AI Startup Says It Will Pay People $2,000 A Month to Masturbate... Yes, Really

We're Living In A Tragicomic Parody Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, We're blessed/cursed to be living in a very peculiar era in which parodies are taken with the utmost seriousness, an absurdist state of affairs captured by the classic line from the 1959 film North by Northwest: "So horribly sad. How is it I feel like laughing?" The parodies are now so extreme they are self-parodies that cannot be parodied. How do we parody a world gone mad with parodies? Every attempt to parody "the news" today is trumped...

Taiwan Plans $930 Million Sea Drone Buildout As China Expands Maritime Pressure Taiwan is moving quickly to build a large fleet of unmanned vessels as it looks for cheaper, scalable ways to complicate any Chinese attempt to blockade or cross the Taiwan Strait, according to Nikkei Asia. The emerging strategy combines something Taiwan already does well, building ships and sophisticated electronics, with American expertise in autonomous systems, artificial intelligence and military command networks. The potential scale is significant. Taiwan’s navy is considering roughly 1,320 small attack drones for the water, with spending...

The “progress” in last week’s Rome talks on Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon left the situation without any timetable, and as Israel continues to escalate strikes against southern Lebanon, all indications are that they’re prepping for an open-ended occupation of the region. Israeli newspapers are now reporting that the IDF is establishing another line of “permanent” […]