Today’s music is definitely NSFW (shout out to Chafed who I suspect will appreciate this).

 

 

CHINA SUSPENDS CURRENCY SWAP DEAL WITH ARGENTINA: China has halted a currency swap deal worth $6.5 billion with Argentina. This decision comes just 10 days into the term of Argentine President Javier Milei, who had campaigned vehemently against China and advocated for severing ties.

STANFORD RESEARCHERS CLAIM AI BEING TRAINED USING CHILD PORN: Stanford Internet Observatory found more than 3,200 images of suspected child sexual abuse in the giant AI database LAION, an index of online images and captions that’s been used to train leading AI image-makers such as Stable Diffusion.

WHINY, IGNORANT LEFTIST BULLSHIT OF THE DAY: Don’t say that I didn’t warn you. Over at McSweeny’s, one Melanie Winklosky pens a petulant little open letter (a pretentious and desperate form of writing) to “the eleven adults responsible for the majority of book bans in schools.” Her first paragraph trashes a heavily suburban Virginia county because one of the eleven lives there, “Spotsylvania, which I imagined as a dark and misty town where dogs became vampires.” I can forgive her ignorance of Virginia (and Civil War) history and geography, but her etymological ignorance is truly disappointing in a writer. It only goes downhill from there as the author invites those eleven people to a Zoom meeting to explain it all to her, as if, somehow, those challenging books in the libraries of some government schools hadn’t explained their positions and rationale in popular media. But intellectual laziness seems par for the course for Winklosky.

COMMIE POPE ALLOWS BLESSING OF GAY COUPLES: Pope Francis announced his “conditional approval” for Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples – under certain circumstances – although he was keen to add that these blessings should not be seen as validation of same-sex relationships. “It will be possible to bless same-sex couples but without any type of ritualisation or offering the impression of a marriage.”  Needless to say this has pissed off both gays who are angered at the feeble gesture, and traditionalists who are also angered by the feeble gesture. I smell schism in the air.

NEWS THAT WILL SURPRISE ABSOLUTELY NOBODY: Eight high-profile Jeffrey Epstein associates redacted from the list of names expected to be released by a federal judge next year.

MALAYSIA TO OPEN ISLAMIC REHAB CENTRE FOR HOMOS NEXT YEAR: While there are worse third-world Islamic shitholes in which to be a homosexual, Malaysia is a pretty bad place for gays what with the canings and imprisonment and all. Conversion therapy is bullshit, and the folly of concentrating a bunch of homos together for the ostensible purpose of stopping them from sucking cock is obvious. Ultimately, I don’t know if this represents a step forward or a step backward for gay people there.

THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF FLORIDA MAN: In this week’s link, Florida Man attempts poisons nephew’s meatball sandwich with Visine. The nephew refused medical treatment and survived. Pro-tip: don’t put the poison on the sandwich in front of the store clerk.