In the weeks after a widely shared video circulated online where politicians urged servicemembers to refuse illegal orders, a separate campaign began placing billboards near Florida military communities with a shorter message: "Obey Only Lawful Orders."
President Donald Trump struggled to offer much sympathy for the families of about 100 Americans -- many of them U.S. military veterans -- who have died fighting in Ukraine. read more
Elon Musk said on Tuesday his artificial intelligence startup xAI has bought a third building to expand its infrastructure, aiming to boost training capacity to nearly 2 gigawatts of compute power.
Finnish police on Wednesday seized a ship sailing from Russia on suspicion of sabotaging an undersea telecoms cable running from Helsinki to Estonia across the Gulf of Finland, an area hit by a string of similar incidents in recent years.
President Donald Trump says he believes the 2026 midterm elections will center on "pricing" as Republicans head into a critical period with control of Congress on the line. read more
Chinese New Year
en.wikipedia.org
... Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival (see also Names), marks the beginning of a new year on the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar. It is one of the most important holidays in Chinese culture and was placed on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list in 2024.
Marking the end of winter and the beginning of spring, this festival takes place from Chinese New Year's Eve (the evening preceding the first day of the year) to the Lantern Festival, held on the 15th day of the year.
The first day of the Chinese New Year falls on the new moon that appears between 21 January and 20 February.[a] ...
Zohran Mamdani will be first mayor to be sworn in on Quran during New York City inauguration
www.foxnews.com
... New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's campaign confirmed on Wednesday he will make a historical move on New Year's Day, using the Quran during his swearing-in ceremony.
Mamdani, a 34-year-old Ugandan-born socialist, will be the first Muslim mayor of New York City and the first mayor to be sworn in using the Quran, the central religious text of Islam.
New York Attorney General Letitia James will host a private midnight ceremony at Old City Hall Station, a historical decommissioned subway station, before he is sworn in during a public inauguration on the steps of City Hall by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Thursday afternoon.
He will use two family Qurans, as well as one that belonged to writer and Puerto Rican activist Arturo Schomburg, who built the foundation for Harlem's Schomburg Center for research in Black culture. ...
U2 - New Year's Day (1983)
www.youtube.com
Lyrics excerpt ...
...
The lyric had its origins in a love song from Bono to his wife, but was subsequently reshaped and inspired by the Polish Solidarity movement.
[Verse 1]
All is quiet on New Year's Day
A world in white gets underway
I want to be with you, be with you night and day
Nothing changes on New Year's Day
On New Year's Day
[Chorus]
I will be with you again
I will be with you again
[Verse 2]
Under a blood red sky
A crowd has gathered in black and white
Arms entwined, the chosen few
The newspaper says, says
[Pre-Chorus]
Say it's true, it's true
And we can break through
Though torn in two
We can be one
[Chorus]
I, I will begin again
I, I will begin again
...
[Verse 3]
And so we're told this is the golden age
And gold is the reason for the wars we wage
Though I want to be with you, be with you night and day
Nothing changes New Year's Day
...
... His announcement comes after the US Supreme Court last week rejected his request to allow him to deploy the guard to Chicago to protect ICE agents as part of the administration's ongoing immigration crackdown. ...
Bobby Fuller Four- I Fought the Law (And The Law Won) (1966)
www.youtube.com
Lyrics excerpt ...
...
Popularized by Texas rockers the Bobby Fuller Four in 1965 and covered by countless artists in the decades since, "I Fought the Law" is one of rock's most enduring anti-authority anthems. The song is sung from the perspective of a prison inmate serving time for armed robbery, and while he cops to his crime and accepts his punishment, he offers nothing in the way of apology.
[Verse 1]
I'm breakin' rocks in the hot sun
I fought the law and the law won
I fought the law and the law won
I needed money 'cause I had none
I fought the law and the law won
I fought the law and the law won
...
@#227 ... It appears Lisa Demuth has an agenda ...
Ya think?
Then I see this ...
'We're serving the children' | A look inside a Minneapolis child care center accused of fraud in now-viral video
www.kare11.com
... Hasin shared surveillance video of Shirley's visit to the center, saying Shirley was there for only a few minutes. According to Hasin, Shirley arrived a little after noon and was accompanied by masked men driving a vehicle with no license plates.
"A lot of people are not feeling safe," Hasin said. "Some people believe him. The viral video was shared everywhere." ...
According to the state, ABC Learning Center has been open for about six years and is licensed to serve up to 40 children. Hasin said the center operates seven days a week and was open at the time of Shirley's visit two weeks ago.
"The center is running. There are children here. We're serving the children," Hasin said.
"DHS just came three months ago.
They also came yesterday, so this is a regular business that's running."
Hasin said he and other employees have been receiving threatening phone calls from people across the country since the video went viral. ...
Elon Musk's AI chatbot is suddenly posting antisemitic tropes (July 2025)
www.cnn.com
... Grok, the AI-powered chatbot created by Elon Musk's xAI, has begun pushing antisemitic tropes in its responses to some users' queries, weeks after Musk said he would rebuild the chatbot because he was unsatisfied with some of its replies that he viewed as too politically correct.
On Tuesday, Grok connected several antisemitic tropes to an X account with a name it identified as being "Ashkenazi Jewish" that caused controversy with offensive comments posted online about the victims of the recent Texas floods.
"[T]hat surname? Every damn time," Grok said in response to a user who asked the bot to identify a woman in an unrelated image. When a user asked the chatbot to elaborate, Grok responded that, "'the type' in that meme often points to surnames like Goldstein, Rosenberg, Silverman, Cohen, or Shapiro -- frequently popping up among vocal radicals cheering tragedies or pushing anti-white narratives. Pattern's anecdotal but persistent; not every one fits, but damn if it doesn't recur."
When asked by another user "who is controlling the government," the bot replied with an answer with more anti-Jewish tropes. ...
@#5
Then there's this ...
Just the start': X's new AI software driving online racist abuse, experts warn (January 2025)
www.theguardian.com
... A rise in online racism driven by fake images is "just the start of a coming problem" after the latest release of X's AI software, online abuse experts have warned.
Concerns were raised after computer-generated images created using Grok, X's generative artificial intelligence chatbot, flooded the social media site in December last year.
Signify, an organisation that works with prominent groups and clubs in sports to track and report online hate, said it has seen an increase in reports of abuse since Grok's latest update, and believes the introduction of photorealistic AI will make it far more prevalent.
"It is a problem now, but it's really just the start of a coming problem. It is going to get so much worse and we're just at the start, I expect over the next 12 months it will become incredibly serious." ...
Wall Street Journal " Bias and Credibility
mediabiasfactcheck.com
... Overall, we rate the Wall Street Journal Right-Center biased due to low-biased news reporting combined with a strong right-biased editorial stance.
We also rate them Mostly Factual in reporting rather than High due to anti-climate, anti-science views, and occasional misleading editorials. ...
@#2 ... ... Tesla Inc. took the unusual step of publishing a series of sales estimates indicating the outlook for its vehicle deliveries may be lower than many investors were expecting. ...
Tesla seems to be having issues of late.