The North Forester County School Board Ethics Committee has forwarded its ethics report for school board member Chet Addison to the school board for action. Mr. Addison has angered many of his constituents after the local newspaper investigated his claims regarding his history in the county, financial status, religion, and several other matters. In its report, the ethics committee found that Addison made many false and dubious claims and may have misused election campaign funds. Mr. Addison's campaign web site claims that he is a billionaire with total assets valued at more than $2.6B, which includes his primary residence currently located in the Happy Hills Trailer Park and his 2005 GMC pickup truck. His educational background lists many advanced degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Cornell. His current employer, All-State Recycling, shared his employment application, which lists only his degree from Harvard. Harvard University has no record of his attendance there. Sheriff Jefferson Banks stated that Mr. Addison reported being chased by alien spacecraft at least twice to avoid a speeding ticket, was arrested while naked on three occasions protesting outside the local pizza restaurant against their use of Canadian bacon and Italian sausage, called 911 on his 90-year old neighbor, Clara Thompson, for “snoring loud enough to ruin his buzz”, and had to be restrained by deputies during a raucous school board meetings over gender-neutral bathrooms. Mr. Addison has claimed in several media interviews to be a Catholic, Hasidic Jew, Baptist, Zoroastrian, and a current president of the Jim Bakker Fan Club. The Everyman's Action Committee to Elect Chet Addison (EAC-ECA or “Eek-Ecka”), raised only $124.35 according to campaign finance reporting. However, that money is unaccounted for though widely suspected to have been used to pay a bar tab. At the next school board meeting, a debate and vote on expulsion of Mr. Addison is on the agenda. Three board members have signaled their intentions to keep Addison on the board by filibuster. They plan to read the objectionable parts from some of the 368 books they have banned this year.
As the last of the Giant Pandas in the US will return to China when their lease expires next year, the US President discussed the future of “panda diplomacy” with the leader of China in the first talks they have held in more than a year. Loud disagreements and outright shouting was overheard in the hallway outside over a variety of issues, including trade tariffs, electronic waste, inflation, climate change, basketball player dominance, Confucianist ideals, Tito Puente's best album, and even the choice of bathroom colors in the Olympic Village at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. On the issue of placing giant pandas in US zoos with reasonable lease terms, they could not agree. China raised the price on leasing pandas to the US, which would increase the national debt by 23%. As alternative, the Chinese leader instead offered binturongs (Arctictis binturong), which are a threatened species of weird looking tree creatures. They are commonly known as the bearcat. The President quickly accepted the offer since it was getting close to bed time, and immediately dashed off a quick handwritten executive order for funding support to any US zoo willing to take a couple bearcats. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums issued a stark warning to its members highlighting potential visitor confusion if bearcats are placed near bear species or cat species exhibits. They suggest creating a separate enclosure of “China Bears” with one small space for the bearcats and larger empty space for Giant Pandas that says “Invisible Giant Pandas”.
The North Carolina Army National Guard announced its deployment in recovery operations to save the state's commercial turkey industry and the Thanksgiving holiday. Governor Jim Wallace activated soldiers from the 252nd Armor Regiment, 120th Infantry Regiment, and the 130th Aviation Regiment to locate and capture turkeys that escaped from a large commercial facility. The turkey industry in North Carolina accounts for more than 1.2 billion birds each year. In an act of agro-terrorism, more than 37,000 birds escaped when a newly hired employee, suspected to be member of the Animal Liberation Front and a known vegan, intentionally opened the gates and then struggled to free the turkeys by chasing them around their pens, resulting in hours of security camera footage destined for the FailArmy channel on YouTube. All the escaped birds were doomed for the slaughterhouse the next day and then the Thanksgiving table. Adjutant General Mark Milnes expressed elation at the opportunity for the North Carolina Guard to demonstrate its value to the state during emergencies. Several soldiers were excited to use advanced weaponry and newly issued night-scopes to hunt down and capture enemy turkeys. The operation has been formally designated as “Operation Enduring Thanksgiving”, though many soldiers have referred to it as the “The Great Turkey Shoot”. Black Hawk helicopters have been seen circling over the wooded areas near the turkey facility. Tanks and armored personnel carriers are at the edge of the woods, and the troops are preparing for close-quarters battle. Anti-Thanksgiving and animal rights groups have protested outside the Guard's headquarters in Raleigh. Governor Wallis has insisted that the woods will be invaded soon to restore American Thanksgiving values.
While Mei Xiang, Tian Tian, and their cub Xiao Qi Ji, the giant pandas on loan from China for twenty years, travel back to their home country, the future of “panda diplomacy” is in question given the tense relations between the US and China. California, the one US state with the longest independent reach into international relations, has decided to try its own version of animal diplomacy through short-term leasing, exorbitant recurring payments, and inflexible contract terms covering animal enclosures, food quality, and animal “amusements”. California also added new requirements for data collection on zoo visitors, free advertising for summer blockbuster movies, and exclusivity on California wines to be served at all government functions. The California rare animal to be used for diplomatic purposes is the Santa Cruz kangaroo rat, named after its home in the Santa Cruz mountains but also Santa Cruz, a small coastal city with a big Californian cost of living crisis. The rodent, which has unusually long hind legs used for walking, was once thought to be extinct for decades until a small population was discovered bounding through a nature preserve savagely chasing away a large flock of Canadian Geese. Qatar is the first country to sign up for three rats and is already building a modest $57M animal enclosure to house them. The Wroclaw Zoo in Poland was considering the rat to add its expansive collection of animals but balked at the monthly lease price of $60,000 per month per rat plus the costs of organic vegan animal feed required to be purchased from California. The US State Department, believing that it too should get in on the rare animal diplomacy game, has offered wild buffaloes to zoos with reasonable leasing terms and an option to buy the animals at the end of the lease. Spain has already shown interest in a “Running of the Buffaloes” event next summer.
An internal classified memo was leaked today showing that US spy agencies are dealing with a designation crisis—the supply of code names is running critically low. Code names form the basis of secrecy within the intelligence community. Without code names, agents would no longer know how to refer to enemy targets, secret projects, meet-up locations, or each other. Reusing code names is also problematic, as the memo described confusion at a spy station in a foreign country where every agent is known as “Condor”. Unfortunately, the English language just does not have enough interesting single words that can be used as code names—all of the cool ones have already been assigned. Since 1982, all Federal code names have been created and managed by an aging machine known as “Code Namer 5000”, a system so old that none of the staff members know how it works internally, how to fix it when it spits out a code name in French, or to prevent it from issuing racist or dehumanizing code names. As a stop-gap measure the Federal agency in charge of code names, the National Institute of Code Names and Cover Stories (NICNaCS; code name: “Knickknacks”), has started assigning two-word code names. “Purple Passion”, “Anger Management”, “White Guy”, “Jealous Husband”, and “Horny Jason” were cited as examples of the new approach to code names. Knickknacks believes it has extended the life of Federal code names with only a minor inconvenience for remembering a two-word code name. The American Federation of Government Employees has filed a formal complaint with the Office of Personnel Management claiming the two-word code name approach devalues the existing code naming scheme and will lead to errors with potentially deadly consequences for American spies. Knickknacks has a budget request of $782M to replace the Code Namer 5000 as part of its “Make American Names Great Again” initiative.
Disagreement in the US House of Representatives has led to a continued delay in passing a spending bill to fund the Ukrainian war effort. The Department of Defense has been unable to rotate current equipment and supplies to the Ukrainian military for upgraded replacements without funding from Congress. With the Thanksgiving holiday approaching, the DoD has a large supply of frozen turkeys, which are being diverted from military installations around the world to Ukraine to be used as projectiles. DARPA, the DoD's advanced research group, funded experiments using frozen turkeys as projectiles and found that the frozen flightless fowl flew at more than 1,200 feet per second and delivered 900,000 Joules per kilogram of kinetic energy, which is sufficient to penetrate Russian tanks and armored vehicles. The DoD is rapidly transferring 5,634 frozen turkeys in cold storage around the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Asia. They are expected to arrive frozen and ready for battlefield use over the next three days according a DoD press release. The Ukrainian President was livid over the announcement of the alternative munitions being supplied by the cash-strapped US military. The US President praised his military chiefs for their ability to find a solution in the face of the budget crisis. The USO promised to replace the standard turkey dinner that deployed military service men and women would normally have on Thanksgiving Day with a meal of tortellini with sausage and mascarpone and a live-streamed concert with celebrity chef Danny O'Malley singing his favorite restaurant songs.
BrainProbers, a start-up company focused on biomedical implant products, has been given approval by the Food and Drug Administration to begin human trials to test their new brain implant, called Wetware Ads. Unlike other implants available in the market today, Wetware Ads will directly place advertising impressions into a user's brain. Competing brain implant companies have focused on human augmentation and interfacing with software to improve human capabilities or to help disabled people. BrainProbers, supported by investments from major advertising companies and Big Tech, are taking the technology in a different direction. With the initial release of the technology, the implants will directly insert fully immersive and targeted advertising impressions into the brain. The next planned release will add the ability to measure the effectiveness of the advertisements through the user's thoughts and actions. The user's cogitations and beliefs will be collected by the implant and shared with the advertisers to tune their advertising campaigns, develop more effectual advertising content, and measure the overall value of their advertising investments. BrainProbers Wetware Ads will be provided free to users, including the implantation and all follow-on medical services, except the removal of the implant at service termination. The Wetware Ads Terms of Service have raised alarms with the Electronic Freedom Foundation, which highlighted language that shows BrainProbers and its advertisers will record and own all of the user's thoughts in perpetuity. The USDA is investigating the company for its treatment of animals during testing, where more than 3,000 animals were killed in the research and testing of the implants. The CEO, under pressure from advertisers and investors, indicated in an interview that the company will kill an additional 3,000 animals in the next six months to get the implants into humans faster.
Meta has ignored its own internal reporting on harmful content and complaints by users for years. Steve McAffee, a former Meta employee testified to Meta's culture of increased user harm before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the algorithms used by Meta to place and promote harmful content to senior citizens. After several rambling technical support questions on Apple iPhones, that “weird dinging sound”, and the TikTok mobile app from the subcommittee's septuagenarians, the Senators eventually probed Mr. McAffee about Meta and its lackadaisical attitude toward senior citizens. Mr. McAffee provided internal documents from Meta complete with technical terms, dry discussions, and pointless presentations that many subcommittee members could not or did not read. The focus of the questions eventually focused on two issues for seniors: 1) If everyone is living their best lives online, why won't they call me more often? and 2) Why won't my family visit more often? The Senators were outraged to learn that Meta continues to harm seniors and their relationship with their families by promoting only the best experiences and fun that their families are having without them. Senator Tracey Donnelly, D-Iowa, stated that legislation is needed to force Meta and other social media companies to create better tools to connect families to more God-centered, America-focused, and meaningful activities online and in the real world. Calling for an outright ban on social media and the interner, Senator Harlon G. Oldman, R-Michigan, tearfully remembered the joys of America before the internet came along. The President has weighed in on the debate, asking companies like Meta to help senior citizens online by replacing positive posts from the their relatives with more cat videos. The International Organization for More Cat Media, a large donor to the President's re-election campaign, cheered the President's insight and sensible approach to fighting for America's seniors.
Weeks after proposing a Canadian border wall in a presidential debate, Republican hopeful Arjun Gupta published his plan for the Canadian border wall and how to finance its construction. Mr. Gupta is a second-generation Indian American businessman who made his fortune in commercial construction. In the plan posted on his campaign site, Mr. Gupta stated that “the time has come to halt the illegal migration of Canadians into the US to steal jobs from hard-working Americans, to smuggle in tons of fentanyl that kills more than three million Americans every year, and to stop the illegal trade in Caribou as domesticated pets.” All of these claims have been proven to be false. The Canada-United States border is the longest undefended international border in the world with a total length of 5,525 miles. Mr. Gupta's plan included the specifications for the wall construction, including spotlights, infrared cameras, sniper tasers, and robotic guard dogs. Total costs are estimated at $50 trillion. Mr. Gupta plans to increase tariffs on imported Canadian goods, raise income taxes for Canadian Americans, and force illegal Canadians captured in America to work on constructing the wall as part of their sentence. The Canadian Prime Minister was frustrated and attempted to correct the inaccuracies about Canada and Canadians stated in the plan. The Congressional Budget Office estimated a four-fold increase in the national debt over the fifty-five years needed to build the border wall. An opinion poll of likely voters taken after the debate showed Mr. Gupta is now the Republican front runner in the race.
After almost six months of strike, SAG-AFTRA, the union representing Hollywood actors, reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP, the association of movie studios. Their new three-year contract resolves many of the issues SAG-AFTRA members were concerned about, including the threat of AI, increased compensation, healthcare, unpaid filmed auditions, and streaming residuals. The most contentious issue, however, took longer to find a solution—puppies on the set. For years, the actors have complained that there were never enough puppies on set to meet specified minimums, that what the studios claimed were puppies were actually adult dogs, and that the overall “cuteness” factor has been on a steady decline. The AMPTP argued that cute puppies were hard to find and that the COVID-induced supply chain issues were never resolved. The union found that the studios were using substandard puppies and cut their puppy budgets by 24% since the start of the last contract. Actors have long used puppies in their approach to acting to encourage sincere and expressive performances. The “Puppy Method” pioneered at Studio Canine in Chicago became the rival to Method Acting in the 1980s. In the agreement, the studios will increase funding for puppy farms, include buy-outs for top dogs, and an option for actors to keep the puppies at the end of the set. The actors celebrated the move with a long series of social media selfies with random puppies. The Humane Society warned the actors and studios of their concerns about animal welfare and the added strain on their animal health operations in Southern California. Superior Puppy Mills of California has already expressed interest in being the studio puppy supplier of choice.