(or AI for The Labor Question & What is Silicon Valley?)

NEW YORK - A man who took in an orphaned squirrel and made it a social media star vowed Saturday that New York state's decision to seize and euthanize the animal "won't go unheard." "We will make a stance on how this government and New York state utilizes their resources," Mark Longo said in a phone interview. He declined to specify his possible next steps but said officials would hear from him soon about what happened to Peanut the squirrel and Fred, a rescued raccoon that was also confiscated and put down.

It’s an extraordinary look inside a key American institution under intense external scrutiny and internal pressure.

Of course, they are the ones planning it

Jeffrey Epstein described himself as Donald Trump’s “closest friend” and claimed intimate knowledge of his proclivity for sex, including cuckolding his best friends, according to recordings obtained exclusively by the Daily Beast. The convicted pedophile even boasted of his closeness to Trump and his now-wife Melania by claiming, “the first time he slept with her was on my plane,” which was dubbed the Lolita Express. Epstein spoke at length about Trump with the author Michael Wolff in August 2017, two years before being found dead in his jail cell. Wolff was researching his bombshell bestseller Fire and Fury at the time. The recordings cast more light on Trump’s long relationship with Epstein, and will add to debate over the character of the Republican candidate, especially his attitudes and conduct toward women, just days before the election.

PBS NewsHour reported on Lakeland' s Taylor Cadle, who was charged with filing a false report at age 12 after accusing her adoptive father of rape. The NewsHour segment emphasized that Taylor felt it necessary to gather evidence on her own to prove that her adoptive father had raped her. She took those brave actions knowing that about a year earlier, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office not only declined to arrest Henry Cadle but charged Taylor with filing a false report. At the suggestion of her adoptive mother — Henry Cadle’s wife — Taylor pled guilty. As part of her probation, she was required to write letters of apology to Henry Cadle and to Polk County Sheriff’s Deputy Melissa Turnage, the officer who interviewed her after the original complaint.

The former president had a meltdown at a rally in Milwaukee Friday night over a faulty mic, which culminated in him simulating fellatio.

"The fear of humans is ingrained and pervasive," said Clinchy. "There's this idea that the animals are going to habituate to humans if they're not hunted. But we've shown that this isn't the case."

Pentagon removed this photo in embarrassment

Derrick Anderson's campaign sent an angry letter in response to a hilarious ad depicting Anderson living with cardboard cutouts of someone else's family.

A group of anti-government extremists who showed up in western North Carolina promising to provide disaster relief after Hurricane Helene is now threatening to destroy cell-phone towers and sabotage military vehicles. The group, Veterans on Patrol, attracted attention by setting up a disaster relief staging area in the parking lot of the Ingles grocery store in Lake Lure, about 50 miles from Asheville. But locals, including some who initially cooperated with the group, began to complain about threats and harassment. Over the past three weeks, members of the group, which falsely claims that Helene was caused by a “weather weapon,” have been making conspiracy-driven claims that the U.S. military is attempting to kill U.S. citizens with “directed energy weapons.”

It took three ER visits and 20 hours before a hospital admitted Nevaeh Crain, 18, as her condition worsened. Doctors insisted on two ultrasounds to confirm “fetal demise.” She’s one of at least two Texas women who died under the state’s abortion ban.

“Ghost jobs,” or ads for positions that aren’t actually open, are a common phenomenon in the tech industry, which has been plagued by layoffs and budget cuts over recent years. As unemployed workers struggle to regain their footing, recruiters and career coaches who spoke with SFGATE warned that these fake jobs posted by real companies serve multiple, sometimes insidious purposes. According to a 2024 survey from MyPerfectResume, 81% of recruiters admitted to posting ads for positions that were fake or already filled. While some respondents said employers did it to maintain a presence on job boards and build a talent pool, it’s also used to commit psychological warfare: 25% said ghost jobs helped companies gauge how replaceable their employees were, while 23% said it helped make the company appear more stable during a hiring freeze. Another damning 2024 report from Resume Builder said that 62% companies posted them specifically to make their employees feel replaceable. They also made ads to “trick overworked employees” into believing that more people would be brought on to alleviate their overwhelming workload.

Police said a 17-year-old suspect was arrested

No one is as vicious about a game as its most dedicated player. Take a jaunt over to the forums for WoW, or CoD, or Overwatch sometime and you'll see what I mean: Scores of people who play almost nothing but the game in question but have almost nothing positive to say about it. But not a single irritated MMO player is a patch on my own personal icon of this genre: Herp McDerperson—real name Scott Smith—who I discovered one day when I stumbled on the negative review he left on Steam for Battlezone 98 Redux (BZ98R), Rebellion's 2016 remaster of the original RTS/FPS hybrid from 1998. A negative review which he left, says Steam, after 8,461.1 hours of playtime, then followed up with 600 more. I've been curious about Smith since before I even began writing about games—a product of both the disparity between his hour-count and his attitude and the authoritative tone of his review (it pretty much kicks off with the statement "This review involves numerous statements of objective fact"). It's a relationship with a single piece of art that I can't really fathom. My favourite game of all time is Morrowind and I've poured a paltry few hundred hours into that. My most-played, according to Steam? Fallout: New Vegas with 650ish hours, a mere 7% of Smith's total in BZ98R. I have only positive things to say about either. Naturally, I had to leverage my position as a PCG writer to reach out to Smith and see if he'd chat about what makes him tick.

From questions in online forums to TikTok Live streamers looking around Parnell Square, there’s been some confusion this evening over Dublin’s Halloween Parade. Unfortunately, people have been left “ghosted” by the phantom parade which seems to have all been part of an ad-revenue scam.

The blogging platform Medium is facing an influx of AI-generated content. CEO Tony Stubblebine says it “doesn’t matter” as long as nobody reads it.

At a news conference Wednesday, Portland police released their first description of a possible culprit, but declined to provide any details about a possible motive for the attacks.

Young Thug is coming home from prison after making a non-negotiated plea in the RICO trial against his record label, YSL. The rapper, born Jeffery Williams, pleaded guilty to various firearm and drug charges, along with one count of participation in criminal gang activity, while pleading no contest to a RICO charge and a gang leadership charge. He was sentenced to serve five years, commuted to time served, along with various conditions. Below, the latest on his plea and sentencing.

Ubisoft has quietly released its own NFT game to join the ranks of other vaunted, widely-played blockchain enabled titles like Axie Infinity and...uh, Ember Sword. Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles launched earlier this month with relatively little fanfare or marketing. The game comes two years after Ubisoft’s failed bid to make NFTs work in Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, a solid three years after NFT prices and purchases fell off a cliff, and barely a week after it announced it would disband the team behind the critically acclaimed Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Surface level, Champions Tactics is a PC strategy game where players assemble teams of champions to fight their way up the rankings. Teams are composed of three champions, each with their own attributes and abilities that can exploit enemy teams’ weaknesses. At the beginning of each round, players roll dice to determine combat order. Next, they select abilities for their champions before combat plays out simultaneously. Rinse and repeat until one team is defeated. All in all, the game looks like a surprisingly decent, if generic, tactics game. But then there’s all the NFT garbage. Champions are the game’s NFTs associated with the Oasys blockchain. To acquire champions you have to either forge them from existing champions you own or purchase them off the game’s marketplace. To purchase champions, you can either use the OAS cryptocurrency or plain ole cash money, with the cheapest going for about $7 and the most expensive sitting at an eye-watering $63,000 whole-ass American dollars. To understand what’s in it for Ubisoft to perpetrate this nonsense, the company takes a six percent “royalty fee” for every marketplace transaction, and there are about 2,700 active listings on the site. But wait! There’s worse! Having more champions increases your VIP status. The higher your VIP status, the more experience points and in-game currency you earn, thus incentivizing players to spend money accumulating champions. To entice even more dollars out of customers, Champions Tactics also features an additional exclusive collection of NFTs to buy called warlords. According to the game’s website, owning a warlord unlocks access to “special events” and even more in-game boosts to earning EXP and gold. Players can use their warlords as their in-game profile pictures. Here’s what they look like.