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Obstructionist Husband

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Bitcoin has lost half its value in less than 12 months, down 13% in June thus far [Jun. 14th, 2026|11:40 am]
Obstructionist Husband
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Wow. An "investment" that is not based on anything is losing value? Whouldathunkit. Now, if you'd generated a few hundred Bitcoins at the beginning when it was possible and sold them when they were worth $100,000+, that would have been quite awesome. But it still wouldn't have been an investment: it would have been speculative trading to other speculators. Because there's nothing behind it. Still, the only value in Bitcoin is other people buying it and it being used for illegal activity such as to traffic in drugs and paying ransomware demands.

This is an excellent quote from the CNBC article: "Bitcoin differs from stocks, bonds and real estate because it doesn’t generate earnings, interest payments or rental income that investors can use to estimate its value, says Robert Johnson, a finance professor at Creighton University. Instead, its price is largely determined solely by investor demand.

“You cannot invest in Bitcoin, you can only speculate,” he says."

A comment in the Slashdot story notes that prominent FORMER promotors of Bitcoin, Marc Andreesen and Peter Thiel are no longer singing the praises of Bitcoin, they're now telling people to invest in AI. Apparently they made their money in BC and got out.

By the way, unless you're really good at timing markets, don't invest in AI.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/12/bitcoins-price-drop-is-forcing-investors-to-revisit-why-they-own-it.html

https://slashdot.org/story/26/06/14/0817238/bitcoin-has-lost-nearly-half-its-value-in-11-months
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More stories of AI enshitification [Jun. 9th, 2026|08:04 pm]
Obstructionist Husband
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First up, town leaders screwing over the will of good people.

In 1999, a farmer in Taylor, Texas deeded the town almost 88 acres of land for $10 for the express purpose of turning the acreage into a park.

It has now been sold to a data center developer called Blueprint for $10 million to build a 135,000 square foot facility.

There was zero public input. And the town council says that it is a done deal and cannot be stopped.

https://gizmodo.com/a-farmer-donated-land-for-a-public-park-and-the-city-sold-it-to-a-data-center-developer-for-10-million-2000769211


Next, attorneys using chatbots badly.

A case in the Northern District of Mississippi, an attorney - Tom Withers - is suing the City of Aberdeen for unpaid legal fees. Now, the conventional wisdom is that a person representing themselves in court has a fool for a client, and Tom seemingly is no fool, had two lawyers representing him. The city had two attorneys representing them.

BOTH SIDES filed briefs mostly or completely generated by AI. With hallucinated citations, i.e. citing court cases that do not exist, i.e. BOOOOGUS. Neither side checked their own citations, nor did they check the other side's citations.

The judge was not amused.

ALL FOUR attorneys were fined. But the biggie was that two of them were BARRED FROM APPEARING BEFORE THE COURT FOR TWO YEARS! That's one from each side. THAT is going to be sting as it will greatly reduce their ability to provide representation, and since a city is always involved in law suites, it's really going to hurt his job.

The proceedings were paused, the case was cancelled, and all four attorneys were dismissed from the case.

Maybe Tom should have represented himself. He probably couldn't have done worse.

https://gizmodo.com/judge-cancels-whole-case-after-lawyers-admit-they-didnt-read-ai-generated-filings-2000769668
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SpaceX rejected in attempt to get listed in the S&P 500 index! Bodes ill for AI IPOs... [Jun. 8th, 2026|01:52 pm]
Obstructionist Husband
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Ah, what a lovely article! Sometimes standards get upheld!

As you may have heard, SpaceX has filed to do an IPO (initial public offering [of stock shares]) and go on the stock market. Lots and lots of people are salivating, perhaps Leon Muskbrat most of all. They also filed with the New York Stock Exchange for a quick listing on the Standard & Poor 500 stock market index.

And they were rejected to get listed on that index.

HAD they been accepted, their valuation would have skyrocketed, no pun intended. Lots of institutional investors buy funds directly based on the S&P rather than or in addition to buying individual stocks, so that mix would have contained SpaceX immediately.

What squelched the deal?

A basic problem that Musk-lead companies have long had: profitability.

In order to be included in the S&P 500, the company has to be currently profitable, and must have been profitable in the four preceding quarters. SpaceX is not currently posting a profit, and never has. There is also a rule that they must release at least 10% of their shares to be publicly traded, SpaceX is going to release 3%. After a month-long consultation to decide whether to allow the rules to be waved to allow SpaceX into the club, the decision was made to not open the door.

This may hamper Muskbrat's quest to become the world's first trillionaire. Now, will he alter the IPO to let loose more shares to meet the 10% threshold, and will he alter operations to make it more profitable? I expect that among the things dragging it down is he's making SpaceX buy almost all of the Tesla Cybertruck production to keep Tesla's sales chugging along. Apparently SpaceX's debt load is $29 BILLION dollars US because of its AI debt load. That's a big load on profitability, having to service that amount of debt.

The AI company Anthropic has also filed for an IPO. It's sealed, so details are not much available, like what percentage of shares will be let loose. But like all AI companies, it is not profitable.

However, Leon did get some good news with the Nasdaq folks, who decided"... to allow SpaceX to enter the Nasdaq-100 Index within 15 trading days as opposed to the usual three months. Similarly, the FTSE Russell index provider decided to give SpaceX and other follow-on companies accelerated entry to the Russell Top 500 Index after the close of the fifth trading day following an IPO."

But there was even more bad news for SpaceX: "...Morningstar analysts described SpaceX as having been “significantly overvalued” in the lead-up to its IPO. The investment research firm valued SpaceX at $780 billion—less than half of SpaceX’s $1.75 trillion IPO goal—primarily based on the strengths of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite service and rocket launch business."

OUCH! A Muskbrat-led business overvalued? Say it isn't so!

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/sp-500-blocks-fast-spacex-entry-wont-waive-rule-for-unprofitable-ai-firms/
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RIP: Anthony Head, known for Buffy the Vampire Slayer among many other things [Jun. 5th, 2026|02:39 pm]
Obstructionist Husband
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Ah, a sad day. He was a marvelous actor and did a lot of work. Aside from the TV series Buffy, he appeared in the Apple TV series Ted Lasso, and from the AP article: "...Other notable roles included playing Geoffrey Howe, the deputy to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, played by Meryl Streep, in the Oscar-winning “The Iron Lady.”

Head portrayed a prime minister himself in the sketch comedy show “Little Britain,” as well as King Uther Pendragon, the father of Prince Arthur, in the “Merlin” TV series. He also appeared in “Motherland,” Manchild,” and “Silent Witness,” along with acting in many plays, musicals, and recording music as a singer.

Head passed away 'due to complications from pneumonia'. He will be missed.

https://apnews.com/article/anthony-head-obit-buffy-vampire-lasso-a1c56edf560de048e730a2cf337e4223
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Amazon cancels the Stargate TV series before it fully starts production [Jun. 4th, 2026|10:07 am]
Obstructionist Husband
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Well, the odds weren't good that it would see the light of day. I had just heard they were in development earlier this year. I was really looking forward to this, we enjoyed the original and the SG-1 series.

I still cringe whenever I'm in a theater and I see the MGM logo and Amazon with it. It just makes me sad. Perhaps it's better than MGM dying entirely, but not by much.

https://screenrant.com/stargate-amazon-new-series-canceled/
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Pope Leo issues an encyclical about artificial intelligence [May. 28th, 2026|01:49 pm]
Obstructionist Husband
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This came out two weeks ago, and I'm not commenting on it as I'm reading it right now: I just converted it to an epub and at 43,000 words it's about 80 pages long in a double-page format on my laptop. It's going to take some time to chew through and form opinions on. There's definitely a lot to think about.

In it, he quotes Gandalf! Some commentators have proclaimed it as a slam against Peter Theil who created the Palantir [company/system] and is decidedly using it not for the betterment of humanity.

If anyone would like a copy of an epub of the encyclical, send me your email address as a private message and I'll send it to you. It's only 95k, so easily fits as an attachment.

An Ars Technica article on the encyclical:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/citing-gandalf-pope-leo-says-we-must-disarm-ai/

The inevitable Slashdot page on the encyclical:
https://slashdot.org/story/26/05/26/0441241/pope-leo-warns-of-risks-from-ai-in-42300-word-encyclical

And the actual encyclical!
https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html
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S. Korea Starbucks CEO sacked after disastrous Tank Day promotion [May. 25th, 2026|02:21 am]
Obstructionist Husband
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Oh, boy!

This guy is apparently an ultra-nationalist type and decided to do a Tank Day promotion. In South Korea, this was something that happened in 1980, a time when South Korea was being ruled by a military dictatorship. There was a brutal crack-down on pro-democracy protesters and a lot of people died when an unidentified person ordered troops to open fire on the protesters. A lot of people also just disappeared and still haven't been accounted for.

The CEO decided to 'celebrate' Tank Day, obviously a severely tone-deaf idea, which included special Tank Day tumblers and mugs. The public responded with videos of said tumblers and mugs being destroyed with hammers and such, along with other Starbucks merch being destroyed. The article goes on to report people getting refunds on prepaid gift cards and deleting their Starbucks smartphone apps. When word finally reached the USA HQ, he was fired. Starbucks Global announced that the CEO was no longer employed by the corporation and was no longer in that role.

The company that owns just over 2/3rds of Starbucks South Korea, Shinsegae Group, saw their stock take a 5.5% dive in trading.

From the article, "...Shinsegae Group Chairman Chung Yong-jin also issued a public apology.

“I deeply bow in apology as the representative of the group,” Chung said. The marketing “deeply hurt the public, the bereaved families, and the victims of the May 18 demonstration.”

Also from the article, the President of South Korea, Lee Jae Myung said on Twitter that "...he was “enraged” by Starbucks’ campaign and demanded it apologize to families of people killed during the uprising."

One more lesson on how to utterly ruin your high-paying career.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/19/starbucks-korea-head-fired-after-tank-day-promotion-sparks-public-uproar.html
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Functional strength vs body builders [May. 21st, 2026|05:47 pm]
Obstructionist Husband
This is hilarious! You only need the first six minutes until you get to his first commercial, the rest of the video is just more of the same. But it is funny.



I saw another video that explained. "Anatoly" is actually named Vladimir and placed 3rd in his weight class in a world championship. He's a pretty serious lifter, just happens to be a bit on the small side at 78 kg. So basically it's world champion-class vs gym rats.

But I love the mop!
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Anthropic AI attended a multi-faith religion confab after hosting one with Christian leaders [May. 18th, 2026|02:42 pm]
Obstructionist Husband
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In early April, Anthropic hosted a two-day gathering of 15 Christian leaders to discuss Claude's "morality and spiritual development" at its HQ. Ignoring the concept of coding morals into software and the fact that different groups of the same religion who ostensibly follow the same core book have different interpretations, you do have the problem of this being just one core religion. And Anthropic took some heat for just meeting with representatives of Christian religions,

In early May, Anthropic and OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, joined a conference that included scholars from the "...New York Board of Rabbis, the Hindu Temple Society of North America, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the U.S.-based Sikh Coalition, and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America...". I note the absence of Hindu, Buddhist, atheists, Native American and Shamanistic traditions, Druidic and Wiccan traditions, and any number of other faiths. Heck, having the Church of Satan present would have certainly livened things up! But this was an invitational gathering called the Faith-AI Covenant, so they're just being a little representative, not remotely all-inclusive.

LLMs have a 'rule book' that are supposed to dictate some of their behavior. In the case of Anthropic's Claude, it's called a constitution. As of a month ago, it was 29,000 words. That's probably pretty complex. Considering how self-contradictory religious texts can be, do you want to code that into a rule book?

The companies making chatbots have a big problem. People using them have been talked into committing homicide, suicide, experimenting with drugs to the point of fatal overdoses, etc. While they say their programs are designed to be protective, their behavior shows that it is anything but.

Martin Luther King Jr. had a great quote: 'Our technology has so out-stripped our morals that we now have guided missiles and un-guided men.' It's relatively easy to guide a missile with radar, GPS, and terrain-matching optics/computers. But to code morals into a computer, based on religion - especially with several competing religions contributing?

I think you're going to end up with an almost HAL-9000 scenario, or any number of other scenarios where the program is paralyzed by the contradictions and mismatches within and between the various faiths. Ethics and morality are tricky codes, and they don't have to come from religion, and if you try to dictate them from religion, it's a great way to get the Crusades and any number of other horrible things.

I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think this is it.

Gizmodo article from last month on the Christian gathering:
https://gizmodo.com/how-do-we-make-sure-that-claude-behaves-itself-anthropic-invited-15-christians-for-a-summit-2000743766

Washington Post article re: Christian gathering, much more in-depth:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/04/11/anthropic-christians-claude-morals/

Gizmodo article on latest multi-faith gathering:
https://gizmodo.com/anthropic-has-added-several-more-religions-on-its-quest-to-inject-perfect-morals-into-claude-2000756740
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Napoleon Solo wins the 151st Preakness Stakes! [May. 16th, 2026|06:07 pm]
Obstructionist Husband
He's in pretty phenomenal shape to win in a field of 14 horses!
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