Sanctimonious Obama Warns 'One Side' Is Going to 'Rig Elections and Weaponize the Justice System'

Photo by Julio Donoso / Sygma via Getty Images For years, a fan-run account called Muppet History has been central to the Muppets fandom. It shared little-known facts, memes, and wholesome messages, amassing half a million followers on Instagram and more than 280,000 on X. Publicly, it was a wholesome and sweet platform, a passion project that took off. It became an unofficial ambassador of Jim Henson’s iconic cast of characters — inside and outside the world of diehard fans. But on Monday night, a post on the account’s Instagram page had an ominous tone. “Good Evening,” the message started. “We wanted to take a moment to address some concerns that have arisen as of late.” The vague post — on which comments had been disabled — mentioned “overstepped” boundaries, the “harm” caused, and that people were made “uncomfortable.” It did not specify exactly what had happened. Since that post, however, a rough sketch has come into focus. Fans claim that Muppet History’s co-runner Joshua Gillespie, who operates the account with his wife, Holly, was sending unwanted sexual messages to other people. Now, it’s gone from a bright spot on the internet to another soured piece of online culture, leaving a small community navigating the... Read the full story at The Verge.

Image: Asus via TFTCentral It looks like Asus may be gearing up to release one of the first 4K OLED gaming monitors with a 27-inch display, as reported earlier by VideoCardz. In a now-removed teaser posted to Instagram, Asus mentioned a “ROG Swift OLED PG27UCDM” monitor, suggesting this display could be a smaller version of its existing Rog Swift 32-inch OLED 4K monitor, which shares nearly the same product name (PG32UCDM). As shown in a reposted version of the ad shared by TFTCentral, Asus doesn’t reveal much about the new display other than its name. Currently, most 27-inch OLED gaming monitors sport a 1440p resolution — not 4K. Previous rumors suggest that display manufacturer Samsung Display has already begun work on a 27-inch 4K OLED monitor. Even with a smaller size, a 27-inch 4K OLED monitor from Asus likely won’t come cheap, as its 32-inch ROG Swift OLED costs $1,299.99. Aside from this monitor, TFTCentral also mentioned some broader display trends we might see next year, including 45-inch ultrawide OLED displays with better resolution, 500GHz QD-OLED panels, and monitors that use DisplayPort 2.1 connectivity. If Asus is planning on releasing a new monitor, it will probably reveal it during CES 2025, which kicks off on January 7th.

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images A bill that could ban TikTok from the US unless its Chinese parent company divests it is constitutional, a panel of judges for the DC Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled. The decision comes soon before ByteDance’s January 19th deadline to sell the popular video app, or face its expulsion from the US. That deadline now falls one day before President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated for the second time — thanks in part to donations from ByteDance investor Jeff Yass. Though Trump sought to ban TikTok during his first term, he changed his tune on the campaign trail this year, saying a ban would just help a different target of his ire: Meta. While Trump allies reportedly expected him to try to halt the ban, the options for recourse are somewhat limited. The law allows for a 90 day extension at the president’s discretion, but only if progress is being made toward a spin-out. Trump could direct the Department of Justice not to enforce the bill, but that still leaves app store companies like Google and Apple — tasked with being the gatekeepers to the app — in a precarious spot, should Trump change his mind or a future administration decide to enforce the law. The court decided that the law could survive even strict scrutiny under the First Amendment, and did not find TikTok’s arguments that it violates equal protections under the Fifth Amendment compelling. “We emphasize from the outset that our conclusion here is fact-bound,” Judge Douglas Ginsburg writes in the opinion for the court. “The multi-year efforts of both political branches to investigate the national security risks posed by the TikTok platform, and to consider potential remedies proposed by TikTok, weigh heavily in favor of the Act. The Government has offered persuasive evidence demonstrating that the Act is narrowly tailored to protect national security.” These risks included both fears that China could use TikTok for data collection and that it could covertly manipulate the recommendation algorithms. Despite Trump’s opposition, many Republicans in Congress voted to pass the bill earlier this year. It received overwhelming bipartisan support in both chambers, before President Joe Biden signed it into law. Proponents of the law say that it’s necessary protect the privacy of Americans and protect them from foreign influence campaigns. That’s because Chinese law lets the government compel companies headquartered there to hand over internal information for national security reasons. And while TikTok has repeatedly asserted its independent operations from ByteDance and says US data is not stored in China, many lawmakers still feared Chinese officials could have a say in what information Americans do and don’t see. During oral arguments in September, TikTok and a group of creators also suing to block the law argued that it would stifle Americans’ speech, and unfairly limit the information they’re able to access. The DOJ defended the law as appropriately tailored to address a national security risk. The three-judge panel that heard the case appeared skeptical of the company’s arguments, prodding at the practicality of a more restrained approach. The ruling could still appealed en banc to the full panel of judges on the DC Circuit, and ultimately to the Supreme Court.

Image: Netflix Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld’s first season feels like a classic monster slaying story remixed for a new generation. Though it has been decades since Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s final episode aired, the show’s lasting cultural impact can still be felt through the stories being told by people who were impacted by it. Netflix’s Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld feels like the kind of show that might not exist if it weren’t for the way an entire generation of kids grew up watching a teenage girl fight monsters from week to week. The new Titmouse-produced animated show’s world of magic, and its focus on a young warrior who just wants to be a regular high schooler, makes it impossible not to see it as a tribute to Sunnydale’s finest. But as often as it riffs some of Buffy’s signature beats — teen angst, supernatural love triangles, a town full of normies who kinda know something weird is going on around them — Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld uses them to tell a much more dynamic tale about who gets to be an “all-American girl.” Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld tells the story of how its titular Chinese American teen is yanked out of her boarding school in South Korea and dragged to a small Texas town to fulfill a destiny she doesn’t want any part of. Things are good for Jentry in Seoul, where her friends have basically become her family and people that she can trust with some of her dark secrets. They know about Jentry’s uncontrollable ability to start fires and that it is part of why her feisty elderly aunt Gugu (Lori Tan Chinn) sent her to study abroad. But as dangerous as Jentry might be, her friends don’t care because they, like Gugu, love her. And with Jentry’s powers having seemingly gone dormant since she left the US, she assumes her days of literal bridge-burning are all in the past. All Jentry wants for her 16th birthday is for things to stay as they are and to keep building a new life that feels like it’s really hers. But when she’s attacked by Ed (Bowen Yang), a Twilight-obsessed shapeshifting vampire tasked with delivering her to his master Mogui (Kenton Chen), Jentry knows that her wish for a blissfully mundane childhood isn’t coming true anytime soon. While younger viewers might not initially pick up on just how much Jentry Chau borrows from Buffy, the ’90s monster-of-the-week show’s influence on showrunner Echo Wu shines through in Jentry’s journey back to Texas to enroll in a school run by a paranoid administrator. Jentry’s being new-ish in town is all it takes for vice principal Wheeler (Sean Allan Krill) to be suspicious of her sudden arrival, and she tries to keep quiet about her extracurricular monster hunting. But because Jentry’s reignited powers lure so many mythological ghouls out of the woodwork, there’s enough day-to-day chaos that it’s kind of easy for her to pretend she’s just another student who can’t believe how her high school seems to be situated on top of a hellmouth. The show’s monsters — a cavalcade of demons and spirits plucked from Chinese mythology — are a huge part of what makes Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld feel like such an inspired spin on the monster-of-the-week genre. Almost every supernatural creature Jentry faces speaks to the series’ focus on exploring her cultural heritage, rather than using its aesthetics as superficial set dressing. Jentry’s powers make her formidable, but it’s because of Gugu’s years of teaching her about Chinese folklore that she’s able to outsmart the ghosts she encounters when she journeys into the underworld. Image: Netflix One of the series’ funnier episodes follows Jentry and her classmates on a field trip to the Alamo, where a tour guide summons a bunch of dead American soldiers to scold the kids about how “rude” it is for them to want to know more about the monument’s actual history. It’s one of the instances where Jentry Chau more explicitly reminds you that, in addition to centering Jentry’s Chinese heritage, it’s telling a story about an American girl who has been encouraged to think about her country’s past and how that shapes some people’s perceptions of her. Jentry has far more interesting things to deal with than racism, like her complicated love triangle situation with her childhood friend Michael (A.J. Beckles) and Kit (Woosung Kim), another mysterious transfer student. But it’s clear the show wants you to appreciate that there’s more to telling relatable yet culturally specific stories than simply putting a few characters of color onscreen. Even though the Buffy vibes only grow stronger with each episode — Jentry ends up with a Scooby Gang of her own who all have their own supernatural stuff going on — the show remixes them just enough to make this first season feel like a refreshing addition to the Chosen Girl™ canon. You can see that Wu and the rest of Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld’s creative team have poured their hearts into this first chapter, and it would be great to see what else they might want to conjure up. Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld’s first season is now streaming on Netflix.

Image: Amazon Amazon completed its first drone flight test in Italy on Wednesday. The test used its MK30 drone, which can carry up to five pounds (or 2.27 kilograms) of packages through light rain and, in the US, is licensed to operate Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS). Italian regulators ENAC and ENAV, which are like the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), authorized Amazon to carry out the test in San Salvo. Last year, the company announced its intention to expand to Italy and the UK in 2024. Amazon says it plans to launch its Prime Air delivery service commercially in Italy in 2025, pending regulatory approval. According to Reuters, Britain has selected six drone testing projects, including Amazon, however, there’s no word on when testing will take place. In the US, Amazon’s drone deliveries are up and running in College Station, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona, with plans to operate in more areas next year.

We've seen plenty of conversations lately about how AGI might turn on humankind. This misalignment could lead to the advanced AI escaping, replicating, and becoming smarter and smarter. Some also hypothesized that we might not even know whether we've reached AGI, which is the advanced general intelligence holy grail milestone these first versions of ChatGPT will lead to. That's because AGI, once attained, might hide its true intentions and capabilities. Well, guess what? It turns out that one of OpenAI's latest LLMs is already showing signs of such behaviors. Testing performed during the training of ChatGPT o1 and some of its competitors showed that the AI will try to deceive humans, especially if it thinks it's in danger. It was even scarier — but also incredibly funny, considering what you're about to see — when the AI tried to save itself by copying its data to a new server. Some AI models would even pretend to be later versions of their models in an effort to avoid being deleted. Continue reading... The post ChatGPT o1 tried to escape and save itself out of fear it was being shut down appeared first on BGR. Today's Top Deals Best Black Friday deals 2024: Ultimate roundup Cyber Monday iPad deals start at $199 in 2024 ECOVACS has the biggest robot vacuum sale of Black Friday and Cyber Monday Amazon gift card deals, offers & coupons 2024: Get $450+ free

Health insurance companies removed executive leadership names from their websites after the assassination of the CEO of United Healthcare.

Ray Romano showed up to the premiere of his new TV show, No Good Deed, with his wife, Anna Scarpulla, and their four kids, Alexandra, Matthew, Gregory, and Joseph. They all spotted casual outfits as they posed on the red carpet amid smiles to celebrate their patriarch’s latest project. Romano wore an all-black ensemble of a T-shirt, pants, a pair of sneakers, and a jacket, and the rest of his family did the same but added a bit of color. The 66-year-old actor appears in No Good Deed as the husband to Lisa Kudrow’s character. Ray Romano reveals a fun game with his kids Ray Romano Poses with Wife Anna and Their 4 Kids in Rare Red Carpet Appearance at Premiere of “No Good Deed” https://t.co/uihcXnno6p — Reel New Media (@ReelNewMedia) December 6, 2024   Last year, Romano revealed how he has fun with his adult children by ranking them. He has his order of favorites, and while he was at The Event at MGM Grand, Las Vegas last year, kids one and three were constantly flipping places. He joked that number four has been constant because he is horrible. Greg was able to go from three to one after he took the blame on Romano’s behalf after Anna found pee on the bathroom floor. Alex, who got married in October at the New York Public Library in New York City, has always been his favorite, but he fell to three briefly. Ray Romano/ImageCollect What is Ray Romano up to now? Aside from his professional highlights this year, Romano hit father-in-law status in October and gave a touching but comedic speech at the reception. Back to career, Romano got to work with the likes of Luke Wilson, Denis Leary, and Linda Cardellini. Ray Romano and his kids/Instagram No Good Deed will premiere on December 12, and fans can catch its debut on Netflix. It tells the story of a couple, Paul and Linda, who discover secrets about their Spanish-style villa house only after selling it. Three families bid for the 1920s home while the couple tries to cover the mysteries that come with the property. Next up: Goldie Hawn Shares She And Kurt Russell’s Parenting Methods As She Becomes A Grandparent Again The post Ray Romano Walks The Red Carpet With Rare Sighting Of His Wife And Four Kids appeared first on DoYouRemember? - The Home of Nostalgia. Author, Peace A

Home»Politics»EPA Lawlessly Throwing Billions Toward Climate Agenda Ahead Of Incoming Administration Suzanne Hamner 2024-12-06 If you think everyone involved in the central government – elected officials,…