Of night/rev X

Skate boarding

Oasis

BB Court

Parking Lot

The sound

When you're dead, you're dead ... maybe

A screenshot from the 2Wai trailer. Image: 2Wai

In Ghost, Whoopi Goldberg plays Oda Mae Brown, a  fake psychic medium who actually sees Sam, a real ghost, 
but no one else can. Hilarious says it all. 

To whit ...

Fast forward from 1990 to 2025 and you get 2Wai where you too can access the dead & even more. 

As long as one knows it's a product, no problem but for some folks, Oda Mae Brown comes to mind ...

• 2Wai’s app generates conversational video avatars from a few minutes of recordings,
  drawing comparisons to "Black Mirror."
• Critics warn the tech exploits vulnerable mourners and operates in a legal gray zone
  with weak post-mortem privacy protections.
• The launch intensifies scrutiny of a grief-tech industry struggling
  with consent, data ownership, and the risks of AI-generated “digital ghosts.”

2Wai, founded by Calum Worthy—known for portraying Dez on the Disney series "Austin & Ally" from 2011 to 2016—and producer Russell Geyser, released its iOS beta on November 11. The app’s “HoloAvatar” feature generates conversational video avatars from as little as three minutes of uploaded footage, audio, and text inputs, enabling real-time chats in over 40 languages.

While marketed as a tool for legacy preservation, the deceased-recreation capability has dominated headlines, evoking comparisons to the dystopian 2013 Black Mirror episode “Be Right Back,” in which a grieving widow animates her late husband’s digital ghost.

At the end, the avatar resides forever in the attic ...

Martha (Hayley Atwell, right) interacts with a synthetic re-creation
of her deceased boyfriend Ash (Domhnall Gleeson).

Sgt. Chatbot

Aitor Diago

Yours truly has waxed poetic about autonomous AI driven weapons for years as an example of war porn brought to the highest degree of imperfection as the question to ask is, can you properly identify the enemy? Pattern recognition isn't good enough, neither is prediction based on said patterns as humans, who are also error prone, can at least add some kind of meaning to what they see in terms of possible enemy action brought against them by some combat force. The advantage of AI is reaction time, precision and the ability to scale but mapping this tech to true intelligence is something all together different.

Rise of the Killer Chatbots

On an airstrip somewhere in Texas, a swarm of killer jets approaches
—controlled by, of all things, a large language model.

At a secret US military base located about 50 miles from the Mexican border—exact location: classified—the defense contractor Anduril is testing a remarkable new use for a large language model. I attended one of the first demonstrations last year. From a sun-bleached landing strip, I watched as four jet aircraft, codenamed Mustang, appeared on the horizon to the west and soared over a desolate landscape of boulders and brush. The prototypes, miniaturized for the demo, fell into formation, their engines buzzing as they grew near.

The sun burned my eyes, so I turned to a nearby computer monitor under a dusty tarp. With a few keyboard clacks, a fifth aircraft appeared on the edge of the screen, its outline looking suspiciously like that of a Chinese J-20 stealth fighter. A young man named Colby, wearing a black baseball hat and sunglasses, gave the order to deal with the computer-simulated bogey: “Mustang intercept.” That’s when AI stepped in. A model similar to the one that powers ChatGPT parsed the command, spoke with the drones, and then responded in a dispassionate female voice: “Mustang collapsing.” Within about a minute, the drones had converged on the target and then, with minimal fuss—and virtual missiles—destroyed it.

Anduril’s demo illustrates how eagerly the defense industry is experimenting with new forms of AI. The startup is developing a larger autonomous fighter for the US Air Force, designed to fly alongside crewed jets, through a project called Fury. Many of these systems are already autonomous, thanks to older AI tech, but the idea is to incorporate aspects of LLMs into the chain of command, to relay orders and surface useful information to pilots. Sergeant Chatbot at your service.

Emergence

The ghost from Xmas past ...

Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios.
Photos: Bonnie Cash/UPI/Bloomberg, Patrick McMullan, and John Moore via Getty Images

Can't help but channel A Christmas Carol where the ghost of Xmas past, on the behest of Jacob Marley, pays a visit to The Donald to recount tails of betrayal, sleaze and debauchery of a different kind. Without question, Trump and his administration will go down in history as the worst ever as this atrocity is a dumpster fire of epic proportions. 

Ebenezer Scrooge encounters the ghost of Jacob Marley in Dickens's novella,
A Christmas Carol – illustration by John Leech (1843)

Four months ago, President Trump blocked the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Wednesday's disclosure of thousands of Epstein emails showed why.

Why it matters: The emails contained no real smoking gun. But they shed new light on the relationship between the two men, with gossipy, unflattering descriptions of Trump by Epstein.

Trump has started calling the recent attacks "the Epstein hoax." He sued The Wall Street Journal for publishing a story in July about a racy drawing and poem he allegedly wrote to Epstein for his birthday in 2003. Trump said the drawing and message weren't his.

"The minute he thinks it's unfair to him and it's a personal attack, he just goes into fight mode," said one confidant. "No one wants to ask him what's going on here [with Epstein] because he just gets angry."

In these emails, Epstein indicated he was at Trump Tower in New York after Trump won his first election in 2016, suggesting the falling out between the two had been patched up.

In other correspondence, he called Trump "dirty," "demented," "borderline insane" and "f**king crazy," or said Trump had "early dementia" and was photographed "with girls in bikinis in my kitchen."

However, none of the emails was between Trump and Epstein. Trump wasn't known to use email.

What they're saying: "When we passed my motion to subpoena the Epstein files, we knew we'd find damning information," Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said Wednesday on X. "Today we learned Trump is alleged to have personal knowledge of Epstein's crimes & spent hours with victims."

Lee's post referred to an email in which Democrats redacted the name of the Epstein victim, Virginia Giuffre, who Epstein had said had spent "hours" with Trump at Epstein's Florida home.

A tiny shred of "decency"

But Giuffre, who committed suicide in April, had never accused Trump of wrongdoing, testified she knew of no accusations against him and was supportive of his 2024 presidential campaign.

The Spirit of Christmas Past meets Scrooge - illustration by Sol Eytinge Jr. (1868).

So the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body: of which dissolving parts, no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And in the very wonder of this, it would be itself again; distinct and clear as ever. [8]

And this ...

“Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever,” Epstein wrote in a 2019 email to Michael Wolff, an apparent plea from the president for Epstein to leave Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. “[O]f course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”

Epstein also wrote in an email in 2011 to Maxwell that Trump was a “dog that hasn’t barked” — what appeared to mean that Trump had not disclosed details about Epstein’s activities. Epstein added that a victim, whose name was redacted, spent hours with Trump.

Also in the emails flagged by Oversight Democrats on Wednesday, Wolff wrote in a 2015 message to Epstein that he heard Trump — then a presidential candidate — would be asked by CNN about the convicted sex offender. Epstein asked Wolff what he thought an ideal response from Trump would be.

“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff responded. “If [Trump] says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency.

“You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you,” Wolff continued, “or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt.”

This is akin to shanking hands with a slime and checking to see if you still had all of your fingers ...

In closing, there is about 300 GB of content seized in Epstein's penthouse and there were cameras everywhere, both there and in the facilities on his island. All of this data is classified so the betting pool on getting this content out by this government is nil but enterprising hackers with consummate skill to get the data in question out is another matter altogether. This is red pill stuff, Epstein's op was very deep with alleged connects to intel, both foreign and domestic, along with links to foreign governments and banks as expressed by others far better versed than yours truly with the intricate operations of this very sophisticated enterprise from hell.

One last bon bon. 

US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman announces charges against Jeffery Epstein on July 8, 2019 in New York City. Epstein will be charged with one count of sex trafficking of minors and one count of conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking of minors. Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

Other emails include exchanges Epstein had during Trump's first term in office. 

A few days after Trump's first inauguration, on Feb. 8, 2017, Epstein, in conversation with Larry Summers, who was the treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and former president of Harvard University said, "Recall ive told you,, -- i have met some very bad people ,, none as bad as trump. not one decent cell in his body.. so yes- dangerous." 

Any questions?

One cannot make this up ...

The Nation

The Nation

Why are these men laughing?

President Trump speaks to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Oct. 13 in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The picture says it all. Two war criminals laughing it off. Kinda reminiscent of Esquire's 1960 pix of Nixon forever captioned Why is this man laughing? but far more sinister in this writer's opinion. 

"Why is This Man Laughing?", 1960

Portfolio/Series title: published in Esquire

In their first annual Dubious Achievement Awards in 1962, Esquire published what would become something of a preinternet meme: a photo of Richard Milhous Nixon grinning maniacally, with the caption “Why is This Man Laughing?” Nixon had just been nominated by the Republican Party as their candidate for President in the 1960 election, which he would ultimately lose to John F. Kennedy.

From these dubious beginnings to the aftermath of Nixon’s resignation, Esquire routinely mocked the politician in its pages. 

As for Bibi and The Donald ...

President Trump sent an official letter to Israeli President Isaac Herzog calling on him to pardon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and claimed the corruption charges against him are "political lawfare."

Why it matters: Trump has repeatedly intervened in Israel's judicial system and domestic politics over Netanyahu's ongoing trial. His letter, released on Wednesday morning by the Israeli President's office, is the first official step he has taken on this matter.

Driving the news: Trump wrote to Herzog that after ending the war in Gaza, he now wants to work with key Middle East leaders on expanding the Abraham Accords.

He stressed that Netanyahu's "attention cannot be unnecessarily diverted" by his trial.

"While I absolutely respect the independence of the Israeli Justice System, and its requirements, I believe that this 'case' against Bibi, who has fought alongside me for a long time, including against the very tough adversary of Israel, Iran, is a political, unjustified prosecution... It is time to let Bibi unite Israel by pardoning him," Trump wrote.

Entangled alliances are a truly dangerous thing are they not?

Less than 0 sum ...

Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

Geoffrey Hinton is a guy I respect. Brilliant, humble and ethical, he speaks the truth about AI and how the tech he helped to invent is amoral to the nth degree just as creativity and science are as it depends on who uses the entity in question, not the entity itself and what he is saying is all too true in terms of how greed invites stupidity to occur in truly astonishing ways.

To whit.

Let me translate what Geoffrey Hinton just said, because it’s important and most people are going to miss it.

Geoffrey Hinton literally invented the neural networks that power modern AI. He won a Nobel Prize for it. And this week, he went on Bloomberg TV and said something that tech CEOs have been dancing around for months:

Tech companies cannot profit from their AI investments without replacing human workers.

Not “might replace.” Not “could eventually replace.” Cannot profit without replacing.

That’s not a prediction. That’s him explaining the business model.

Here’s Hinton’s point in plain English:

Tech giants are spending $420 billion next year on AI infrastructure. Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon. They’re building data centers, buying AI chips, training massive models.

That money only makes sense if AI replaces workers.

Think about it. If you spend $100 billion building AI systems, how do you make that money back?

You can’t just sell slightly better products. You need massive cost savings. And the biggest cost in any company is labor.

So the business case for AI isn’t “AI will help workers be more productive.” It’s “AI will replace workers entirely, and we’ll pocket the salary savings.”

Hinton is saying what everyone in Silicon Valley knows but won’t say publicly: the whole AI investment thesis depends on job elimination.

Now lets think about this. Question, corporate X fires 30,000 workers to increase the bottom line and cover the expenses of using AI to terminate said jobs. Excellent is it not but ... can the now newly fired 30.000 buy the services or products said corporate X offers? I thought so. 

Ouroboros drawing from a late medieval Byzantine Greek alchemical manuscript.

AI Slop

ArXiv will no longer accept review or position papers in computer science
unless they have already been peer reviewed.Credit: Sharaf Maksumov/Alamy

AI slop, digital content made with generative artificial intelligence, specifically when perceived to show a lack of effort, quality or deeper meaning, and an overwhelming volume of production.[1][4][5][6] Coined in the 2020s, the term has a pejorative connotation similar to spam.[4]

In 2024, AI-generated "Shrimp Jesus" images
proliferated on Facebook.[1][2][3]

AI slop is everywhere. Anywhere you look, some image, video or story just appears, forcing one to analyze is this real? It's like the slime balls who try to steal your ID or money via scams where vigilance must be adhered to or your mind or wallet will go sideways in a nano second.

To whit ...

The oldest and best-known preprint repository, arXiv, has announced that it will no longer accept review or position papers in computer science. The website will make exceptions only for papers that have been previously accepted by a peer-reviewed venue, such as a journal or conference.

These types of article were never officially on arXiv’s list of ‘accepted content types’, but they had previously been allowed at moderator discretion, said a blog post announcing the move on 31 October. arXiv management says the move was made necessary by a surge in low-quality papers, including many that appear to be written using generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

“I think this is a wise move by arXiv,” says Richard Sever, chief science and strategy officer of the non-profit organisation openRxiv in New York City, which runs the biomedical-sciences preprint servers bioRxiv and medRxiv. He adds both of those platforms have had a ‘no narrative reviews’ policy from the outset.

 End result ...

Rising rejection rates

Preprints submitted to arXiv are checked by automated tools. Before going live on the site, around 20% of submissions are flagged to one of 240 volunteer moderators, says arXiv executive director Ramin Zabih, a computer scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Until a year ago, only 2–3% of submissions were ultimately rejected by moderators, says Steinn Sigurðsson, an astrophysicist at Penn State University in University Park who is arXiv’s scientific director. But in the last year, that number has gone up to 10%.

An originally-generated example of the "Shrimp Jesus" AI imagery that appeared on Facebook in 2024.
Generation prompt was: A person who looks like Jesus but who is made completely out of live shrimp, swimming underwater in the turquoise ocean, with a shrimp halo, and his hands dissolving into a shoal of shrimp.

He has risen ... :)

When it gets personal ...

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP or food stamps, provides aid to about one in eight Americans.Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

When you deny food from folks based on politics and a lie, people remember and what the administration from hell is doing is making said denial personal. Combine this with Epstein, a tanking economy, Medicaid cuts and exploding Affordable Care costs and one sees a perfect storm brewing, costing the Orange Menace dearly regarding the midterms, something the repugs are starting to realize with great anxiety as we move closer to 2026.

The Trump administration moved on Friday to deny swift and full food stamp payments to millions of low-income Americans, as it asked a federal appeals court to halt a judge’s recent order that would preserve those benefits during the shutdown.

The legal salvo once again plunged the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, into confusion and chaos — and raised the possibility that the poorest families may receive no aid while the fiscal stalemate in Washington remains unresolved.

The Trump administration specifically sought to challenge a ruling handed down by a lower court on Thursday. In that scathing order, Judge John J. McConnell Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, directed the government to tap an ample store of leftover federal money to fund food stamps in their entirety for this month.

In doing so, the judge faulted President Trump and his top aides for using the nation’s largest anti-hunger program as a political bargaining chip. And he gave the government a Friday deadline to comply and release full payments for states, which administer food stamps for roughly 42 million people.

But the art of stupid prevails ...

But lawyers for the government asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to halt that requirement and render a ruling before 4 p.m. If the administration prevails, it could severely cut or delay aid that helps many families purchase groceries.

It's personal now.

Recession 2025?

A sign for a job fair in New York in September. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

Well, the great, great economy that the orange menace endlessly promised, due to his innate genius of being the ultimate business man, is taking a rather large hit due to circumstances beyond his control, something most galling as he knows, without question, how to run a once great nation known as America better than anyone, right?

Layoffs accelerated in October, pushing 2025 job cuts to levels typically seen in recessions, according to newly released data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a private firm that tracks workplace reductions.

U.S. employers have announced 1.1 million layoffs so far this year — the largest reading since the pandemic recession and on par with 2008 and 2009 job cuts during the Great Recession, the firm’s figures show. The data includes a recent spate of layoffs at major companies such as UPS, Amazon and Target, and adds to growing concern about a labor market slowdown.

Employers cited cost-cutting and artificial intelligence as the top two reasons for job reductions in October.

“We’re entering new territory with these layoffs in October,” said John Challenger, CEO of the consulting firm that tracks job losses. “We haven’t seen mega-layoffs of the size that are being discussed now — 48,000 from UPS, potentially 30,000 from Amazon — since 2020 and before that, since the recession of 2009. When you see companies making cuts of this size, it does signal a real shift in direction.” (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Recent layoffs, the data shows, have been concentrated in technology, retail, service and warehousing jobs. Employers announced more than 153,000 job cuts last month, a 183 percent increase from the month before, marking the worst October for layoffs since 2003, the Challenger report said.

Any questions?