Category: This is Not Cool

Where Did Venezuelan Bucks Go? Congress says “Show Us the Money.”

I don’t steal nearly enough material from Thom Hartmann.

So much Trumpian corruption has simply slipped down the memory hole because the zone is so flooded. Glad to see Rep. Casten get after Secretary Bessent here, but the scope of this criminality is just appalling.

Hartmann Report:

At any other time in American history, it would end the career of somebody like Scott Bessent, our limited-intelligence Treasury Secretary. It came out yesterday when Illinois Congressman Sean Casten was questioning him about the “billions of dollars” that Trump keeps claiming America is “getting” from selling Venezuelan oil. 

Bessent agreed with Trump, saying the oil and oil money we’ve seized from that country is “one of the largest assets to ever go on the U.S. balance sheet.” Billions and billions of dollars.

So Casten asked him a simple question: Can you tell us who controls that money and where it is? Can you confirm “whether or not those [funds] are flowing to U.S. persons?”

Bessent’s answer was a shocking single word: “No.” He ain’t talkin…

Did Trump take the oil and the money from the oil? Bessent refuses to say. Trump refuses to say. Nobody, in fact, in the Trump regime will tell us where that money is or who controls it or even who’s making the money accrued on its interest. 

Here’s what we do know:

Three days after Trump kidnapped President Maduro and his wife, he went on his Nazi-infested social media site and wrote that Venezuela’s oil revenues would be controlled by him personally “as President of the United States.” 

Three days after that, he signed an executive order declaring a “national emergency” involving that oil so no court or creditor could touch the money, screwing the bondholders and oil companies to which Venezuela owed roughly $150 billion. 

Then Trump started selling the oil we’d seized from Venezuela. The first load, according to Reuters and Semafor, went to commodity trading companies Vitol and Trafigura for about $500 million, groups that the Washington Post said both carry histories of bribery schemes tied to oil sales.

Continue reading “Where Did Venezuelan Bucks Go? Congress says “Show Us the Money.””

How Likely is an AI Built Pandemic?

David Bellamy is an Infrastructure Engineer for agentic training and a Harvard PhD Statistician, that I follow on X.
I hope he doesn’t mind that I quote him verbatim here.

David Bellamy on X:

I must be among an extremely small group of people (n=1?) that have both 1) trained a frontier LLM and 2) designed and synthesized custom viruses in a lab with my own two hands.

And I think that the takes on AI killing us all by creating dangerous viruses is total bogus.
Could an LLM propose a viral genome to synthesize? Sure. Could it be synthesize-able? Sure. Could it be infectious? Sure, it could just be a replica or a slight modification of a viral genome we already know.

This really isn’t the bottleneck to creating dangerous viruses. The bottleneck is in the physical process of synthesizing a virus and the equipment/goods needed to do so.
Designing a virus that can evade all forms of pandemic counterdefense is not something that a ‘genius in a datacenter’ can do. This is something that requires contact with the physical world and iteration.
Let me steelman the fearmongering as much as I can. Imagine a ‘fully automated’ viral synthesis laboratory. I’m talking automated freezers, automated cell culture room, the whole nine yards. This would be an extremely expensive lab – >>$100M. And there is no such thing as 1 lab that can synthesize all conceivable viruses. But let’s put practical constraint aside. Let’s suppose this hypothetical lab is built to synthesize the ‘most dangerous types’ of viruses known.

Continue reading “How Likely is an AI Built Pandemic?”

Time for an “I, Robot” Sequel?

The Three Laws of Robots, presented to be from the fictional “Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.” by Isaac Asimov, are:

  1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law

—
Recent events have made the 2004 Will Smith sci-fi thriller “I, Robot” a stealth hit on streaming.

There should probably be a corollary list for Action stars, –

“I will not stride on to the stage and slap the shit out of the MC at an Academy Award show.”

Runners Face Waist Deep Water

The New Normal is Nothing is Normal anymore.

New York Times:

A half-marathon race on Sunday in Paramus, N.J., nearly turned disastrous, as heavy rainfall flooded parts of the course and forced runners to wade through several feet of water.

No injuries were reported, but several runners posted videos to social media showing them traversing knee-deep waters throughout the course at Saddle River Park. The entire area had been placed under a flash flood warning on Sunday, and the organization behind the race, Racefaster, was criticized for going forward with the event despite those warnings.

Racefaster did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.

The race was supposed to start at 8 a.m., but organizers on Saturday opted to delay the half-marathon by two hours.

Samantha Spitaletta, a Bloomfield, N.J., resident who has run dozens of half-marathons, said it was already raining heavily when the race started. She said an organizer informed the runners to be aware of “ankle-deep water” in an early section of the course.

Continue reading “Runners Face Waist Deep Water”

Good News! AI Dangers are a Hoax, Like Climate Change!

BBC:

US President Donald Trump has said fears about the safety of artificial intelligence (AI) are a “hoax”, as he criticised calls to have more guardrails in place for the fast-moving technology.

It comes after Jack Clark, co-founder of AI giant Anthropic, told the BBCthat a “kill switch” that can be checked by a third party may need to be mandatory for the industry.

Clark’s comments followed warnings about the risks the technology poses to humanity that have been raised in recent days by several executives and staff at leading AI firms.

Those concerns triggered a selloff in tech firms’ shares as investors weighed the impact of a potential slowdown in the multi-billion dollar development of AI.

In a series of social media posts, the US president compared warnings about AI to the “Global Warming Scam” which, he said, was “being perpetrated by the Radical Left Dumocrats”.

Trump also called himself “the Hoax Buster”, likening concerns about the safety of the technology to what he called “the RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX”.

Continue reading “Good News! AI Dangers are a Hoax, Like Climate Change!”

US Drivers: All Bent Over and Now No Lube

That’s gotta hurt.

Yahoo:

Costco has raised the price of its Kirkland Signature full-synthetic motor oil and begun limiting how much any one member can purchase, as a global lubricant shortage tied to the ongoing Middle East conflict pushes crude oil toward $100 a barrel.

That 10-quart case — two 5-quart bottles, enough for a typical V6 or V8 oil change — has jumped to $57.99, compared with the roughly $30 price members had grown accustomed to paying, according to The Drive. Stores are capping purchases at two units per customer per week. The retailer has also imposed a five-per-member limit on Mobil 1, with six quarts of that brand running $44.

Oil Execs: Crisis is Here

UPDATE: Mr Global weighs in. Matt Randolph (aka Mr Global) is an experienced founder of Oil and Gas companies, now a YouTuber.

The Crisis, long warned, is here.
Be patient, we’re killing as fast as we can.

Wall Street Journal:

American oil executives warned for months that the prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz was bound to cause a fuel crisis. Now, they say it is here. 

Commercial fuel stocks around the world have been depleting for more than six months, and strategic crude reserves can’t be tapped much further. Attacks last week shut down a crucial crude pipeline in Saudi Arabia that bypassed the Strait, stranding at least 2.5 million barrels a day from an already tight global oil market, analysts estimate.

“All these mechanisms helped to mitigate the price and supply risk,” Chevron CVX Chief Executive Mike Wirth said Friday at an energy conference in Austin, Texas. “Those have largely now played out, and we don’t have nearly the buffers in the system that we did when it began.”

Continue reading “Oil Execs: Crisis is Here”

Oil Prices Still not Reflecting Reality

Ill considered Iran War continues to reveal how vulnerable global economies are in their dependence on fossil fuels.
A generation of business and political leaders are internalizing this message, and making plans accordingly.

CNBC:

Crude oil prices jumped Monday after Saudi Arabia closed its critical pipeline that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz, a disruption that will constrain global supplies at a time when the market is already tight.

Drones launched from Iraq damaged the East-West pipeline on Thursday, forcing the Saudi government to close the key crude oil artery. Riyadh has not disclosed how badly the pipeline is damaged or how long it will remain shut. 

“The relatively contained price reaction suggests the market still expects Saudi inventories to cushion exports in the near term, but if the disruption extends beyond the five-to-seven-day inventory cushion, that could change quickly,” said Janiv Shah, an oil market analyst at Rystad Energy, in a Monday note.

A pump station appears to have taken serious damage, said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates. Riyadh may be able to bypass the pump and restart the pipeline with lower output, Lipow said. This is why prices have not surged even higher, he said.

“The longer the shutdown, the higher the price. Judging from the on-line pictures, it will take months to repair,” Lipow said in a note Monday.

Continue reading “Oil Prices Still not Reflecting Reality”