That photo might be an AI fake, here’s how to tell
Did Prince William and Prince Harry make up?
Not even close. But thanks to Bing’s AI image generator, they practically skipped through a meadow hand in hand like it’s the finale of a very weird British rom-com reboot. No Daddy intervention, therapist or overpriced raspberry jam required.
⚡ Watt the heck? Electricity prices rose 6.5% nationwide so far this year, and in some states, like Maine, they’re up a whopping 36%. Major culprit? Data centers. Their sky-high energy demands (thanks, AI) are hiking rates and triggering billion-dollar grid upgrades that we get to fund. Ohm my gosh!
Over 1.2 million kilometers
How far one 1985 Toyota Tercel has driven in the past 40 years. The car’s still in mint condition, and if you don’t believe owner Andy, he’s got a photo of the odometer rolling over at 999,999 (it only goes up to six digits). His secret? Regular oil changes. (That’s about 745,000 miles if you’re like me and never got the metric system.)
September 30
The last day to take delivery and still score the $7,500 EV tax credit. Tick, tick, tax. Forget order dates. The feds only care when it hits your driveway. So if you’re waiting eight to 10 weeks for delivery, as is the case for most Teslas, you’re cutting it real close. Better hope your dream car is already on a lot somewhere.
🪦 Big Tech, meet Big Audit: The IRS’s free tax-filing tool got iced after just one full season due to limited adoption. Commissioner Billy Long says Direct File’s donezo. RIP to the rare government app that actually worked. IRS saw people being happy and said, “Yeah, that’s enough.”
Proof that rocket science is history: In D.C.’s Air and Space Museum, there are five new galleries, two of them straight out of a sci-fi fever dream. I’m talking about Elon’s rocket guts, cosplay-level spacesuits and a clone of R2-D2 built by MythBuster Adam Savage. One display feels like a TEDx event on Mars. Goes to prove that despite the name, the Air and Space Museum has a lot to see there. (lol)
ElevenLabs hits a high note: The AI speech company released a new tool that sings and raps. For example, you can ask it to “make a relaxing jazz song with an ’80s vibe,” and it’ll generate a track in minutes, complete with vocals and instruments. It can do 29 languages and accents. It’s raising copyright eyebrows and soon, long-gone superstar hitmakers with new tunes.
🚨 This is important: Google Search is dead. If your content isn’t showing up in ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini, you’re invisible to millions of potential customers. Whether you run a business, blog or sell anything online, this shift changes everything. I couldn’t fit it all in this newsletter. 👉 Read my full post here. Let me know what you think, or drop me a question about it in the comments.
Nearly $9,000
That’s what someone paid for one of Michael Jackson’s dirty socks at an auction in France. A technician found it after a concert in Nîmes, and it’s been preserved in a frame for 28 years. The twist? Back in 2009, a casino dropped almost $350,000 on the glove he wore for his first moonwalk dance. Beat that.
$1 billion
What Zuck allegedly dangled in front of an unnamed AI engineer. That’s 5,200 Oppenheimers, adjusted for inflation. The man who ended WWII got $190K a year; this mystery coder might make that before breakfast. Superintelligence might be coming, but super salaries are already here.