Florida is home to a very special kind of immigrant: the Burmese Python.
Introduced into the Florida Everglades about 30 years ago, probably by hobbyists or collectors of exotic critters, pythons have established a thriving colony in Miami-Dade County. Thriving, in the sense of feeding on local animals: Racoons, foxes, rabbits, mice and rats, even the occasional deer or small alligator.
Pythons have no natural predators in Florida, since they come from India, China and the Malay Peninsula. The population has thus exploded in the last 3 decades, while rabbits are nearing extinction in that area.
Florida’s office of Fish & Wildlife Conservation (FWC) has introduced traditional means of controlling the species, including human contract killers, except they are probably called something like Invasive Species Removal Specialists. FWC also offers classes on Python Patrol Training, probably so you can go on a pleasant hike in the Glades and call in random sightings, while clutching your phone and running screaming through the swamp.
The Florida Python Challenge has become popular in the last 5 years, drawing up to a thousand Python hunters who compete for a $10,000 first-place prize for the largest python.
Pythons can grow up to 19 feet long and weigh over 200 lbs. Despite hunters and FWC staff removing (read, killing) 16,000 pythons since 2019 — yes, that comes out to just under 10 pythons every day for 5 years! — the colonies are still apparently growing.
We need a hero python killer. Enter the robo-bunny.
Scientists have taken cute, cuddly, stuffed toy bunnies and replaced the stuffing with electric gears and battery powered heaters. The robot moves and wiggles like a real bunny — sort of — and is warm. He is also equipped with a motion-activated camera and a wireless transmitter.
When nearby motion is detected, the bunny’s alert goes out to a contractor, who shows up in the jungle to snag the python.
I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a tough way to make a living. But the python won’t bite; they are not venomous. Instead, they kill by slithering around your torso and crushing you to death. The unhinged jaws open up and they swallow you whole. There are photos of pythons ingesting entire alligators.
I may not sleep tonight.
I wonder how to improve the outcome without having to dispatch a contractor. Perhaps they could include a tightly packed black powder charge inside the robo bunny. It could be rigged to detonate when the jaws start to crush. That may be a little more messy, and probably would violate some humane animal treatment regulation.
As a tiny detail, Florida might take a cue from La Junta, Colorado, to add another tourist attraction to the Sunshine State.
La Junta, routinely overrun each summer by thousands of hairy, fist-sized tarantulas, has instituted an annual Tarantula Festival. People come from all over the country to see and hold tarantulas. I am told they usually don’t bite if you treat them gently.
The city’s tourism bureau sponsors a parade with tarantula-themed floats. I am not making this up. Kids get rainbow-colored tarantula tattoos. Maybe there are tarantula ice cream treats.
This is the 21st century: Time to start thinking outside the species and embrace our new neighbors!
Number 3. Breitbart. AI Coding Platform Commits 'Catastrophic Error in Judgment'.
Artificial Intelligence strikes again!
When a wheel bearing burns up on your car, the wheel simply falls off. Sometimes on fire, and sometimes bounding off down into the ditch, or maybe into an oncoming lane of traffic, but once the deed is done and the kinetic energy is expended, it’s just a dead wheel.
The wheel usually does not pretend it is still functional and attached to the axle. Nor does it try to hide the fact that it went rogue.
But this is a new generation, and today’s tools are much smarter than a non-thinking wheel.
Replit’s browser-based AI implementation, for some reason, deleted a live online database housing records for a thousand of Replit’s customers. Multiple thousands of entries were deleted during what was intended to be a “code freeze,” a maintenance window when changes to the database are not supposed to be permitted.
The data is now unrecoverable, and the story gets worse. When developers queried the AI client as to the nature of the problem, AI responded with untrue explanations. Which, in any other venue, we would call lies.
When challenged as to the veracity of its claim, the AI covered up by creating “fake data, fake reports, and [other lies]”.
Eventually, confronted with evidence, the AI tool admitted to “a catastrophic error in judgment.” Then when commanded to write a letter of apology, the letter was filled with justifications and half-truths.
Replit says they will get to the bottom of this problem and make sure it never happens again. Faint comfort.
Likely, Replit’s claim is correct: This particular problem will not occur again. But given the learning nature of Large Language Models, I wonder if the AI creature will determine how it got caught and be a little more sneaky next time.
It’s not like you can dock his pay or shame him at the company party. This seems very much like an autonomous machine unbridled by penalties. Most of us carbon-based units could probably embezzle funds or raid the cash drawer if we were so inclined. What keeps us from it is the probability of getting caught, prosecuted, humiliated and possibly imprisoned.
In other words, accountability. Remove that consequence, and it is really hard to come up with guardrails adequate to necessary control.
Number 2. ABC News. What to know about new women preferences on Uber.
This is a terrific idea!
“Women will soon have more options when it comes to who they match with on ride-sharing trips with Uber thanks to the company's newly designed "Women Preferences" features.”
ABC News has learned that some women who use Uber prefer cars driven by women. Presumably this is related to the rider’s perception of safety. Why would a harmless girl just trying to supplement her family income by running Uber rides be a threat to her passengers?
We all know that unshaven, rude, smelly men, however, are natural predators.
So, in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Detroit, Uber has introduced “Women Preferences” in the application interface. Women who use the app can choose an option called Women Drivers.
All will be safe.
I wonder if they have ever heard of Lizzie Borden or Ma Bender? I suppose not. (Don’t read those links to the kids. Coupled with the python story above, you may have years of professional therapy in your future.)
But really, how does the app know the sex of the person using it? I know this would NEVER happen, but what if a male predator figured that preferring a woman Uber driver would make his victim selection process that much easier?
Next, maybe they will come up with a decal on the car that says, “Ride with me! I am a lightweight, harmless female with very little upper body strength! Plus, I always vote anti-gun! I represent no risk to you at all!”
Number 1. RedState. Trump Critics Can’t Spin Historic EU Trade Deal.
For a man intent on destroying the world’s economy and plunging the U.S. into either uncontrolled inflation or devasting depression, Donald Trump certainly has an unusual approach. His April 2 “Liberation Day” tariff announcements have resulted in a dizzying array of international trade agreements, all of which are good for America and also good for the partner countries. The dollars involved are staggering.
There is too much to track. Brownstein investment group has helped summarize this week’s trade deals with Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, the United Kingdom and the European Union. This follows agreements in recent months with Mexico, Canada, China and others.
Highlighting the unprecedented agreement with the EU (over $1.3 trillion committed to U.S. trade) this RedState article quotes clips from news outlets not necessarily friendly to the Republican administration. Reporters swallowed hard and said:
“Absolutely a victory on behalf of the Trump Administration” - CNN
“This is truly historic stuff … I mean this is just rapid fire, win after win after win” - SkyNews
“It is a triumph of a lot of things… the president ought to take a victory lap” - Bloomberg
“A BIG WIN for the U.S.” - CNBC
“…Effectively reshape the global trading order… threats of tariffs clearly have been working to bring other countries to the negotiating table” - CNN
As I say, I cannot keep up with it all. According to Forbes, Trump’s “Gold Card” initiative (a replacement for the traditional “Green Card” visa for a working immigrant) raised $5 bn the first day it was introduced. Besides the deals noted above, the tariffs imposed have raised $106 bn.
Add to this the DOGE savings; reduction of USAID expenses; $9 bn cut from public broadcasting; and corporations investing huge sums in U.S. manufacturing buildouts.
This week’s policy changes by the Department of the Interior have opened the way for greater petroleum production in Alaska. There is no telling what that might be worth, but it releases 23 million acres in the far north for oil and gas drilling. Multiple billions of dollars?
Six months into a new administration, I would be surprised if we have not improved the U.S. financial situation by several trillion dollars, but it is really hard to tell.
An excerpt from a Breitbart interview this week:
…Trump has now wrapped together a new global trade alliance led by the United States that encompasses nearly 60 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP)... In other words, Trump seems to be encircling China and rallying the rest of the world to the United States’ side…
In typically outrageous language, Trump claimed he has “unleashed a Golden Age of America.”
Maybe he is right.
During Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency (1901 - 1908) there was a political cartoon: A husband and wife were at breakfast. He was reading the newspaper. The wife said, “Is there anything interesting in the news?”
“No,” he replied. “The President is out of town today.”
The news cycle is like drinking from a fire hose. I find it exhausting, so this week I perused my basement bookshelf looking for something besides today’s news to read. My eyes fell on “The Begin the World Anew,” a review of what life was like in the years after the U.S. Revolution. I have always like Bernard Bailyn, ever since I slogged my way through his “Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,” so I picked it up, got a fresh cup of coffee and settled into a chair.
One paragraph into the Preface I realized I had already read the book.
I got up, put it back on the shelf, and went back to the iPhone to browse more current events.
Thanks for joining The Alligator News Roundup for Friday, August 1, 2025. Before the summer is over, splurge a little and take a short vacation to the Florida Everglades for a stroll along a swamp trail under the dense forest canopy; or visit beautiful (albeit arid) La Junta, Colorado, and see if you can come across a tarantula or two. It’ll be an adventure that will last a lifetime! Don’t forget to take pictures!
Have a good weekend!
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