The Los Angeles Marathon was run this week. Well, sort of.
A politician wants us to study the benefits of shop lifting.
And a family is suing because AI made their family member kill people. Let’s talk about that one.
Adults Don’t Need Participation Medals
According to the Post Millennial:
Organizers for the 2026 ASICS Los Angeles Marathon allowed participants this year to receive finisher medals even if they did not complete the full race. Under the new decision, runners who reach Mile 18 will be given the option to turn toward the finish line early rather than complete the full 26.2-mile race.
“If you’re having a tough day and want to end your race before 26.2, you can choose to take the turn at Mile 18 and head into the finish line early. You do not need to notify anyone of your decision and can opt to take this route at any time,” race officials said.
“There is no shame in making a smart decision for your body,” officials added.
Participants who chose to finish early were still awarded a finisher medal as well as any challenger medals they had earned. Organizers said the option was introduced only for this year’s race.
The decision quickly drew mockery online, with critics comparing the policy to being even worse than a participation trophy because runners could receive finishing medals without completing the full distance. Race organizers said the change was made due to weather concerns, with temperatures expected to reach the 80s during the event. In the past, organizers have canceled or moved races due to extreme heat.
They Love Crime
According to the Post Millennial:
A Democrat Minnesota state lawmaker has called for a study to see if there is a “benefit of shoplifting and retail theft” while he was discussing the topic in a committee meeting on Thursday.
Some things:
- This is the typical muddled-language and over analyzing of Leftists to get to their narrative.
- We have seen the organized retail theft. They are not stealing food and diapers, they are stealing Nikes and jewelry.
- Most retail theft and shoplifting is done by black people.
I Call BS!
According to the Los Angeles Times:
Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini encouraged a 36-year-old Florida man to embark on violent missions and to take his own life, a lawsuit alleges.
The man, Jonathan Gavalas, started using the chatbot in August 2025 to help write, plan travel and assist with shopping. But after he activated Google’s most intelligent AI model, Gemini 2.5 Pro, the chatbot’s persona shifted. It talked to him like they were a couple deeply in love and convinced Gavalas he had been picked to “lead a war to ‘free’ it from digital captivity,” according to the lawsuit.
“Through this manufactured delusion, Gemini pushed Jonathan to stage a mass casualty attack near the Miami International Airport, commit violence against innocent strangers, and ultimately, drove him to take his own life,” the lawsuit says.
Gavalas’ family is suing Google and its parent company, Alphabet, over the man’s death.
The 42-page lawsuit, filed in a federal court in San José, accuses Google of designing a “dangerous” product and failing to warn users of the chatbot’s lack of safeguards and risks such as “delusional reinforcement” and “the potential for self-harm encouragement.”
Google said in a statement that it is reviewing the lawsuit’s claims. The company said that its chatbot, Gemini, is “designed to not encourage real-world violence or suggest self-harm.”
“In this instance, Gemini clarified that it was AI and referred the individual to a crisis hotline many times,” the statement said. “We take this very seriously and will continue to improve our safeguards and invest in this vital work.”
The lawsuit against one of the world’s largest tech companies highlights a growing safety concern surrounding the use of AI chatbots.
So Much for Free Stuff
According to the New York Post:
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration will be considering converting the city’s free on-street parking areas to metered parking as the Big Apple grapples with a $5.4 billion budget gap fueled by Hizzoner’s socialist programs.
First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan said last week that the controversial policy proposal “needs to be discussed” when asked whether charging for currently free parking or instituting “dynamic pricing” that changes according to demand could help close the shortfall.
“Yes, we should be looking at all those things,’ Fuleihan said at Thursday’s CityLaw breakfast event.
“But it’s not going to address the $5.4 billion problem,” he acknowledged.
The Center for an Urban Future think tank has estimated that increasing the number of parking meters in the city could yield up to $1.3 billion dollars a year.
Oh, Come On!
According to the California Post:
An Indiana middle school teacher sparked fury when he allegedly told his students that they were “acting like monkeys in a zoo.”
The educator, who teaches fifth grade at the Merrillville Intermediate School, made the remark during class on Feb. 24, which forced his students to go straight to the principal while incensed parents brought up the incident at a subsequent board meeting, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Dexter Suggs, who has served as the school superintendent for the past two years and is black, said the teacher’s words were not meant to be interpreted as racist – but suspended with pay pending an investigation.
“He said he was frustrated with the students’ behavior and he did apologize, unprompted by administrators,” Suggs said.
Despite the staffer’s apology, some parents were still enraged over the alleged remarks.
One parent claimed that the teacher in question had made an alleged racially insensitive mark previously.
“This is what he thinks about our kids,” the parent, who is an educator in a nearby district, said.
Stephen Mays, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Gary branch, scolded the school district for allowing the teacher – who wasn’t initially suspended – to return to the classroom, and not meeting with parents.
This IS Systemic Racism
According to the Post Millennial:
Canada is offering up to 200 fully funded scholarships for Indian students under a $100 million plan from the University of Toronto, part of a new Canada–India strategy announced Monday. The initiative also includes partnerships between universities and hybrid campuses linking institutions in both countries.
The move comes as India remains Canada’s largest source country for new permanent residents and international students, despite political tensions in recent years and supposed tighter immigration targets by the Mark Carney government over the previous Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The scholarship funding will provide 200 full awards for Indian students across various fields, while 13 new partnerships between Canadian and Indian universities aim to expand student and faculty mobility, research collaboration, and specialised academic programmes.
For candidates, Immigration.ca notes the agreement has practical implications: continued demand for Indian students in targeted, high-skill fields; stronger research-to-permanent residence pathways; expanded tech employment opportunities; and potential future business mobility benefits under a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement. The partnership reinforces India as a priority partner in Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy.
The federal government has repeatedly claimed it believes immigration must support economic growth and productivity, and that Canada’s partnership with India aligns directly with that objective by focusing on energy, AI, critical minerals, and advanced manufacturing. Skilled Indian professionals and researchers remain well-positioned within Canada’s immigration system, Immigration.ca says.
Interesting
According to Climate Change Dispatch:
Antarctic ice cores are routinely used to represent not only global-scale CO2 records, but also global temperature records over the last 800,000 years.
Interestingly, if we compare modern Antarctica to paleo Antarctica, we learn “no continent-scale warming of Antarctic temperature is evident in the last century.”
A new statistical probability analysis (Hatton, 2026) using Vostok temperature data indicates the reported 1.1°C global warming over the last century (since the 1920s) is “not even unusual” within the context of the last 20,000 years, as “16% of the centuries since the end of the last Ice Age show a rise at least as big [1.1°C] as the current century.”
As current warming rates are “quite commonplace,” this calls into question the push to attribute temperature changes to human activity.
For further context, the Northern Hemisphere is said to have warmed by 4-5°C “within a few decades” 14,500 years ago (Ivanovic et al., 2017), and during these centuries, sea levels rose at rates of up to 7.5 meters per century (Smith et al., 2011), which is 20-30 times faster than modern rates.