Because Elon Musk is so rich, his defects are everyone's business. And because he owns Twitter, his bone-deep personal wackness is now everyone else's problem.

President Joe Biden said Monday that Democrats still lack the power to codify abortion rights into law despite his party’s stronger-than-expected performance in the midterm elections. Asked what voters might expect on the issue, Biden replied, “I don’t think they can expect much of anything.”

Imagine the turmoil if a newly elected president of the United States announced that the U.S. government would no longer honor any outstanding Treasury bills because most of them were issued under his profligate predecessor. That’s essentially what Kim Jin-tae, the governor of South Korea’s Gangwon province, did. In doing so, Kim sparked a nationwide credit crisis that is spreading internationally, in the most farcical and unnecessary economic self-destruction this side of Liz Truss. Enhancing the absurdity is the origin of the crisis: Legoland Korea, a theme park based on the familiar brick toys. Gangwon, a sparsely populated, mountainous region east of Seoul, had tried since 2010 to build a Legoland near the resort town of Chuncheon. After years of delay caused by a discovery of ancient artifacts in the construction site and allegations of bribery and kickbacks, the theme park finally opened on May 5.

Among the mass layoffs at the company formerly known as Facebook last week are several roles that have served as a bridge between the news industry and the sprawling tech company. The Meta Journalism Project Accelerator’s David Grant, a program manager, and Dorrine Mendoza, who led local news partnerships for the platform, were both laid off. Other journalism-adjacent positions eliminated include the head of news partnerships for South East Asia, a program manager for news, two program managers for news integrity, and multiple news communications jobs. Meta declined to comment on the layoffs or confirm how many of the 11,000 positions eliminated were jobs relating to the news business. It’s unclear what impact the job losses will have on all of Facebook’s various news-related efforts, including the Meta Journalism Project itself. (Meta spokespeople and Campbell Brown, Meta’s vice president of global media partnerships, did not respond to requests for comment on the future of the Meta Journalism Project.)

Defence minister calls investigation into Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing by Israeli army ‘interference in internal affairs’

FTX seemed to be a shining example of a cryptocurrency exchange that was doing everything right. Run by Sam Bankman-Fried – a multibillionaire, believed by many to be a once-in-a-generation genius, who rubbed shoulders with congresspeople and called for “thoughtful regulatory leadership” – FTX and its sister companies were bringing crypto to the mainstream. They spent millions on a Super Bowl ad comparing crypto to the invention of the wheel and the lightbulb, urging customers not to “miss out” on “the next big thing” and touting FTX as “a safe and easy way to get into crypto.” During the crypto downturn this past year, Bankman-Fried was compared to JP Morgan for the seemingly endless pile of cash he had to offer floundering crypto firms as he swooped in as a savior. In the span of one week, his empire came crashing down. A leaked balance sheet from Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried’s quantitative trading firm, allegedly showed that a massive portion of Alameda’s assets were denominated in tokens that FTX themselves created. It was already an open secret that FTX and Alameda were tightly intertwined, but there was little hard evidence as to how tightly they were linked, and regulators had not made any substantial moves to investigate the ties.

If there’s one major change in Joshua A. Miele’s life since September 2021, it’s that pretty much anyone he wishes to talk to also wants to talk with him. “Before, they might have said, ‘Who are you and why should I care?’ or ‘You work on accessibility, that’s nice,’” he said. “But to say I’m a 2021 MacArthur fellow calling, it totally changes people’s reactions to you.”

The Substack writer Matt Yglesias confirmed that he had spoken to Bankman-Fried about the project, saying he was “flattered but not interested.” The 538 founder Nate Silver told Semafor that he spoke to an FTX executive about the project, and was similarly not interested. Other names Bankman-Fried floated included Bloomberg’s Matt Levine. (Death penalty.)

José Irizarry accepts that he’s known as the most corrupt agent in U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration history, admitting he “became another man” in conspiring with Colombian cartels to build a lavish lifestyle of expensive sportscars, Tiffany jewels and paramours around the world. But as he used his final hours of freedom to tell his story to The Associated Press, Irizarry says he won’t go down for this alone, accusing some long-trusted DEA colleagues of joining him in skimming millions of dollars from drug money laundering stings to fund a decade’s worth of luxury overseas travel, fine dining, top seats at sporting events and frat house-style debauchery. The way Irizarry tells it, dozens of other federal agents, prosecutors, informants and in some cases cartel smugglers themselves were all in on the three-continent joyride known as “Team America” that chose cities for money laundering pick-ups mostly for party purposes or to coincide with Real Madrid soccer or Rafael Nadal tennis matches. That included stops along the way in VIP rooms of Caribbean strip joints, Amsterdam’s red-light district and aboard a Colombian yacht that launched with plenty of booze and more than a dozen prostitutes.

UVA Police say one suspect is at large after a shooting that killed three people and injured two more Sunday night.

California’s pot businesses have a new worry to add to the long list of problems facing the industry: customers suing cannabis brands for allegedly not getting them high enough. In the past three weeks, Santa Monica law firm Dovel & Luner has sued four companies in two class action lawsuits, alleging the pot sellers have been overstating how much THC is in their pre-rolled joints. Both suits cite an investigation into THC inflation by cannabis news site WeedWeek, which commissioned lab tests of pre-rolls being sold in California and found that “potency inflation is close to ubiquitous” in the market. “I’m not surprised [this lawsuit] got filed,” said Hilary Bricken, a Los Angeles cannabis attorney. “I think a lot of this behavior is rampant in the industry and it was only a matter of time before a plaintiff firm would figure it out and test the waters.”

The United Arab Emirates steered U.S. foreign policy in its favor through legal and illegal exploits, according to an unprecedented intelligence report.

Per Cointelegraph: FTX former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder Gary Wang and director of engineering Nishad Singh are understood to be in the Bahamas and are “under supervision” by the local authorities. The source familiar with the matter told Cointelegraph that the three former FTX executives, as well as Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, are looking for ways to flee to Dubai, which "doesn't have any extradition treaties" — likely in reference to the United States.

This is like half a decade old but i have become obsessed with this shitty, hateful comic after one of him being shitty about his wife's body got posted to Twitter.

What Tuesday’s voting demonstrated is that our country is still equally divided and deeply polarized, with no political healing on the horizon. That reality speaks to the need for a proven vote-getter with lots of money and a logistical machine behind him. In Politics 101, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) meets — maybe even exceeds — those qualifications. -Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s main international FTX exchange held just $900mn in easily sellable assets against $9bn of liabilities the day before it collapsed into bankruptcy, according to investment materials seen by the Financial Times. The largest portion of those liquid assets listed on a FTX international balance sheet dated Thursday was $470mn of Robinhood shares owned by a Bankman-Fried vehicle not listed in Friday’s bankruptcy filing, which included 134 corporate entities. The document, shared with prospective investors before the bankruptcy, provides a detailed picture of the financial hole in the FTX crypto empire and suggests customers of FTX international may face steep losses on cash and crypto assets they held on the exchange.

The general spin on the election results is that they were good for Democrats and bad for Republicans. And they were, at least in the short term. But they may ultimately prove to be good for Republicans, since former President Trump’s grip on the GOP has taken a beating, opening the door to younger and more electable 2024 Republican presidential candidates.

Catherine Cortez Masto's win delivered a one-two punch for Democrats in Nevada and Arizona, a pair of battleground states that Republicans contested fiercely.

An energy-efficient chip called NeuRRAM fixes an old design flaw to run large-scale AI algorithms on smaller devices, reaching the same accuracy as wasteful digital computers.

Eventually DCI scrubbed celluloid film almost entirely from the film industry, ushering in the most significant technological shift since the introduction of sound. The digital revolution transformed nearly every aspect of filmmaking for Hollywood and independent filmmakers. This revolution was invisible, and it was designed to be that way. Its success depended on audiences never noticing at all.