Hello, good evening, happy Friday. I hope you all had a lovely Valentine’s Day. Personally, I am just thrilled that Taylor Swift won the Super Bowl in her rookie year. She deserves it. I hope we get Spongebob on Election night.
INJECT IT INTO MY VEINS
I don’t care if he somehow manages to wriggle out of this one (how? truly?), this shit is still fucking incredible:
A New York judge Friday ordered Donald Trump to pay about $454 million in total penalties as part of his ruling in the former president’s civil business fraud trial.
The staggering figure includes about $355 million in disgorgement, a term for returning ill-gotten gains, plus more than $98 million in pre-judgment interest that will accrue every day until it is paid, according to a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office.
Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron also barred Trump from running a business in New York for three years.
The former president also faces a three-year ban on applying for loans from financial institutions registered with the state.
92 pages!
You are not Pierogi
Do not talk to scammers:
In New York magazine’s the Cut, the writer Charlotte Cowles has offered up a memoiristic account of being scammed out of $50,000. It’s a humbling tale made all the more mortifying because Cowles, who personally handed her scammers fat stacks of cash in a taped-up shoe box, is the financial advice columnist for the magazine. Lord have mercy.
Listen, maybe don’t
I don’t know man, this just feels cartoonish:
An ornately clad royal, draped in velvet and frills, sits at his dressing table within the hallowed halls of Versailles awaiting a final dusting of powder. Just then, a courtier bursts in with an urgent message concerning the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
You have to spend the money
Or else it’s just a number:
Chicago spent just 29% of the federal relief funds officials promised to use to strengthen the city’s tattered social safety net and provide direct aid to Chicagoans struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic by the end of 2023, according to a WTTW News analysis.
In all, Chicago spent less than $160 million on a host of programs including affordable housing, mental health, violence prevention, youth job programs and help for unhoused Chicagoans through Dec. 31, according to the most recent reports filed with the U.S. Department of the Treasury as required by federal law.
Chicago’s entire budget for the federally funded programs is approximately $550 million, records show.
Seriously, what the fuck! What was Lori doing!
False spot
Gunshot Detection Technology does “not translate to any meaningful improvements to crime control outcomes,” according to a new study funded by the National Institute of Justice.
The study also concluded that Gunshot Detection Technology (GDT) “had no effect on fatal shootings,” in Chicago.
The study, which appears to be the most comprehensive study yet of the effects of GDT on crime, was conducted by investigators from Northeastern University, Boston College, Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis and others.
Ourobotoros
Yeah, okay, this checks out:
ChatGPT exploded into the world in the fall of 2022, sparking a race toward ever more advanced artificial intelligence: GPT-4, Anthropic’s Claude, Google Gemini, and so many others. Just yesterday, OpenAI unveiled a model called Sora, the latest to instantly generate short videos from written prompts. But for all the dazzling tech demos and promises, development of the fundamental technology has slowed.
The most advanced and attention-grabbing AI programs, especially language models, have consumed most of the text and images available on the internet and are running out of training data, their most precious resource. This, along with the costly and slow process of using human evaluators to develop these systems, has stymied the technology’s growth, leading to iterative updates rather than massive paradigm shifts. Companies are stuck competing over millimeters of progress.
Sisyphean swiping
You’re not insane, according to these plaintiffs, the app really does hate you:
The popular dating apps Tinder, Hinge and the League hook users with the promise of seemingly endless romantic matches in order to push people to pay money to continue their compulsive behavior, according to a federal lawsuit filed in San Francisco on Wednesday.
The suit, brought by six plaintiffs in states including New York, California and Florida, argues that dating app parent company Match Group gamifies the services "to transform users into gamblers locked in a search for psychological rewards that Match makes elusive on purpose."
But amid growth that places dating apps front and center in our lives, one of those apps, Hinge, faces a problem.
New analysis finds that the number of complaints lodged against the app through the Better Business Bureau, a consumer advocacy group, per million monthly active users is nearly four times that of Tinder, and eight or more times that of Bumble. And of those complaints, almost 98% are related to unjustified user bans from the app.
You deserve some good animal content
https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1758329134957162708
https://twitter.com/apurv_anand/status/1758329684599931191
https://twitter.com/ServalEveryHr/status/1758642705801068751
https://twitter.com/GoldretrieverUS/status/1758616243542630688
https://twitter.com/OregonZoo/status/1758564618530943034
https://twitter.com/weirdlilguys/status/1758496352953139687
https://twitter.com/GoldretrieverUS/status/1758453198413549658
Have a good weekend.
Addendums
Twitter Files’ Matt Taibbi Says Elon Musk Sent Him Unhinged Messages. Alexey Navalny troubled the Kremlin like no one else before him. Why Russia Killed Navalny. Is Your Instagram Husband Good Enough for the Internet? Elon Musk is finally resigned to making X more like old-school Twitter. New York Times, Get out of My School. Red flags, missed clues: How accused US diplomat-turned-Cuban spy avoided scrutiny for decades.