'He's not just slipping out of Washington'

From West Australia comes the story of some ‘lucky’ misfortune, as a pair of road-tripping Frenchmen found a “second home” in a small town. Nannup has just 1,500 inhabitants—many of whose hands were on deck to help the tourists after they hit a kangaroo and wrecked their car just 4 hours into what was supposed […] The post Tourists Stranded After Kangaroo Crash Receive 23 Days of ‘Unforgettable’ Help from Loving Locals appeared first on Good News Network.

Movies & TV Murderbot Murderbot Is Glitching in “Escape Velocity” Have you ever imagined what Murderbot would look like if it were to appear in*Sanctuary Moon? Well… By Alex Brown | Published on May 30, 2025 Image: Apple TV+ Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Apple TV+ Best episode yet! I was breathless through the entire 22 minutes. The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon part? I literally squealed with glee. My only complaint is that it’s too damn short. I need a whole episode of Murderbot self-inserting into Sanctuary Moon fanfic. Spoilers ahoy. The episode opens with a flashback to Security Unit 238776431 being built at the Threshold Pass Fabrication Center in the Corporation Rim. We see how SecUnits are made, which is in this charmingly antiquated fashion. The Company indentures people into their factories and they apparently make all the parts by hand and then piece the constructs together. I guess when you have an endless supply of free labor, there’s no reason to automate anything. There are thousands, potentially millions of people with decades of indenture to work off. Might as well let them build SecUnit arms one at a time. Seeing all the glitches and protocol breaks, it’s a surprise more SecUnits haven’t gone rogue. If anything, this whole episode is one big glitch. Murderbot survived the attack by the blue SecUnit, but only barely. It comes to being dragged through the DeltFall habitat. Due to injuries sustained in the fight in the previous episode, its memory is dumping The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon episodes into its consciousness. This leads to my favorite scene thus far: Murderbot acting like it’s in the show. It’s what finally sold me on Alexander Skarsgård as Murderbot. I’ve more or less enjoyed his take on the character thus far, but this right here, was perfection. The sheer, unadulterated joy he expresses as Sanctuary Moon!Murderbot, with its glorious bouffant of a wig and its garish yellow jumpsuit, is just delightful. And recasting Mensah as the Captain! And her hair! I am obsessed. Truly obsessed. Whoever came up with the idea for that scene deserves a special Emmy just for them. Pin-Lee, Ratthi, and Arada are back at the ship, having been ditched by Mensah. She decides to rescue SecUnit, against the wishes of the rest of her crew. Poor Murderbot gets downloaded with malware through a combat override module, then can’t remember it was infected, but it still knows something is wrong. Mensah kills the blue SecUnit with a mining drill, then drags the glitching Murderbot out of the habitat. But hold on, that evil blue SecUnit isn’t actually dead! (This is some real soap opera plot twisting and, as someone raised on a steady diet of All My Children and One Life to Live, I’m hella into it.) Ratthi tries to be the hero and fails spectacularly by getting knocked out by the recoil of his energy blaster. The honor of permanently and totally killing the blue SecUnit goes to Arada and Pin-Lee who quash it like a bug with the hopper landing gear. It sounds intense, but the script once again expertly balances darkness and levity.  Murderbot isn’t in the clear, though. It now knows it’s going to kill the humans thanks to the malware the evil blue SecUnit installed on it. We’ve seen Murderbot fantasizing about killing the humans or abandoning them and running off on its own. We’ve seen Murderbot freak out about interacting with humans and wanting to be left alone. Now it has the chance to get everything it claims it’s been wanting. But instead of letting itself kill everyone, it sacrifices itself. It spares the humans by shooting itself in the gut. Oh yeah, our little killing machine is a living, breathing (wait, does it breathe?), caring companion, whether it likes it or not. Image: Apple TV+ One of the things I think a lot about in terms of AI is how so often people most excited about it talk about the tech as if it were a slave at the mercy of their every whim. All these ads talking about an AI app like it’s a personal assistant, all these tech bros talking about how they’re going to make a computer who can take care of their children and do all their thinking for them, all these weirdos eagerly anticipating everyone getting their own sexbot. What they want is a sentient construct without the ability to refuse. They want something that is basically a human but one they have an excuse not to care about.  The Murderbot Diaries were written well before the generative AI snake oil hysteria, but Martha Wells explores similar themes. The humans fabricating Security Units are trapped in an exploitative labor system, but unlike Security Units, they’re only indentured. The only thing they’re more powerful than are constructs. They don’t see constructs as potential allies in the fight to overthrow the Corporate Rim. They see them as machines, as things that can only do what they’re told. They delight in forcing a Security Unit to hold its hand out while they burn it, or fabricate shoddy equipment because the constructs themselves don’t matter. Until they do. Obviously generative AI and AI aren’t sentient (no matter what venture capitalists, overpaid consultants, and news magazine op-ed writers will have you believe), but the desire to lord over others and to boss around something that can’t say no is just under the surface of a lot of the hype. On a less heady topic, it is so nice to have a normal, middle aged woman be a hero for once. Mensah isn’t a buff bad-ass, a strategic genius, or a decisive leader. She’s a scientist in a leadership role that requires of her more than she ever thought she would have to give. She has panic attacks and cares deeply about her team, even the ones who don’t want to be part of it. She takes on the blue SecUnit not because she thinks she can fight it—we just saw Murderbot lose to it twice in direct hand-to-hand combat—but because she couldn’t live with herself if she left behind one of her own. She doesn’t see Murderbot as a human or a robot but as something in between, and she doesn’t even know it hacked its governor module. She thinks it’s a normal SecUnit, a little glitchy perhaps, possibly even a corporate spy, but still normal. It’s pretty remarkable. Murderbot doesn’t know how lucky it was that Mensah picked it for this mission. Noma Dumezweni is perfectly cast as Mensah. She plays her with just the right amount of frustrated mom energy. Sabrina Wu and Akshay Khanna go all out in this episode as Pin-Lee and Ratthi. Wu plays Pin-Lee with such gusto. They’re erratic and high-strung, then dip down into this mischievous calmness. Ratthi constantly stumbles into toxic masculinity then immediately backs out again with a litany of apologies, and Khanna does an excellent job keeping him on this side of charming instead of being obnoxious, insincere, or obsequious. In the previous episode, Pin-Lee accused Ratthi of auto grinding to get a high score in the videogame KillJoyBloodLustTechRiot, and after his performance in this ep, yeah, I believe it. The character development on the show is so much deeper than in the novella, for obvious reasons. I’m really enjoying the choices the actors are making with these characters. They feel like they fit the medium of a television adaptation while also honoring the vibes of the books.  This is the episode where I decided I loved this show. It’s been fun so far, but this was top tier. Fingers crossed we ride this high through the rest of the season. Image: Apple TV+ Final Thoughts Episode 4 covers the last half of chapter 4 in All Systems Red. Who is Donna Komparzits and what is in the classified blue room that she needs to report to? So, do we think the reason Murderbot was able to hack its governor module was because of a glitch in its fabrication? If so, are other SecUnits also trying to hack their governor modules? Is the going rogue all the time thing just a joke or… The names of the actors on Sanctuary Moon are absolutely incredible. It was hard to tell on the distorted screen, but I think these are the names (correct me in the comments if I get someone wrong): Captain Hossein is played by ElonieJef Chem, Navigation Officer Hardööp-Sklanch is played by Breiller MocJac, Lieutenant Kulleroo is played by Arletty, NavBot 337 Alt 66 is played by Pordron Bretney III Roche, and a “subcontracted actor” Kon Rennell plays Colony Solicitor Vagus. Director Toa Fraser and Director of Photography Daniel Grant are back at it with more fantastic shots. Especially loved the rotating shot of Murderbot on the ground after falling off the table. And how they have the camera glide at unusual angles to demonstrate Murderbot’s disorientation.  Murderbot singing the theme song to Sanctuary Moon was so silly, and I mean that as a compliment.   It’s so interesting that Murderbot casts itself not as a construct like the NavBot but as one of the human crew. Despite insisting both last episode and this that it absolutely was not part of any crew. Quotes “Yeah, take some pride in your work. You wouldn’t wanna fuck up and produce a chronically anxious, depressed Murderbot.” How very Marvin the Paranoid Android. “Humans. On some level, they must know how weird they are.”  “You don’t mean that. It is a very cool rule.”  Pin-Lee: “You’re being very macho, it’s disgusting.” Ratthi: “You’re both wonderful people. I mean that.” [end-mark] The post <i>Murderbot</i> Is Glitching in “Escape Velocity” appeared first on Reactor.

This week, President Donald Trump announced that he was considering a 50% tariff on goods from the European Union. Just days later, he reversed himself, announcing that any such tariffs would be delayed until July 9. Traders rejoiced, with the S&P 500 spiking dramatically. The market’s leap at Trump’s flip-flop was not unusual; in fact, it’s become a common feature of the financial landscape. As one Financial Times columnist has flippantly suggested, traders are making bank by betting on the “TACO” trade—Trump Always Chickens Out. The notion is that, like Liberation Day tariffs and threatened tariffs on China and now threatened tariffs on the European Union, Trump enjoys launching shots across the bow of his geopolitical opponents, but then quickly backs off once the prospective damage becomes clear. Now, the buried lede in this arrangement is obvious: The markets are ready and raring to rip, looking for any sign that Trump will revert to the economic policies of his first term—deregulation, tax cuts, and low trade barriers. If he does that, investors are prepared to open the floodgates. In fact, the TACO bet is presumably the only reason the stock markets haven’t totally tanked since Trump’s Liberation Day gambit: Investors expect that Trump’s largest mistakes will never practically materialize. But uncertainty creates its own form of paralysis. The question for market-watchers isn’t merely whether the markets are up or down overall under Trump (the S&P is down a little over 2%; the Dow Jones is down around 4%). The question is where the markets would have been had Trump never launched his barrage of inconsistent and vacillating policies. There, the answer is more troubling: If we calculate the rate of increase in the S&P 500 from Election Day 2024 to Inauguration Day 2025, and assume the same rate of growth until today, and then contrast that growth with the actual market numbers, the markets are underperforming around 10%. And the problems for Trump don’t stop there. The benefit of a non-ideological president is that Trump can quickly jettison policy that doesn’t work in favor of policy that does. But it also means that our geopolitical enemies don’t actually believe that Trump is willing to maintain tough policy over the long term. Take, for example, Trump’s vacillation on Russian aggression in Ukraine. Trump entered office pledging to end the Ukraine conflict and launched his quest for peace by exerting extreme pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who quickly caved to his every request. Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has rejected every demand Trump has made. This week, after Trump posted that Putin was “playing with fire!” Russia Today responded, “Trump’s message leaves little room for misinterpretation. Until he posts the opposite tomorrow morning.” Meanwhile, the Iranian regime is banking on the White House’s rising isolationism to push its own agenda in nuclear talks. Trump repeatedly labeled Barack Obama’s Iran deal the “worst deal in history” during his first term. Iran now seeks to remake that deal, under a different name. And the White House has signaled different positions to every side: that the United States seeks complete denuclearization, or a ban on Iranian nuclear weaponry, or a ban on Iranian nuclear weapons development … Iran sees daylight, and they’re acting. For China, the calculus is similar. China has been ramping up its activities in the Taiwan Strait, preparing for the possibility of a blockade of the island nation. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has variously threatened massive tariffs, withdrawn those massive tariffs, threatened to ban TikTok, delayed that ban … China sees vacillation, and they’re acting. Strategic ambiguity is sometimes useful. But uncertainty interpreted as weakness is wildly counterproductive. For the sake of Trump’s presidency, a return to free markets and peace through strength would do far more to ensure success than the whipsawing policy prescriptions emerging from the White House on a near-daily basis. Trump knows the right thing to do. He did it the first time around. All he has to do is learn from his own history. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Vacillation, Uncertainty, and Danger Signs appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Implosion: MSNBC Still Cratering With New Line-Up -- And CNN's Not Far Behind

POLL: What was the worst media take of the week? (Vote below)     NOMINEES:    1. Jeffrey Goldberg: It’s Not that We Covered-Up for Biden, It’s That the Audience Is Stupid “I don’t understand how this narrative is developed….that the media was covering for Biden. I think what might be going on here a the lack of understanding about how reporting works.”— Host Jeffrey Goldberg on PBS’s Washington Week with The Atlantic, May 23.   2. Scott Pelley Scares Students At Commencement Address: “Our Country Is In Peril” from Trump “Our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack, universities are under attack, freedom of speech is under attack. An insidious fear is reaching through our schools, our businesses, our homes and into our private thoughts. The fear to speak in America....In a moment like this, when our country is in peril, don’t ask the meaning of life. Life is asking, what’s the meaning of you?”— CBS’s 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley during a commencement speech at Wake Forest University, May 19.    3. Rosie O’Donnell: “Millions” Are Going to “Die Early” from Big Beautiful Bill “Millions of people are gonna go hungry. Millions of people are gonna die early for not getting their medication. Millions of people are going to suffer as a result of the big, beautiful bill….This is the most blatantly corrupt thing that Mango Mussolini has ever come up with.”— Comedian/former ABC’s The View co-host Rosie O’Donnell on her TikTok account, May 27.   Loading…  Funded by James P. Jimirro

ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel announced himself on Thursday as not be a fan of President Trump’s lawsuit against 60 Minutes, but whatever one thinks of the suit’s legal merits, Kimmel’s claim that the network did not deceptively edit the interview with Kamala Harris to make her look better fell flat. Kimmel began by dreaming about using Trump’s legal arguments against him, “Trump right now is reportedly one step closer to settling the lawsuit he filed against 60 Minutes. Trump's suing CBS for $20 billion because an interview they aired with Kamala Harris caused him ‘mental anguish.’ He can sue them for mental anguish; imagine how much we could sue him for. We're going to be rich.     Moving on to the actual controversy, Kimmel recalled, “Paramount, which is CBS's parent company, reportedly offered Trump $15 million to settle the case. He said no. His lawyers want at least $25 million, and even worse, they want an apology for not doing anything wrong. If you haven't been following this, during the election, 60 Minutes did a segment with Kamala Harris, and because 60 Minutes is only 60 minutes, they edited the interview, just like they always do.” Kimmel further explained, “But Trump, who never misses an opportunity to, A, whine and, B, abuse the legal system, claimed, based on no evidence, that 60 Minutes edited the interview deceptively to make his opponent look better.” That’s just not true. In the original video, Harris was pressed from the left by Bill Whitaker on why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not appear to be listening to the Biden administration. She gave a typical Harris word salad of an answer, “Well Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of, many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.”   Remember Kamala’s word salad answer about Israel on 60 Minutes? It’s gone. This is what many Americans will now see. pic.twitter.com/H4w7btDv6x — MAZE (@mazemoore) October 8, 2024   In the version that aired on 60 Minutes, Harris came across as more competently, “We are not gonna stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.” As for Kimmel, he concluded, “He sued them for $10 billion. And then, even though he won the election, he raised it to $20 billion. Which, the whole company isn't even worth $20 billion. They're selling it for 8 right now. It's a plainly frivolous lawsuit, but Shari Redstone, who inherited Paramount from her horrible father, is trying to sell her company, and she knows Trump will vindictively use his power as president to block that from happening through the FCC. Now she's trying to pay him off, and she's going to pay him off. This is how it works now. It's just like the Mafia but with cheeseburgers instead of gabagool.” Harris’s actual answer took about 20 seconds, so Kimmel’s argument that 60 Minutes just needed to edit it down for time doesn’t pass the laugh test. Here is a transcript for the May 29 show: ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live! 5/29/2025 11:39 PM ET JIMMY KIMMEL: Trump right now is reportedly one step closer to settling the lawsuit he filed against 60 Minutes. Trump's suing CBS for $20 billion because an interview they aired with Kamala Harris caused him "mental anguish."  He can sue them for mental anguish; imagine how much we could sue him for. We're going to be rich. Paramount, which is CBS's parent company, reportedly offered Trump $15 million to settle the case. He said no. His lawyers want at least $25 million, and even worse, they want an apology for not doing anything wrong. If you haven't been following this, during the election, 60 Minutes did a segment with Kamala Harris, and because 60 Minutes is only 60 minutes, they edited the interview, just like they always do.  But Trump, who never misses an opportunity to, A, whine and, B, abuse the legal system, claimed, based on no evidence, that 60 Minutes edited the interview deceptively to make his opponent look better. He sued them for $10 billion. And then, even though he won the election, he raised it to $20 billion. Which, the whole company isn't even worth $20 billion. They're selling it for 8 right now.  It's a plainly frivolous lawsuit, but Shari Redstone, who inherited Paramount from her horrible father, is trying to sell her company, and she knows Trump will vindictively use his power as president to block that from happening through the FCC. Now she's trying to pay him off, and she's going to pay him off. This is how it works now. It's just like the Mafia but with cheeseburgers instead of gabagool.  

Elon Musk’s time in government is over, Congress is poised to raise the debt ceiling by at least $4 trillion, and Republican fiscal hawks (and Musk himself) are understandably irritated about their progress in cutting the federal debt. This irritation, the changes in DOGE leadership, and the threat of hitting the debt limit in August or September have all combined to push the White House to propose codifying $9.3 billion in cuts to USAID, NPR, and PBS. The process, in which the legislative and executive branches agree to recall spending Congress previously appropriated, is called rescission. And while most things in Congress are fairly complicated, this one is pretty simple. Here’s how it works. Watch what Republicans do next. That will show you exactly how much their promises are worth. First, the White House signals which funds it’s been given but didn’t use or doesn't want to use and would like to return to the Treasury Department. That’s the proposal that’s reportedly heading to the lower chamber on Monday. Congress gave the president this power under the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Next, the House of Representatives considers the cuts, makes whatever tweaks and changes it wants to the proposal, and votes. If a simple majority says yes, it sends the rescission package to the Senate. Then the Senate considers the proposal and can either pass it with a simple majority vote, thereby sending the rescissions to the president for his signature, or make its own alterations, in which case it goes back to the House of Representatives for another vote. As with just about everything, the two chambers must agree on the exact text before it can make the journey west to the White House. Simple enough! After all, Republicans make cutting government a top campaign pledge in every single race, and even Democrats claim they want to make cuts to federal bloat when they’re on the campaign trail. Of course, once they’re in D.C., Democrats don’t want to cut a dime, and few Republicans do either. So what happens next? You can get a good preview by looking to the fairly recent history of Donald Trump’s rescissions. In 2018, first-term President Trump proposed $15.4 billion in rescissions of unused, unobligated funds sitting in the Children's Health Insurance Program, Land and Water Conservation Fund, and Department of Energy's fuel-efficient vehicle loan fund. The request passed the Republican-controlled House with little problem but stalled and was ultimately defeated in the Senate 48-50, with Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.) voting no and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) absent, battling brain cancer. The Republican senators who voted no saw the rescissions as attacks on programs they cared about. How could you be against children’s health!? The water?! None of them were swayed that the money was not needed and that the programs had been funded for the next year, so no child nor waterway was under threat. They didn’t care at all. They couldn’t even bring themselves to cut the deficit by reclaiming unspent money. That was too much! This is what you’re up against in Washington – and from Republicans no less. So who are the Republican senators to expect trouble from this time around, when the money is being clawed back from agencies and organizations that have been pushing a progressive, anti-American, and partisan Democratic agenda? Susan Collins: Seven years after the failure of the 2018 rescissions package, Collins is the only no-vote Republican still in the U.S. Senate. She said her initial “no” was because she objected to the procedure being used at all — for anything. Money appropriated after careful negotiation by Congress should not be sent back, she reasoned, or senators will stop trusting the process. Oh no! There’s no sign she’s changed her views on this, and she’s been a fairly regular no vote on the rest of Trump 47’s agenda thus far. Lisa Murkowski: Back in 2018, the senior senator from Alaska pinched her nose and voted yes after some last-minute on-the-floor wrangling by then-Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and others. While these cuts don’t hit anything specific to her constituents, don’t expect her to have softened her stance. Mitch McConnell: While McConnell embraced rescissions as common sense in 2018, his cold relationship with the president has become openly antagonistic since the 2021 Capitol riot. More, foreign funding is dear to him — and he considers it his sacred duty to defend the Washington Blob’s foreign policy consensus against the president and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s America First agenda. While few will argue USAID spending wasn’t corrupt and wasteful, McConnell considers it an important tool of American statecraft. He’s a likely no with nothing to lose. Thom Tillis: While longtime observers have noted Tillis’ penchant for clashing with the president, the North Carolina senator also considers himself a fiscal hawk, and his office has tweeted that he's open to voting yes on rescissions — with Senate amendments. Roger Wicker: The Mississippi senator doesn’t hide his frustration. He sees the rescission debate as a distraction from what he considers the Senate’s real work. He hasn’t ruled out supporting the measure, but if it were his call, the chamber wouldn’t waste time on this right now. Any three Republican senators voting no would leave the decision to Vice President JD Vance, just as Mike Pence stood ready to break a tie in 2018. But four GOP defections would kill the measure outright. A loss would deal a humiliating blow to both the administration and the broader Republican Party. Fiscal hawks now claim a mandate that voters never gave them. Trump won office promising mass deportations, a secure border, a smarter foreign policy, an end to the DEI and trans ideology push, and aggressive tariffs — not deep cuts to the Department of Education or a crusade against USAID. The administration’s sudden focus on those targets reflects the influence of Elon Musk and OMB Director Russ Vought, not the will of the voters. But they’ve arrived. Their early shock-and-awe tactics grabbed the public’s attention, and the waste the DOGE uncovered has lit a fire — one that’s driving near-Tea Party intensity across Washington and social media. Voters are demanding more, and for good reason. Channeling that energy into codifying DOGE cuts through rescissions makes far more sense than sabotaging the president’s agenda over a reconciliation bill that doesn’t go far enough. This approach strengthens the republic. It deserves to continue. Even if the effort only serves to placate budget hawks like Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin — senators still fuming over the debt ceiling hike — it’s a win. Watch what Republicans do next. That will show you exactly how much their promises are worth. Blaze News: EPA reverses Biden-era rules on greenhouse gas emissions Blaze News: Governor candidate John James hammers Michigan GOP over political failures: 'What are we even talking about?' Sign up for Bedford’s newsletter Sign up to get Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford’s newsletter.

Chaos Theory is the best one. It has the bank mission, the Amon Tobin soundtrack, and a just-about-perfect mixture of stealth and aggression. But Pandora Tomorrow has that section on the train, and that shocking moment during the Jerusalem level (no spoilers). There’s also the original, with the CIA infiltration, and Double Agent, which plays more directly with the push and pull of Sam’s loyalty. What I’m saying is that the classic Splinter Cell games are all good. I’m not so keen on Conviction and Blacklist - they’re too slick, and skim over the murky morality of espionage and warfare - but after 12 years, I’d welcome the stealth game’s return. Turns out, that might be on the horizon. Based on a mysterious new post from Ubisoft, the long-whispered Splinter Cell remake could be about to break cover. Continue reading New Splinter Cell remake could be revealed soon as Ubisoft posts cryptic image MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best old games, Best stealth games, Best single-player games

WOW: Taylor Lorenz Takes EFFED UP to Whole New Level with Unhinged 9/11 Take, Gets PULVERIZED by All of X