Welcome back to TGIF, a new summary, where I do my absolute best to get my wife fired.
→ Iran? Oh well, nevertheless: President Donald J. Trump traveled to France where, at Versailles, he signed an agreement giving Iran everything it ever wanted and more. He said that you gotta let them enrich a little bit of uranium. Trump: “It is a little hard, though, when you say that somebody wants it, other people have it, other adjoining states have it, and you’re not letting them have it for purposes of electricity and things like that. It’s always a little tough. You have to use a little common sense.” As for ballistic missiles, it’s what anyone would want: “I’m saying that if other countries have them, it’s a little bit unfair for them not to have some.” And, actually, Hamas might be alright. When it comes to Hamas, Trump says: “They’ve actually behaved pretty well.” It looks worse than Obama’s Iran deal, which is a shock to all the neocons who thought Obama was Voldemort, but a vindication to the neolibs who thought he was fine. Not a great man of history like Hillary Clinton (I’m a 2008 election denier; it was stolen), but he was fine.
J.D. Vance—Mr. Eyelashes, Mr. Chicken Coop, a fellow who definitely spends too much time on right-wing Twitter/X—has been selling the deal all week. And he came out swinging yesterday against Israel, which has balked at the seeming surrender. “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left.” And: “The problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump, and anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the president of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in.” I’m appalled and offended and want him to be wrong. But he’s not that much wrong. Increasingly, Israel stands alone. I guess there’s always India. But here, the heir apparent of the Republican Party is close friends with Tucker Carlson, whose every podcast episode is him shrieking why can’t we talk about how evil Israel is, no one can say it. So I’m just saying this is what time it is. It’s name-change o’clock in America. I mean, I’m changing mine to Nili Bowlsky but I do understand that this is not popular at the moment.
→ Give me back my AI: Top artificial intelligence company Anthropic released its new ultra-powerful model, Fable 5. It was—in my brief moments with it, asking about rashes and the best swim shoes for kids—so incredible. And then the Trump administration forced them to suspend access to Fable 5, along with another model, Mythos 5. They stole from us the greatest artificial intelligence on Earth. Anthropic says that the government basically gave them no information other than vague hand-waving that it’s not safe enough. Inside sources said that Anthropic just began to displease the administration. From Axios:
Following Anthropic’s models going dark, the optics added fuel to the fire. Anthropic came out with a blog post dismissing the Amazon report. Then the company enlisted a cybersecurity expert viewed by the administration as a “radical Democrat,” who was then celebrated by Chris Krebs, who Trump just fired.
Oh, no! Anthropic, you have forgotten how to please the king. Amazon, whose executives have the permanent taste of metal in their mouths from all their truly impressive ring-kissing, apparently tattled to the admin to get this started. Per Axios: “On Thursday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy called Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent expressing concerns that Anthropic’s most powerful models, Mythos and Fable, could be jailbroken.” I love that. Amazon kneecaps a competitor and then makes sure everyone knows it was them. Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei should expect a bloody horse head in his bed, delivered via Amazon package, any day now.
