NEWS AROUND US: March 2024

Sunday, 31 March 2024

Joe Brandon Ruined Easter!

Brent Terhune, the master of satire, is not holding back today. Not after Joe Brandon went ahead and just ruined Easter for all of us good Christians! All that food gone to waste! Hell, he even took a bath last night so he would be ready to go to church this morning, dammit! And while we're at it, to hell with Bunsen burners, daylight savings time and all them citrus fruits! But even though International Potato Day is also today, they're cool. They make French fries and vodka, so we'll keep them around for a while longer. But if Mr. Potato Head ever starts looking like Mrs. Potato Head, all bets are off!

PS: If you're mad as hell like Brent, send all your chocolate bunnies and other candies to me. I'll make sure they get a good home.

Open thread below...

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Marsha Blackburn 'Incensed' Over Plan To Table DHS Secretary Impeachment

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said Sunday that Americans should be "incensed" over a Democratic plan to table the impeachment of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in the Senate.

During an interview on Fox News, guest host Jason Chaffetz asked Blackburn about Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-LA) intentions to send Mayorkas' impeachment articles to the Senate for a trial.

"Yes, and on Wednesday, we expect them to come to us," Blackburn explained. "We will receive the articles. We will be sworn in. Each senator is sworn in into the court of impeachment."

"We should move forward at that point with the impeachment trial or a committee of impeachment," she continued. "But what we're hearing is for the first time ever in our nation's history, Chuck Schumer is wanting to table the impeachment articles."

"Every American should be incensed by this."

Blackburn accused the secretary of "doing Joe Biden's bidding."

"He should stand for his impeachment trial as instructed by the Constitution of the United States," she concluded.

Just years earlier, Republicans in the Senate effectively tabled the nomination of Merrick Garland for Supreme Court justice. There is no record of Blackburn expressing outrage at that time.

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TechCrunch Mobility: Fisker enters into dumpster fire territory and Tesla chases FSD revenue

TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Remember in the last edition of TechCrunch […]

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Saturday, 30 March 2024

Late Night Music Club: Beyoncé's 'TEXAS HOLD 'EM'

Beyoncé shook up the Country music world when she dropped two tracks on the night of the Super Bowl, including “Texas Hold ’Em,” our featured track tonight, to country music stations.

The NY Times writes:

Beyoncé finally released her new album, “Cowboy Carter,” and the country bona fides were certainly there. Dolly Parton provides a cameo introduction to Beyoncé’s version of “Jolene,” Parton’s 1972 classic about a woman confronting a romantic rival. Willie Nelson pops in twice as a grizzled D.J., who says he “turns you on to some real good [expletive],” including snippets of Chuck Berry, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the blues singer Son House.

Yet “Cowboy Carter” is far broader than simply a country album. Beyoncé does a version of the Beatles’ “Blackbird” and, on the track “Ya Ya,” draws from Nancy Sinatra and the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” “Desert Eagle” is glistening funk, and the upbeat “Bodyguard” would not be out of place on a modern rock radio station. The album’s range suggests a broad essay on contemporary pop music, and on the nature of genre itself.

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Fox Guest Goes On Unhinged Rant Attacking Biden Fundraiser

Fox regular Tammy Bruce has got the feigned outrage routine down pat, which is nothing new for her, but this latest rant on this Friday's Hannity was something special when it comes to the sheer audacity of what came out of her mouth, along with managing to avoid being struck by lightning in the process.

We all know they're not happy over on Fox that Biden's star-studded fundraiser made over $26 million, while Trump's campaign is still lagging behind Biden in cash, the RNC is a mess, and Trump and his allies are more than willing raid the campaign coffers to keep him out of prison rather than worry about down-ballot races.

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Fisker loses customers’ money, Robinhood launches a credit card, and Google generates travel itineraries

Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the notable happenings in tech over the past few days. This week, TC’s auto reporter Sean O’Kane revealed how EV startup Fisker temporarily lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments as it scaled up deliveries, leading to an internal audit that started […]

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Friday, 29 March 2024

Is This The Work Of Dark Brandon Or Just Poetic Justice?

During the midterm elections, the RNC opened up a new minority outreach center on the south side of Milwaukee. However, after the elections, they closed it up. RNC officials said that they were going to definitely open it back up for the 2024 elections. But after Trump became the presumptive nominee and the shake up in RNC top officers, the RNC quietly decided they weren't going to reopen the center after all. And then the story really gets delicious:

New tenants took over the building in Milwaukee’s south side Lincoln Village neighborhood last June after the RNC declined to renew its lease, a real estate representative for the building’s owner told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this week. And the new occupants have plans to open an ice cream shop at the location sometime this spring.

Now, it could be just karma delivering some poetic justice right before Wisconsin holds its presidential primary on Tuesday.. However, Dark Brandon's alter ego, President Joe Biden was in town just a week or two ago. That could have just been coincidence, but I'm not willing to rule it out.

To add to the suspiciousness of the situation, the Biden campaign couldn't resist but taunt the Republicans with the news:

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Startups Weekly: Big shake-ups at the AI heavyweights

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. There’s not that much news from me this week, but I’ve been doing a ton of prep for TechCrunch Early Stage taking place in Boston on […]

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Thursday, 28 March 2024

Activision says it’s investigating password-stealing malware targeting game players

Video game giant Activision is investigating a hacking campaign that’s targeting players with the goal of stealing their credentials, TechCrunch has learned. At this point, the hackers’ specific goals — apart from stealing passwords for various types of accounts — are unclear. Somehow, the hackers are getting malware on the victim’s computers and then stealing […]

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SBF sentenced, Worldcoin hit with another ban order and big web3 pre-seed rounds are back

Welcome to TechCrunch Crypto, formerly known as Chain Reaction. This is the last edition of this newsletter. I want to personally thank each of you for reading this and if you would like to stay in touch, you can follow me on X here for future updates. With that said, the show goes on. This […]

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Wednesday, 27 March 2024

The UK threw a splashy event in New York this week to woo more American VCs

U.K. officials unveiled a hologram statue and threw a big party to celebrate the U.K. as the third $1 trillion tech economy.

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Fisker lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments for months

Fisker temporarily lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments as it scaled up deliveries, leading to an internal audit that started in December and took months to complete, TechCrunch has learned. The EV startup was ultimately able to track down a majority of those payments or request new ones from customers whose payment […]

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Did Ronna Just Earn Herself Some MAGA Cred?

You might think McDaniel is going through a difficult time, what with the many attacks on her credibility from major on-air figures at NBC and MSNBC. But think about it: McDaniel was ditched by Donald Trump and was no longer seen as sufficiently loyal to MAGA, yet now she's a right-wing martyr. That's very, very good for her post-RNC career.

Republican propagandists are deliberately lying about the anger over her hiring. Mick Mulvaney, for instance:

“This has nothing to do with Ronna McDaniel’s behavior during Jan. 6 or the 2020 election,” Mulvaney said Monday during an appearance on cable news channel NewsNation. “NBC just cannot stand having somebody from the right on their sacred airwaves. If it wasn’t so sad, it would be hysterically funny.”

And Fox News:

NBC's Ronna McDaniel meltdown marks latest news outlet to face revolt from liberal staff for GOP platforming

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Tuesday, 26 March 2024

Ronna McDaniel Gone From NBC After Four Days

NBC News should never have hired election-denier, coup-plotting Ronna McDaniel in the first place. But better to dump her quickly than to double down on their mistake.

Puck's Dylan Byers reported the decision McDaniel's ousting earlier, noting that details have yet to be worked out and that McDaniel is seeking legal representation:

SCOOP @PuckNews: NBC NEWS plans to drop ex RNC-chair Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor following on-air revolt from NBC/MSNBC talent. Execs are deliberating over details; announcement pending. Meanwhile, McDaniel is seeking legal representation.

Full details, scoops &…

— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) March 26, 2024

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Vibrant Planet uses AI for land mapping and improving climate resiliency

As the planet warms due to human-caused climate change, damage from wildfires has increased with it. The amount of forest area burned by wildfires increased 320% from 1996 to 2021, according to the National Integrated Drought Information System. While building tech to slow the progression and impacts of climate change would be ideal, it’s a […]

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Synctera is the latest banking-as-a-service startup to lay off staff

Banking-as-a-service startup (BaaS) Synctera has conducted a restructuring that has resulted in a staff reduction, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. While Synctera did not share how many employees were impacted, a report in Fintech Business Weekly pegs the number to be about 17 people, or about 15% of the company. Doing the math, that means […]

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Monday, 25 March 2024

Fisker trading suspended by NYSE

The exchange said Monday that Fisker's stock is "no longer suitable for listing" because of "abnormally low" price levels.

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Large language models can help home robots recover from errors without human help

There are countless reasons why home robots have found little success post-Roomba. Pricing, practicality, form factor and mapping have all contributed to failure after failure. Even when some or all of those are addressed, there remains the question of what happens when a system makes an inevitable mistake. This has been a point of friction […]

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Sunday, 24 March 2024

'Complete Catastrophe': Marjorie Taylor Greene Melts Down At Mike Johnson

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA) lashed out at House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) after House Republicans passed a bipartisan government funding bill.

"Republicans and the House of Representatives, where we hold on to a razor-thin majority," Greene told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. "But yet this week, Speaker Johnson, who has barely been a speaker for six months, led us to a complete catastrophe."

Greene blasted the bill passed to fund the government before excoriating Johnson for allowing Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) to retire without leaving time for a special election to replace him.

"You're right, Maria, and those people stepping down early and leaving are the ones that are leaving us at risk of the Democrats controlling the majority, not me," Greene said.

"I filed this motion to vacate, but I haven't called it to the floor," she continued. "This is like issuing a pink slip and giving our conference a notice saying that we have got to find a new speaker."

Greene said that finding a new speaker "may take months, and it may not even happen until next Congress, but Speaker Johnson cannot remain a speaker of the House."

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Chuck Todd Slams NBC For Hiring Ronna McDaniel

In one of the more surprising turns of events, former Meet the Press host Chuck Todd lambasted the bosses at NBC for hiring former RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.

Todd's disgust with the machinations and considerations that went into her hiring was evident and is shared among many journalists at NBC News. Apparently, McDaniel had been booked to appear before her hiring. "You got put into an impossible situation, booking this interview and then all of a sudden the rug [is] pulled out from under you you find out she’s being paid to show up. That is unfortunate for this program,” Todd said.

Source: Politico

NBC chief political analyst Chuck Todd on Sunday publicly slammed the company’s decision to hire Ronna McDaniel in a stunning on-air moment immediately following the former RNC chair’s network debut.

“Let me deal with the elephant in the room. I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation,” Todd told “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker, who previously interviewed McDaniel, during a subsequent panel discussion.

“Look, there’s a reason why there’s a lot of journalists at NBC News uncomfortable with this because many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the six years have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination,” Todd added.

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TechCrunch Mobility: The wheels are starting to come off the Fisker EV bus

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Saturday, 23 March 2024

Apple sued, Microsoft’s AI ambitions and Nvidia’s surprises

In this edition of Week in Review, we have big news on the latest Apple antitrust lawsuit. Microsoft’s AI ambitions dominated the news as well, so let’s dive right in.… Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here to receive the Week in Review newsletter in your inboxes. The U.S. joined international regulators in accusing […]

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NBC Gets Slapped Hard For Hiring Trump Enabler Ronna McDaniel

The hiring of serial liar, election denier and Trump enabler Ronna Don't-Call-Me-Romney McDaniel by NBC News was met with some pretty hysterical and appropriately snide responses across social media.

Sadly, I'm certain it won't make the network blink an eye about their hiring decision.

As Driftglass discussed here already, hiring Republicans who should not be allowed to pollute our airways ever again is a feature, and not a bug over at NBC/MSNBC.

Here are some of the better responses to this debacle that came across in my Xitter feed after the news of her hire broke.

Apparently, Sidney Powell was unavailable so MSNBC had to settle for Ronna McDaniel.

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) March 23, 2024

MSNBC welcomes their new election field correspondent QAnon Shaman, Jacob Chansley. pic.twitter.com/k4DXtegJG3

— Hoodlum 🇺🇸 (@NotHoodlum) March 22, 2024

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Friday, 22 March 2024

AT&T won’t say how its customers’ data spilled online

Customers say their leaked AT&T customer data — names, addresses, phone numbers and Social Security numbers — is accurate.

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Humiliated Comer: 'Criminal Referrals' Instead Of Impeachment

Chairman James Comer told Newsmax this morning that he now prefers to refer the Biden impeachment case to the DOJ for criminal charges, instead of actually trying to proceed with an impeachment.

The Newsmax host was "curious to know" what he was going to do next after yesterday's flop of a hearing.

"Where are you attempting to go at this point, Congressman?"

"Well, I want to hold accountability that's what we said all along," Comer responded.

Innuendo, criminals, liars, debunked witnesses and testimony are not evidence of any type of impeachment.

"So what is real accountability look like does it look like?" Comer asked. "Impeaching Joe Biden in the House and then the Senate, tabling it like they're going to do with the Merrick Garland impeachment. Or does it mean providing real criminal referrals to the Department of Justice?"

"I think the latter," Comer said.

Making criminal referrals is a joke, but Comer and Jordan are trying to save face to the MAGA cult. Chairman Comer and Jordan are only working for one narcissistic traitor and not the US,

MAGA Republicans are so desperate to try and soil President Biden with the same feces-laden rag that Trump has bathed himself in, they've spent millions of taxpayer dollars and spent months and years trying to do Trump's dirty work.

If anyone should be impeached it's the Republican clown car Congress.

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Thursday, 21 March 2024

Solana memecoin hype continues, Backpack’s beta phase was a success and Starbucks axes its NFT program

Welcome to TechCrunch Crypto. This week, Starbucks killed its Odyssey NFT program, Solana continued to see memecoin momentum and India faces more challenges with the crypto space.

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Kimmel: Trump Is The 'Great White...Supremacist!'

On Wednesday night, Jimmy Kimmel didn't hold back on his former Oscar critic, Donald Trump.

KIMMEL: President Biden released his bracket today. He picked Yukon to win, whereas Donald Trump not only won't be releasing his bracket, he won't throw one out at all because he's afraid of getting eaten by that shark.

TRUMP: But if I'm sitting down and that boat's going down and I'm on top of a battery, and the water starts flooding in, I'm getting concerned. But then I look 10 yards to my left and there's a shark over there.
So I have a choice of electrocution or a shark. You know what? I'm gonna take electrocution. I will take electrocution every single time. Do we agree?

KIMMEL: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, apparently there's a lot of agreement. I can go either way.

The great white supremacist has until Monday to come up with a $464 million bond, or the state may seize and sell his property. Trump said nobody has ever heard of anything like this before.
Trump needs cash and... we never heard of most of the crazy stuff you do before, but, I mean, nobody ever heard of the president changing the weather with a Sharpie before either.

Something tells me over the weekend Trump's gonna start talking about how strong Vladimir Putin is and then suddenly a dump truck full of rubles will pull up and cover this for him.

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Wednesday, 20 March 2024

Users say Glassdoor added real names to user profiles without their consent

One user said Glassdoor pulled her full name from an email and added it to her profile. Another user said it wasn't clear how Glassdoor got his data.

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Candela’s electric ferries multiply as the startup lines up $25M in new funding

Electric boat maker Candela is approaching cruising speed with $25 million in new funding and the first commercial deployment of its new P-12 ferry, in New Zealand. The company has global ambitions for its highly efficient boats, and has completed and delivered dozens of them — which is a lot in this industry! Candela has […]

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NBCUniversal’s Peacock will let you watch four live streams at once for 2024 Paris Olympics

Today, during NBCUniversal’s annual technology conference, One24, the company revealed a slew of features coming to its streaming service Peacock ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics in July. The most notable feature to launch on Peacock is multiview, which allows subscribers to view up to four simultaneous matches at once. Next to picture-in-picture mode, many […]

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Lev Parnas’ Testimony Blows Biden Impeachment Out Of The Water

You could not have asked for more dramatic or more damaging testimony from Lev Parnas in the House Biden impeachment inquiry. But it was damaging to MAGA Republicans, not President Joe Biden.

You may recall that this former Giuliani associate was arrested and seems to have been repenting ever since for his role in the MAGA Ukraine operation against Joe Biden. On Wednesday, he delivered what should be the coup de grace against the Republicans’ sham impeachment “inquiry.”

Parnas began his opening statement by incriminating Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani as masterminds of a scheme to smear Joe and Hunter Biden. Jack Smith, I hope you’re listening:

PARNAS: The American people have been lied to by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and various cohorts of individuals in government and media positions.

They created falsehoods to serve their own interests, knowing it would undermine the strength of our nation.

From November 2018 to October 2019, I was a key participant and a witness to numerous efforts to prove that Joe and Hunter Biden were linked to corruption in Ukraine.

Rudy Giuliani, on behalf of then-President Donald Trump tasked me with a mission to travel the globe, finding dirt on the Bidens so that an array of networks could spread misinformation about them, thus securing the 2020 election for Donald J.Trump.

Parnas went on to say that when he was arrested, he was linked to an unnamed individual referred to as “Unindicted Co-Conspirator 1.”

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Tuesday, 19 March 2024

Mike Lindell Panics Over 'Long Shot' Supreme Court Case

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell begged for donations Monday after he admitted the evidence he presented for Kari Lake's election case did not "shock the world" as he had promised.

Lindell blamed the media after experts said his voting machine evidence was nothing new. Lake has asked the Supreme Court to rule that voting machines cannot be used in future elections after she lost her bid for governor in Arizona. Lindell and Lake have said voting machine companies caused her to lose.

"It's an emergency injunction to expedite this case," Lindell explained to conservative podcast host Steve Bannon. "What's gonna come out now will be all the declarations and all the evidence to back up the case. So this is the second part of it. This was very much planned by our lawyers."

"Because the media right now is out there," he continued. "It hasn't really reached the masses of the media, but the ones that are out there are trying to discredit [it]. 'Well, there's nothing behind this.' It's coming, all the declarations."

Lindell pleaded for donations to his legal "offense" fund.

"We need your help!" he said. "All this, any funds coming in, the offense fund, I'm always on the offense."

"We need the Supreme Court case advertised," Lindell insisted. "We need to get it out there. I'm gonna take funds. 100% of the money coming in is gonna go to help save our country. This, we really need your help now, War Room Posse. We've come this far."

Bannon noted that Lake's case was a "long shot."

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Threads is rolling out trending topics to all users in the US

Threads, the Twitter-like app from Instagram, is rolling out its “trending now” feature widely to all users in the U.S. The official rollout comes a month after the app started testing the feature with a select number of users in the country. Trending topics are available on the search page and in the app’s For […]

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Monday, 18 March 2024

TechCrunch Space: $paceX

Welcome back to TechCrunch Space. This is an uncommonly SpaceX-heavy issue. Apologies (or you're welcome).

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X users are still complaining about arbitrary shadowbanning

Users of Elon Musk-owned X (formerly Twitter) continue complaining the platform is engaging in shadowbanning — aka restricting the visibility of posts by applying a “temporary” label to accounts that can limit the reach/visibility of content — without providing clarity over why it’s imposed the sanctions. Running a search on X for the phrase “temporary […]

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Why Elon Musk’s AI company ‘open-sourcing’ Grok matters — and why it doesn’t

Elon Musk’s xAI released its Grok large language model as “open source” over the weekend. The billionaire clearly hopes to set his company at odds with rival OpenAI, which despite its name is not particularly open. But does releasing the code for something like Grok actually contribute to the AI development community? Yes and no. […]

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Sunday, 17 March 2024

Another autonomous vehicle startup shutters, Zoox expands driverless testing and investor fervor for AI escalates

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Fox News Prays To Jesus — Sponsored By Bible App

Fox News on Sunday introduced Christian prayers that were sponsored by a Bible app.

"We have more Fox and Friends coming up, but you know what this is a transition for transitions if you've ever had one so so so Fox and Friends, this is very Fox and Friends, so ready your heart," Fox News host Pete Hegseth said on Sunday, segueing from a rant against TikTok.

"It's the 5th Sunday of Lent, and our prayer series continues with the reading of prayer from the Hallow app. We all need it, let's do it this morning, close your eyes — if you would bow your head," he continued.

The prayer began: "Jesus, today we begin the holy period of passion tide. In these last 2 weeks of Lent help us understand the mystery of your sacrifice and surrender, make us keenly aware of your love for us. We ask that you make yourself known to us, help us to feel the grace of your presence."

"It's a fire in us, the same sacrificial, selfless love selfless love you showed on the cross," Hegseth added. "Jesus we surrender ourselves to you, take care of everything. Thank you again to Hallow for this partnership."

"Amen," the hosts agreed.

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VC Arjun Sethi talks a big game about selling his company-picking strategies to other investors; he says they’re buying it

Arjun Sethi speaks with the confidence of someone who knows more than other people, or else who knows that sounding highly confident can shape perception. Either way, when he tells me over Zoom that “in five years, I’ll have 50% of the world’s private data” at his fingertips, and that it will be “impossible to […]

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'Just Unacceptable': Mike Pence Rips Trump For Calling Jan.6 Criminals 'Hostages'

Former Vice President Mike Pence blasted Donald Trump after his former running mate said that people who committed crimes on Jan. 6 were "hostages" to the legal system.

During an interview on CBS's Face the Nation program on Sunday, host Margaret Brennan asked Pence if he agreed with Trump when he referred to the Jan. 6 criminals as "hostages and patriots" at a recent rally.

"Well, I think it's very unfortunate at a time that there are American hostages being held in Gaza, that the president or any other leaders would refer to people that are moving through our justice system as hostages," Pence replied. "And it's just unacceptable."

"I was there on January 6th," he added. "I've no doubt in my mind, Margaret, that some people were caught up in the moment and that entered the Capitol, and they're certainly entitled to due process of law for any non-violent activities that day, but the assaults on police officers, ultimately an environment that claimed lives is something that I think was tragic that day and I'll never diminish it."

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Saturday, 16 March 2024

LNMC: Dropkick Murphys - We Shall Overcome

Two years ago, the most Irish band in America, the Dropkick Murphys released their cover of the classic song of civil rights and labor rights movements, "We Shall Overcome:"

“We Shall Overcome” became a unifying rallying cry during the American civil rights movement of the 1960s in particular. Dropkick Murphys’ own music often focuses on camaraderie in the face of harsh conditions, and their treatment of the powerful gospel song is a passionate and boisterous one.

“I’ve always found this to be such a powerful protest song,” remarked co-vocalist Ken Casey in a press release, “as we all know from its importance in both the civil rights and labor movements, but what I love the most is its positivity. The message of hope is needed now more than ever. Also, nobody has done a loud, ballsy rock version — so it just needed to happen!”

Have a safe and happy St. Patrick's Day, if you celebrate such things.

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World Central Kitchen Delivers First Aid Shipment To Gaza

The first ship towing a barge of humanitarian aid to Gaza has unloaded supplies. Via BBC.com:

The Spanish ship Open Arms left Cyprus on Tuesday with 200 tonnes of food desperately needed for Gaza, which the UN says is on the brink of famine. Videos posted online show a crane moving crates from the barge to lorries waiting on a purpose-built jetty. It marks the start of a trial to see if sea deliveries are effective, after air and land deliveries proved difficult.

World Central Kitchen (WCK), which supplied the food, carried out the mission in co-operation with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to deliver the barge's cargo of rice, flour, legumes, canned vegetables and canned proteins. Gaza has no functioning port, so a jetty stemming from the shoreline was built by WCK's team. How the food will be distributed in Gaza remains unclear.

WCK's founder, celebrity chef José Andrés, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that all the food aid from the barge had been loaded into 12 lorries. "We did it!" he wrote, adding that this was a test to see if they could bring even more aid in the next shipment - up to "thousands of tons a week".

He's taking a different approach from the U.S., which says it will take 60 days for build a dock:

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SpaceX doc leaks, TikTok ban gains steam, and Grok to go open-source

Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter recapping noteworthy happenings in tech over the past few days. This week, TechCrunch viewed leaked documents out of SpaceX showing some questionable practices related to employee stock options. X CEO Elon Musk announced that he would open source Grok, X’s AI-powered chatbot meant to […]

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Friday, 15 March 2024

Pornhub says, ‘Bad Texas! No smut for you!’

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Pornhub has been playing a game of chicken with a bunch of state legislatures for a while now. Last year, the smut-peddler blocked access to users […]

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White House Spanks Mike Johnson: Impeachment Is Over

It's evident that Republicans only want to impeach President Joe Biden to retaliate against Trump's well-earned impeachments. Their only problem is that they have presented no evidence of wrongdoing on Biden's part. It reveals a lot about Republicans, though, and Biden's White House pointed that out to House Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson on Friday.

The Hill reports:

"I write to you today because it is clear the House Republican impeachment is over," White House counsel Ed Siskel wrote in the letter to Johnson, which was also shared with the top lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee and House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

In his first-ever letter to the Speaker, Siskel laid out a dozen instances where witnesses interviewed by lawmakers have refuted allegations that the president profited from his family members' business ventures.

Siskel highlighted testimony from the president's son, Hunter Biden, his brother, James Biden, and multiple former business associates of Hunter Biden who each said the president was not involved in their business dealings.

The letter also noted two expert witnesses at the House GOP's first impeachment hearing, Jonathan Turley and Bruce Dubinsky, who both indicated there was not enough evidence of wrongdoing to support articles of impeachment.

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Thursday, 14 March 2024

Bitcoin hits new high, Solana price jumps as memecoins mania rises and Worldcoin faces heat in Spain

Welcome to TechCrunch Crypto, formerly known as Chain Reaction -- it was an eventful week in the crypto world.

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Wednesday, 13 March 2024

Solana’s price rises to $160, highest level since January 2022 as memecoin mania rises

The token behind Solana, a layer-1 blockchain that’s competitive with the Ethereum blockchain, has been through the wringer after it plummeted from a high of about $260 in late 2021 to a low around $8 in early 2023. But like every good movie with a character redemption arc, Solana has one too. The cryptocurrency passed […]

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What is Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot and how does it work?

You might’ve heard of Grok, X’s answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It’s a chatbot and, in that sense, behaves as you’d expect — answering questions about current events, pop culture and so on. But unlike other chatbots, Grok has “a bit of wit,” as X owner Elon Musk puts it, and “a rebellious streak.” Long story […]

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Trump's Horrible, No Good Georgia Primary Result

If Georgia is any indication - and it probably is - there are still plenty of disaffected Republican voters out there who want nothing to do with Donald Trump and his brand of odious politics. In large parts of Atlanta, around 40% of them voted for someone who isn't even running anymore.

Source: Newsweek

Donald Trump lost a significant number of votes to Nikki Haley in the Georgia Republican primary despite running essentially unopposed.

The former president won Georgia on Tuesday with 84.5 percent of the vote, as well as winning Mississippi and Washington.

However, Haley, who dropped out of the GOP primary race in the wake of Super Tuesday, still received 13 percent of the Republican vote in Georgia, amounting to more than 77,000 ballots.

The results mean that Trump has now clinched the Republican nomination, setting up a rematch against President Joe Biden in the general election in November.

13% doesn't sound like much until you look where Haley got her votes: Fulton and DeKalb counties around Atlanta, where she received almost 40% of the vote. Better educated, more affluent areas that he'll need to beat Joe Biden in November. And if Georgia is any indication, he's not getting those voters.

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Tuesday, 12 March 2024

Glacier is training AI-powered recycling robots

This week, Glacier co-founder Rebecca Hu chats with Found about wish-cycling and robots.

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Enterprise SaaS investment makes a comeback — but not where you’d expect

When we examined venture investment amounts in enterprise SaaS startups, we were surprised at the top categories.

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Nigeria demands Binance disclose top users, executives remain detained

Nigeria is actively seeking information from Binance regarding its top 100 users in the country and all transaction history spanning the past six months, according to a Financial Times report. This news overlaps with the revelation of the names of the two executives from the cryptocurrency exchange who were detained two weeks ago: Tigran Gambaryan, […]

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Kristi Noem's Audition For Veep Is Also A Dentist Informerical

I did not expect to write THIS ONE today, folks.

Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, universally acknowledged to be on the short list for Trump's vice president slot, posted to her socials today.

Touting her policies? Building up her conservative cred? Even praying to White Jesus for more tax cuts would be understandable given her party.

NOPE, she's doing a literal infomercial for her cosmetic dentist, who practices not in South Dakota but in Sugarland, Texas.

Fun fact: Googling "cosmetic dentistry South Dakota" yields 2,940,000 results.

Twitter wants to know if she got free veneers for her video or if she's simply auditioning in the best possible way for Trump by going full "Apprentice."

The sitting Governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, filmed an infomercial for a cosmetic dentistry center in Texas and posted it on her social media accounts.

She does not indicate in her posts that she has done this in exchange for free or discounted services, but it’s hard to… pic.twitter.com/z2tpTKBnz7

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 12, 2024

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Monday, 11 March 2024

Katie Britt Visits 'Inside The Actors Studio'

Much has been made of Katie Britt's horrible acting in her rebuttal to President Biden's State of the Union address, with one pundit comparing her acting skill (or lack thereof) as somewhere between "porn and a high school play."

Source: The Wrap

U.S. Senator Katie Britt was the main character on social media Thursday night after her expressive performance while delivering the GOP’s response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. While many compared her emotive delivery to that of an actor’s self-tape audition, one user went a step further and edited her into an episode of “Inside the Actors Studio.”

In the video made and shared by Ben Bowman, the late “Inside the Actors Studio” host James Lipton is seen delivering the show’s standard questionnaire that was given at the end of every episode for the 22 seasons he hosted, with clips from Britt’s speech used as responses.

“What turns you on?” Lipton says.

“Putin’s brutal aggression in Europe,” Britt replies in her intense delivery.

“What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?” Lipton continues.

“Sweeping the floor at my dad’s hardware store,” Britt responds.

Ben Bowman with the honors.

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Kate Middleton’s photo editing controversy is an omen of what’s to come

After frenzied speculation that a recent photo of Kate Middleton and her children was AI generated, the Duchess of Cambridge herself had to address the controversy. “Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing,” Middleton wrote in a statement. “I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared […]

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Sunday, 10 March 2024

Fox's Watters Accuses Biden Of 'Being On Speed Or Something' During SOTU Address

Here's how Fox has decided to do damage control after their narrative that Biden is some doddering old man that can barely stay awake blew up in their faces following his fiery State of the Union address. We already saw Hannity directly following the speech calling Biden "jacked up Joe" and accusing him of being "a hyper-caffeinated, angry old man."

Now we've got his fellow MAGA propagandist Jesse Watters literally accusing Biden of taking speed or some other drugs. Here's Watters on this Friday's The Five:

JESSE WATTERS (CO-HOST): If you see a horse, and the horse is old and injured and mopes around the barnyard, and then all of a sudden you race the horse and he fires out of the gate and laps everybody -- what did they give the horse?

Jessica, the man has walked around lethargically for the last three years. Barely picks his head up, can't hear, is out of breath, falls asleep, skips dinners internationally, dies out during funeral processions. All of a sudden, this guy is, like, on speed or something, Jessica. To dismiss it like, "Oh, he's definitely clean."

He should pee in a cup, because there is no way Joe Biden can sustain that type of energy.

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Saturday, 9 March 2024

Everything Trump Touches Dies Including RNC's Bank Account

The law that Everything TFG Touches Dies remains undefeated:

RNC resolution to prohibit paying Trump’s legal bills is ‘dead’

The Republican National Committee is meeting on Friday in Houston to elect a new chair. But what the 168 members won’t be voting on, after all, is a pair of resolutions that would have put some daylight between Donald Trump and the committee.

Henry Barbour, the committee member from Mississippi who has been critical of the former president, drafted resolutions late last month that would have prohibited the party from covering Trump’s legal bills, as well as preventing the RNC and its leadership from supporting Trump as the nominee until he secures 1,215 delegates.

While the attorney fee resolution got some traction, neither draft garnered enough support from members by the deadline last week in order to be considered for a vote on Friday, according to a person with knowledge of the resolutions.

“It’s dead,” Barbour said of the legal fee resolution and relayed that it will not come to a vote on Friday. Barbour said he received co-sponsors from only eight of the 10 necessary states to bring the resolution to a vote.

Put on a red shirt, Barbour. I guarantee you are next.

Republished with permission from Mock Paper Scissors

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What’s going on with the new bill that could ban TikTok?

TikTok faces an uncertain fate in the U.S. once again. After a surprise flurry of activity in the House this week, TikTok is the target of a new government push to separate the company from its Chinese ownership or force it out of the country. TikTok is based in Los Angeles and Singapore, but is […]

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Apple terminates Epic’s account, Meta platforms get knocked offline and former Twitter execs sue Elon Musk

Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter covering all of — or at least the bulk of! — noteworthy happenings around the tech-o-sphere. This week, Roku played hardball with its customers, requiring them to consent to new dispute resolution terms. This means users can’t use their Roku devices until agreeing to the […]

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Friday, 8 March 2024

How DMA gatekeepers are responding to the EU’s new competition rules — in their own words

The compliance deadline for the six tech giants regulated under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) expired yesterday. Which means Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance/TikTok, Meta and Microsoft are now under active assessment by EU enforcers. The bloc will monitor whether they’re abiding by DMA requirements to deal fairly with business users of their regulated […]

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Great Jobs Report Puts Maria Bartiromo On Full-Tilt

US job growth beat expectations by 75,000 in February, causing FOX Business host Maria Bartiromo to launch into another wingnut conspiracy theory.

The jobs report total 275,000 created while unemployment slightly rose to 3.9%.

Appearing in a septuplet screen (seriously) to hypnotize their viewers, Maria quickly jumped in to downplay the strong economy.

After claiming small businesses are afraid their taxes are going up, she began her pinball rant.

"Charles, if you've got the government holding the strings and pulling the strings, of course, you're going to get a better showing than reality!" Bartiromo claimed.

Huh? So every jobs report is bogus since President Biden took office?

"I'm wondering if this is going to be the case all year until election day. I mean, government's creating all these jobs, making the numbers look so great, government could also impact the price of oil, get gasoline down right before the election by putting more pressure on the Saudis to pump more, putting more expectation on more oil in the market!" she exclaimed.

Republicans and their media lackeys spent Biden's three years in office attacking him for gas prices and oil production, so now, as the US produces more oil than it ever has, she's claiming if we actually put more pressure, the Saudis produce more oil, that's a deep state conspiracy.

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Thursday, 7 March 2024

TikTok begs users to tell Congress not to ban it

When some American users opened TikTok on Thursday morning, they were met with a full-screen message encouraging them to call Congress and say no to a TikTok ban. “Speak up now — before your government strips 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression,” the screen says. “Let Congress know what TikTok means […]

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Wednesday, 6 March 2024

GOP IN DISARRAY: Haley Drops Out, Trump Freezes Out Her Voters

Trump's former United Nations Ambassador, Nikki Haley, dropped out of the race for the GOP nomination. Trump immediately took a confusing victory lap on Truth Social. But Haley had a message for him. She is not going to hand over her supporters to him. She wants him to earn their support. Trump, though, has never earned anything in his miserable life. His father, Fred, always bailed him out.

"It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him, and I hope he does that," Haley said to supporters in Charleston, S.C. "At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people. This is now his time for choosing."

"In all likelihood, Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee when our party convention meets in July. I congratulate him and wish him well," she continued. "I wish anyone who would be America's president well. Our country is too precious to let our differences divide us."

"I have always been a conservative Republican and always supported the Republican nominee," she added.

After ostracizing Haley's supporters, Trump invited her supporters to join his MAGA movement. He also lashed out at her donors, claiming that support was from the "radical left":

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Twitch is looking at life beyond the livestream

In an open letter published on Wednesday, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy outlined the livestreaming company’s plans for 2024, with a focus on helping streamers grow their audiences even when they aren’t live. This year, Twitch plans to overhaul its app for the first time in five years, ditching its longstanding design to focus on a […]

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Tuesday, 5 March 2024

WATCH: Wisconsin Fake Electors Applaud Their Crime

At the end of last year, Wisconsin's ten fake electors settled a lawsuit against them when they admitted what they did, that their fake electoral votes were used in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election and a promise not to be electors for Trump again. However, Trump's former lawyers who headed the whole scheme, Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis, were still on the hook for their roles in the whole sordid affair.

It was reported on Monday that these two troglodytes have setttled their part of the lawsuit against them by admitting their roles, turning over a ton of previously hidden documents, texts, emails, and videos like the one above and paying an undisclosed amount of money and a promise to be good little traitors from now on:

Former Trump attorneys Jim Troupis and Kenneth Chesebro made public this week "troves of previously hidden emails, text messages, and other documents" as part of an agreement to settle a lawsuit filed against them over a plan to have 10 Wisconsin Republicans sign and submit paperwork claiming to be electors for Trump, according to the plaintiffs' attorneys.

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Monday, 4 March 2024

CNN's Smerconish Upset His Viewers Are Smarter Than He Is

Too bad he didn't realize it. Weekend CNN host Michael Smerconish apparently has no idea what the Department of Justice's actual policy is when it comes to prosecuting someone in the middle of a campaign. Maybe he should try reading his cohort at CNN Daniel Dale's column before he does a segment like the one above.

Trump lied about Justice Department rules, claiming that he can't be prosecuted, and Dale shot that notion down last week:

Former President Donald Trump is facing two prosecutions brought by a federal special counsel and two prosecutions brought by local district attorneys. Trump claimed on social media on Monday that all four prosecutions violate strict Justice Department rules, since he is a candidate for president, and therefore must be stopped “IMMEDIATELY.”

“The Very Strict Rules and Regulations of the Department of Injustice STATE CLEARLY that you can’t prosecute a Political Opponent, or anyone, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF HIS/HER CAMPAIGN,” Trump wrote. He added a claim that these supposed Justice Department rules also apply to the offices of local district attorneys and state attorneys general, which he said are both “DOJ subservient ‘subsidiaries.’”

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Sunday, 3 March 2024

Waymo scores a critical robotaxi permit, Fisker cuts more workers and Apple car fades away

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Virginia School Board Member Arrested On Capitol Riot Charges

Miles Adkins, a member of the Fredrick School District School Board in Virginia, has been arrested for his participation in the January 6th insurrection:

Miles Adkins, 40, of Frederick County, faces four misdemeanor charges in federal court.

The FBI says a picture shows Adkins inside the Capitol helping someone else climb in through a window.

The FBI's criminal complaint includes an exchange of Facebook messages between Adkins and a friend with Adkins writing, "I'm getting food then fighting" and "I drank fireball and a coors lite in the capitol." The friend replied, "You guys better go out with a bang" and "don't let it be nothing." Adkins replied with a racial slur and "you know this."

The FBI says pictures show Adkins carrying a canned drink.

Even though Adkins states that he takes responsibility for what he is charged with, it's clear that he doesn't really mean that and quite probably is unclear on the concept of what is happening:

Adkins claims the Department of Justice targeted him because he's a Republican and said he will not resign his position on the school board.

"I don't put up with bullies in our school with our kids, so I'm not gonna be bullied out of this position, either," he said.

Adkins admitted his latest arrest is a distraction but wouldn't say how he plans to address the four federal charges he's facing.

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Best Actor

Good Sunday morning to all! Here is your very appropriate Sunday morning cartoon. I'm going to make coffee now. You should get some too, pull up a chair, and tell us what's on your mind this morning.

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Saturday, 2 March 2024

Late Night Music Club: Deep Purple - Smoke On The Water

I did not know this until yesterday, but Deep Purple's Smoke On The Water is actually based a story about how the band was in Montreux to record some tracks. They were to record in a casino there after Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention played a concert. However, during the concert, some idiot shot off a flare gun towards the ceiling, which caught on fire and the entire building burned to the ground.

Anyway, they have just released a deluxe edition of Machine Head, the album on which the song was first released. In honor of the new release, the song finally got its official video, which was released just yesterday. Using AI technology, the video reminds me a bit of the classic movie Heavy Metal mixed in with some other genres. It also shows clips from actual real life concerts as well.

As a point of interest, the guy who did the remixing is Dweezil Zappa, son of Frank Zappa, which kind of brings the whole thing full circle.

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New Missouri Bill Makes Teachers Who Use Pronouns Into Felons

A new bill introduced in the Missouri legislature makes it even less likely that people will see the state as a desirable destination. It would put teachers on the sex offense registry if they “contribute to social transition” of a trans youth- including pronouns, haircuts, information, and more. It would make the actions of the teacher “contributing to social transition” a class E felony. Via The Los Angeles Blade:

House Bill 2885 was introduced by Republican State Representative Jamie Ray Gragg (District 140 Christian County), a first term lawmaker who has previously publicly expressed strong anti-LGBTQ+ viewpoints as well as being anti-abortion rights. He sits on four House committees; Children and Families, Elementary and Secondary Education, Healthcare Reform, and Subcommittee on Appropriations- Education.

In the bill, the language reads:

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Apple cancels its car, Google’s AI goes awry and Bumble stumbles

Hello, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter covering noteworthy happenings in the tech industry. This week, investment firm KKR announced that it would acquire VMware’s end-user computing business from Broadcom for $4 billion. As Ron explains, that business included VMware Workspace One and VMware Horizon — two remote desktop apps that had […]

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Friday, 1 March 2024

Rants, AI and other notes from Upfront Summit

Venture capitalists were in Los Angeles this week for the Upfront Summit, an invite-only conference with celebrity sightings and plenty of talk on the future of the VC industry.

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A Very Confused Donald Trump Mumbles Something About Languages

While visiting the Southern border, Donald Trump said that people from other countries "don't speak languages." Earlier today on Truth Social, Trumpp said, "Crooked Joe Biden must take a Cognitive Test." It's always projection with this guy. Always. Because they can't admit defeat or failure of any kind, narcissists use projection as a defensive tool. Trump is very good at that.

"Because everybody I speak to says how horrible it is, nobody explained to me how allowing millions of people from places unknown, from countries unknown, who don't speak languages," Lumpy said. "We have languages coming into our country."

"We have nobody that even speaks those languages," he added. "They're truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them."

Oh, for fuck's sake. How can anyone continue to defend this guy?

Social media users went berserk:

If no one speaks it... Is it really a language? pic.twitter.com/ROYEoyZqLt

— Bill DeMayo (@BDeMayo) February 29, 2024

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/fJftuF6dte

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