12.25

Merry Christmas

Israel’s decades-long peace with Jordan is unraveling, a development that threatens to upset a fragile regional stability that is being challenged by countries like Iran, Russia, and China, a think tank report warns.

Offenders committed at least 420 acts of hostility against 397 separate churches in the United States between January 2018 and September 2022. These cases include everything from arson and gun-related violence to vandalism and bomb threats, the copiously documented, 84-page report specifies.

The picture is widely viewed as a work of art. More importantly to its creator, however, it was also a feat of electrical engineering. The longtime Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor used it to illustrate a lecture, famously titled “How to make applesauce,” in which he explained the pioneering flash technology that helped him take the shot.

“People involved in the auto industry are largely a silent majority,” Mr. Toyoda said to reporters during a visit to Thailand. “That silent majority is wondering whether EVs are really OK to have as a single option. But they think it’s the trend so they can’t speak out loudly.”

The Ukrainian army has released an instructional video explaining how Russian soldiers should surrender to a drone:

Port Authority Inspector General John Gay said: “This sophisticated, internationally coordinated conspiracy allegedly targeted hard-working taxi drivers trying to earn an honest living. The Port Authority has zero tolerance for bad actors violating the law at our facilities. We thank Damian Williams and the Southern District for their partnership as we continue our relentless commitment to detecting and disrupting illegal behavior at our facilities across the region.”

Many of those newly liberated works were forgotten, partly due to their great age, but also because no one knew who they belonged to (Congress abolished the requirement to register copyrights in 1976), so no one could revive or reissue them while they were still in the popular imagination, depriving them of new leases on life.

Tired of the tactics, a pair of energy industry groups have filed a lawsuit, alleging the Biden administration has failed to comply with federal mandates regarding how often auctions of land for oil and gas drilling are held.

“Foreign government-controlled laboratories should not be eligible to receive U.S. taxpayer dollars while they disregard our policies, dodge congressional oversight, or act against our national interest,” seven watchdog organizations led by the White Coat Waste Project wrote in a letter sent Friday to lawmakers on the House and Senate appropriations committees.

One of the problems with perverting the federal bureaucracy, as the Democrats have done, is that pretty much everyone loses faith in the integrity of government. At this point, there is no reason to assume that government numbers are accurate and unfudged. We have been lied to, too many times.

Gus Gran says it took them five hours to get only three miles back home.

After that Saturday night trip, I started asking my passengers how much they’d paid and comparing it to what I’d earned. The results were all over the map. I had two trips where I got more than 80 percent of the total fare, including tips. I had a couple of others where I earned less than 30 percent.

Not long ago, CIA veterans tell me, the information above the “tearline” of a U.S. government intelligence cable would include the station of origin and any other CIA offices copied on the report. I spent much of today looking at exactly similar documents, seemingly written by the same people, except the “offices” copied at the top of their reports weren’t other agency stations, but Twitter’s Silicon Valley colleagues: Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, LinkedIn, even Wikipedia. It turns out these are the new principal intelligence outposts of the American empire. A subplot is these companies seem not to have had much choice in being made key parts of a global surveillance and information control apparatus, although evidence suggests their Quislingian executives were mostly all thrilled to be absorbed. Details on those “Other Government Agencies” soon, probably tomorrow.

The Essay: 2022 gave us many reasons to be encouraged about our future 5QQ: 5 Quick Questions for … Rule of the Robotsauthor Martin Ford on the impact of artificial intelligence