Happy Hour

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Every Time

Just assume there's a man behind the curtain.

The short is pretty charming. The two-minute video follows a yellow balloon-headed man named Sunny, whose disembodied voice provides an inspiring narration about embracing our big ideas and what makes us different as he and his helium cranium traverse cities, office spaces, meadows, and more.

But as Cederberg told FXGuide, creating Sunny wasn't as easy as inputting a prompt and pressing a button. Some of Sora's interprations of the Sunny character were — to put it bluntly — freakish, with the bot embedding a nightmare-fuel human visage into the balloon. Sora would also sometimes depict the balloon in the wrong color, which for some scenes meant that Shy Kids had to isolate and re-color the balloon in post using Adobe AfterEffects.

Bike Lock Drop

Shots

Deputy Commissioner Tarik Sheppard shows the chains used to secure Hamilton Hall at Columbia University.

"This is not what students bring to school. This is what professionals bring to campuses and universities." pic.twitter.com/fwFUPZlIj7

— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) May 1, 2024

for sharing purposes:

[image or embed]

— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) May 1, 2024 at 4:02 PM

Chaser.

And the New York Times:

City officials and the police said that the use of large chains to block doors and other tactics showed that “professional” activists were influencing student protesters. They have not named the outsiders who were involved in the protests and declined on Wednesday to say how many of the protesters who were arrested were not affiliated with the colleges.

New York Times earlier, recommending that lock and chain!

Lunch

eat

America's Worst Police Department

The New York Police Department.

Yes We Can

 

Good Enough for Journalism

 Amazing stuff.

Morning

Let's go.

Happy Hour

Get happy

Internet Down

Wouldn't be much of a problem as a hotspot is good enough for most purposes, except for some reason I live in a weird cellular black hole where the data service is not great despite being great very nearby!

Seems like one of those "hopefully we'll be able to make a service call soon..." things.

Alberto Gonzales Erasure

We should have a deep dive into why every political journalist in DC did their best to pretend Bush's US Attorney scandal didn't happen.

Such moves would be potentially catastrophic for the credibility of American law enforcement, scholars and former Justice Department leaders from both parties say. “If he ordered an improper prosecution, I would expect any respectable U.S. Attorney to say no,” says Michael McConnell, a former U.S. appellate judge appointed by President George W. Bush. “If the President fired the U.S. Attorney, it would be an enormous firestorm.” McConnell, now a Stanford law professor, says the dismissal could have a cascading effect similar to the Saturday Night Massacre, when President Richard Nixon ordered top DOJ officials to remove the special counsel investigating Watergate. Presidents have the constitutional right to fire U.S. Attorneys, and typically replace their predecessors’ appointees upon taking office. But discharging one specifically for refusing a President’s order would be all but unprecedented.

But I Won't Do That

I still remain a bit flummoxed by the fact that so much punditry has the theme of What Biden Needs To Do To Win The Election, acknowledging that politics is about getting people who are on the fence (either about whether or who) to vote for you, yet foreign policy - normally understand to be an important presidential issue, probably more than it should be - is met with little more than "bad orange man, suck it."

I'm not sure the Fetterman approach to politics, which currently is "vote for Biden, you Hamas supporting scum," is helpful! I mean, you can argue it doesn't matter, but I suspect it does! If your argument is it shouldn't matter, that people would be crazy to not vote or to vote for the bad orange man, well then we get to shut down the Biden campaign and go to brunch, because he's already won.  

I've also noticed a "Hastert rule" creeping in to Dem punditry: if something isn't important to the majority of potential Democratic voters than it shouldn't be important to any of them. You can apply these rules to your social media beefs but I don't think they're persuasive!

A Small Bit Of Good News

Credit where credit is due to a couple of Republicans.

Transgender youth in Kansas will continue to have access to gender transition surgery and hormone therapy after the Republican-controlled Legislature failed to override Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a ban on the care. The House on Monday voted 82-43 to override the veto, two votes short of what was necessary, after the Senate approved it 27-13 earlier in the day.

TOPEKA, Kan. -- A proposed ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors in Kansas died Monday when two Republicans switched their votes and prevented the Republican-controlled Legislature from overriding the Democratic governor's veto of the measure.

Lock Him Up!

Or maybe a $15 fine, whatever.

A judge on Tuesday held Donald Trump in contempt for violating the gag order in his New York criminal hush money case.

(okay it's a $9000 fine)

...the ruling says the Judge would like to do a bigger fine, because Trump has money, but the law won't let him, so jail is his only other option.

The Next 3-4 Years Are Critical

Longtime readers remember widespread self-driving cars adoption was just around the corner and self-driving trucks were the "easy" problem.

The self-driving semi, outfitted with 25 laser, radar and camera sensors, is owned by Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation Inc. Late this year, Aurora plans to start hauling freight on Interstate 45 between the Dallas and Houston areas with 20 driverless trucks.

Within three or four years, Aurora and its competitors expect to put thousands self-driving trucks on America’s public freeways. The goal is for the trucks, which can run nearly around the clock without breaks, to speed the flow of goods, accelerating delivery times.

The technology isn't fanciful anymore - I acknowledge that - but I still suspect the economic case is much less than its boosters claim.

I mean, to put it simply, truck drivers don't make that much money these days, and any self-driving operation will still need significant behind-the-scenes support.  It's not very clear that replacing drivers is really a big cost saver!

Of course automation has long replaced/complemented lower wage workers, but it's generally of the "big machine/big computer replaces hundreds of workers" variety not of the "big machine/big computer replaces one worker" variety.  

And like everything else, unless applications and production of the big machinecomputer scale, it won't be cheap!

Morning

go

Monday Night

Rock on.

...oops forgot to ctrl-c before ctrl-v.

The Rules-Based International Order

They were the ones who kept boasting about how that was their thing.

'We've been really clear about the ICC investigation, we don't support it, we we don't believe that they have the jurisdiction,' White House @PressSec Karine Jean-Pierre after reports Israeli officials fear the Hague-based court could soon issue arrest warrants over Gaza war

— Danny Kemp (@dannyctkemp) April 29, 2024

Happy Hour

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The MAGA Civil War

It might be over whether it's ok to shoot your puppy.

The great schism!