🐤 Protesting 'Project Nimbus'

🏦 Markets: The news was mixed on Wall Street yesterday, which, after several days of sell-offs, was enough to let some stressed-out investors take a much-needed deep breath.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished higher for the first time in more than a week, albeit after a pretty tumultuous day of trading. The Nasdaq and S&P were down by a fraction of a percent at the closing bell.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s remarks, essentially acknowledging that it might be longer than expected until interest rates come down, helped propel Treasury yields higher even as oil prices retreated.

🏀 Calling it quits: After a career spanning 13 seasons that started when he was the NBA’s #1 overall draft pick in 2009, Blake Griffin announced this week that he is retiring. His first season was delayed by a knee injury, but he ultimately made a strong first impression, taking home the 2010-2011 Rookie of the Year award and being named an All-Star each of his first five seasons as an L.A. Clipper. After being traded to the Pistons for his ninth season, he finished with career-low stats for the Celtics, but still leaves behind an enviable legacy.

🎟️ That’s the ticket: Ticketmaster — and its parent company Live Nation — have faced mounting scrutiny in recent years for essentially monopolizing the online sale of tickets for a host of live events. When the two companies merged more than a dozen years ago, criticism soon started to swirl as unavoidable fees and manufactured scarcity forced fans to pay much more for tickets. Then its site crashed during the presale for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. This week, the Justice Department announced its plans to pursue an antitrust lawsuit against the companies.

🛰️ Mystery solved: Last month, a Florida man reported that an unidentified metal object crashed into his home, nearly hitting his son who was only a couple of rooms away from the impact site. At the time, speculation mounted that the roughly two-pound cylindrical item was a piece of space debris from the International Space Station — and a NASA investigation confirmed those suspicions this week. The agency indicated it came from a discarded pallet and had been expected to burn up upon re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.

⛔ Not invited: Russian leader Vladimir Putin is persona non grata at an upcoming ceremony in France commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day, which was the Allied forces invasion of Normandy during World War II. Putin has become something of a pariah on the world stage since sending the Russian military to invade neighboring Ukraine in 2022. But French organizers acknowledged that Russia itself should be included due to its national sacrifice during World War II and representatives from the country will be invited to attend.

The ongoing Israel-Hamas war has fueled impassioned demonstrations worldwide by activists on both sides of the issue, and one Big Tech giant has been thrust into the middle of one such protest.

Taking over offices

Google has an agreement with the Israeli government to provide cloud-based computing services, and a group of the company’s employees expressed their opposition to that $1.2 billion contract with a demonstration at corporate offices in New York and California this week.

According to reports, the group No Tech For Apartheid was behind the protest, which notably involved an occupation of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office on the West Coast as well as the 10th floor common area at the Google office in the Big Apple.

Coordinated protests were also taking place on Tuesday in San Francisco and Seattle, marking the latest and most disruptive demonstrations by pro-Palestine Google employees since the war broke out more than six months ago.

About the protesters

While the individual demonstrators have their own personal reasons for engaging in the protest, it all stems from Project Nimbus, which refers to the 2021 contract Google (and Amazon) reached with the Israel Defense Forces.

For its part, No Tech For Apartheid reportedly includes activists from two separate organizations — Muslim-led MPower Change and Jewish Voice for Peace. The interfaith coalition was formed as a direct result of Project Nimbus and has issued — along with 18 other entities — an open letter demanding both Google and Amazon to sever its contract with the IDF.

Nearly 100,000 people have added their signatures to the letter, which details a number of complaints stemming from the agreement, including concerns that Israel has used the resources contained in Google Photos to locate and target Palestinians living throughout the West Bank.

Fire can be among the most destructive forces on Earth, and its devastation can be multiplied when an iconic piece of history is burned to the ground. That’s exactly what happened in the capital city of Denmark this week when a fire broke out in one of the oldest structures in Copenhagen.

“Irreplaceable cultural heritage”

The blaze struck the Old Stock Exchange building, which had been standing since the 1600s and was recognizable by, among other things, its 184-foot-tall spire. According to early reports, the dragon-tail feature collapsed as the blaze moved through the brick building.

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen responded to the news in a social media post lamenting the destruction of “irreplaceable cultural heritage” and declaring: “A piece of Danish history is on fire.”

In total, about half of the building is believed to have been completely destroyed by the blaze, which started on its green copper roof where renovations were underway. As of the latest updates available, officials said there was no confirmation regarding the cause or source of the fire.

Looking for the silver lining

Fortunately, there were no injuries reported and local officials credited the quick work of first responders as well as quick-thinking locals in the ability to at least save some of this historic building and artifacts contained inside it.

According to Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt, the “touching” display of civic responsibility included multiple individuals pitching in “to save art treasures and iconic images from the burning building.”

Chamber of Commerce head Brian Mikkelsen acknowledged that the destructive fire represented a “national disaster,” but also sought to highlight the positive.

“We have been able to rescue a lot,” he said.

Nevertheless, King Frederik spoke for Danes far and wide when he remarked: “This morning we woke up to a sad sight.”

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Beauty pageants have been around in some form for many generations, but they’ve fallen out of favor in some circles over the course of recent decades due to concerns about judging women on their physical characteristics.

But what if women (at least those with flesh and blood) are not the ones competing? That’s what we’ll have a chance to witness — whether we want to or not — when the first-ever “Miss AI” pageant takes place soon.

More than just looks

They say beauty is skin deep, but in the case of these contestants, it’s as shallow as the screen on your smartphone. While there might be some similarities between the Miss AI pageant and traditional competitions, the factors that will determine which AI-generated model wins the top prize will depend on these factors:

• The models’ looks and poise
• Technical skill required to produce them
• Their level of online influence

And since there’s no human model to take home the prize, the creator of whichever model is crowned Miss AI will actually be the winner.

How it’s all decided

There will be four judges responsible for choosing the winner, only two of which — entrepreneur Andrew Bloch and author Sally-Ann Fawcett — are human. The other two are AI-generated influencers Aitana Lopez (with 300,000 Instagram followers) and Emily Pelligrini (with an Instagram audience of 250,000).

“AI creators’ social clout will be assessed based on their engagement numbers with fans, rate of growth of audience and utilization of other platforms such as Instagram,” explained the World AI Creator Awards.

Future pageants could judge AI-generated models (including male ones) on characteristics such as fashion and diversity.

The top prize will be $5,000 in cash and thousands of dollars worth of PR promotion and support. The winner will be announced on May 10.