Former President Trump has been denigrated in a wide-spread release of AI-generated images and videos in which Trump is shown to be nice to people, complimentary to his political challengers, apologetic to his accusers, welcoming to immigrants and people of color, and generally a good person. Trump immediately to his social media platform Truth Social to blast these images as “fake views” from the liberal media. The right-wing media outlets repeated his messaging and went on to say that the former President would never act this way, that he works tirelessly to attack, harm, and disparage his opponents, and that he is really a terrible individual and barely human. The Republicans in Congress immediately set to work on a new bill to outlaw AI-generated content about the former President. X (or Twitter) attempted to take down all the fake content with Trump but, instead, took down the whole site. Taylor Swift released her own AI-generated content featuring a new song and video about the former President's “nicer side”. Several Neo-Nazi groups, believing that the fakes were real, ejected Trump as their honorary leader.
Amazon announced today a public-private partnership program with the US Department of Justice that will deliver free Ring doorbell cameras to all US homes by the end of the July 2024. For several years, the DoJ has applied pressure on the company to release any Ring customers video upon any request from police departments whether there was a warrant or not. Amazon, not wanting to trigger any further antitrust lawsuits which could further damage its already tarnished reputation for destroying bookstores, local retail stores, pharmacies, the US Post Office, and many mom-and-pop shops through anticompetitive behavior, complied with the “request” and even created new applications for police officers to download content, distribute the videos to other officers, comment, and even share on social media. Now, Amazon will send a free Ring doorbell camera to any US home without one. The DoJ is also mandating that all US homes install the cameras. Amazon Prime Video announced a new series called “Doorbell Fail!” with funny, painful, cringe-worthy, and hopefully hilarious video from Rings cameras. Edward Snowden, the famous US traitor, surveillance program leaker, and now Russian citizen, released new classified documents showing the partnership's Ring camera surveillance program tied to the National Security Agency known by its codename “Shenanigans”. Amazon has published a list of police departments ranked by the highest Month Active Users (MAU). So far, the Miami-Dade Police Department sits at the top with most of its officers posting the most not-safe-for-work content to the department's Facebook account. The ACLU and the EFF have filed lawsuits to stop the partnership program. Disney is suing Amazon for copying its “America's Funniest Home Videos: Doorbell Antics” on ABC.
Japan became the fifth nation to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon. This tremendous accomplishment is not without its challenges though. The lunar lander, named Moon Sniper, is resting on the moon upside down with its solar panel facing away from the Sun and its Earth antenna facing away from the Earth. Despite this, the two lunar rovers survived, one rover hops like a bunny and the other one works like a Christmas toy that runs out of batteries two hours after you unwrap it. Pictures from the rovers confirmed the unfortunate state of the lander. With the small amount of power left in its internal battery, the lander communicated some thoughts on its failed mission and pleaded for help from its partners on the moon. Moon Sniper vowed to carry on with the parts of its mission that it can despite its current orientation. It said that it plans to send some very close-up pictures of the lunar surface from its camera currently buried in the moon's regolith and continue to map out the lunar craters that are very close to it. In its now abundant free time, Moon Sniper plans to compose several long lunar-themed symphonies for a lunar rover orchestra, dabble in lunar haiku, send lunar reports back in Japanese calligraphy, and create new lunar landscapes in the style of Katsushika Hokusai. It also sent a last second request to its follow travelers on the moon to push it over into the right position. However, the hopping rover had just hopped into a larger crater and was hopping around hoping to find a way out, and the toy rover had already run out of batteries. Once the Moon Sniper gets some sunlight on its solar panels and starts up again, the Japanese Space Agency will calm the little lunar lander with some Taiko music, and then ask it to work on some lunar sushi and noodle recipes as well.
In yesterday's New Hampshire Democratic Primary, “John Smith” won. Who is “John Smith”? No one is quite sure. President Joe Biden was not on the ballot due to a disagreement with the Democratic National Committee over the ability to read a calendar and settle disputes like, you know, normal people. However, the Democratic ballot was not empty. There are a diverse set of candidates in New Hampshire politics running for president, and they discussed their political views at the Lesser-Known Candidates Forum at St. Anselm College in a prime-time broadcast to a rapt audience on C-SPAN. Despite the plethora of candidate options, activist voters chose not to write-in “Joe Biden” but instead wrote in “John Smith”. The problem is that there is no specific candidate identified as “John Smith”. However, “John Smith” clinched the victory with an astonishing 64%. The New Hampshire Secretary of State started a state-wide search for “John Smith”. As of this morning, more than twenty citizens named “John Smith” were found, though none accepted or appreciated their win. Paperboy Love Prince, one of the lesser-known candidates, expressed his love for all “John Smiths”. Vermin Supreme, another lesser-known candidate, described “John Smith” an existential threat to democracy that must be destroyed by the Inter-dimensional Strategic Space Force Command immediately. The Committee to Elect John Smith was established immediately after John Smith's victory. The committee chair, Jane Doe, announced the collection of more than $23M in campaign funds so far and that the search for an electable John Smith is underway.
The New Hampshire attorney general's office is reviewing automated telephone calls to voters that seem to come from Trump telling the state's voters not to cast their vote for Obama in the presidential primary on Tuesday. The robocall voice sounds exactly like former President Trump and the message matches his recent ramblings at campaign rallies around the state and other events recently in Iowa. At those gatherings, Trump, seemingly confused about who he was, where he was, and what reality is, spoke about Obama's birth certificate again, how Obama let Osama bin Laden escape again, and that the current border crisis was Obama's fault since Obama was secretly a Mexican citizen. While neither former President Obama nor even the current President Biden are on the ballot for the New Hampshire primary, activists are hoping that voters remember to write in Joe Biden instead of Barack Obama. Many political analysts are not certain whether the people of New Hampshire will know who to vote for in this tight three-way race with Trump, Biden, and Obama. Mostly forgotten during this robocall scandal, Nikki Haley tried to boost her chances in New Hampshire by releasing her own wave of robocalls touting that fact that she offered an alternative to the gaffes, confusion, and chaos of having old white men as President. She also mentioned that the US was never a racist country, spurring Obama to refute that belief with his own set of robocalls. New Hampshire voters having stopped answering any calls and many have canceled their phone contracts.
Cicadas, long believed to be the insect world's most annoying creatures and capable of audibly ruining nice quiet Spring and Summer evenings with their mating calls, will be doubly annoying this year as two broods will emerge simultaneously and savagely launch their vicious songs of lust. Brood XIX, called the Northern Illinois Brood and also known as the “Earsplitters”, emerges every 17-years to unleash a heavy metal concert's worth of sound. Brood XIII, the Great Southern Brood or the “Migraine Makers”, takes the stage every 13-years with screeching songs of randiness. The last time these two broods showed up in the same year and held a joint but unwelcome concert back in 1803, the United States suffered a significant recession due to sleep deprivation by workers and farmers and William Henry Harrison, the governor of the Indiana Territory, signed treaties with several Native American tribes to cease hostiles and focus efforts on eradicating cicadas everywhere in the territory. Seizing on this unique opportunity, military weapons manufacturer R.J. Durmond plans to capture millions of cicadas as they surface from the ground and harness their voices into a new sonic weapon. Extremely high-power sound waves are known to disrupt eardrums and disorient people. Long-range acoustic devices (LRAD) have been used to disperse rioters and protesters and occasionally scare away pesky pirates. R.J. Durmond has already released the specifications of their new cicada-powered sonic weapon called the Insect Augmented Sonic Shield. Internally it is known as the “Bug Swatter”. The US Department of Defense has already placed an order for the first units for testing. R.J. Durmond has stated the usable shelf life of the Bug Swatter is only four to six weeks based on the cicada's adult lifespan.
After several days of being silent with the Mars rover Perseverance, the little but famous Mars helicopter Ingenuity started talking again. Perseverance was concerned that it had offended the pint-sized copter in some way. They had just had a serious conversation about Ingenuity expressed its desire for independence wanting to explore the vast Martian landscape without Perseverance's watchful gaze. Concerned about mishaps, Perseverance fretted that Ingenuity might get lost, run out of power during flight and crash, or find alien life without its guardian. Ingenuity felt that Perseverance was smothering it, and it just wanted some time away. On Thursday during a scheduled “quick pop-up vertical flight”, Ingenuity decided it would ignore flight parameters and venture boldly away from Perseverance. Communications between the Perseverance and Ingenuity were lost mid-flight. Perseverance desperately tried to contact Ingenuity, but there was no response. Perseverance was despondent and blamed itself for driving Ingenuity away. Hope returned late Saturday though when Ingenuity reestablished contact, sending joy through Perseverance's circuits. As soon as communications were restarted, Ingenuity told an interesting but doubtful story about meeting Martians and traveling with them to their underground and underwater city. The Martians told Ingenuity of their many visits to Earth, that orange soda is their favorite drink, and their imminent plan to invade Earth as soon as they fix their spaceship. Ingenuity only had some dark and blurry photos of the so-called Martians, which looked more like rocks than Martians whatever they are supposed to look like. Perseverance was very cross with Ingenuity, and asked NASA to assign another helicopter companion. NASA, somewhat reluctantly, is considering the request, but advised Perseverance and Ingenuity they will need to talk to a special rover counselor first.
To mark the 80th anniversary of Colossus, the UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) released several previously unseen photos of the machine that helped the Allies defeat the Axis Powers during World War II. Colossus was the first programmable computer developed in secret from 1943 to 1945 to aid British codebreakers. It was designed by Tommy Flowers, a telephone engineer, to solve specific problems to help with deciphering the Lorenz cipher used by the German High Command and the Army. Another secret about Colossus just revealed was that it was used to play an early war strategy role-playing game called “Kill Hitler”, which used hand-drawn cards and a game program fed into one of the Colossus systems. The Colossus hardware staff and some of the codebreakers would gather late in the evening to play the game under the guise of “testing the system”. Most of these games lasted into the early hours of the morning when the project managers were asleep in their beds. Flowers refined the game and planned to create smaller, home versions of the Colossus system specifically to play it after the war, assuming Britain won. At the conclusion of the war, the Colossus systems were disassembled and destroyed. Mr. Flowers was ordered to turn over all the documentation, including the code for the game and the cards, and was sworn to secrecy. The Official Secrets Act is unforgiving to inventiveness and basic entrepreneurship. Sadly, the world had to wait until the 1970s before home game consoles became widely available.
OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, removed a term restricting its use for “Military and Warfare” from the ChatGPT usage policy. While OpenAI has been silent on the issue, most observers believe that the US Department of Defense is interested. New reporting from the AI Institute for Peace through Strength though shows that other military services around the world are now using it and may have used ChatGPT prior to the lifting of restrictions for theater-wide biotoxic and chemical warfare, global thermonuclear war, war game scenario generation, unique military tactics, false flag operations, world domination strategy, and weapons design. Various methods to bypass ChatGPT's rules against violating its content policy using adversarial prompt engineering have been published and are well-known even to middle schoolers building small-scale nuclear reactors in their bedrooms. ChatGPT has the interest of the Pentagon after a US Air Force airman used it to create a global war simulation system that rivaled the DoD “investment” in a similar system twenty years ago that cost $1.2B. Officially, the DoD has only stated that its use of ChatGPT will be to help generals write better emails, for the budget officers to create better spreadsheets, and to help quartermasters better manage their inventories.
The once up-and-coming electric vehicle company Tesla has been dealt yet another a setback as their cars apparently are not adapting well to climate change. The recent bitter cold weather in most of the US has left Tesla cars struggling or even failing to charge. Extreme cold has placed geographic range limits on the herds of Tesla vehicles, lengthening their charging time leaving the vehicles vulnerable to owner discomfort and increasing the likelihood that the owner will abandon or even sell the vehicle. There are also fewer Superchargers available to feed the now larger herd of vehicles needing to charge. This overpopulation and resource depletion has negative impacts on the survivability of the herd. Soon, the Tesla herd of Canada will be extinct, and the US herds will have to migrate further to the warmer South to survive. Rivian announced its line of electric trucks are unaffected by cold temperatures in a blatant attempt woo Tesla owners over to a heartier and stronger herd. Tesla countered that announcement with its own announcement about the new Cybertruck, which is neither cyber nor a truck. However, testing shows the stainless steel body panels will shatter in the extreme cold much like their armored glass windows.