Number 5. The Gateway Pundit. Scammers Allegedly Sell “Fake Tickets” to Trump Inauguration
In what some will no doubt see as a metaphor for the 45th/47th president’s inauguration, the event on Monday last was rife with scam artists ripping off well-intentioned Americans.
The Capital One Arena in Washington D.C. was the scene of thousands of Trump supporters (some long-time hardened Maga-ites, some much more recent converts) who lined up hours ahead of time for access to the pre-inauguration rally.
The weather was cold, wet and generally miserable, made more so by the compulsory 15-block walk from the nearest shuttle stop. While the article does not say, I take the distance from shuttle to venue to be related to police barricades guarding against vehicle traffic.
Once arrived outside the venue, according to one witness arriving at 9:00 AM to wait for the 3:00 PM door-opening, there was much confusion surrounding counterfeit tickets sold by scammers.
“These guys were selling lanyards with what looked like official passes,” the witness explained. “Security started letting people in with them, then realized they were fake.”
It took about 90 minutes to sort the sheep from the goats, all the while with 20,000 fans being drenched in cold, light rain outdoors.
I don’t think Grover Cleveland had this issue.
Grover, a confirmed Democrat, was first elected to the presidency in 1884. A solid American patriot, he believed it was immoral for a person entrusted with the service of his country to stoop to running a political campaign while in office.
Which is why Grover lost his 1888 re-election bid to Benjamin Harrison, a Republican who campaigned on the promise to spend down the federal surplus by awarding special payments in gratitude to Civil War veterans. Given that remaining Civil War veterans would have been nearing 50 years old in an era when average life expectancy was 44, this is not as outlandish as it sounds.
Nevertheless, Grover lost, and returned to campaign again successfully in 1892, the only U.S. President to do so before or since, until Trump showed up. Grover was inaugurated the second time on March 4, 1893, exactly 60 days before a massive stock market sell-off marked the beginning of the Panic of 1893.
Grover Cleveland was by all accounts a stalwart fiscal conservative who took personal responsibilities seriously. As evidence, as a single man he fathered a child out of wedlock, then, as many men of means like himself, assumed financial responsibility for the child until she reached adulthood.
Because of the economic upheaval at the beginning of his term, Grover never had a chance to secure his legacy in a second presidency. He was naturally blamed for the economic depression, which was probably sparked during his predecessor’s administration with the passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890. Such is the nature of undeserved political reputation.
We hope and pray that Mr. Trump’s second term may be more profitable.
Meanwhile, you gotta love that American spirit of making a buck anytime there’s a crowd. Human nature has twisted that drive into a sinful swindle, but still… creative profit-taking rules the day.
Number 4. Reddit dot com. The Starship blew up in front of us.
Donald Trump was not the only one to launch things this week. Elon Musk (of Tesla, X, and SpaceX) launched his Starship and Jeff Bezos (of Amazon) launched his Blue Origin New Glenn rocket.
Only one of them blew up shortly after takeoff.
The Starship did not make it back in one piece after suffering what we all now acknowledge as a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” about 4 minutes into the flight. An oxygen leak, or maybe a fuel leak, developed just after the Super Heavy booster rocket separated as planned.
The booster made it back to the launch pad in what has already become a monotonous, unremarkable vertical safe landing into the gentle and waiting arms of the chopsticks. The Starship itself — what would be the crew and payload capsule if it were manned, which it was not — disintegrated colorfully as pieces streaked across the sky like very expensive fireworks. It was photographed by passengers on a nearby commercial airliner, diverted around the wreckage while airborne.
Predictably, Elon posted on X, “Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!”
This is Musk’s latest test for a SpaceX launch. It is the 33rd iteration of the Starship component and the 7th time the Starship and Heavy Booster have been paired for actual lift-off. Most of the previous equipment has been retired from service, or in several cases destroyed during unmanned missions. All that has happened since Elon Musk first entered the space flight business in 2019.
Jeff Bezos founded his own space venture, Blue Origin, in 2020 and made a small stir when he flew into space on it himself in 2021. His NG (“New Glenn”) booster rocket can lift 50 tons into orbit, somewhat less than the 70 tons boasted by Elon’s Super Heavy. Both boosters are expected to be recoverable and re-used dozens of times.
Blue Origin is scheduled to send a robot explorer to the Moon. Both Blue Origin and SpaceX claim they are headed for Mars, but the commercial opportunities for both companies lean heavily toward communication satellite deployment in earth orbit.
If you happen to have a middle-schooler interested in STEM subjects, encourage them. They might find a lucrative future in a space program.
Number 3. Variety dot com. What Hollywood lost in the fires.
As of this writing, the California wildfires are mostly contained but not completely extinguished in the Los Angeles area. In total, some 60 square miles have burned with 27 deaths reported.
The affected areas look much like World War 2 photographs of fire bombings in Germany and Japan. It is not unreasonable to liken the 2025 wildfire damage to that of a nuclear explosion.
Various blazes are known by the names of their neighborhoods: Palisades, Eaton, Lilac, Pala, Lidia, Archer, Woodley, Sunset, Kenneth, Hurst and Auto.
Drought conditions, 80-mile-per-hour Santa Ana winds, ubiquitous deadfall, ungroomed forests and reservoirs with unaccountably low water levels contributed to some $50 billion in economic impact to a state already deep in debt.
Uncountable is the personal loss of long-time homes with all the associated memorabilia: Photographs and Memories all irrevocably lost. Many of the 12,000 structures lost will not be fully covered, some not even partially covered, by insurance.
It is difficult to sort truth from political grand-standing. Were the reservoirs dry because of mismanagement, or because there is simply no amount of fresh water available anywhere to manage a conflagration of this magnitude? Turning on high-pressure hoses across 40,000 acres will stretch anybody’s water reserves.
That said, I do wonder what happened to the $2.2 billion of federal money made available to California for new reservoirs in 2022.
Maybe they are still working on it. And also on the $4.5 billion to fast-track a new reservoir with federal funds provided last year.
I know… it takes time to build dams and reservoirs. Especially if we try to build around what amounts to a religious avoidance of the habitats of certain fish and reptiles and shrubs. That might not be possible. Just like it might not be possible now to find out what happened to the money.
When they say its not about the money, it’s about the money.
Number 2. BBC dot com. Apple suspends error-strewn AI generated news alerts.
In other news, rest assured that artificial intelligence is on the job. Apple is making great strides in collecting and disseminating information. It’s just that sometimes the stride is backwards instead of forwards.
When Luigi Mangione allegedly shot and killed Brian Thompson, the United Healthcare CEO last month, BBC carried the headline like every other major news outlet. BBC’s story centered on the accused man’s argument with Pennsylvania authorities over being extradited to New York to stand trial. The headline read:
“CEO shooting suspect Luigi Mangione in angry outburst outside court.” The digital publication carried the well-known, colorful BBC logo.
The Apple news alert sought, without much success, to re-word and publish the same story. It was brief, clear and completely false: “Luigi Mangione shoots himself.” This, too, carried the unmistakable BBC logo, because Apple thoughtfully was giving credit to the source.
The misleading headline was attributed by Apple sources to their on-going battle with what they call AI hallucinations. These are instances where the algorithm inexplicably makes up data to include in a news story. Why and how this happens remains a mystery.
The Apple spokesperson who heads up their AI endeavor, basically said, “Yeah, that’s sometimes a problem.” Apparently the only way to guard against this is with something they characterize as “human oversight.”
Sounds reasonable.
But it does make one ponder the situation of a professionally trained journalist hired to watch a computer take away his work, and then be asked to fix the errors. And how, exactly, is the journalist who provides “human oversight” to recognize the errors?
How would you know whether Luigi shot himself or not, unless you researched the story yourself? If the journalist is being paid to do that, why not just have him write the story in the first place?
When God views what we have convinced ourselves is progress, it may be one of those occasions where the Psalmist says, “The Lord laughs at him, for He sees that his day is coming.” (37:13)
Number 1. BBC dot com. How AI can spot diseases that doctors aren't looking for.
On the other hand, artificial intelligence produces some unexpected and wildly successful results.
When a 58-year-old UK resident saw his doctor for some unpleasant abdominal symptoms, he was scheduled for a “computed tomography” test, which we generally know as a CT scan. This used to be called a CAT scan, for “computed axial tomography,” but that is so yesterday. Please try to keep up.
It turned out the only problem was one of food poisoning; unpleasant but not fatal. However, the practice at that hospital was apparently to submit the scan results to AI review. There, it was discovered that the patient also had a collapsed vertebra in the spine.
Research and further tests proved he had osteoporosis, a bone disease which would surely lead to premature fragility and significant risk of fractures. As a result, the patient elected to receive preventative treatment.
This saved significant expense, hassle, and — at a minimum — his quality of life.
In my current hospital role as an untrained, unqualified and usually unproductive volunteer who gets in the way of professional clinicians caring for cancer patients, I have seen presentations on this sort of thing. Patients need CT scans, ultrasounds and other tests in the normal course of treatment. Because the data is available, and it’s already paid for, the hospital routinely submits it to a further artificial intelligence review.
In a high percentage of cases, the AI routine accurately identifies pre-cancerous growths impossible to find through conventional analysis.
This is all good news, but, fallen world that this is, it is not without its share of worry. The quandary for the doctor-patient consultation is thus:
“We can perform a procedure to remove the pre-cancerous item. That could prevent you from developing cancer, surely a good thing.
On the other hand, it may never become cancerous anyway. And also, every time there is a physical intrusion into the body there is the possibility of collateral damage.”
So… we know more but we do not necessarily understand what to do with the knowledge. Sort of exemplifies the state of the internet, doesn’t it?
But on balance, I will come down in favor of knowing the data. I met a 60-year-old woman who had never had a mammogram, despite a family history of breast cancer. “I’d rather not know,” she told me. “It’s too scary to think about.”
I sympathized with her, but inside, my thought was, “You’ll THINK scary, once it starts to metastasize.”
So… artificial intelligence. Just like this digital world we live in, it can save your life just as easily as it can corrupt tomorrow’s headlines.
This digital age both obscures and reveals. From scam artists to space exploration to uncontrollable wild fires to technology that hides truth as well as it exposes corruption, perhaps it would serve us all well to echo a fundamental cry of the heart expressed 3,000 years ago:
Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. Psalm 73:25-26
And thanks for joining The Alligator News Roundup for Friday, January 24, 2025.
Make a list of all the things you are afraid of during a Trump presidency. Write small on one side of a piece of standard 8-1/2 x 11 paper. On the other side, write all the things you are happy about.
Then wad up the paper and burn it in your chiminea while chanting: “Presidents come and presidents go; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
That is not precisely what Joshua 24:15 says, but it’s on the same axis. Have a good weekend!
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