I would have expected AI to be better at summarising, to be honest. But in hindsight, it’s kind of logical that it would start drawing on all the news article summaries it knows, not just the one it is supposed to summarize. I highly doubt this is even fixable with the current maturity of the tech.
Just a little history since it is highly unlikely the US will annex Canada or buy Greenland or use the military to take the Panama Canal. However, renaming the Gulf of Mexico could be forced on us, though the rest of the world would not have to recognize it.
Here’s How The U.S. Acquired Its Territories—And How Much They Cost
…he says while wearing his $900,000 Greubel Forsey Hand Made 1
Jokes aside, I now have a friend in CA with fires approaching her area. She says cars abandoned in jammed roads. Bulldozers being used to shove them out of the way. Sheer chaos she says as people flee.
She is in Burbank. I marked it with a red dot
Our current decades-old freezer had quite an ice buildup. But we use it so much that it’s never empty enough to warm up and then mop up all the water. ![]()
FWIW the ‘abandoning cars’ thing is down around the Palisades fire. Palisades is one of those ‘elite enclave’ areas where the upper crust residents value their privacy (so limited access) and have the lawyer power to say ‘brush clearance requirements are for the lesser folk, not us.’ So, yeah, they get burned up and lawyers filing emergency injunctions against the fire don’t seem to help. As an aside, their lawyers have also not managed to keep the entire peninsula from slowly sliding downhill towards the Pacific, and there are a bunch of big mansions that have no utilities because power, gas, and water lines break constantly.
Burbank is suburban flatlands and other than the smoke getting bad nothing much will happen to Burbank. It’s like where I am. A fire in the foothills is very hard to fight, but when it spills down onto the flatlands it loses 99% of its juice. When it tries to come out of the brush and into suburbia it has no chance to advance at all because there is no fuel.
Where my son lives, which is sort of upper middle class hills, they have limited (but better) access. They also have LA County fire all up in their business twice a year waving ‘clear this within 10 days or else’ citations. He could just ride out a fire if he had to, because the hillside he is on doesn’t have enough brush to sustain a fire.
So the Palisades can slide into the ocean and put out their own fire. Problem solved. ![]()
Harsh. Selfish rich people have feelings, too. Just not for you.
Oh. My apologies. Maybe Elon can help them out. I simply don’t have the means.
My friend in Burbank just found out she has RSV. I am sure the smoke helps.
Provided he doesn’t think they’re pedos, Elon will send them a miniature submarine.
I know we are just being snarky but, really, fire has to be terrifying. Not only do you have to escape the flames but then you have to escape the smoke. The LA area has had less than an inch of rain since last May so there isn’t enough water in the lines to even begin fighting the fires and air drops are too dangerous while the winds are so high. 100 mph in some cases.
What I just don’t get is why people will rebuild in an area that is sliding so bad, their houses crack and move on a regular basis.
I have family in CA but they are in the Mendocino area which is much further north. My dad was a milkman there in the 40s and then worked in the redwood forest. California has some beautiful areas but I can’t imagine the vast amounts of money needed to keep trying to live on shifting ground.
The price tag from this disaster will be mind-blowing.
The reservoirs are actually full and there’s plenty of water. There’s no water pressure in Pacific Palisades because when the rich and entitled were ordered to evacuate they all turned their sprinklers on before they left. All the other fires are being held to lines at the edge of any development, though they are burning out of control into the wilderness.*
*This is mostly true, though now and then a fire will start so close to developed property that it gets some along the edge before it can be controlled, and some developed property is isolated and indefensible. The latest fire started in a place called Soledad Canyon, which has maybe thirty developed properties along the twenty mile length. It is currently a seventy MPH wind tunnel with a fire near the end where the wind comes in. Those properties are basically written off already, though some will survive through brush clearance and grace of god.
I wasn’t aware of anyone being snarky about the fires. I was being snarky about rich people buying houses that slide into the sea.
Unlike the Thai caves, it’s a situation where Elon’s submarine might possibly be useful.
It’s gonna be a good 4 year stretch for that starting very soon
Not Will Rogers’ house…![]()
I live in a place called Crosby. It’s a coastal village, just to the North of Liverpool, England.
Until the mid 1800s, Crosby was fairly isolated, but then a local railway company decided to build a railway through to Southport, about 20 miles North. The original plan was to buy land to build the railway some miles East of Crosby.
However, a local landowner named Blundell owned thousands of acres of agriculturally useless dune land in the area. Blundell offered to give the railway company the land to build their railway on for free, on two conditions – one, that they built him a railway station on the land he donated, and two, that the area would become known as “Blundellsands”.
At that time, Liverpool was one of the wealthiest cities in the World. Of course, once the railway came through, Blundell’s thousands of acres of useless sand dunes became prime real estate. Now having easy access, rich merchants from Liverpool flocked to build themselves sea front mansions and villas on Blundell’s formerly worthless land. Blundell made a fortune, and Blundellsands became one of the country’s most desirable affluent suburbs.
Unfortunately, what nobody had realised was that the reason the dunes were there in the first place was because, over time, coastal winds and winter storms were picking up the beach, and dumping it hundreds of yards inland. The coastline wasn’t stable. In some places it was building up, and in others it was being eaten away. By the 1870s, many of these palatial mansions were falling into the sea.
Blundellsands still exists, and it’s still a pleasant, affluent suburb. But now it confines itself to the area well behind the dunes.
It was a vegan fire.
Finally someone has found a proper use for almond milk. For sure, you can’t drink it.








