BF Borgers, Trump Media & Technology Group’s independent accounting firm, was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday with widespread fraud and accused of operating a “sham audit mill.”
The SEC made no allegation of wrongdoing against Truth Social owner Trump Media (DJT), which is not mentioned in the charges from the regulator.
Friday, May 03, 2024
Shams
I guess good for the SEC but it doesn't do too much to amelioriate the feeling that everything is trending towards being scams.
The Wanker Cuellar
Been trying to get rid of this guy for years, over the very active support of his colleagues (yes, of course, they defend incumbents, but they went above and beyond many times).
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is expected to announce the indictment of longtime Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, on Friday, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.
Cuellar’s home and campaign office in Laredo, Texas, were raided in January 2022 as part of a federal investigation into Azerbaijan and a group of U.S. businessmen who have ties to the country, law enforcement said at the time. His office had pledged to cooperate with the investigation. In April, Cuellar's lawyer, Joshua Berman, told some news outlets that federal authorities informed him he was not the target of the investigation.
Cuellar is a one-time co-chair of the Congressional Azerbaijan Caucus.
Shot/Chaser
Shot:
A bipartisan group of senators held a virtual meeting on Wednesday with senior officials at the International Criminal Court to express their concern about possible arrest warrants being issued for Israeli leaders over the war in Gaza, according to three sources who were in the meeting or briefed about it.Chaser:
Statement of the #ICC Office of the Prosecutor pic.twitter.com/Cw331pMcDm
— Int'l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) May 3, 2024
It's Always 5 Years Away
I'd missed that that chtatbot grifter Sam Altman is also pushing fusion, and of course bundling them together.
Just years of the "tech" industry lighting money on fire for nonsense.
Backed by renowned entrepreneur Sam Altman, Helion Energy Inc. is garnering attention for its ambitious endeavors in nuclear fusion power. With Altman’s substantial investment of $375 million, the company is spearheading a groundbreaking initiative to revolutionize the renewable energy sector.Amazing stuff.
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 16 (Reuters) - OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman on Tuesday said an energy breakthrough is necessary for future artificial intelligence, which will consume vastly more power than people have expected.Imagine thinking "we need the holy grail of energy breakthroughs to power spicy Alexa."
Speaking at a Bloomberg event on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Altman said the silver lining is that more climate-friendly sources of energy, particularly nuclear fusion or cheaper solar power and storage, are the way forward for AI.
Just years of the "tech" industry lighting money on fire for nonsense.
Thursday, May 02, 2024
Ouch
It's actually rare that our great newspapers do a scathing review of a conservative, so a little treat.
What is the function of this genre, the conservative memoir of political awakening? And can it vindicate the contention that progressivism is simply a rite of passage, rather than a seriously considered platform? For my part, I suspect that maturation is not always a boon. “Morning After the Revolution” demonstrates that, if leftism is a hazard of adolescence, conservatism is all too often an unfortunate symptom of aging, not unlike senility.
Now that Bowles is employed by the Free Press, a bastion of free thought, what free thoughts is she thinking? Very few, as it turns out. In fact, it can be difficult to discern any at all in her book.
...
Some of the anecdotes Bowles shares are indeed about movements, albeit distinct ones: In a chapter titled “Whose Tents? Our Tents!,” she scoffs at the anti-homelessness movement in Los Angeles, and Black Lives Matter is a recurrent fixation. But some of her reporting treats isolated incidents that are not plausibly cast as part of any broader campaign. Is an irritating podcast about asexuality with fewer than 300 ratings on the App Store “remaking our institutions from the inside”? Are the three professors who pretended to be people of color for academic clout really “transforming the country”? (Given that there are 1.5 million college faculty members in America, the tendency these outliers represent appears to be less common than the rarest forms of cancer.) And what, if anything, do diversity, equity and inclusion workshops have in common with doctors who treat trans children? “Morning After the Revolution” is, at best, a grab bag of Bowles’s pet peeves.
The Book Of Face
I left facebook of awhile and then rejoined mostly because certain things "required" it. I really cannot believe how bad it is at everything it is supposed to do. I'm not referring to the generally problems of social media (which they have addressed poorly, too), I just mean the basic interface, tools, the way to post or comment or really everything!!!
And now they've added "AI" which, you know, whatever else it is, AI is bots! It's exploding the bot problem!
While writing this article, I created another Facebook account with the intention of trying to find out if anyone would try to hack my account if I interacted with AI spam. The first image I saw on Facebook after creating this account was an AI-generated log cabin. Six of the first 10 posts I saw were AI-generated spam, which included an entire page full of AI-altered images of Justin Bieber and Hailey Bieber. One image was of an AI-generated starving, mutilated child asking for birthday wishes. When I clicked through to the page that posted the image, I saw dozens of AI-generated children, some of whom were seemingly dead, drowning, starving, had amputations, or were some combination of all of those. (Facebook deleted these accounts after I wrote an article about them but did not respond to my email requesting comment and an interview about how it tracks and takes action on this type of content). Another image I saw within seconds of joining Facebook was an AI-generated image of Jesus with an amputated leg, wearing an Uncle Sam hat, sitting in a wheelchair and holding a birthday cake while sitting next to an American soldier holding a machine gun in a war zone.
...
It is reductive to call Facebook the “Dead Internet.” There are real people on Facebook, and real people are being fed this content. The images themselves are being made by AI at the direction of real humans who have learned that spam can be monetized. Real humans at Facebook the company are choosing not to or are not equipped to take action on these accounts or this type of content, which now makes up an unknown but significant portion of content on the site. AI spam, as well as the specter of AI content, is impacting how real people use Facebook and perceive reality more broadly. Facebook itself is shoving its own AI features down people’s throats, and has made clear that it is going to continue spending billions of dollars on AI features that it intends to make core to its products and business model.
But If You Kill Just One Puppy
Kristi this is your political adviser and I recommend you never stop talking about this.
It'll Be Wrapped Up By (Last) January
The twin of "this is a problem, someone else should do something about it" is "surely that problem will take care of itself."
I actually don't like yelling at Democrats, contrary to the belief of many of my fine readers. I was all set to clap for the great and glorious perpetual reign of King Joey I. I did do some clapping! They started off great! Then things started going wrong as they started to listen to the centrist dipshits. Not everything was their fault, but presidents do have an ability to get some of their priorities through, at least, and the priorities started to shift noticeably.
There was still some good stuff, but the reversion to mean Democrat both in policy and rhetoric was noticeable.
But, hey, anyway, politics isn't about pleasing me, personally, and I get that beating the bad orange man is pretty important. I wish they'd treat beating the bad orange man as important!
They really believed that Bibi would kill a bunch of Palestinians, for no particular reason other than revenge (it was clear from the beginning that targeting Hamas specifically and retrieving hostages were not in any way priorities), then the bloodlust would be satiated (this is Sensible Politics), and Joey would implement the Kushner-Netanyahu-Biden Middle East Peace Plan with Saudi Arabia (!!) and everyone would cheer. All wrapped up by February 1.
I actually don't like yelling at Democrats, contrary to the belief of many of my fine readers. I was all set to clap for the great and glorious perpetual reign of King Joey I. I did do some clapping! They started off great! Then things started going wrong as they started to listen to the centrist dipshits. Not everything was their fault, but presidents do have an ability to get some of their priorities through, at least, and the priorities started to shift noticeably.
There was still some good stuff, but the reversion to mean Democrat both in policy and rhetoric was noticeable.
But, hey, anyway, politics isn't about pleasing me, personally, and I get that beating the bad orange man is pretty important. I wish they'd treat beating the bad orange man as important!
They really believed that Bibi would kill a bunch of Palestinians, for no particular reason other than revenge (it was clear from the beginning that targeting Hamas specifically and retrieving hostages were not in any way priorities), then the bloodlust would be satiated (this is Sensible Politics), and Joey would implement the Kushner-Netanyahu-Biden Middle East Peace Plan with Saudi Arabia (!!) and everyone would cheer. All wrapped up by February 1.
It was obvious since late October that, at a minimum, the devastation in Gaza was going to be so total that there would be no way to have a "day after."
And, now, if you're a completely cynical shit, they have a "protester problem."
Joey gets mad at his aids when they still him things he doesn't want to hear, so they stop, and is very influenced by the very intelligent opinions of former Republican Congressman, Florida Man Morning Joseph, who is busy pushing the idea that bike locks are proof that protesters are all funded by Putin and Soros.
Again, they should be more worried about beating the bad orange man. "The protesters are upsetting suburban voters so we should beat them, also the protesters and people who broadly agree with them should vote for us" has some problems as a strategy.
No I am not saying Biden is ordering the cops to bust heads, or has the power to micromanage police, but these things are, in various ways, coming from the top, and could be pushed in the other direction from the top.
"Bears The Impression Of The Last Person Who Sat on Her"
Saw someone describe the Grauniad editor that way and I just liked the phrase.
Wrongthink
The outside agitators are professors, poisoning the minds of "our" children.
The mayor goes on to say "One professor poisoning a classroom of students" is just as bad as 50.
— Dana Rubinstein (@danarubinstein) May 2, 2024
"How much of this is organic" versus "outside agitators?" he asks. "Doesn't matter the percentage," @nycmayor responds, after repeating his argument about the danger posed to a classroom of receptive young minds by a misinformation-wielding professor.
— Dana Rubinstein (@danarubinstein) May 2, 2024
Heckuva job, everybody. This is what the Columbia president chose. Gotta beat it out of the little shits."We can't allow our children to be radicalized," the mayor continues, citing a poll showing many young Americans aren't proud to be Americans.
— Dana Rubinstein (@danarubinstein) May 2, 2024
Wednesday, May 01, 2024
Every Time
Just assume there's a man behind the curtain.
The short is pretty charming. The two-minute video follows a yellow balloon-headed man named Sunny, whose disembodied voice provides an inspiring narration about embracing our big ideas and what makes us different as he and his helium cranium traverse cities, office spaces, meadows, and more.
But as Cederberg told FXGuide, creating Sunny wasn't as easy as inputting a prompt and pressing a button. Some of Sora's interprations of the Sunny character were — to put it bluntly — freakish, with the bot embedding a nightmare-fuel human visage into the balloon. Sora would also sometimes depict the balloon in the wrong color, which for some scenes meant that Shy Kids had to isolate and re-color the balloon in post using Adobe AfterEffects.
Bike Lock Drop
Shots
And the New York Times:
Deputy Commissioner Tarik Sheppard shows the chains used to secure Hamilton Hall at Columbia University.
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) May 1, 2024
"This is not what students bring to school. This is what professionals bring to campuses and universities." pic.twitter.com/fwFUPZlIj7
Chaser.for sharing purposes:
— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) May 1, 2024 at 4:02 PM
[image or embed]
And the New York Times:
City officials and the police said that the use of large chains to block doors and other tactics showed that “professional” activists were influencing student protesters. They have not named the outsiders who were involved in the protests and declined on Wednesday to say how many of the protesters who were arrested were not affiliated with the colleges.New York Times earlier, recommending that lock and chain!
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