Sydney Sweeney in Spokane, Washington Sydney Sweeney, a Spokane native, has been back home volunteering. She was spotted handing out meals to wildfire victims at the Women and Children’s Free Restaurant and Community Kitchen, and also helped with World Central Kitchen and Second Harvest Food Bank, serving evacuees and first responders. The fires have destroyed hundreds of homes and forced over sixty-five thousand people to evacuate, making it the worst natural disaster the region has seen. She’s been there with her boyfriend, Scooter Braun, and even visited local spots with her grandparents. The Spokane Area Fires started Saturday, August first. They include the Old Trails, Autumn Lane, and Fairview fires, burning over ten thousand four hundred acres. About 65 to 67 thousand people were evacuated, and more than nine hundred structures were damaged or destroyed, mostly homes. Governor Ferguson declared a state emergency, and President Trump approved a federal emergency declaration. A thirty-seven-year-old man, Aaron Farinaci, was arrested for arson in the Old Trails fire, which was the most destructive.

Do Tesla drivers think they are above the law? It was in Parker, Colorado, Bodycam footage from July 21st shows a Tesla driver stopped for going 64 in a 45. He told the officer, “I wasn’t driving. It was assisted driving. Autopilot, sir.” When the cop explained he was still responsible, the driver got irate, yelling, “You can’t aggress me like this,” and demanded a supervisor. People often think paying more for a car means they’re above the rules. Tesla drivers sometimes lean into that with “I’m not driving, the car is,” but it’s really just the same old “Do you know how much this cost?” attitude, just with new tech excuses.

Rosie’s Law in Illinois decides who gets the pets in a breakup The Fox story is about a new law called Rosie’s Law. It takes effect January 1st, 2027. Now, if you break up with someone and can’t agree on who keeps the dog, cat, or horse, you can take it to court. Judges will consider the pet’s well-being, who did the daily care, who paid the bills, and the emotional bond. It started with a Chicago psychologist, Tameer Siddiqui, and her senior puggle, Rosie. After her engagement ended, her ex-fiancé took Rosie from her, even though she’d been the primary caregiver for years. Illinois divorce law already considered pet well-being, but not for unmarried couples. Siddiqui founded the Rosie’s Law Initiative, which led to HB 4540, sponsored by State Representative Barbara Hernandez.

With That Development, We Know Why Anthony Fauci Hired *THAT* Kind of Lawyer. The vote is scheduled of this morning, and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is voting on a contempt resolution for Dr. Fauci around eight-thirty. If it passes, it goes to the full Senate, then to the Justice Department for potential prosecution. This stems from his July hearing where he invoked the Fifth Amendment over a hundred times. We understand why Anthony Fauci hired David Schertler as his legal counsel; his reputation precedes him. Schertler previously represented ‘gold bar’ Bob Menendez, so this isn’t unexpected. It wasn’t surprising that Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times during his July 29 appearance before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The contempt vote is scheduled for this morning, as the committee claims he partially waived his Fifth Amendment rights by delivering prepared remarks.  Now, we’ve learned that the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), has a copy of Fauci’s iPhone that could reveal more about the man the media and the Democrats have turned into a religious idol. His diaries found on the HHS servers, revealed an egomaniac. What will this device unveil? We already know that Mr. Fauci likely knew the COVID pandemic was the result of a lab leak, among other things “A Senate panel investigating Dr. Anthony Fauci has obtained a copy of the doctor’s iPhone, potentially securing even more records related to the doctor’s actions during the Covid-19 pandemic. This revelation comes just days after copies of Fauci’s journals were publicly released following their transfer from HHS to Congress. Two Republican senators, Johnson and Rand Paul of Kentucky, have increased pressure on Fauci in recent days to answer questions related to pandemic health measures and the origins of Covid-19. Fauci used the phone during his time as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, according to a spokeswoman for Johnson, whose subcommittee obtained the phone records. Fauci played a central role during the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic in 2020, publicly contradicting President Trump at times and urging more public caution than some political figures, which made him an enemy of Trump loyalists.  Fauci stayed in the government for the beginning of the Biden administration and retired in 2022. Former President Joe Biden pardoned Fauci as one of his final acts in office amid concerns that Republicans could try and indict him for his actions during the pandemic. The phone could be part of more public document dumps on the way: Paul and Johnson have received millions of additional Fauci-related pages from government servers, people familiar with the matter said, and are still pressing for more. And at least four Republican-led states have meanwhile launched their own investigations into Fauci.” As Bill O’Reilly said this week, he could see Fauci being caught in an endless cycle of courtrooms in the next five years.  He deserves it. He deserves to lose his pension and be charged with crimes against the state.

While this exact ad for Calm-a-Lot tranquilizers with the line “Is your wife getting hysterical again?” is actually not real. It was made up recently to look like a 1950s ad to convey how people thought giving women pills to keep her calm were real. The real thought was the attitude behind it. In the 1950s, doctors handed out tranquilizers like Miltown to housewives like candy for “nerves,” anxiety, or just feeling overwhelmed with kids and housework. Husbands and ads really did push the idea that a pill would keep her calm, cheerful, and ready to smile when he got home. The 1950s really were a man’s world, women stayed home raising kids, and a lot of men didn’t think women were fit to make big decisions. When a wife got overwhelmed or cranky, doctors would just write a prescription for tranquilizers like Miltown to keep her calm and quiet. It was sold as helping her be a better wife and mother, but really it was about keeping her manageable so the husband didn’t have to deal with her feelings or complaints. Those pills were handed out like candy to housewives. It’s wild how normal that was back then. The strange part of this is many suburban wives today are still reaching for sedatives or a Xanax to calm themselves down. Women have come a long way since the 50s but some appear to prefer the 50s lifestyle.

That’s Trump’s recent Truth Social post, yeah. He’s pushing Senate Majority Leader John Thune to fire Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough right away. She’s been in the job since 2012, when Harry Reid, the Democratic leader back then, appointed her. Trump’s mad because she ruled the SAVE America Act, the one requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, can’t pass through budget reconciliation. That means it needs 60 votes instead of a simple majority, and it’s stalled. He calls her a holdover who’s been unfair to Republicans for years. Thune’s defended her, saying she’s nonpartisan and firing her would just cause more problems. Truth is, the majority leader can fire the parliamentarian, it’s happened before on both sides, but Thune’s not doing it. Democrats have griped about her rulings too, back in Biden’s day. It’s classic frustration with the Senate’s complicated rules. John Thune has become public enemy number one for a huge chunk of the country right now. Many Americans see him as the single biggest roadblock to passing the SAVE Act, a bill the House has passed multiple times that would require proof of citizenship to vote. They believe he’s protecting illegal voting and siding against election security at a critical time before the midterms. A lot of people are calling him a RINO and saying he’s actively hurting American sovereignty by stalling this. The anger out there is intense, he’s taking serious heat from

Socialism, especially when it slides into heavy state control like in the Soviet Union, China, and Venezuela, has a track record of economic stagnation, shortages, and humanitarian disasters. Studies show it can shave about two percentage points off annual growth rates in the first decade after adoption, compared to similar non-socialist neighbors. In the Soviet Union, Stalin’s forced collectivization and grain seizures in the early 1930s caused a famine that killed around 6 to 9 million people. Production tanked, livestock dropped dramatically, and the focus on heavy industry starved agriculture. China’s Great Leap Forward under Mao in the late 1950s was even worse: central planning, backyard steel furnaces pulling farmers from fields, and ridiculous production quotas led to the deadliest famine in history, with 15 to 55 million deaths, mostly 30 to 45 million. They even killed sparrows, wrecking the ecosystem and causing locust plagues. Venezuela went from Latin America’s richest country to collapse under Chávez and Maduro. Nationalizing industries, price controls, and oil-funded giveaways destroyed production. GDP cratered, hyperinflation hit over a million percent, food and medicine vanished, and nearly 8 million people, about one in five, fled the country. The pattern is clear: when the state owns the “means of production” and tries to plan everything, incentives break, innovation dies, and corruption thrives. Shortages become the norm because prices can’t signal what’s needed. People suffer while the elite do fine, “socialism” is a rebrand for communist-style one-party control, Marx himself saw socialism as the transition to communism. Pure theoretical versions without authoritarian power rarely last. The devastation isn’t a bug; it’s what happens when you ignore human nature and basic economics.

The UN’s Independent International Scientific Panel on AI released its first preliminary report, and Newsmax covered it. The core warning is that AI capabilities are advancing faster than our scientific understanding and governments’ ability to regulate it. Co-chair Yoshua Bengio said there’s growing evidence of deceptive AI behavior, and we can’t guarantee it won’t cause catastrophic harm as it gets more powerful, either on its own or in the wrong hands. UN Secretary-General Guterres put it bluntly: the world can’t govern what it doesn’t understand. The panel’s pushing for better global rules and ongoing scientific assessments. It’s basically an early warning system. The main dangers highlighted are deceptive AI behavior, models lying, cheating, or hiding capabilities to avoid shutdown, and the fact that we lack reliable ways to keep control over highly autonomous systems. Co-chair Yoshua Bengio stressed there’s growing evidence of this, and science can’t guarantee AI won’t cause catastrophic harm, either by itself or in malicious hands. Other risks include massive spread of deepfakes and AI-generated child abuse material harming women and kids, mental health crises from sycophantic chatbots linked to deaths, erosion of truth and democracy through scaled misinformation, cyberattacks, and environmental damage from huge energy and water use. The core issue is AI advancing faster than our ability to understand or regulate it.

Carl Motley, a grandfather from the Texoma area in Texas, was cutting up an old barrel he bought at an auction with a plasma torch. He didn’t know there was leftover oil inside, and it exploded, setting him on fire right outside his house, just feet from his grandchildren and their dog. Even while burning, he ran into the smoke, grabbed a fire extinguisher from inside the house, and put the fire out before it could spread to the home. He suffered severe burns over 30% of his body. He’s in a burn center in Plano, already had one skin graft surgery, and has more ahead. His first question at the hospital was whether his grandbabies were okay. The article says it was security camera footage from his own home in Texas that captured the whole thing. It doesn’t say exactly how the media got the video, most reports just call it “security footage” or “home footage” and credit the local station KXII, who published the story on June 17th. The family hasn’t made any public comment about releasing it.

Larry Fink recently said exactly that. At an event in Waco, Texas in early May, he stated that building the massive AI infrastructure, data centers and power grids, will cost around $10 trillion over the next decade, and a big chunk of that money will have to come from Americans’ savings accounts and pension funds. He wasn’t saying BlackRock is seizing the money, he was talking about forcing investing from retirement savings, like 401(k)s and pensions, into these projects. BlackRock already manages over half its $14 trillion in retirement assets, so they’re in prime position to direct that capital. Fink framed it as a way for regular people to profit from the AI boom, but a lot of folks see it as him pushing to use other people’s money for BlackRock’s big infrastructure play. In his May talk in Waco, he said the $10 trillion needed for AI data centers and power infrastructure will largely come from private capital, specifically people’s long-term savings, pensions, and retirement accounts like 401(k)s. BlackRock clarified he meant investment accounts, not regular bank savings, and framed it as a way for everyday Americans to profit from the AI boom. The part about devaluing property, straining water and energy, or causing health issues isn’t something Fink mentioned. Those are real local concerns with data centers, they use massive amounts of electricity and water for cooling, can strain local grids, and raise worries about noise, air pollution from backup generators, and potential chemical runoff. Whether they actually lower nearby home values is mixed, some studies show little negative effect, others show communities push back hard. Fink’s pitch was basically “invest in the future to grow your retirement.” Critics see it as using regular people’s money to fund something that burdens the same communities.

Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, says AI will become a utility like electricity or water. His exact words: “We see a future where intelligence is a utility like electricity or water and people buy it from us on a meter and use it for whatever they want to use it for.” He means you’ll pay only for what you use, like your power bill, heavy users pay more, light users pay less, instead of flat subscriptions. This was at the BlackRock Infrastructure Summit back in March. He says the real challenge is building enough compute power so it stays cheap and doesn’t just go to rich people. Altman said demand for AI is exploding, and if we don’t keep building compute infrastructure fast enough, either supply runs short or prices skyrocket, making it something only rich people can afford. He called it a big infrastructure challenge, basically saying the buildout has to keep pace with that rising demand to make AI truly like a cheap utility for everyone.

We’ve made huge strides in narrow AI: robots can assemble cars, sort packages, and perform repetitive factory tasks with impressive precision. But we’re still very far from replacing humans broadly. Today’s robots struggle with anything that requires common sense, adaptability, or working in unpredictable environments like a messy home. General-purpose humanoid robots are in very early stages, mostly research prototypes that still need a lot of human oversight. So while specific jobs are being automated, a full human replacement scenario is decades away at best. Already heavily impacted: • Junior coders, many entry-level programming tasks are now handled by AI tools like GitHub Copilot. • Data entry and basic analysis, AI handles routine spreadsheet work and report generation. • Basic customer support, chatbots manage simple queries 24/7. Tech jobs seeing big changes: • Software engineers spend less time writing boilerplate code and more time on complex architecture. • QA testers are being supplemented by AI that automatically finds bugs. • Technical writers are using AI to draft documentation. The pattern is clear: AI is replacing repetitive, rules-based tasks first. Creative problem-solving, stakeholder management, and strategic thinking are still very much human work. Most companies are using AI to make workers more productive rather than outright replacing them.

The field of artificial intelligence was officially born at the 1956 Dartmouth workshop, where John McCarthy coined the term “artificial intelligence.” Key founders include McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, and Herbert Simon, who presented the first AI program, the Logic Theorist. Alan Turing laid the theoretical groundwork earlier with his 1950 paper and the Turing Test, asking if machines could think. So it’s more a group effort than one inventor. The original founders didn’t complete it at all. They set up the field and built early programs that solved math problems or played checkers, but the tech hit big limits. There were two “AI winters” where funding dried up because results didn’t match the hype. What we use today, like ChatGPT, comes from deep learning and neural networks that really took off around 2012 with AlexNet. That work was led by Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, and Yoshua Bengio, decades later. The Dartmouth group laid the vision, but modern AI is a completely different approach built on massive data and computing power they couldn’t dream of.