Artificial Unintelligence

This confirms that no actual brains are required to operate the drive-by media. Just the News reports that dozens of in-house journalists are being laid off at msn, the Microsoft Network. But Microsoft isn’t getting out of the news business; they’re just replacing the humans with robots to curate articles.

Almost 80 news staff will lose their jobs in the U.S. and the UK. Microsoft will instead use computer algorithms to choose which news stories to present to readers. Can a machine discern which stories are important to human news consumers? Well, bots certainly can’t do worse than the mindless drivel that flesh-and-blood journalists put together now.

Microsoft says the company is just “redeploying its resources.” Makes sense: the kind of viruses that plague artificial intelligence don’t incur hospitalization costs. And bots don’t sue over hostile work environments. Clearly, Microsoft computed that if they’re going to curate fake news, they might as well use a simulated news staff.

Breaking Wind

Just after the start of hurricane season in June, Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D, TX) started kicking up a storm. The Hill reports she has introduced a bill in Congress that would forbid Presidents from using a nuclear bomb for “altering weather patterns or addressing climate change.”

I kid you not.

Rep. Garcia says she was motivated by an Axios report last year titled: “Scoop: Trump Suggested Nuking Hurricanes to Stop Them From Hitting U.S.” She apparently believed it, which tells you all you need to know about Rep. Garcia. The Axios “scoop” seriously claimed that President Trump wanted to stop cyclones by detonating an actual nuclear bomb in the middle of one.

Of course, there was never anything to this stupid report. But Rep. Garcia claims that with Trump as President, she couldn’t be sure. So she wanted to make sure to prevent any chance of showers of radioactive fallout. Considering that the Axios story came out in August of 2019, Garcia was clearly in no hurry to save the climate from nuclear weapons. Easy forecast: her bill will dissipate before it reaches land. She’s full of wind.

Greenhouse Opera House

The stage was lit, the musicians tuned their instruments, and for once the audience was perfectly silent. Because, according to Fox News, the crowd in Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu opera house was inanimate. For the first opera concert since the covid-19 lockdown, the theatre was packed, and every seat occupied by a leafy potted plant.

The UceLi Quartet played Puccini’s “Crisantemi” (Chrysanthemums) with two violins, a cello, and a viola; human audiences could only enjoy the concert via livestream. The plant concert idea germinated in the mind of an artist who wanted to get back to nature after the lockdown. Fox reports: “At the end of the eight-minute concert, the sound of leaves and branches blowing in the wind resonated throughout the opera house like applause.”

But plants are freeloaders. Their stems may sprout greenbacks, but not the kind that pay musicians. So the concert lasted eight minutes — and the fat lady called it done.

No Room, With a View

Some hotel rooms in Switzerland are fresh out of walls. In the Alps, you can now rent one of seven hotel “rooms” perched on the side of a mountain, with spectacular vistas but zero shelter. Reuters reports that each room has a floor and a double bed with a panoramic view of the surrounding peaks — and the stars. The $300-a-night fee includes being served by a “modern butler,” who may or may not be a local farmer in field clothes.

The open-air project is the brainchild of artist-twins Frank and Patrik Riklin. “The idea is that with ‘Zero Real Estate,’ we make others the performers, by performing the concept of real estate without hotel rooms,” explained Frank Riklin. As George Orwell said, “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.” If it rains, guests have to run to nearby farmhouses and barns for shelter. The Riklins may be a few walls short of a building, but there’s room for improvement. To give their seven spaces the appearance of luxury cachet for the easily hoodwinked, the Riklin brothers could name the “rooms”: Breezy, Sneezy, Wheezy, Sleazy, Drafty, Crafty, and Dopey.

Artificial Unintelligence illustration ©2020 Shutterstock/ka100500; Breaking Wind Illustration ©2020 Shutterstock/Just FP/kozhedub_nc/Rushartsstudio; Dumb Distancing illustration for The Limbaugh Letter ©2020 Allison Smith; Greenhouse Opera House photo ©2020 Associated Press/Emilio Morenatti; No Room, With a View photo ©2020 Reuters/Arnd Wiegmann