A Russian drone guided entirely by AI killed three civilian Ukrainians. Really!

Concerning! This could be another escalation of the drone warfare!

However, this drone was not trained to kill civilians but to destroy a gas station! Thus, the headline is junk journalism!

"The bloody war in Ukraine has helped push any hesitations around AI-enabled warfare aside. Ukrainian forces now say a Russian drone guided entirely by AI killed three of its civilians. ..."

"The young woman ran for her life, but it was too late.

A small Russian drone resembling a model airplane swooped down from the sky last month in the city of Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine. As it tried to navigate toward a gas station, it crashed into a wall and exploded in a hail of shrapnel, killing Tetiana Bubynets, 19, a university student, and two others. ...

The drone that killed them was guided by an experimental artificial intelligence system, not a human pilot, according to drone experts, Ukrainian military commanders and the forensic team that examined wreckage from the deadly strike and others in the city.

The drone was programmed by human operators to travel toward a particular gas station, but once it got close, it chose its exact target — most likely propane tanks — on its own, based on its training to recognize such tanks and strike them, the experts and military officials said. ..."

How to use AI to help (not hinder) teaching

A Drone Killed Three Ukrainians. It Was Guided Entirely by A.I. (behind paywall)

Rape Dogs Claim Lands NYT in Defamation Lawsuit by Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Good news! Bravo! Defeat junk journalism! This journalist is supposedly a "self-described progressive" and a member of the Dimocratic Party!

"Israel announced it will pursue a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times following the publication of an opinion piece by columnist Nicholas Kristof that alleged Israeli forces trained dogs to rape Palestinian women.

“Today I instructed my legal advisers to consider the harshest legal action against The New York Times and Nicholas Kristof,” Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on X. “They defamed the soldiers of Israel and perpetuated a blood libel about rape, trying to create a false symmetry between the genocidal terrorists of Hamas and Israel’s valiant soldiers. Under my leadership, Israel will not be silent.” ..."

Rape Dogs Claim Lands NYT in Defamation Lawsuit - The Daily Signal

Nicholas Kristof (Source)

Judge gives President Trump 28 days to refile an amended complaint against the New York Times, but no longer than 40 pages

Good news! Will Trump comply and try again?

"A federal judge on Friday struck down President Trump’s $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times, saying a courtroom can’t be used as a “megaphone for public relations.” The judge gave the administration 28 days to refile an amended complaint."

Saturday, September 20, 2025 - Join The Flyover

Trump sues New York Times, publisher for $15 billion in defamation lawsuit

Good news! Will this be the end of the NYT if Trump wins? Apparently, Trump has already won several recent lawsuits against various media outlets.

According to NYT: How A Top Secret SEAL Team 6 Mission Into North Korea Fell Apart in 2019

A daring operation, if confirmed. Here is the link to the NYT article.

Maybe soon, we have a special operation going on against Hamas?

Elon Musk's drug use ramped up during the 2024 presidential campaign according to New York Times. Really!

What kind of attempt is this to smear Elon Musk?

What unnamed sources told the NYT?

And according to NYT Elon Musk violates a custody agreement: "... Ms. Boucher has privately complained that the appearances violate a custody settlement in which she and Mr. Musk agreed to try to keep their children out of the public eye, according to people familiar with her concerns and the provision, which has not been previously reported. ..."

If Elon Musk indeed has a serious substance use problem, then hopefully he will get some help.

"... The Times reports that over the course of last year, his drug consumption went beyond recreational use. He reportedly carried a medication box with 20 pills, which included Adderall. Sources told the outlet that his use of ketamine was so rampant that it affected his bladder. ..."

"As Elon Musk became one of Donald J. Trump’s closest allies last year, leading raucous rallies and donating about $275 million to help him win the presidency, he was also using drugs far more intensely than previously known, according to people familiar with his activities.

Mr. Musk’s drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it. ...

He plays video games for hours on end. He struggles with binge eating, according to people familiar with his habits, and takes weight-loss medication. And he posts day and night on his social media platform, X.

Mr. Musk has a history of recreational drug use, The Wall Street Journal reported last year. Some board members at Tesla, his electric vehicle company, have worried about his use of drugs, including Ambien, a sleep medication. ..."

Report: Elon Musk's drug use ramped up during the 2024 presidential campaign | TechCrunch

On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama "As Mr. Musk entered President Trump’s orbit, his private life grew increasingly tumultuous and his drug use was more intense than previously known."

We’re Experts in Fascism. We’re Leaving the U.S. | NYT Opinion. Really!

The NYT is publishing such a bullshit! Pardon my French! This is pure Trump Derangement Syndrome!

Who are the moron professors!

Tesla Fires a Manager Who Criticized Elon Musk on Social Media for using Nazi references. Really!

Why did this manager not resign if he was so concerned/offended for years!

Is this the next smear campaign against Elon Musk after he raised his arms in what was claimed to be a Nazi salute?

"Tesla has fired a manager who objected to a social media post by Elon Musk, the chief executive, that referred to Nazi leaders. It was the latest example that public criticism of the boss was unacceptable in the Musk business empire.

Jared Ottmann, a manager and engineer who worked with Tesla’s battery suppliers, said he had been fired because he criticized Mr. Musk for a post on X that used the names of Nazis like Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring in a series of wordplay.

“Stop Göring your enemies,” Mr. Musk wrote on Jan. 23, adding, “Bet you did Nazi that coming.” He punctuated the post with a laughing-while-crying emoji."

Tesla Fires a Manager Who Criticized Elon Musk on Social Media - The New York Times

Credits: Techcrunch newsletter

The First Signs of Tyranny [by President Trump], From People Who Missed Them by New York Times. Really!

What a ridiculous video by NYT! Mega Trump Derangement Syndrome! Trump is compared to half a dozen or so dictators and authoritarians around the world including Putin the Terrible! NYT is short of comparing Trump to Hitler or Stalin!

Tucker Carlson reveals why the New York Times 'mysteriously' deleted articles

Very recommendable! Great journalism by Tucker Carlson. So the New York Times and other major U.S. media outlets received money from the Communist Party of China to spread its propaganda! How wonderful! Then, the cover up of the possibility of a Wuhan Virology Institute lab leak!

New York Times Sympathizes With Terrorists

Posted: 12/27/2014

Trigger

Just read this opinion article by the New York Times Editorial Board titled “ Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses”. It this the last gasp of a dying and once vaunted media empire?

In this article, the NYT rehashed without any qualification a lot of the same baloney, which I will not repeat here. In short, the NYT wants to prosecute about everybody of the former George W. Bush administration.

One can only hope that one day we learn how many of the about 19 members of the NYT Editorial Board actually supported this opinion or who spoke out against it.

The Editorial Board Is No Emile Zola

When Emile Zola his famous J’Accuse article in which he forcefully defended Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish officer Dreyfuss who was indeed an innocent man.

KSM (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) and other detainees of the CIA who were subjected to aggressive/harsh interrogation were certainly not innocent.

Multiple Acts Of War

The NYT Editorial Board in its grand naivety completely and conveniently ignores the fact of 9/11/2001, Madrid (3/11/2004)/Bali (10/12/2002)/London (7/7/2005 & 6/29/2007)/Mumbai (11/26/2008) bombings and other similar, but foiled attacks.

Nobody knew how many more such attacks were planned or imminent to be carried out. Who wants to be the next victim of such senseless attacks, anybody of the Editorial Board?

Multiple Attacks Before 9/11

The NYT Editorial Board is willfully blind to the fact that 9/11 had a history of serious attacks on U.S. citizens and others across the world. For brevity sake, I will not list them here.

Had the former and overly popular U.S. President Clinton not ignored the rising danger of militant Islamism, e.g. had he captured Bin Laden etc. … Perhaps, he and his wife were too influenced by the NYT.

Fanatical Killers And Unlawful Combatants

Does the NYT Editorial Board really understand who these human beings are that we are dealing with?

What moral relativism is the NYT Editorial Board applying here to compare members of the U.S. government or its agencies with unlawful combatants who obey no laws or rules whatsoever?

A New Totalitarian Ideology

Have the naive members of the NYT Editorial Board realized that militant, fanatical islam or Islamism represents an emerging totalitarian, hegemonistic ideology as bad or worse than those of the last century. Actually, Islamism goes at least as far back to the 1950s (see e.g. Sayyid Qutb) Like those totalitarian ideologies of the recent past, Islamism enjoys powerful and financially well off supporters.

Does the NYT Editorial Board perhaps suggest we wait until this fairly new totalitarian ideology becomes a global threat and menace like the Western countries waited for decades until Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain were ready to take on the world?

One can also suspect that Islamism is being supported to keep the West on its toes.

What Is Torture?

I am personally very tired of hearing this word torture so frequently used to describe with the U.S. government’s treatment of detainees suspected of terrorism.

Who is behind this nasty propaganda? Putin the Terrible? China? Iran? Who are the fellow travellers?

The above NYT article bases its demand on “These are, simply, crimes. They are prohibited by federal law [18 U.S. Code § 2340, 2340A], which defines torture as the intentional infliction of “severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” They are also banned by the Convention Against Torture, the international treaty that the United States ratified in 1994 and that requires prosecution of any acts of torture.” First of all these cited laws apply primarily during peace time not during military conflict.

One can have a debate of what constitutes torture? Is e.g. sleep deprivation or waterboarding as reported by the U.S. Senate committee really torture and so on? On the other hand, it appears that serious mistreatments possibly have occurred, which should be further investigated on a case by case basis.

Torture does not equal torture! There is huge difference when one considers circumstances and motives. Contrast aggressive/harsh interrogations that were applied to specific individuals to prevent further mass murder with a dictator or his relatives (e.g. Saddam Hussein and his sons, Fidel Castro or and his brother) torture innocent, unarmed dissidents in their dungeons and often inflict permanent physical damages or death.

Truth Drug

Unfortunately, as far as I know, we do not yet have a truth drug that could be applied to suspects of serious crimes. Would applying truth drugs to suspects of mass murder be considered torture as well?

Absolutely yes,  according to the federal law cited by the NYT Editorial Board (see above or the article [18 U.S. Code § 2340, 2340A]). I would add that this federal law goes way overboard with its definition of torture as far as truth drugs are concerned.

New York Times In Admiration On Timothy Geithner

Trigger

Just happened to read  the New York Times book review on Timothy Geithner's “Stress Test“. Thanks to the NYT we learn  more about an incompetent, foolish man who was at the helm of federal government during the time of Great Recession and financial crisis of 2008.

I have previously written another, critical blog post about this man and his new book here.

Salient Excerpts

Emphasis and comments added.

1. “The future Treasury secretary grew up everywhere and nowhere, a bit like a military brat, and came away from his childhood with a certain detachment from the American way of life: “At a local supermarket in suburban Virginia one summer, I was stunned to see an entire aisle stocked with pet food. It seemed bizarre in a world full of starving people.””
   [Thanks to NYT, we get more confirmation that this former U.S. treasury secretary and NY fed chief was and is a naive fool.]
2. “Politically, Geithner was more or less born a left-leaning Republican and appears to have become a right-leaning Democrat. …  As a student at Dartmouth in the early 1980s, he would have called himself a Republican, but “without much conviction.” …  “After The Dartmouth Review . . . published a ­McCarthy-style list of gay students on campus, I ran into a Review writer named Dinesh D’Souza at a coffee shop and asked him how it felt to be such a [expletive].””
   [What a man without conviction and what a bold guy to tell Dinesh D’Souza in College to be an expletive! Is there more such name dropping this book?]
3. “Oddly, for a Republican Ivy League graduate of the 1980s — and even more oddly for a future Treasury secretary — he found Wall Street pointless and the business world faintly ridiculous. He had no particular interest in money. “I did endure one job interview with a management consultant, whose first question was about how I would turn around a small failing beer company,” he writes. “I had no idea.””
   [Again who appointed this incompetent man for such a stellar career in the federal government?]
4. “The square that changed his life was Larry Summers, then a Treasury under secretary, who clearly saw in Geithner someone who would at least pretend not to be intimidated by him. But this part of the Timothy Geithner story — his rise in the world of important people — remains a bit vague.”
   [Was that it?]
5. “He became one of the guys who kept their heads as others lost theirs, defined less by what he was than by what he was not: in trouble. Mervyn King, the former governor of the Bank of England, joked (and as Geithner quotes him joking): “Tim was present at all the crises. But he didn’t cause the crises. The crises caused him.””
   [This is also typical for fools, they do not realize how serious the situation is!]
6. ““The fundamental causes of this crisis were familiar and straightforward,” Geithner writes. “It began with a mania — the widespread belief that devastating financial crises were a thing of the past, that future recessions would be mild, that gravity-defying home prices would never crash to earth.” ”
   [The causes were more like massive government failure in the form of affordable housing for everyone policies combined with recklessly low interest rates and toleration of ridiculous lending standards.]
7. “A few of the important people with a privileged view expressed concerns about the risks being taken, but most said nothing. Geithner counts himself in the minority. “I began asking questions about capital: Do our banks really have enough?” he writes, adding, “I was more worried than many of my colleagues, but I was not nearly worried enough.””
   [Sorry to say, but Timothy Geithner failed his job!]
8. “Interestingly, Geithner has little sympathy for those who wanted to see Wall Street bankers held accountable for whatever it was they had done. “Old Testament vengeance” is his pet phrase for such moralistic sentiments, and he argues persuasively that if he had indulged them, the crisis would only have caused more economic pain and suffering for ordinary people.”
   [What a weird viewpoint! Every day, numerous enterprises in a free market economy go bust for various reasons. If there is overinvestment in an economy fueled by reckless government policies, then more enterprises go bust than usual. ]
9. “He says President Obama very quickly grasped the merits of ignoring the desire for vengeance, and didn’t ask him to pursue some other, more punitive strategy. As if to ensure that no one leaves confused about his point of view on all this, Geithner argues at the end of his book that the only serious weakness of the Dodd-Frank financial reform measures is that they don’t give the federal government enough power to bail out banks in future crises.”
   [It only gets worse! What was going on in their minds, i.e. Geithner and president Obama? Dodd-Frank aptly named after two other characters/senators involved in the Great Recession is one of those massive big government take control laws.]
10. “The decisions he made are easier to criticize than they are to improve upon. I doubt many readers will put his book down and think the man did anything but his best. On his feet he might have stammered and wavered. That in itself was always a sign he was unusually brave.”
    [Thus ends the glowing review by the NYT.]

Russia’s Putin Pleas For Caution

An Op-Ed In The New York Times

On 9/11/2012 (a date that lives in infamy), Russia’s President Vladimir Putin saw it opportune to address the readers of this famous newspaper with an op-ed titled “A Plea for Caution From Russia/What Putin Has to Say to Americans About Syria”

Salient Excerpts & Comment

In bullet points (emphasis added):

1.       “Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together.”
[I don’t think we were ever allies with Stalin. Or if it appeared that way, then FDR is to blame.]

2.       “The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.”
[If Putin means by that that a third World War was prevented until today, he might be right. However, the period since 1945 was anything but peaceful. That the U.S. consented to this veto was probably a major mistake of historical proportions.]

3.       “The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries [China & Russia] and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism.”
[Is this some kind of a threat? What does this man want? If he wants to keep the Russian naval base in Syria, there is probably a solution to this. Is this former KGB man even behind some of the global terrorism we experienced in the past 20 years or so?]

4.       “Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country. There are few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough Qaeda fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government.”
[Orwellian speak! Is it not rather a conflict between a Stalinist, murderous dictator and the citizens of Syria, plus foreign militants? He knows better who is behind the extremists, other Arab countries or Iran. Did not the former Soviet Union help the Baath party to come to power in Syria or Iraq?]

5.       “We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos.”
[A very pretentious man.]

6.       “But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes.”
[Is it not also Putin’s fault that these outcomes as he describes them have happened? So why did Putin use force against Georgia or Chechnya? Had the U.S. (a weakness of President Bush Jr.) prevented Syria from being a porous border for militants who then killed U.S. soldiers in Iraq, perhaps the world would be a different place.]

7.       “No matter how targeted the strikes or how sophisticated the weapons, civilian casualties are inevitable, including the elderly and children, whom the strikes are meant to protect.”
[Putin is the right man to lecture the world about moral values!]

8.       “The United States, Russia and all members of the international community must take advantage of the Syrian government’s willingness to place its chemical arsenal under international control for subsequent destruction.”
[This is about as good as had the Allies of World War II convinced Hitler to close all the concentration camps. This a red herring or a delaying plot.]

9.       “And I would rather disagree with a case he [President Obama during his recent address to the nation.] made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”
[This is from Putin’s epilogue. God did not only create us all equal, but also mandated that we oppose leaders like you and President Obama in the cause of humanity and individual freedom.]

Plea To The Russian People

Would you finally rid yourselves from pathetic leaders like this one! The world will be very thankful! I have faith in the Russian people to do much better than that.

Essay Grading Vs. Essay Writing Software Race

Trigger

New York Times recently published an article titled “Essay-Grading Software Offers Professors a Break” (4/4/2013). This software was introduced by the EdX Consortium founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “[EdX] will make its automated software available free on the Web to any institution that wants to use it. The software uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short written answers, freeing professors for other tasks.”

What are these other tasks? Who frees the student from writing those essays?

Import

It will be only a matter of time until students use essay writing software to outsmart the grading software.

Viewed from this perspective, what is the importance or benefit of traditional essays for the educational assessment of students in the 21^st century?

I have an inkling that traditional forms of student assessment go the way of the Dodo bird! J

Further Reading

See, e.g. my earlier blog on education reform.

The Parents Of Jared Loughner Had More Than A Hunch

 Parents Admitted They Were Aware 
Of Their Sons Mental Illness

To quote from a New York Times article published on 3/27/13 (emphasis added):

“The parents of Jared L. Loughner, the man who killed six people and wounded 13 others during a … event hosted by former [US] Representative Gabrielle Giffords in 2011, told the authorities after the mass shooting that they had become so concerned about their son’s strange behavior in the previous months that they had taken away his shotgun, insisted he get psychological counseling and had even begun to disable his car so that he could not go out at night … The documents, released by the Pima County Sheriff’s Department after Freedom of Information requests from news organizations, reveal the depth of the worries that Mr. Loughner’s parents had about their son’s rapidly deteriorating psychological stability.”

Other Example

The murderer of John Lennon, i.e. Mark David Chapman, confessed to his wife he was obsessed with John Lennon and he had planned to kill him. His wife did not report him.

Take Away

I don’t have the time at the moment to research this further, but I have an inkling that mentally ill persons more often than not confide to loved ones or other people close to them what they are up to. Or loved ones or close ones often sense that something terrible is going to happen.

Thus, it would be a great and long overdue idea to overcome the stigma and taboo that still surrounds mental illness in our society. As far as mental illness is concerned we are not much better off than the medieval ages. Yes, we do not subject mentally to harsh treatments anymore; yes, we do not keep mentally ill in lunatic asylums anymore; yes, we released involuntarily committed mentally ill to live among us.

However, seriously mentally ill people need treatment and care not incarceration in prison or a life as a homeless. Did the parents of Mr. Loughner have the knowledge how to provide treatment and care? If not, why?

I would also suggest that parents or other close individuals should be held liable for acts of mentally ill people, if they neglected to act. Like parents, who leave their baby to starve of food.