The guy next to the President. [FoxBusinessNews] The CFTC found Gabriel Perez used advance access to Trump's remarks to trade prediction market contracts for profit.
A White House teleprompter operator who used advance access to President Donald Trump's speeches to bet on what the president would say has been ordered to pay nearly $173,000 and stop trading for three years, federal regulators announced Friday.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said Gabriel Perez, Trump's teleprompter operator since 2016, misappropriated material, nonpublic information obtained through his government job to trade event contracts on Kalshi, a prediction market platform, for his personal benefit.
Perez, who was placed on paid administrative leave in July amid the investigation into his conduct, was ordered to surrender $107,539 in trading profits and pay a $65,000 civil penalty.
The CFTC also imposed a three-year trading ban and ordered Perez to cease and desist from further violations of federal commodities laws and regulations.
The CFTC found that between December 2025 and February 2026, while working as a White House teleprompter operator, Perez traded "presidential mention market contracts," which reflected words or phrases Trump might use during his speeches.
The event contracts paid out based on whether Trump used specific words or phrases during his public remarks.
According to the CFTC, Perez had access to presidential speeches before they were delivered and "misappropriated" that information in "breach of his duty of trust and confidence" to make the trades.
Perez generated more than $107,500 in profits, according to the agency.
His $65,000 civil penalty represented a "substantial discount" because of his "exemplary cooperation" with the investigation, the CFTC said.
Robert DeNault, Kalshi's head of enforcement, reacted to the enforcement action, saying traders who violate the company's rules must be held accountable.
"A Kalshi surveillance investigation caught a White House staffer engaging in prohibited trading activity," DeNault wrote on X.
"Today this individual was subjected to penalties by the CFTC and by our exchange," he continued. "It doesn’t matter who you are: violate our rules or federal law and you will face the consequences."
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
[Regnum] King Harald V of Norway has died at the age of 89 after a 35-year reign. The royal family announced this on August 28.
“It is with deep sorrow that we announce the passing of His Majesty King Harald,” the statement said.
The monarch died early in the morning at Oslo's Rikshospitalet University Hospital. The day before, the royal family reported his condition had worsened, after which family members cancelled official events and came to the hospital.
Harald V was hospitalized on August 17 due to a bacterial bloodstream infection. He received antibiotics, but his condition continued to deteriorate.
Following the death of Harald V, his 53-year-old son Haakon automatically became King of Norway. According to NRK, an extraordinary government meeting will be convened soon, at which the new monarch will announce his accession to the throne, as well as his royal name and motto. He will later take the oath of office in the Storting. Haakon's daughter, Princess Ingrid Alexandra, has become heir to the throne.
Harald V was born on February 21, 1937, the son of the future King Olav V. After Norway was occupied by Germany in 1940, he lived with his mother in Sweden and the United States, returning to his homeland in 1945. Harald received a military education and then studied political science, history, and economics at Oxford University.
#3
When some relatively obscure Norwegian princess has ties to Jeff E. Epstein, then you know they are a mess. P.S. What's Prince Andrew's new name again?
[Reuters] The black bears, also spotted in a Granby vape shop, are among thousands heading into towns and cities across the U.S. West in record numbers.
Bears have wandered near a school in Santa Fe, New Mexico, climbed a tree near a farmers market in Denver and startled humans in other ways across the country after the driest winter in memory wiped out plants, grasses, berries and nuts that form around 90% of their diet, according to bear experts and state wildlife agencies.
The animals' incredible sense of smell is drawing them to human food. That is leading to record bear deaths in some states as hundreds are euthanized, run over, shot and even electrocuted as they interact with humans, according to wildlife agencies.
TESTING THE BEARS
With the West's aridification expected to continue, experts fear bears may become habituated to human food and even stop hibernating should winters become too warm and wild food too scarce.
“It's like testing the bears in a way that they've never been tested before, and testing humans,” black bear expert Jon Beckmann said.
Development has moved people into areas where bears used to forage for food. At the same time, bear populations have rebounded in states like Nevada, where they were largely wiped out over a century ago.
Black bears are now the healthiest of the world's eight bear species, with between 17,000 and 20,000 in Colorado alone, according to state authorities.
That state is bearing the brunt of encounters after its human population more than doubled in the last 50 years, pushing homes into bear country around cities like Colorado Springs and Vail.
Colorado, which only has black bears, has had more than 7,000 sightings in 2026, more than the previous full-year record in 2019, according to the state's wildlife agency. There have been at least six bear attacks in the state.
Around 1.5% to 2% of sightings end in euthanization, according to Jonathan Livingston, a spokesperson for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Bears are typically killed when they are deemed dangerous, such as when they attack humans or break into homes.
Conservation groups like the Colorado Bear Coalition say the animals too often pay with their lives for human negligence, and wildlife agencies should do more to prevent conflicts.
If people alert authorities to bears early, officials can usually avoid euthanizations by scaring off the animals, Livingston added.
Officials and landowners in New Mexico have killed 187 bears this year, the most since 2011, according to the state's wildlife agency, which has relocated 35 adults and 16 cubs. A bear killed a man in New Mexico last week, police reported, marking the state's first fatal attack in 25 years.
Utah authorities said they have euthanized 39 animals in 2026, already a record for any full year.
In Montana, sightings are too numerous to count, with grizzlies moving into areas they have not visited in decades, the state's wildlife agency said. Twenty-four grizzlies have died this year, most killed after attacking livestock or people or being hit by cars, according to the agency, which did not provide historical data. A man was killed by a grizzly in Montana's Glacier National Park in May.
Fatal bear attacks remain rare in the West, with a handful recorded each year.
BEARMAGGEDON?
Authorities are calling on residents to use bear-resistant garbage bins, not leave trash containers on the street for days and not put pet food or bird seed within reach of the animals.
Basic common sense stuff.
Clashes often begin with dumpster diving and can end with a 200- to 400-pound (91-181 kg) black bear, with 3- to 4-inch (8-10 cm) razor-sharp claws, confronting someone in their kitchen, Livingston said.
Nevada bear expert Heather Reich hopes that the animals will find living around humans too stressful and return to the wild, should drought conditions ease. With bears just beginning to put on body weight for hibernation, she fears the encounters will increase.
"We can't even imagine what September and October are going to look like. It is going to be just Armageddon for us," said Reich, a former bear manager for Nevada's wildlife agency who now sells electric doormats to deter bears from entering homes.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
[Regnum] Flooding in northern Nepal has killed 469 people, local police reported on August 28.
The death toll from floods in northern Nepal has risen to 469.
According to an updated report from law enforcement officials, 469 bodies have been recovered in Nepal, 1,545 people were injured, and 1,545 people were rescued.
On the morning of August 26, a powerful mudflow descended from Nepal, affecting the Gyirong border crossing point. Due to a rockfall and ice collapse, a torrent of water and debris rushed from the Lhende River and flooded the area near the China-Nepal border. As a result of the disaster, at least 558 people are still missing, including 260 foreigners. The natural disaster caused significant damage to critical infrastructure, damaging or destroying hydroelectric power stations, power lines, bridges, and roads. A total of more than 8,300 police officers have been dispatched to the disaster areas. Search and rescue operations are ongoing.
On August 27, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences to Chinese President Xi Jinping, Nepalese President Ram Chandra Paudel, and Nepalese Prime Minister Balendra Shah over the deaths caused by mudslides.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
[Regnum] On the night of August 28, the Moon almost completely entered Earth's shadow, ending the 2026 eclipse season. This was reported by the Solar Astronomy Laboratory of the Space Research Institute (IKI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The Earth's shadow passed across the lunar disk from 5:33 to 8:53 Moscow time. The greatest shadow phase was recorded at 7:13 Moscow time. The eclipse was visible in Europe, western Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, and the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. In Russia, the Kaliningrad region was the best vantage point for observing the phenomenon.
The IKI RAS also clarified that the event was the last in a series of both lunar and solar eclipses this year.
On August 12, a total solar eclipse occurred on Earth. The phenomenon was best visible in St. Petersburg, Murmansk, and other northern regions of Russia. However, residents of the capital were only able to see a partial eclipse—the Moon covered less than 1% of the solar disk.
On March 3, a total lunar eclipse also occurred on Earth. For an hour, the moon was completely hidden by the planet's shadow. This phenomenon was best observed in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, the Indian Ocean, Asia, Australia, North and South America, the Arctic, and Antarctica.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
[Regnum] A moderate magnetic storm will hit Earth on the night of August 29. Anton Reva, a senior researcher at the Space Plasma Physics Department at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Space Research Institute, spoke with Regnum News Agency.
According to the specialist, a coronal mass ejection (CME) following a solar flare is heading toward Earth on August 28. Its impact with the planet will cause a magnetic storm.
"The plasma cloud will brush the edge of the Earth. When this happens, a magnetic storm will occur. Once the cloud passes, the storm will end. The magnetic storm is expected to hit around midnight today. It will last until about nine in the morning," Reva noted.
The most active phase typically lasts about six hours. Even at its peak, the magnetic storm's intensity should not exceed average values.
"The magnetic storm will be slightly below average in strength. It's expected to be slightly below G2 (out of a possible five). But this is a forecast; actual readings may vary," the scientist concluded.
An M7.0-class flare occurred on August 25 and was the latest in a series of solar flares. Scientists initially predicted it would trigger strong G3-level magnetic storms, but this estimate was later downgraded to G1–G2.
[FoxNews] The move comes as cities cancel contracts with the automated license plate reader company amid privacy concerns
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state agencies to pause funding Thursday for AI-powered Flock cameras, which have come under scrutiny nationwide amid privacy concerns.
Abbott's office told Fox News Digital that the state was moving to cut off state-agency funding for the cameras, while noting that most funding for them comes from the federal government.
"Almost all Flock cameras in Texas are used by cities, and those cities are increasingly canceling their contracts with Flock," Abbott spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris said in a statement.
"To the extent that cities get any funding for those cameras, most of it comes from the federal government," Mahaleris continued. "To the extent any funding comes from Texas agencies, those agencies are clarifying that those funds cannot be used for Flock cameras."
Flock Safety is one of the most widely used providers of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) in Texas. The cameras photograph passing vehicles and record identifying information. Using artificial intelligence, the cameras can detect vehicle characteristics such as make, model and color, as well as features including bumper stickers or dents.
Using the information collected, law enforcement agencies can search records across participating camera networks.
Supporters of the technology argue the cameras can help authorities quickly locate criminal suspects, stolen vehicles or vehicles connected to crimes. Opponents have raised concerns about privacy and data sharing, as well as the potential misuse of information collected by the cameras.
[FOX] President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order to establish the U.S. Space Academy.
Trump said the location of the academy was yet to be determined, but compared its significance to that of the United States Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., and the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn.
The U.S. Space Academy will be for students looking to enter the U.S. Space Force, a new branch of the military Trump created in his first term. Trump said it will also serve NASA and the civilian spaceflight industry.
"We're going to have an academy for what the people in this room love the most. That's exciting. That's really exciting. And I'm going to be choosing a location very shortly," Trump said during remarks at NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
The other purpose of the event was to award the four Artemis II astronauts with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. Behind Trump stood more than a dozen astronauts throughout the ceremony.
"Before the end of my term, American astronauts will return to the lunar surface," he said. "And when we do, they'll plant this very important flag to mark the site of the first permanent American settlement on the Moon."
**NASA** is currently collaborating with **DARPA** on the **Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO)** program to test a **nuclear thermal rocket (NTR)** engine in space by **2027**. This initiative aims to validate advanced nuclear propulsion technology that offers **two to five times greater efficiency** than conventional chemical rockets, significantly reducing travel time for future **crewed missions to Mars**.
The DRACO spacecraft, led by **Lockheed Martin** for integration and **BWX Technologies** for the reactor, will use **high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)** fuel. The engine operates by using a compact fission reactor to heat liquid hydrogen propellant to extremely high temperatures, which is then exhausted through a nozzle to generate thrust. This approach provides high thrust while doubling propellant efficiency, allowing for more cargo capacity and enhanced radiation shielding for astronauts.
This modern effort builds upon the legacy of the **NERVA** program (1961–1973), which successfully demonstrated nuclear thermal propulsion on the ground but was canceled before flight testing. Recent developments include **cold flow tests** of full-scale reactor cores at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, marking the first significant hardware testing of such systems since the 1960s. The successful demonstration of DRACO is intended to pave the way for operational nuclear thermal propulsion systems capable of supporting deep space exploration.
[Reuters] Nearly 200,000 people were forcibly returned to Haiti in the first eight months of this year, a U.N. official told an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Friday, days after a brutal gang attack killed nearly 50 people near the capital.
The forced return represents at least 20,000 more people than in the same period last year, Indrika Ratwatte, the acting assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told the meeting.
Sunday night's attack took place days after Haiti received its first U.S. deportation flight since the Trump administration won a legal battle ending Temporary Protected Status for around 350,000 Haitians. On Thursday, another flight arrived with migrants from the U.S. and the Bahamas.
Haitian security analysts have meanwhile warned that the flood of illegal arms entering the country is worsening the conflict that has claimed more than 21,000 lives since 2022.
The U.N. estimates most guns in Haiti originate from the southeastern United States, though many are trafficked into the country through the land border with the Dominican Republic.
Ratwatte briefed the Security Council alongside Carlos Ruiz, the head of the U.N. Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH), who warned that without improved security, efforts to advance preparations for the country's first elections in a decade remain "severely constrained and vulnerable to setbacks."
Ruiz said three boys and two girls were among the 47 people killed in the hillside community of Kenscoff near the capital Port-au-Prince on Sunday, where houses were set on fire and people who sought to escape were attacked inside a church.
"This latest heartbreaking episode is a stark reminder of the urgent need to further strengthen international security support for Haiti," Ruiz said.
U.N.-BACKED FORCE'S MANDATE NEARS END
Diplomats argued the attack showed the need to more rapidly scale up the deployment of the U.N.-backed multinational force mandated to help police fight gangs that have massively expanded their influence over the last five years.
Haitian authorities first requested foreign military assistance in 2022, but this was slow to materialize, and a year ago the U.N. mandated a different, larger and more aggressive force to deploy, called the Gang Suppression Force (GSF). The GSF aims to reach a capacity of 5,500 troops by fall this year. The Security Council will vote on whether to renew its mandate at the end of September.
U.S. representative Jennifer Locetta called on the Security Council to renew the mandate.
"The GSF was not created to issue statements from within a compound wall or spend our money while Haiti suffers," she said, adding if more countries bring material support to the force, it could help police fight gangs more efficiently.
"This attack is precisely why the U.N. authorized Gang Suppression Force's mission and mandate matters," she said.
A representative for the Haitian government said Chad, Mongolia and Ivory Coast had agreed to support the force and work was under way for similar agreements with Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Jamaica and Guatemala. The latter two countries had already deployed personnel under a prior iteration of the force.
[TWZ] The buildout of the remote flight-test base has accelerated sharply, and large new hangars suggest a specific type of aircraft may be arriving in the near future.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is rapidly expanding a secretive airbase in the northwest of the country that is loosely akin to America’s top-secret proving ground at Area 51. The facility is used to test experimental platforms and next-generation combat aircraft, sporting one of the longest runways in the world at 16,400 feet. It has transformed from a relatively austere and remote airstrip into an increasingly sprawling People’s Liberation Army (PLA) flight-test center over the past few years, and there is no sign that construction will slow anytime soon. In fact, it’s accelerating, and one of its newest features is of significant interest.
Satellite imagery taken by Planet Labs on August 27, 2026, shows the scale and scope of the buildout in high-resolution detail.
The installation is located near the infamous Lop Nur Nuclear Test Base in the desolate, arid Xinjiang autonomous region of northwestern China. Lop Nur is the PRC’s primary testing facility for nuclear weapons and where China detonated its first nuclear device, codenamed Project 596, in 1964, becoming the world’s fifth nuclear power.
Last year, TWZ spotted both of China’s sixth-generation stealth fighter designs, the J-36 and J-XDS, at the base for the first time − far from the home airfields of their respective manufacturers, Chengdu and Shenyang. Before supporting the development of advanced air combat technologies, the facility was linked to military space development efforts and testing reusable space planes as far back as 2020. At that point, the site was nothing more than a 3.1-mile runway with a small hangar and a few scattered vehicles.
[ZERO] We publish this piece in the August of 2026, as the machinery of global commerce groans and sputters, as hollow men in expensive suits speak of "corrections" and "adjustments" while families count pennies in dimly lit kitchens. The photograph you see above [below] - those gaunt men hunched over bowls of thin soup, their eyes fixed on some middle distance between hunger and dignity - was snapped nearly a century ago, yet it could have been taken yesterday in any tent city stretching like a scar across the American landscape. We do not traffic in false nostalgia here, nor in the cheap comfort of historical distance. The Great Depression was not a sepia-toned folktale; it was a meat-grinder that chewed through 25 percent of the working population, that evicted grandmothers into snowbanks, that turned proud men into beggars and children into scavengers. The bones of that era still jut through the soil of our present moment - visible to anyone brave enough to look. What follows is not a curiosity shop of antiquated customs, but a field manual written in blood and hunger, a record of how ordinary human beings refused to break when the world snapped in half. Read it. Memorize it. The wolves are already at the door INTRODUCTION
October 29, 1929, began as a Tuesday and ended as an autopsy. When the stock market shed its skin that Black Tuesday, it revealed something putrid beneath the gilt and glamour of the Roaring Twenties - the entire economic edifice had been a painted facade, a stage set propped up by speculation and debt. Within months, the iron sinews of American industry seized up. Factories that had belched smoke and churned out automobiles now stood silent as tombstones. Construction cranes froze in place, their skeletal arms reaching toward empty skies. The breadlines formed not from laziness but from the sudden, violent evaporation of work itself - fourteen million pairs of boots kicked dust on Main Street, fourteen million stomachs growled in concert.
The trauma cut marrow-deep. Men who had worn white collars found themselves fighting rats for garbage. Women who had managed households like generals now found themselves bartering wedding rings for sacks of beans. Children learned to sleep through the rumble of empty bellies, to recognize the particular gray color of hunger. This was not merely poverty - poverty implies a falling from somewhere. This was collapse, the sudden plunging of an entire civilization into a pit without handholds. The American Dream, that peculiar national religion promising infinite ascension, revealed itself as a confidence trick played on the desperate.
Yet here is the strange miracle: they did not all perish. They did not all devolve into the savage calculus of dog-eat-dog, though some surely did. Instead, something older and tougher emerged from the wreckage - a kind of stubborn, ornery ingenuity that had lain dormant during the fat years. People remembered how to do things. They recalled skills their grandparents had brought from the old country: how to stretch a dollar until it screamed, how to mend what was torn, how to find nourishment in landscapes others called barren. They discovered that the human animal is infinitely adaptable, capable of surviving on pride and lard and sheer cussedness when the supermarkets close and the ATMs go dark.
We have grown soft in the intervening decades. We have forgotten the taste of true scarcity, the texture of want. Our landfills overflow with the discarded, while our grandparents hoarded string and bacon fat like treasure. We order sustenance through glowing screens, disconnected from the soil and the seasons. But the old knowledge persists, passed down through whispered conversations in kitchens where the radio once played FDR's fireside chats. The fifty fragments of wisdom that follow are not theoretical. They were paid for with calloused hands and sleepless nights. They represent the collective survival manual of a generation that faced the abyss and chose, defiantly, to keep walking.
#2
My grandparents and their 5 children (mother, 3 aunts, 1 uncle) kept a cow for milk, a horse for transport and tilling the garden, and chickens for eggs and meat. The kids would fish, weed the garden and collect firewood.
Grandpa raised bees so they had an agricultural subsidy and would occasionally get a stipend of sugar to feed the bees, which the children sampled. Some also went to the still.
Clothes were passed down from eldest to youngest daughter. Grandpa's worn out pants were cut down and sewed up for my uncle.
With no refrigeration all the food was fresh. Meat, egg, raw moonshine and honey surplus was traded in town for flour, tools or used shoes of children who had outgrown theirs, or died. Vegetables went into the root cellar.
#5
Unemployment in the Great Depression peaked at 25% in the United States, translating to about 15 million unemployed Americans in 1933.
Which also means 75% were employed. Since the 60s, the government has kept changing the definition of unemployed used during the 1930s, so we will never be able to actually have comparative analysis.
#7
Lots of the old-fashioned skills are demonstrated on the internet — YouTube, Facebook Reels, and all the rest. Millennial women suddenly took up knitting about a decade ago, canning has its own section, and so forth. I even recently discovered a series on Medieval European/English homesteading practices that change how I understand most effective ways to plant a kitchen garden and make more nutritious bread with fewer ingredients.
#8
If you had a job in the oil patch you did pretty good. 2-3 Dollars per day as a roughneck. Crews used chain tongs to lay 2-4 inch pipe. Field welding units had no come about yet. If you could get a job as a lease pumpers you might get a house on or near the lease (pumpers house) owned by the company. WWII took a lot men out of the oil patch. Old timers came back to work until the war was over, or so I was told.
#9
Electric pumping stations pretty much did away with the oil lease pumper. Stripper wells that only need servicing once or twice per month still needed a pumper. 8-10 barrels a week did not justify electric systems. Pumpers would go from lease to lease. "Tramp pumpers" they were called. I knew a fellow, WWII vet who pumped several strippers in the late 1950's. He was able to buy a string of stripper wells. The oil embargo took $3.75 cent oil the $30. And higher. Old Bill did pretty good.
#10
Bill became a philanthropist for a local cancer center. He was carried to his grave by a team of cancer surgeons with full military honors in 1996.
My parents lived through the Gread Depression and World War II. When I was in junior high and high school I could not fathom why they were so damn tight with their money. They tried to tell me but I couldn't understand until I started trying to make a living for myself.
Now I tell people, I say, you look at all this around you and you assume without even thinking about it that your world will always be this way. But there is no guarantee that it will.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
08/29/2026 14:29 Comments ||
Top||
#12
#6 - Mercutio - My kids don't believe me that they did that
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/29/2026 18:04 Comments ||
Top||
Good. Hopefully it will become clear how much is outside agitation, and how much is idiocy.
[IsraelTimes] US vice president has alienated some Jewish Republicans with criticism of Israeli leaders, anti-Israel conspiracy theories and silence on antisemitism
US Vice President JD Vance, who has drawn the ire of a number of Jewish conservatives, will speak at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit in Las Vegas on Monday, the RJC confirmed.
"The Republican Jewish Coalition is proud to welcome Vice President JD Vance to our National Leadership Summit in Las Vegas," said an RJC spokesperson. "JD Vance is a friend who is coming back after first joining us in 2022 as a candidate for the US Senate."
Vance’s appearance comes as a number of Jewish Republicans and major GOP donors have indicated that they would rather support Marco Rubio ...The diminutive 13-year-old Republican U.S. Senator from Florida, Secretary of State in the second Trump administration... for the presidential nomination in 2028 than Vance, who is seen as US President Donald Trump ...Never got invited to a P.Diddy party... ’s likeliest successor.
Some of those donors will be in the room on Monday at the Venetian Resort, which is owned by the billionaire Adelson family — a major backer of Trump and various Jewish and Israeli causes.
The vice president has lost the confidence of the pro-Israel crowd with his reprimanding of Israeli officials, indulgence of anti-Israel conspiracy theories and silence on Tucker Carlson, the prominent pundit who has spread antisemitic conspiracy theories. Multiple donors told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency during last year’s confab that they would not support Vance in 2028.
Carlson, meanwhile, was a major focus of the discussion at the RJC’s 2025 summit, where signs reading "Tucker is not MAGA" were handed out to attendees. His son, Buckley Carlson, is a former Vance staffer.
An agenda sent by the RJC lists Vance as a speaker during a Monday evening session that will be closed to the press. A spokesperson confirmed that Vance will be speaking in a "fireside chat."
A number of high-profile Republican candidates are also expected to speak at the RJC confab, which is being held on Sunday and Monday, a few months ahead of the midterm elections. Speakers include US Senate candidates Mike Collins, the Georgia congressman who is challenging Jewish Democrat Jon Ossoff, and former Rep. Mike Rogers, who is running against Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
Collins has faced accusations of antisemitism and having ties to the far right. He has said that some of his statements were misunderstood, and has defended himself by citing his support for Israel.
#1
Hopefully, nothing - like medical crisis or impeachment - will happen to Trump until 2028. And, in 2028, Rubio - or better yet DeSantis - will give Bowman-Hamel-Vance a gender transition surgery.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Shamil Kerashe
[REGNUM] The virtual cocoon in which Western youth have been cocooned for years appears to have developed deep cracks, according to a recent report from one of the largest US sociological centers, the Pew Research Center.
According to his data, for the first time in history, so-called "digital natives"—people under 30—openly admitted that the rapid development of technology is causing them panic and depression rather than enthusiasm. This primarily concerns artificial intelligence: about 55% of American Zoomers now consider it a real problem.
You might think this is a real paradox—after all, this very audience remains key for generative model developers. 66% use neural networks regularly, and one in three uses them daily.
Moreover, as the same PRC clarifies, young Americans are quite willing to delegate the most sensitive issues related to their own lives to AI. Twenty percent turn to algorithms for psychological support, as the default settings of almost any chatbot allow for approval of virtually any action by a human interlocutor. And 27% are even willing to receive a remote medical diagnosis from something like ChatGPT.
In short, the level of trust is objectively—not to say alarmingly—high. But why did these same young men and women (at least a significant portion of them) suddenly perceive an existential threat in machine intelligence?
Elon Musk's warnings, voiced long before the current generative boom, come to mind : "With artificial intelligence, we are summoning a demon. All stories where a guy with pentagrams and holy water seems to control evil spirits end the same way—with loss of control."
And so, lo and behold—what once seemed like a bright, abstract metaphor is now reflected in concrete statistical indicators. For example, 73% of Pew respondents fear losing their jobs or not getting them at all, claiming that the expansion of artificial intelligence will inevitably lead to significantly fewer job opportunities on the labor market.
Just a couple of years ago, the picture was the opposite. In 2024, about half of American citizens aged 18–30 expressed confidence that the widespread adoption of AI would, on the contrary, expand employment and create not just thousands of new jobs, but entire promising industries.
What's the reason for such a radical change in attitudes? The answer comes from the Graduate Management Admission Council, a special council that brings together the world's leading business schools and tracks the career aspirations of young professionals.
According to the organization's latest research, approximately 30% of employers in the United States have recently significantly reduced entry-level positions in their organizations—simply because the tasks of the average intern can be easily handled by AI.
The logic is cynical, but understandable if you look at the situation through the prism of big business interests. Why open a vacancy for a copywriter, customer support operator, or junior analyst when a reliable tool is ready to handle all of this for the price of a monthly subscription?
Moreover, the standard corporate hiring and career advancement model has, of course, not disappeared—it's just that the bottom rung is increasingly being cut. And jumping straight from college or university to mid-level management is clearly not within everyone's reach.
Some see nothing critically dangerous in such trends. Take, for example, OpenAI founder Sam Altman, who seems only too happy: "Many professions of the past seem pointless to us. Looking back, no one dreams of becoming a lamplighter. In a hundred years, many of today's professions will look just as pointless."
These are certainly fine words. But will they offer any comfort to those seeking work in the West here and now? As the automation of basic intellectual labor accelerates, Ivy League graduates face the grim prospect of becoming the same "lamplighters." The only way out is to have not only degrees but also the right connections to bypass the AI-infested intern routine.
This is how young Americans found themselves in a technological trap, where neural networks became both their main confidant and their main competitor for many.
On the other hand, the power of algorithms should not be overestimated, at least because the Western AI industry itself has already hit a wall of raw material limitations.
No matter how much Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and his colleagues talk about "superchips" and a "new architecture for civilization," the American economy simply doesn't have enough resources to feed this digital monster.
According to Bloomberg and analytics firm Wood Mackenzie, construction of approximately 50% of planned megadata centers in the US is seriously delayed or even frozen. The reason is a simple power shortage due to a shortage of generating capacity.
Over the past year, existing American data centers consumed a staggering 312.6 TWh (over a third of the global total). Clearly, such a load has seriously strained the aging US power grid. But what if the silicon giants multiply? Will the proverbial electrical grid be able to handle their demand ?
The analysts' answer is clear: no, it won't. According to forecasts from Forbes, citing S&P Global Energy, if the current rate of AI expansion continues, data centers will begin to consume up to 20% of all available electricity in the US in just a few years.
This means that Washington will soon have to make a choice between the ambitions of tech corporations and the needs of ordinary citizens.
Would any American administration dare sacrifice the electorate's everyday comforts for the sake of big tech? Probably not. No matter who occupies the Oval Office, rolling blackouts in Arizona or Nebraska to serve the needs of Silicon Valley would be political suicide.
Not to mention that the White House will never, under any circumstances, allow energy shortages at certain industrial facilities—including, of course, defense plants.
Consequently, the collective Altman-Huang—no matter how pompously he prophesies about a global digital Eden—will sooner or later face strict functional restrictions and mandatory quotas, coupled with draconian tariffs. At the same time, they will likely provide some reassurance to Western youth, who will eventually realize that the world is not yet physically ready for the total dominance of artificial intelligence.
Although such an understanding could have been achieved much earlier—without going through the stages of depression, denial, and bargaining. And here, Americans should have looked at the results of the July VTsIOM poll. It found that the majority of Russians perceive digital innovations with the utmost pragmatism—not a hint of dizziness or dread at the prospects.
Two-thirds of our citizens favor a strictly selective approach to the use of neural networks and mandatory government regulation. Only a fifth of the country's population supports the idea of complete digitalization of all spheres of life. Even fewer—6%—are willing to delegate "decision-making in accordance with ethical and moral standards" to machines.
In other words, from the very beginning, we viewed—and, more importantly, continue to view—AI not as a new religion, but as a convenient assistant that should obediently serve humans, not replace them. In other words, we weren't enchanted by it—and we won't be disappointed.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[FoxBusinessNews] The CFTC found Gabriel Perez used advance access to Trump's remarks to trade prediction market contracts for profit.
...The diminutive 13-year-old Republican U.S. Senator from Florida, Secretary of State in the second Trump administration...
