A great new idea for a video game, the newest and best, for 2026.

 

 Grand Theft Venezuela. Yes. Think about it! Spin out the possibilities. Four hundred enemy helicopters and fighter jets and drones, each play a random number distribution set but totaling four hundred, your gamer perspective is one of Maduro's palace guards. Stop the Huns from capture of your prize, while staying alive while doing it, all by adroit use of your gaming interrface - keyboard control of one Kalishnikov 47, some body armor, and the ability to jump ten feet at a time.

It could be a big winner. You fight off adversary attack, and need to exit the palace alive with Maduro protected, or game over, tote up your score if your Maduro is killed or captured.

You'd always loose, but think of the point competition before losing. "I got 756,411 points, before my Maduro got captured and a bonus 75 points for holding off further for the spouse. 756,486 total, and that's so far the Internet post of most points." Woo woo!

It could be a massive appeal, right and left politics aside, what's good for Exxon is good for the invading Huns, and you need to fight off the Huns and Exxon. You against the massive fighting force the evil Hun leader has amassed for a land, sea and air capture of your Maduro.

Another possibility - Grand Hunt Osama, where you are a Pakistani Intelligence agent protecting a borderland compound with a target individual under house arrest etc, etc. and where your nearby military academy agents can or cannot be invoked, set binary random each play. Tote scores in each binary category. 

One game for the Dems, one for the Repubs as the invading evil force. 

A game like that might play in the third world better than in North America.  Big question in design of Grand Theft Venezuela - how to work Simon Bolivar into a game script role. As a force on your side. A force of some kind, some measure, but how exactly?

 TOI offers ideas for visuals in the game, but it would need faster action frames too if selling a video game.. Among other TOI  items  -  

THIS = Spin the win example? So the question is, who'll win the spin?

 Spin - an image =

more spin

Spin! Crabgrass' view? I agree with my friends. An unclear thing, stuff was bombed in the extraction of Maduro with an aim being for a show trial. Oil facilities bombed? You think? Internally sabot used, perhaps. But if so, do you think it's major mayhem, or subject to quick repair and resume pumping away?

And what about our grocery prices and healthcare prices spiraling? Stealing other peoples' natural resources might affect pump prices, but what about, say, food? What of Chinese soybean purchases? Brazil grows soybeans and Cargill is there as well as in Minnetonka headquarters.

Iran next, but who has a safe labor based income with AI arguably poised? What moves the US people is the situation in the US, and the question of theft or attempted theft of oil under non-US ground is related, i.e., their oil factored into our economy/supply chains, over time; it's a big guess.

 Yet more spin, a sampling, here, here and here. Enough already. Remember, grocery prices, and watch the spin. And MTG's trying to grab the news, grabbing it by the Epstein.

 UPDATE: Marco does say Iran, Hezbollah. What's that all about? And that Marco link, for me, segued into MTG critiquing what "America First" means. So if for you too, keep watching. Epstein still hot?

"My friends will get hurt" means what to you? And do you think for one minute Epstein hanged himself, or that this Maduro thing is about anything but oil and Marco and Trump's Florida having in residence there a mob of Venezuelan pissed off former bosses from there, collaborators then, since displaced making noise and promising to go back and retake their comforts? Things seem clear, including a big military and the building of a big federal Gestapo like force in our nation, the U.S. of A. And corporate oil interests get served while Americans are paying more to live. Like Obama bailing out the banks while Americans ate shit while being foreclosed, with nobody going to jail. MTG saying what she's saying is interesting, but is she sincere, or just another opportunist? She's now engaged to an ultra-rightwing media figure, the guy who jumped Zylinskyy over no suit.Go figure that one.

Was that "we're going to run that nation and its oil" press conference the functional equivalent of the little Bush's "Mission Acomplished" carrier landing? Seems so, but time must pass to see for sure.

The full "Our Oil under Their Ground" press conference is now on YouTube - Dog and pony, but no JD or Noem.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZV1Q2hXdXI

UPDATE: https://digbysblog.net/2026/01/03/were-going-to-run-it/ 

Actually, maybe Elon or Google may make Venezula "self-driving." That may be the plan. AI used to make wellhead to the tanker all automated, self steering tankers to Gulf coast refineries, AI unloading and refining. Self driving tank trucks to the gas station, and robots to fuel your Lexis and check the oil.

Only that and a few porta-potties around for the few humans maintaining  things and fixing breakdowns.

Last, that image above. I recognize the background American flag, but what's the other, the Mar-a-Lago flag? The flag of the self-driving nation?

Trump and myself share one likely thing. We're each more likely than not to have croaked by the time the climate change blowback from stealing and burning all that fossil fuel happens and worsens life of all.

Venezuela may may not get even, but the earth will. The climate will. The Oceans and their long run current pattern changes will not be as weak or permissive as Maduro was. Hegseth's legions hold no sway with the waters, with over ocean and submarine power dwarfed compared with present hurricanes. And the future holds what?

If Iran has any nuclear facility beyond what we know of, it will run overtime, ya betcha. 

 

This AM I watched their "Our Oil, under Their Ground" news conference on Lindell TV. Yes, Lindell TV, and when the press conference, where JD absented himself, ended, Lindell TV cut over to Steve Bannon.

 This is troubling.  https://lindelltv.com/lindelltv-news/ It really does exist. 

What more is to say? Trump even phrased "Monroe Doctrine" as "Donroe Doctrine."

He said that. And stumbled his way through reading his script. 

Who is boss? The General who stood at the  right side of the "support cast" behind him with the flags?

Where was JD? 

Who came up with Lindall TV? You can buy their stock. A public company.

It really exists.

UPDATE: Whose pillow is paying the freight?

FURTHER UPDATE: The Murdoch perspective: https://nypost.com/2026/01/02/opinion/blame-naive-anti-israel-gopers-not-trump-for-dividing-maga/

With this image: https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/president-donald-trump-shakes-hands-117996006.jpg

Published Jan. 2, 2026, 6:03 p.m. ET -- JD mentioned. That image, cropped somewhat:

Turning Point mentioned.  A perspective from before the overnight-overflight events.

FURTHER UPDATE: Try it for yourself, search = Iran 2026 news 

FURTHER UPDATE: Three further links, arguably cross-related, here, here and here. Interpretations can differ.

AI is going to be soaking up a lot of capital investment, regardless of any actual dimension of payout. Nadella is in 100%. Microsoft is not being timid.

Top Trend: The AI evolution from Model Training to Inference

March 28, 2025

 Yes first quarter, this year, but painting a picture with projected petaflop and power projections.

NOT, apparently double precision floating point, as much science requires, but heat up those Nvidia gpus.

Projecting something greater than Avagadro's number of petaflops, near future (not double precision). 

More recently, Financial Times, for those paying or transgressing the paywall: 

 

sorry about the mid-item bar, not atop, but the gist remains

 

https://www.ft.com/content/255dbecc-5c57-4928-824f-b3f2d764f635#26908107

That's an into-2026 thing, and if you cannot get that story because of the paywall, search = nadella $$ AI 

Doing that search, multiple overlapping stories, including: https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-ai-revolution-2025-12?op=1 

Timing in the year may differ, but the leadership changes at Microsoft have been over the 2025 year, not all jammed into year-end. 

https://www.ft.com/content/2f82a42c-7b41-40a4-b549-bce7805166f3

https://www.ft.com/content/8e21d389-64bb-42cc-b52d-48203837979f 

 Again, have an FT account, beat the paywall, or see as much as FT shows you, and search accordingly in the non-paywalled world. The content will, more or less, be there. In essence, the big players seem to be aggregating and cross-pollenating, with Elon (Xai) and the Chinese not mentioned. The Indian brain power seems to be HB-1 drained to US work, while the Chinese are not sleeping. E.g., here or here.

Those two links, plus this, say enough to where readers can search more as they choose.

Pop the popcorn, and watch. It is the whole worldwide industry moving from desktop/local to rental of gigantic stuff. As in get the riff-raft on payments. You can buy an Nvidia Spark, and learn, but the big players are playing big, and $$$ capital is being gambled upon an on-payments future cashflow model.

Good luck into 2026 and later, where pay-to-play seems to be the goal of the heaviest in hi-tech.

Not that it was not before, but IBM has waned, Digital has disappeared to Control Data land, and the beat goes on. And demand for electricity will dwarf us citizens, and the crypto guys, to where we pay more so Microsof, Google, Amazon, the Eurpoeans and the Chinese can game away their time and extra dollars.

 _____________UPDATE____________

Yahoo Finance posts M$ naval gazing. Who knows? Nadella, or is he being driven by the winds of change?

Explainable AI - It could give a boost to acceptance, and also a boost to trust and reliable use scenarios.

 https://spectrum.ieee.org/autonomous-vehicles-explainable-ai-decisions

 The item's title -- 

Safer Autonomous Vehicles Means Asking Them the Right Questions

Explainable AI could help clarify vehicle decision-making

Michelle Hampson

23 Nov 2025

 

What you see is a U. Alberta research line aimed at extracting knowledge of the workings of the black box, from the black box. A particuolar author's work is discussed -

 

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Ji1mO4IAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao 

 

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/08839514.2024.2318670 

 

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.17256 

 

None of the links is paywalled, and the links are enough to get further reading link finding started. 

 

Also worth exploration --

 

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_labs/search?hl=en 

 

We enter a new year where, like it or love it, AI will be expanding and crammed down upon us, so know the promise or the pain. Energy prices will parallel an increase in AI servers, and for four grand you can buy in now to Nvidia in a little box:

 

https://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.aspx?N=&cat=&Ntt=nvidia+spark&searchButton=search 

 

The Spark is written up at many web links, but, for now it is not vaporware, it is stocked retail. Not cheap, and this is a Linix box, not Windows, but it seems interesting, and Windows boxes with top end gamer GPU laptops and  desktop are commodity items. This is being typed on an HP Ryzen laptop with an NPU and Win 11, bought via Costco, so the AI march is mainstrream. For whatever that will ultimately be worth. And confessing to not delving deeply into the NPU capability, but having used Copilot enough to see it has value, even marketed as is being done, it works. Etc.

 

A bonus link, for what it says, https://spectrum.ieee.org/china-ai-chip 

 

 

The Genesis Mission. A/K/A Merry Christmas, Elon and Palentir. Big Federal Bucks are coming. Quietly, it only reaches private contractor mention in Section 5, But Elon got all that federal data access and copies, and then Elon boogied, and presumably kept the copied content.

It is all laid out on Whitehouse.gov.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/11/launching-the-genesis-mission/ 

Read all about it. The juice flows, Section 5, in its whole disbursement intent - but you might want to scan read the rest for context -

Sec. 5.  Interagency Coordination and External Engagement.  (a)  The APST, through the NSTC, and with support from the Federal Chief Data Officer Council and the Chief AI Officer Council, shall convene relevant and interested agencies to:

(i)    assist participating agencies in aligning, to the extent permitted by law, their AI-related programs, datasets, and research and development activities with the objectives of the Mission in their respective areas of expertise, while avoiding duplication of effort across the Federal Government and promoting interoperability;

(ii)   identify data sources that may support the Mission’s aim;

(iii)  develop a process and resourcing plan in coordination with participating agencies for integrating appropriate and available agency data and infrastructure into the Mission, to the extent permitted by law and subject to available appropriations, including methods under which all agencies contributing to the Mission are encouraged to implement appropriate risk-based security measures that reflect cybersecurity best practices;

(iv)   launch coordinated funding opportunities or prize competitions across participating agencies, to the extent permitted by law and subject to available appropriations, to incentivize private-sector participation in AI-driven scientific research aligned with Mission objectives; and

(v)    establish mechanisms to coordinate research and development funding opportunities and experimental resources across participating agencies, ensuring agencies can participate effectively in the Mission.

(b)  The APST shall coordinate with relevant agencies in establishing, consistent with existing authorizing statutes and subject to available appropriations, competitive programs for research fellowships, internships, and apprenticeships focused on the application of AI to scientific domains identified as national challenges for the Mission, to include placement of program participants at DOE national laboratories and other participating Federal research facilities, with the purpose of providing access to the Platform and training in AI-enabled scientific discovery.

(c)  The Secretary, in coordination with the APST and the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto, shall establish mechanisms for agency collaboration with external partners possessing advanced AI, data, or computing capabilities or scientific domain expertise, including through cooperative research and development agreements, user facility partnerships, or other appropriate arrangements with external entities to support and enhance the activities of the Mission, and shall ensure that such partnerships are structured to preserve the security of Federal research assets and maximize public benefit.  To facilitate these collaborations, the Secretary shall:

(i)    develop standardized partnership frameworks, including cooperative research and development or other appropriate agreements, and data-use and model‑sharing agreements;

(ii)   establish clear policies for ownership, licensing, trade-secret protections, and commercialization of intellectual property developed under the Mission, including innovations arising from AI-directed experiments;

(iii)  implement uniform and stringent data access and management processes and cybersecurity standards for non-Federal collaborators accessing datasets, models, and computing environments, including measures requiring compliance with classification, privacy, and export-control requirements, as well as other applicable laws; and

(iv)   establish procedures to ensure the highest standards of vetting and authorization of users and collaborators seeking access to the resources of the Mission and associated research activities, including the Platform and associated Federal research resources.

(d)  The APST, through the NSTC, shall, to the extent appropriate, identify opportunities for international scientific collaboration to support activities under the Mission.

There's a reporting requirement - a section 6 - 

Sec. 6.  Evaluation and Reporting.  (a)  Within 1 year of the date of this order, and on an annual basis thereafter, the Secretary shall submit a report to the President, through the APST and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, describing:

(i)    the Platform’s operational status and capabilities;

(ii)   progress toward integration across DOE national laboratories and other participating Federal research partners, including shared access to computing resources, data infrastructure, and research facilities;

(iii)  the status of user engagement, including participation of student researchers and any related training;

(iv)   updates on research efforts and outcomes achieved, including measurable scientific advances, publications, and prototype technologies;

(v)    the scope and outcomes of public-private partnerships, including collaborative research projects and any technology transitions or commercialization activities; and

(vi)   any identified needs or recommendations for authorities or interagency support to achieve the Mission’s objective

So, "comercialization" is envisioned, with a string attached, regular reporting, to satisfy what? Something like the FIFA Peace Prize, as envisioned by Jon Stewart?

 

Ho, Ho, Ho. Santa will look at naughty or nice, as will others, Executive branch most likely. 

NVIDIA is a solid buy. Accumulate. 

 

 

Susan Du of Strib writes, "Walz expects influx of ICE agents in Minnesota around holidays -- The governor held a news conference with community and faith leaders in north Minneapolis, calling on residents to help observe immigration enforcement activity in the coming days."

 https://www.startribune.com/walz-frey-carter-ice-targeting-us-citizens-mn/601551872

 A brief excerpt -

Gov. Tim Walz says President Donald Trump’s federal immigration enforcement is targeting people of color in Minnesota, including U.S. citizens, and he’s warning that there could be a surge of ICE agents in the state over the next two weeks.

“It’s pretty clear to all of us exactly what this president is doing. He’s targeting states and communities that he has a national political fight against and that he doesn’t agree with,” Walz said. “It’s also a distraction from his own personal crimes that are out there being investigated while he’s harassing others.”

Walz said the Trump administration is not sharing any information with the state about this month’s “Operation Metro Surge” but he said he was expecting an increase as early as Christmas Eve.

“I would not put it past this administration to target midnight Mass services,” Walz said. “It makes it especially cruel. It makes it especially mean-spirited. It makes it especially traumatizing for communities that wish to gather to celebrate in their faith.”

Mayor Frey is fully in agreement -

“Minneapolis is ready to partner to keep people safe, but that is not the case with this federal administration right now,” Frey said. “I am increasingly concerned because of the chaos that is being caused by these ICE agents that somebody is going to get seriously injured or killed.” 

Mayor Carter -

“Our biggest opponent is our own weaponized federal government, who says ‘Put America first’ but arrest American citizens, who says this is about ending violent crime, and goes and arrests workers on their way to work, who says that we care about you and we care for you, and then goes and separates families from their children,” Carter said.