But they’re getting increasingly pissed all the same.

That includes Texas, which was slated to get the most “BEAD” (Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment) funds ($3.3 billion) of any state in the country.

Over the last month or two there’s been a growing, bipartisan annoyance in the Lone Star state at the fact that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos appeared to have hijacked billions of dollars originally slated for fiber optics for their satellite ventures. That’s forced the Texas Broadband Deployment Office (BDO) to put all grant awards on hold while the state investigates questions of cronyism and favoritism at the agency:

The fact that both Musk and Bezos are also building large AI data centers, which are politically toxic, even in the corporate whoring Lone Star State, may have something to do with this.

I would expect that Musk and Bezos will get their Baksheesh following the November elections.

Forget it Jake, it's Texas. 

That Which Can Be Destroyed by the Truth, Should Be

A local activist in Arkansas filed an FOI request to the state PUC about a what Entergy was doing with regard to Google's efforts to secure power for their planned data center in West Memphis, Arkansas.

It appears that she got more than what the utility company intended. 

The short version:

Google appears to be paying only a third of the cost for new electric infrastructure, not the full amount, as Entergy has said.

Yes, these documents appear to undermine Entergy’s claims that customers won’t pay higher bills to support data centers

Details of Google’s West Memphis site’s massive power draw are revealed. [Google would be using all of the energy from a solar installation that it was touting.]

In response to this data being released, Entergy filed suit asking for a restraining order preventing the news media from writing about this information, something which a Federal Judge promptly denied.

Entergy claimed that the documents revealed trade secrets, but the fact that Entergy plans to screw its rate-payers is simply not a secret.  It never has been. 

Holy F%$#ing Sh%$

We have a report that a a grad student synthesized dimethylmercury and possibly exposed themselves.

Dimethylmercury makes the Minimata Disease look like a trip to a pre-Amazon Whole Foods.

We had a weird story develop over the weekend here in the Cambridge area (and among organic chemists in general). I’m glad that I wasn’t trying to blog it as it happened, because it’s taken some turns!

This all started last Wednesday night, but most of us only heard something on Thursday when word came of an MIT chemistry building that was being closed off because of a report of someone who had been exposed to hazardous material. It became clear that said material was possibly dimethylmercury, which a graduate student had claimed to have synthesized, and who subsequently reported themselves to a local emergency room. And you can see why that caused a stir (but read on!)

Dimethylmercury is very, very bad news. It is obviously something I will not work with, but it’s never been the subject of a blog post here in that category because unfortunately there’s nothing lighthearted about the subject. Not after the death of Karen Wetterhahn in 1997. That story should be well known to chemists everywhere, but the short version is that Prof. Wetterhahn (at Dartmouth) was accidentally exposed in August of 1996 to a few drops of liquid dimethylmercury on her latex-gloved hand. What she didn’t know (and what none of us really knew) was that this compound rapidly penetrates such gloves, which meant that Wetterhahn was exposed to skin contact within seconds. Toxicologically, it is probably the worst of the organomercurys, which are of course a dangerously toxic group of compounds overall. Her precautions for handling the compound were the standard at the time, it should be noted.

Prof. Wetterhahn began to notice general symptoms within weeks. Early in 1997 she began to show neurological problems, and within weeks she had collapsed into a vegetative state. She was removed from life support in June. She had very high levels of mercury in her blood, and all attempts at chelation therapy to remove it were ineffective. That’s surely because it had spread throughout her body by the time the problem was recognized, but frankly no one can be sure if there were any measures that could have been effective enough after the initial exposure. This horrifying incident led to a complete re-evaluation of the use of dimethylmercury in synthetic and analytical chemistry, where among other things it had been the reference peak standard in mercury NMR experiments.

It appears that there was no exposure to anyone, and possibly that there was no actual synthesis of the ferociously toxic material, but someone was trying to make some.

Whoever they are should be blackballed from chemistry for the rest of their natural life. 

I don't just mean that they should be banned working in ans academic or industrial programs related to chemistry.  I mean that they should be banned from any work with chemicals at all, up to and including working as a pastry chef.

Coyote vs. ACME Review (No Spoilers Except Revealing a Cameo)

A brief and explosive cameo



A promotional poster

---

Director	Dave Green
Writers	Samy Burch James Gunn Jeremy Slater
From a New Yorker article by	Ian Frazier
Cast
Will Forte	Kevin Avery
Lana Condor	Paige Avery
John Cena	Buddy Crane
Tone Bell	Sal Maltese
Martha Kelly	Dottie Jones
Luis Guzmán	Judge Troppogrosso
P.J. Byrne	Bill Pelicanos
John Early	Henry Heslop
Nancy Linehan Charles	Cherry
Kenneth Choi	Oscar Jeon
Ernie Vigil	Talon
Eric Bauza	Bugs Bunny Charlie Dog Daffy Duck Dr. Lorre Elmer Fudd Foghorn Leghorn Gossamer Porky Pig Road Runner Tweety
Candi Milo	Granny Miss Prissy Witch Hazel
Jim Cummings	Tasmanian Devil

First, the cameo.  It came from a 70 year old USAF veteran, the AIM-4 Falcon.

The round nose, triangular wings, and the tiny fins on the front are kind of a dead give-away.

I will not reveal the role that the missile took, except to say that it was sell acted and, "Energetic," pairing very nicely with their fellow actor in the scene.

A further note: my guess is that there are perhaps 100 other people in the united states who identified the missile.

I cannot speak to these other mil-pr0n geeks, but this makes me the least cool man in the world.

Of course, this is not a surprise.  My kids have been saying this for years.  

As to my movie review, I will take the approach that Michael Caine took with the Muppets, in a Muppet Christmas Carol,  and review all characters, both live action and animated as if they are all live actors.

First, let me state that this is a really good movie, funny, poignant, and at times laugh out loud. 

I think that it is better than Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and it is better while having to carry the enormous burden of Warner Brothers canon, which Roger Rabbit did not.

The technical production values are very high, but truth be told, this does not matter.  We are here for the dialogue, characters, and story.

There is a lot that I wanted to see that I did not see, not just more of some of the non Coyote and Roadrunner characters, but also, for example, a deeper dive into the law office staff, who seemed to have been worked through far more deeply than the there was addressed in the film.

I understand why this happened.

If we had seen more of Bugs Bunny as the classic trickster, and more of Daffy Duck duck being ……… well ……… daffy, along with a deeper dive into the law offices, the movie would likely have been about 4½ hours long, which would have been too long.

It was good at 1h 39m

Still, I'd like to see what ended up on the cutting room floor.

The basic plot was obvious to anyone who read the original New Yorker essay or saw the coming attractions, but it was executed quite well.

It was also laugh out loud funny, and quite touching, being an examination of friendships and obsessions. (Wile E. Coyote and obsession, now there is a surprise)

It was a bit less subversive than the original Looney Tunes, which did a job of communicating very different humor to the adults and the children in the audience.

I also think that it is kind of absurd that it got a PG rating.  It's Looney Tunes for f%$#'s sake!  Those anvils have a context!

As to the performances:  They were all good, and it was apparent that everyone involved was enjoying themselves, which is just plain fun to watch.

John Cena as evil lawyer Buddy Crane is clearly the best performance in the film.  He chews the scenery with reckless abandon, and does extremely well both as a source of jokes and as a straight man without completely dominating the movie.  (Thing about Alan Rickman in Robin Hood, who made Kevin Costner look like Jerry Lewis)

Wile E. is great, true to form. His portrait as a person whose obsession is being opposed by the universe itself is as pure and focused as it was when he fell off that cliff ………and that cliff ……… and that cliff ………and that cliff in the original Warner Brothers shorts.

The Road Runner is good, but a little softer than in the original.  He is not taunting the Coyote (and everyone else in this movie) quite so much as he does in the original.  Good, but only an A, not an A+.

Will Forte gives a good solid performance as Kevin Avery, (I assume that the name is an homage to Tex Avery) but he's a little bit too earnest, particularly in the beginning.  As the character who changes the most, going from disillusioned cynic to crusader almost as obsessed as the coyote, he's just too nice and too engaged in the needs of his clients at the start.

The weakest performance was from Foghorn Leghorn.  He was OK, but given his role as a villain, arguably the boss villain, he lacked the menace and arrogance required for the role.

While his earlier performances never presented much in the way of menace, his arrogance is normally a bit more prominent.  

Also, Tweety's performance was a disappointment.  His character was in a bad place, but we don't see any of the ingenuity and brutality that has made Sylvester's life a living hell.

As to the legal machinations in the plot, it was well done, but I would have liked it to a bit more Perry Mason than it was. 

Of course, one does have to talk about the real villain in this movie, former Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zazlav, who canceled the release of the film in order to secure a tax write-off.

I won't go into detail on that whole matter, but Zazlav should be strapped into a chair and made to watch this movie on repeat for a full week without being allowed to close his eyes. 

You know the drill: 

 

I call it Kubricking.

"Convenience Fees," My Flabby White Hairy Ass!

I booked tickets to Coyote vs. Acme this afternoon, and it came with a 20% "Convenience Fee".

F%$# that, and f%$# AMC Theaters, without lube.

It's late, so I will do a full review the movie tomorrow.   

Short version:  See it.  It is Who Framed Roger Rabbit good.

Elemental Geography

I’m wondering if the Trump regime thought through pissing off Canada, including renaming a lake that honors not just the province of Ontario but also the First Nations people who lived there and named it. But there’s the little matter of navigation on the Great Lakes, including the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Welland Canal, which is the only way ships can travel between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The canal is in Ontario and wholly operated by Canada, and no ship can pass through it and the eight locks without permission of Canada. In other words, Canada has their own Strait of Hormuz.

—Bark Bark Woof Woof

Oh Snap! 

The Welland Canal, because you cannot sail a ship over Niagara Falls.

The phrase, "Own Goal," comes to mind here. 

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

I get that recruiting at the FBI is not what it once was, but recruiting people who frequent prostitutes and f%$# animals seems to be desparation.

Worst timeline ever, 

Kash Patel's FBI is being pilloried online after a new report revealed the bureau quietly loosened the vetting standards that once automatically disqualified applicants who had hired sex workers, stolen from an employer or engaged in bestiality.

According to CBS News, the FBI in June eased some background check rules so that those acts, most of them illegal, are no longer instant disqualifiers for would-be agents. A candidate may now get a pass on prostitution as long as they did not hire sex workers three or more times and not within the past decade, and someone who committed bestiality as a minor could still make the cut, sources told the outlet.

The change comes as the FBI lost more than 1,000 special agents in 2025, part of an exodus of firings, forced retirements and polygraphs since Trump returned to power. Critics say the loosened rules point to a recruiting crisis.

"How can this not be reflective of a recruiting problem at the FBI if you are lowering your standards on issues like bestiality and prostitution?" attorney Mark Zaid told CBS.

Only the very best people?

Linkage

• It’s 90 degrees in the Arctic right now (Scientific American) We are at f%$#ed.
• Florida Republican could face death penalty under child abuse law he championed (Raw Story) It's all projection, isn't it.
• 2,200-year-old Roman shipwreck reveals ancient waterproofing secrets (ScienceDaily) Getting your historical engineering freak on.
• There Are Carrier Pigeon Apps Now Because Pigeon Technology Is Actually Superior (Gizmodo) There's an app for what?
• Tesla to recall almost three million vehicles over hidden door handles (The Register) It turns out that China takes exception to the stupid and unsafe door handles that Elon Musk is such a fan of.
• Scientists find evidence for two origins of life on Earth (ScienceDaily) 2 separate events in 2 separate locations.  Cool.
• Scientists Studied 338 NFL Players' Brains After Death. Nearly All Had the Same Disease (Gizmodo) CTE,  I do not think that there is a way to fix football.
• Trump Isn’t Caligula, He’s Commodus (Martin Longman) It gets down into the historical weeds, but I agree.
• Did Google Glass Wearers Actually Get Punched in the Face? (Gizmodo) There is no evidence that "Glassholes" were actually punched in the face, though they deserved it.

The history of coffee, as only OTR can cover it:

Guck Foogle

We're not changing the name of Lake Ontario. Name it whatever you want at your leisure: https://gulfof.mapquest.com/lakeontario (tag us so we can see your work 🙂)

[image or embed]

— MapQuest (@mapquest.com) August 27, 2026 at 4:14 PM

MapQuest is having none of it 

Once again Google has offered conclusive evidence that it's old motto of, "Don't be evil," is inoperative.

In this case, Google Maps renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America before the ink was dry on Trump's executive order.

Time to switch to MapQuest, I guess.  (Waze is owned by Google)

Google Maps has changed the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America following Donald Trump’s executive order mandating the change amid his trade war with Canada.

On Saturday, two days after the president cited Executive Order 14172 (Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness) to authorize the Great Lake’s renaming, Google Maps was updated to reflect the change for U.S. users.

Google’s sudden name change — the executive order stated the change must occur within 30 days, not 48 hours — was met with anger by Canadians, Lake Ontario-defending Americans, and HOMES mnemonic rememberers, all of whom accused the company of too quickly complying with Trump’s Lake America demand spurred by a trade war over tariffs.

To the degree that a future Democratic administration can dismantle all of the Silly-Con Valley monopolies, they should. 

Pakistan Said This?

While there have been recent movement toward China over the past few years, Pakistan has been in the pocket of the United States.

Not any more, it seems, because Pakistan has stated that it is not bound by unilateral US sanctions against Iran.

Pakistan said it is not “obliged to” comply with unilateral sanctions on Iran unless they are imposed by the United Nations, signaling a willingness to continue trade after the US warned of economic penalties against countries doing business with Tehran.

Islamabad is following bilateral agreements with Iran and while trade between the two neighbors remains robust, “there is a desire to expand,” Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi said at a weekly briefing Thursday.

Pakistan relied on its ties with Iran to negotiate the release of oil tankers early on during the conflict. The two countries have also agreed to Pakistan, Iran Agree on Completing Free Trade Agreement Soon a Pakistan, Iran Businessmen Aim to Boost Trade to $10 Billion to increase bilateral commerce by more than threefold to $10 billion. 

Pakistan has been trying to balance its relations with the US and Iran during the war. The country has strengthened its ties with the US during President Donald Trump’s second term, particularly after emerging as a key mediator between Tehran and Washington.

Last week, Pakistan’s army chief was in Iran as part of negotiations to end the Middle East conflict after tensions flared up again.

Iran won the war, and there are consequences of this. 

Cats, Huh?

Yes, this is our cat Mousetrap/Meatball.

Yes, this is our clothes dryer.  (Gas)

Yes, we took her out before Sharon* loaded her wet clothes.

Catz are weird.

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Not a Surprise

A grand jury in Florida has determined that Ron DeSantis stole money from a Medicaid fraud settlement and gave it to two of his PACs.

I'm surprised, but not by the corruption. I'm surprised that anyone was willing to confront the little man on his blatant corruption.

Unfortunately, there will be no charges forthcoming.

A Florida grand jury has found that the administration of the governor, Ron DeSantis, “misappropriated” $10m in taxpayer money from a Medicaid settlement into the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity with ties to DeSantis’s wife, before the money was reportedly “funneled” into “two political action committees”.

In the grand jury report, which remains sealed but was obtained and published by CBS News Miami on Wednesday, the grand jurors wrote that “we conclude that these funds were misappropriated as part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities” but said that they found “insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally”.

The grand jury report, dated 28 January 2026, states that in 2024, the Hope Florida Foundation received $10m from a Medicaid settlement between the state and Centene, a contractor for the government health insurance program for low-income Americans and children.

The report goes on to say that after the money was transferred to Hope Florida, it was “quickly funneled” from there into two political action committees, and that the money was then reportedly used to lobby against a ballot measure that would have legalized marijuana in Florida, and was sent to the Republican party of Florida.

 In a just world, DeSantis would already in custody.

I've Been Saying this for How Long?

David Sirota on the Real News Network (RNN) describing how the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) consultant class have systematically sabotaged the party for their own personal gain.

As an aside, the woefully pathetic post-mortem that was finally released by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had a chapter removed that called out the consultants before its release.

Go figure. 

Grand Jury No-Bills

For once, this is not the Trump DoJ that f%$#ed this up.

In this case, the grand jury was in Ohio, and they refused to indict a man who sawed down a Flock camera.

Good.

A grand jury in Ohio has declined to indict a man charged with felony vandalism for allegedly destroying a Flock automatic license plate reader camera.

Police in Union Township, a Cincinnati suburb, accused Cody Morelock of disassembling the camera, its support pole and solar panel on June 13.

Investigators, according to WKRC-TV in Cincinnati, identified Morelock after obtaining surveillance footage from other cameras near the scene as well as information linked to a credit card and a customer rewards account.

Police estimated the damage at more than $1,000. Morelock posted a $10,000 bond and was released from custody shortly after his arrest.

A Clermont County grand jury, however, opted not to indict Morelock, and the charges were dismissed.

It is said that a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich.

It appears that a ham sandwich with a side order of flock vandalism is a different kettle of fish. 

Today in Very Bad Fashion for a Very Good Cause

If you wondering what could motivate such an ugly sartorial statement, the answer is pretty simple: The pattern f%$#s up the ability of AI to recognize the target as a human being.

Hopefully, this isn't just someone blowing smoke up our collective asses.

Designer Simon Weckert has created a colourful camouflage shirt that cannot be detected using AI video systems.

Developed in response to a pilot project to use artificial intelligence (AI) video surveillance at Berlin's Kottbusser Tor, which starts this month, the shirt was designed to stop the user being recognised as a person.

Named Digital Camouflage, the shirt aims to confuse the AI-powered object-detection system by subverting what the system recognises as a person.

………

The shirt uses a combination of bright colours and patterns to confuse the AI systems so that it doesn't recognise what it is seeing as a person. 

 Make it so.

 

Yeah, They are a Bookie

The Appeals Court for the 9th Circuit just ruled that Kalshi sports "prediction market" is just sport betting and so subject to state regulations.

The court rejected claims that Kalshi's sports book operation is a. "Swap," which are exclusively covered under federal law.

Kalshi today lost a major ruling over whether it can evade state gambling laws, as a federal appeals court found that Nevada can stop the prediction market from allowing sports bets. While the Trump administration is trying to help prediction markets avoid state regulation, a panel of three Trump-appointed judges unanimously ruled against Kalshi in today’s decision from the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board today said the 9th Circuit “emphatically reject[ed] the view that the federal Commodity Exchange Act preempts application of Nevada’s gaming laws to sports-event contracts offered by Kalshi, Crypto.com, and Robinhood.” Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo, a Republican, said that “prediction markets offering sports-event contracts constitute gambling and must comply with Nevada’s gaming laws and regulatory framework.”

The judges affirmed a district court order that let Nevada enforce state laws against Kalshi’s sports-related event contracts.

“KalshiEX, LLC advertises itself as ‘the first app for legal sports betting in all 50 states,’” wrote Judge Ryan Nelson. “As the volume of activity on Kalshi’s ‘sports betting’ platform ballooned, the Nevada Gaming Control Board sent a cease-and-desist letter notifying Kalshi that it was violating Nevada statutes and gaming regulations. Kalshi sought injunctive relief, arguing that it is not a legal sports betting platform but a designated contract market under the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) offering legal sports event contracts. Kalshi argues that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has exclusive regulatory authority over its sports event contracts and, therefore, Nevada’s gaming regulations do not apply.”

Good.

It's Bank Failure Friday!!!

And I missed a few recent ones over the past few weeks.

First, the commercial bank failures number 4, Tioga-Franklin Savings Bank of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 21.

Here is the  Full FDIC list. 

Then there is the credit union failure number 7, African Diaspora Federal Credit Union of Saint Ann, Missouri on August 6.

Here is the Full NCUA list, and the direct link for this year. 

Twice as many bank failures this year as occurred in all of 2025, and one fewer credit union failure than in all of 2025.

Cue Alanis Morissette

When I heard the news that Milo Yiannopoulos had been detained by ICE, and that he has received a final deportation order, I could not help but smile.

It turns out that there ARE some people that I would wish ICE detention on.

I’m torn. I think the government has gone way overboard on deportations — let the people pursue happiness! — but yeesh, it’s Milo Yiannopoulos.

Far-right political commentator and deportation advocate Milo Yiannopoulos is currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody facing a final order of removal, according to U.S. officials and agency records.

Yiannopoulos, who is British, was apprehended in the New Orleans area and is being held in a Louisiana ICE holding facility, the U.S. officials said. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Yiannopoulos came to the U.S. legally in 2019 but “chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws.”

I was feeling a twinge of sympathy, both because I hate ICE and because he sure looks down in the dumps in his mugshot, but then, I was served with some quotes…

California needs ICE checkpoints at supermarket entrances, gas stations, strip malls, intersections and government buildings, with on the spot deportation for anyone who can’t prove they are in the US legally, he posted on social media in June 2025.

Total legal immunity for ICE agents when they’re on duty, he wrote in September 2025.

There is one concrete thing we must insist on this administration delivering, he wrote in June 2025. It matters a lot more than debts measured in imaginary money. We have got to deport millions and millions of people. Without that, nothing else matters.

Yeah, throw his ass out of the country.

Schadenfreude, sweet schadenfreude.

Can We Arrest Him Now?

It appears that the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ was using child pr0n to train his Grok artificial intelligence system.

We are not talking hashes here, where the a digital signature is generated and used to compare to images and the like.

We are talking about actual CSAM.

Put the Elon Musk in jail. 

xAI has now been accused of training Grok on child sex abuse materials (CSAM), as regulators and courts continue to probe how far the problem goes, and some Grok users have been arrested.

In a complaint filed on Wednesday, a plaintiff known as Jane Doe explained that she was preschool-age in the early 2000s when adult men repeatedly raped her to create CSAM to sell to pedophiles online. Since then, Doe’s images have been hashed by groups like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (CCCP).

For her safety, Doe has opted to receive alerts from the US Department of Justice Victim Notification System any time she may be a victim in a new criminal investigation. Although she has received countless alerts, she was shocked when the CCCP notified her that it had identified AI-generated CSAM on xAI that depicted her. This re-traumatized Doe, whose complaint alleged that messages were found on online forums “between offenders chatting about creating AI generated CSAM of Plaintiff and other similarly situated known, legacy, victims of CSAM.”

Now, Doe fears that xAI has not only made it easier to make more violative images of the most distressing time in her life, but also that xAI allegedly has stored the images that Grok generates and uses those outputs to further train Grok. Because of this, she believes that Grok has been trained on both the initial set of images that have haunted her for more than 20 years and the more recent AI-generated ones.

………

The lawsuit further noted that while xAI filters out violent content in Grok outputs to exclude it from training data, xAI’s terms notably do not specify if CSAM, non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), or NSFW material are “excluded categories.”

It seems to follow then that “because full removal of a training example’s influence from an already-trained model is technically difficult and not something that xAI has publicly claimed to have done, any CSAM ingested into training before takedown likely continued to shape the model’s outputs even after the original images were removed from public view,” Doe’s complaint said.

If you cannot get Musk arrested, I would suggest that perhaps Ms. Doe and her lawyers could ask for all of xAI be deleted, because the nature of Large Language Model Artificial Intelligence means that the entire data set has been polluted.