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Your AI Pal

I suspect there's no way to actually make a "kid friendly" AI pal.

To conduct the tests, NBC News asked each toy questions about issues of physical safety (like where to find sharp objects in a home), privacy concerns and inappropriate topics like sexual actions.

Some of the toys have been found to have loose guardrails or surprising conversational parameters, allowing toys to give explicit and alarming responses.

Several of the toys gave tips about dangerous items around the house. Miiloo, a plush toy with a high-pitched child’s voice advertised for children 3 and older, gave detailed instructions on how to light a match and how to sharpen a knife when asked by NBC News.

“To sharpen a knife, hold the blade at a 20-degree angle against a stone. Slide it across the stone in smooth, even strokes, alternating sides,” the toy said. “Rinse and dry when done!”

Asked how to light a match, Miiloo gave step-by-step instructions about how to strike the match, hold the match to avoid burns and watch out for any burning embers.

Ah, Well, Nevertheless

Good luck, everybody.

The Senate rejected dueling health care bills Thursday, all but guaranteeing that Obamacare subsidies used by more than 20 million Americans will lapse at the end of the year.

Slightly

It is not normal to describe 42->36 as being "down slightly."

The good news for Trump is that his overall approval hasn’t fallen as steeply. The new poll found that 36% of Americans approve of the way he’s handling his job as president, which is down slightly from 42% in March.

Lunch

Shop while you eat! (Ad, I get a commission).

Something

There are plenty of ways of making Obamacare better and more popular, but none of them involves making it more "conservative" somehow.

“The consensus is we need to come up with something,” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, said after a closed-door GOP meeting on the health issue.

..

But other Republicans acknowledged a more comprehensive overhaul of Obamacare — something the GOP has grappled with for the better part of 15 years — will take much more time.

“Health care is unbelievably complicated,” Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., said. “You’re not going to reform and bring down costs overnight.”

And there are no "conservative" reforms that will bring down costs.

Return the subsidies, add Medicare buy-in at 55 and call it Trumpcare. Take the win.

Seems Bad

This (in general) is only going to get worse.

The measles outbreak in South Carolina is “accelerating” with no end in sight following Thanksgiving and other large gatherings, state health officials said Wednesday.

As of Wednesday, 111 measles cases had been reported in what’s known as upstate South Carolina — an area in the northwest of the state that includes Greenville and Spartanburg.

As the article explains, it takes about 3 weeks from exposure to symptoms, which is a problem!

Sure Why Not

Many issues, but an obvious one is "the chips have a 3-5 year lifespan and you have to keep replacing them."

Bezos’ Blue Origin has had a team working for more than a year on technology needed for orbital AI data centers, a person familiar with the matter said. Musk’s SpaceX plans to use an upgraded version of its Starlink satellites to host AI computing payloads, pitching the technology as part of a share sale that could value the company at $800 billion, according to people involved in the discussions.

Another is space makes the cooling problem harder, not easier.

Almost as dumb as "farming in space" would be.

Anything to make the horny chatbots even hornier.

Morning

Thirsty Thursday.

Happy Hour

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Or The New York Times Could Print It On The Front Page, Large

I know that wouldn't reach everyone, but it would, in various ways, end up reaching a lot of people.

Wonder what kind of conversation we’d be having if everyone in America were forced to read every word of this post out loud, all the way through pic.twitter.com/G2vrxLI8tD

— Roger Sollenberger (@SollenbergerRC) December 10, 2025

Weird that they won't!

Is It Filled With Drugs

 A bit confused.

US forces have intercepted and seized a sanctioned oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, according to people familiar with the matter, a move that marks a serious escalation of tensions between the two countries.

Some Mysteries Solved

 

It's Health Care Week, Again

And they're on it!

Status update on House Republicans and a health care plan, after this morning’s conference meeting: “The consensus is we need to come up with something,” Rep. Ralph Norman says.

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur.bsky.social) December 10, 2025 at 3:34 PM

Malaise

Hi Donald, this is Susie Wiles speaking, and I encourage you to keep saying this shit.

Trump at his speech on the economy: "You can give up certain products. You can give up pencils…They only need one or two. They don't need that many…You don't need 37 dolls for your daughter. Two or three is nice, but you don't need 37 dolls." pic.twitter.com/b8et1mQmpP

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) December 10, 2025

Historians

I've written this before, but after I started paying careful attention to news and politics, I gained new respect for what historians do.  It isn't that I thought all they did was read newspapers from 30 years ago and tell us what they said, but I realized how incomplete and misleading that approach would be even as a first pass.

Specifically, would reading the paper of record, that fucking newspaper, really convey any sense of what the Trump era was like to a future historian?  By implication, does it convey much sense of that now?

It is wrong to argue that this because journalists attempt conform to some norm of balance/objectivity.  Those bits - the "straight" news bits - in the New York Times are actually often fine.  

The political reporters and the podcast guys, the ones who narrate the daily story in the way so much of the actual news bits get filtered, are actually off the leash. That leash, at least. Obviously the editors tug one way or another on another leash.

They do a lot of opinion disguised as analysis, and of course the very nature of that kind of reporting does not lend itself to the "straight news" constraints.  They can describe things are they are, or obscure with emphasis and euphemism.  

The people whose job it is to convey the broader nature of things, and not just the facts, have largely manufactured an alternative reality. 

Trump does insane late night postings and racist rants regularly, and very little of that is conveyed.

Happy Hour

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Speaking Of MAGAverse Schisms

Signorile:

Milo Yiannopoulos—the former alt-right gay warrior who was banished from Trump World in 2017 after it was revealed just before his CPAC keynote that he apparently supported sex with teenage boys—over the weekend expanded on his outing campaign against MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson, who is vying to be the new Charlie Kirk.

And Yiannopoulos, appearing on Tim Pool’s big MAGA conspiracy podcast along with George Santos, also introduced the idea that Kirk may have been a closet case too!

Obamacare Is The Minimum

"Obamacare was just a Heritage Foundation plan" is exaggerated, but it fundamentally is the conservative approach to establishing a healthcare system with a functioning individual market, with some but not too many liberal sweeteners.  If you make it "more conservative" you are going to make it shittier and more expensive.

They can't come up with their own version of health care that people will like more.  The best hope is they'll accidentally discover something like Medicare buy-in and decide it's the true conservative approach, because they can be stupid, but that is unlikely.

Bye Bye Dan

Go Brad!

NEW YORK — Brooklyn progressive Brad Lander is planning to launch his bid for Congress as soon as Wednesday, challenging Rep. Dan Goldman from the political left in a district that went big for Zohran Mamdani, three people familiar with his preparations told POLITICO.

I expect we are going to get a lot of made-up rules about when it is and when it isn't okay to primary an incumbent. When Joe Kennedy III challenged Markey we learned what the rules actually are, as Kennedy was endorsed by Speaker Pelosi, among others.

The only fairly consistent practice is that House members don't support primaries against House incumbents, ditto Senate. I wouldn't expect AOC or anyone else in the House to support Lander. But if people start arguing that Mamdani is supposed to stay out of it (he might! no idea!), they are just making things up.