All posts tagged: doomed

Keir Starmer looks doomed. But does anyone really want his job?

Keir Starmer looks doomed. But does anyone really want his job?

Published by Sam Flores

Britain’s embattled prime minister, Keir Starmer, faces a worsening political crisis that may force him from power, days after his ruling Labour Party suffered crushing losses in local and regional elections throughout England, Scotland and Wales. You could call this a startling reversal, given that Labour won an enormous parliamentary majority in the British general election less than two years ago. But Starmer’s popularity cratered almost as soon as he took office, and he has looked doomed, haunted and fatally indecisive for at least the past year. As I wrote a few days ago, the inevitable comparisons to Joe Biden are deeply unfair (to Biden). While there’s no way to match the worldwide chaos created by Donald Trump’s second presidency, Britain’s domestic political turmoil is, if anything, worse than America’s. If Starmer leaves office before the middle of July, the U.K. will have had seven prime ministers within the last 10 years. Late last week, it appeared likely that Starmer might survive in the medium term, not least because no plausible challenger seemed ready to …

Spirit Airlines doomed by sky high fuel prices due to ‘recent geopolitical events,’ court docs say

Spirit Airlines doomed by sky high fuel prices due to ‘recent geopolitical events,’ court docs say

Published by Sam Flores

Spirit Airlines said in court papers filed Monday that it was forced to ground its fleet for good over the weekend because “recent geopolitical events resulted in a massive and sustained increase in fuel prices.” Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content. While the court papers did not specify the nature of those geopolitical events, jet fuel prices have soared in the two months since the start of the war in Iran. “The Debtors and their advisors searched for increased capital and any sources of savings or liquidity, leaving no option unexplored,” the airline stated in records filed Monday in federal bankruptcy court in the Southern District of New York. “It became clear on Thursday that sufficient incremental liquidity would not be found, and that there were no longer any viable paths to a restructuring or continued operations.” But Spirit waited until early Saturday to pull the plug on its operations, stranding thousands of travelers midtrip and forcing countless others to rebook on other airlines. Many passengers …

Things You Told ChatGPT or Claude My Have Already Doomed You in Court

Things You Told ChatGPT or Claude My Have Already Doomed You in Court

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Most tech industry products are easily accessible by the US government. Ring Doorbells have given the Los Angeles Police Department warrantless access to their customer’s camera footage. The FBI can extract your iPhones metadata to peep the content of your Signal messages. Google will happily comply with administrative subpoenas issued by Department of Homeland Security apparatchiks. A new ruling by a New York federal judge now definitively includes AI chatbots in that list. As part of a protracted legal battle involving Brad Heppner, former chair of financial service company GWG Holdings, US District Judge Jed Rakoff ruled that AI chatbots aren’t subject to attorney-client privilege. Maybe that sounds like a no-brainer, but evidently some people need the reminder. In preparing background materials for his attorneys, Heppner made the wise decision to enter various reports into Anthropic’s flagship chatbot Claude. The AI then spat out the preliminary reports, which his lawyers used to prepare his defense related to charges …

Every sci-fi show right now says humanity is doomed but this masterpiece disagrees

Every sci-fi show right now says humanity is doomed but this masterpiece disagrees

Published by skeptic

On April 1, NASA launched Artemis II, a manned mission around the Moon designed in part to spot potential landing sites. This lays the groundwork for a future manned mission to the surface, and maybe even the building of a base sometime down the line. Just imagine: mankind living on the Moon. It’s an intoxicating idea that gets people excited about scientific progress, which is something of a rarity at a time when a lot of science news has to do with, say, artificial intelligence threatening your job, or climate change accelerating to the point where it will be all but impossible to reverse. Maybe those kinds of downer science stories explain why so much of popular science fiction these days is so pessimistic…with one big wonderful exception. The bleak state of modern sci-fi We’re all doomed. Enjoy the show. Pessimistic sci-fi is nothing new; Planet of the Apes predicted that humanity would lose out to sentient monkeys way back in 1968. But it’s striking how many popular sci-fi TV shows these days forecast bleak …

There may not be a Christian revival, but Britain’s traditional churches aren’t doomed

There may not be a Christian revival, but Britain’s traditional churches aren’t doomed

Published by Sam Flores

In the same week that a new archbishop of Canterbury was installed, YouGov admitted that a poll suggesting there was a “quiet revival” of Christianity was a dud. It had been inflated by fraudulent results and should be ignored. To those of us who study the bigger picture of religion in Britain, this comes as no surprise. There are good reasons to doubt that Britain is experiencing a Christian revival today – but that does not mean it is dying out. Read more: Is there really a religious revival in England? Why I’m sceptical of a new report To understand what is happening in Britain, it is helpful to compare it with the US, which has has long been viewed as exceptionally religious in comparison. Recent evidence suggests something less clear-cut. In a major recent study, sociologist Christian Smith assembles the data. In the 1970s and ’80s, only around one in ten Americans identified as “nonreligious”. But from 1991, the proportion of people who identify as such has risen steeply, reaching 29% in 2021. Today, …

The Sony Afeela Was Doomed to Fail

The Sony Afeela Was Doomed to Fail

Published by skeptic

Sony-Honda is no longer Afeelin’ it. This week, the Japanese joint venture that for years had promised to bring a video-game sensibility to a digital-first electric car was abruptly canceled. The two companies snuffed out one vehicle, the Afeela 1, that was first announced three years ago, and also halted work on another model under development. Sony Honda Mobility (SHM) pinned the blame on Honda’s larger EV pivot. Earlier this month, the automaker canceled its “0 Series” lineup of electric vehicles after posting a $15.7 billion loss amid bigger changes in the global EV market. Because of those shifts, the joint venture wrote in a press release, “SHM will not be able to utilize certain technologies and assets that were originally planned to be provided by Honda.” Reservation holders will get full refunds, the company said, and “discussions” about the future of the Sony-Honda partnership “will continue.” So the PlayStation-first car of everyone’s dreams may still be far ahead on the horizon, maybe. The Afeela, though, was a weird fit from the start. Let’s put …

Why the “Love Is Blind” experiment was doomed from the start

Why the “Love Is Blind” experiment was doomed from the start

Published by Sam Flores

Surely Chris Fusco did not sign up for “Love Is Blind” to become its failure mascot, but here we are. For most of the romance reality show’s 10th season, the account executive seems like a standard-issue OK guy with a quirk about taking daily cold plunges. He said all the right things to his eventual fiancée, infectious disease physician Jessica Barrett, while they were dating. During their couples’ getaway in Mexico, both seemed to have a sexy good time. Only when they return to Ohio, and Fusco lays eyes on his fiancée’s large and well-appointed home, does he transform into Mr. Hyde. Fusco sits her down in the apartment they share to discuss his problem with their relationship: her body. He’s used to dating women who keep it tight, he explains. And Barrett, who works the long hospital shifts required to save people’s lives, isn’t cutting it. “So I’m trying to like, I don’t know. Somebody who works out all the time and has a different type of, I don’t know,” he stammers. “It’s just …

Trump’s new plan for Iran doomed to backfire

Trump’s new plan for Iran doomed to backfire

Published by Sam Flores

In 2018, on the eve of the massive blue wave in the midterms that gave the Democrats a congressional majority, Donald Trump seemed to acknowledge for the first time that Republicans might actually lose. At a rally in Huntington, West Virginia, airport hangar, he told the ecstatic crowd, “It could happen. And you know what you do? My whole life, you know what I say? ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll just figure it out.’”  That is how the president strategizes. And let’s face it, it’s worked pretty well for him so far.  Trump recovered his fortune by being rescued by a game show producer. Aside from being found civilly liable by a jury for sexually abusing journalist E. Jean Carroll and being convicted of 34 felony counts in a hush-money case, he has managed to evade accountability for all of his crimes and abuses of power. Tens of millions of Americans even put him back in the White House after he tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election and inspired an insurrection. He seems to …

‘Summer House’’s Kyle Cooke and Amanda Batula Are the Doomed Reality-TV Couple We Can’t Turn Away From

‘Summer House’’s Kyle Cooke and Amanda Batula Are the Doomed Reality-TV Couple We Can’t Turn Away From

Published by Jenni Sidey

Kyle Cooke and Amanda Batula, the ill-matched Summer House stars, announced their deeply inevitable separation last month. For anyone who’s paid attention to the pair’s ten-season run on the Bravo series, this development was about as shocking as getting sand in your swim trunks. The dynamic between boisterous, highly emotional Kyle and laconic, sarcastic Amanda has long crackled with the visceral tang of deep dislike. These two contemporaries may have enduring love for one another, but they couldn’t be less compatible. Batula, 34, is a sensitive, laconic girls’ girl and a longtime close friend of glamorous podcaster Paige DeSorbo, who checked out of the show at the end of season 9. Batula hails from New Jersey and recently launched a capsule swimwear collection for women with large breasts. Cooke, 43, is a consummate party-boy beverage entrepreneur with a side hustle as a college-campus DJ that has irritated Batula to no end. Bravo/Getty Images “I wanted him to stop going out late and partying, and he found a career where he goes out late and parties,” …

The Night Manager’s most surprising romance is probably doomed – but it’s not too late for Teddy…

The Night Manager’s most surprising romance is probably doomed – but it’s not too late for Teddy…

Published by Daniella Wilson

Add The Night Manager to your watchlist *Warning: spoilers for The Night Manager season two episode four* The bullets sent flying were the least dramatic part of the shoot-out that brought The Night Manager’s latest chapter to a close. Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) finally revealed his true self to Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva), in order to rescue an innocent teenager tricked into aiding the assassination of Alejandro Gualteros (Alberto Ammann). But the sequence didn’t play out like a typical double-cross, the likes of which spy fiction is filled with. The swelling music, teary eyes and anguished outburst made one thing clear: this was a matter of the heart. Pine’s earlier flirtations with Teddy certainly hadn’t gone unnoticed (a gentle touch here, a stolen glance there), but even after last week’s steamy dance scene, it remained unclear whether the deep cover agent was just exploiting him. Well, consider that case closed. In contrast to Pine’s unhesitating brutality towards season 1 rivals Corky (Tom Hollander) and Freddie (David Avery), we can clearly see that he’s distraught …