New Year’s Eve Concerts at Kennedy Center Are Canceled; The New York Times, December 29, 2025

 Adam Nagourney and Neil Vigdor, The New York Times ; New Year’s Eve Concerts at Kennedy Center Are Canceled

[Kip Currier: The principles of integrity and character are unsurprisingly alien to Richard Grenell. Artists are likely canceling Kennedy Center engagements because they don't want to be associated with an administration that has attacked free expression and the diversity of human experience, financially diminished the arts, as well as science, and that has violated federal law by adding Donald Trump's name to an arts organization memorializing our slain 35th President, John F. Kennedy Jr.

Standing up for values one believes in -- values that are bigger than oneself -- is an example of moral courage, not "derangement".]

[Excerpt]

"A veteran jazz ensemble and a New York dance company have canceled events at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, intensifying the fallout at one of the nation’s pre-eminent arts centers after it was renamed to include President Trump...

The Cookers did not give a reason for the decision in a statement on Monday that said, “Jazz was born from struggle and from a relentless insistence on freedom: freedom of thought, of expression, and of the full human voice."...

Doug Varone and Dancers, a New York dance company, also said on Monday that it was canceling two performances in April that had been intended to celebrate its 40th anniversary. Mr. Varone, the head of the company, said it would lose $40,000 by pulling out.

“It is financially devastating but morally exhilarating,” he said in an email.

Richard Grenell, the Kennedy Center’s chairman, said in a statement on Monday night that the artists canceling shows were “far-left political activists” and that they had been booked by previous leadership. “Boycotting the arts to show you support the arts is a form of derangement syndrome,” he said."

MAGA Official Slammed for Clobbering the Living Christmas Lights Out of AI Santa Claus; The Daily Beast, December 28, 2025

 Will Neal, The Daily Beast; MAGA Official Slammed for Clobbering the Living Christmas Lights Out of AI Santa Claus

[Kip Currier: I was curious about Indiana State Sen. Chris Garten's values and background when I saw this story. So it's eye-opening to see his own descriptor of himself on his Facebook page:

"My name is Chris Garten. I am a Christian, husband, father, Marine Corps veteran..."

https://www.facebook.com/GartenforSenate/

Though Garten's military service is commendable, nowhere in the Bible would the Christian Jesus condone the kinds of actions that Garten portrays himself performing in these AI-generated images of himself brutalizing Santa Claus. How do such images advance one of Jesus's greatest Commandments to "love thy neighbor as thyself" (Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31)?

How does a person who self-identifies as a Christian justify such depictions to others, as well as when he prays? Especially when Jesus stands for helping the "least among us" (Matthew 25:40) and says that "the last shall be first" (Matthew 20:16).

Even in jest, do these images convey a sense of good judgment or an elected official who is a positive role model in a free and democratic society?]

[Excerpt]

"A MAGA official has branded his critics “snowflakes” after marking this year’s holiday season by sharing his apparent fantasy of whaling on a defenseless Saint Nick on the steps of Indiana’s State Capitol building.

State Senator Chris Garten shared the AI-generated images on X on Christmas Day. One of the four pictures features the two-term Republican state senator, decked in a sleeveless suit à la WWE, kicking a bewildered Santa Claus squarely on the chin to send the beloved, age-old children’s folk character sailing backwards through the air.

A second shows the MAGA official launching himself forward with the apparent intention of following up with a flying punch to the jaw. A third shows him further brutalizing the trembling, mythic gift-giver as he writhes in agony on the floor...

“Lots of intolerance, swearing, and outrage on display over a few AI pics I had a blast designing with my kids,” he wrote in a subsequent post. “Some of you clowns are just insufferable. Hopefully your negativity stays in the comments and not directed at your families.” 

“Merry Christmas, snowflakes,” Garten added, accompanied by another AI-generated photo of himself in a Santa suit, pointing at an oversized snowflake."

Californians want controls on AI. Why did Gavin Newsom veto an AI safety bill?; The Guardian, October 16, 2024

 Garrison Lovely, The Guardian; Californians want controls on AI. Why did Gavin Newsom veto an AI safety bill? 

"I’m writing a book on the economics and politics of AI and have analyzed years of nationwide polling on the topic. The findings are pretty consistent: people worry about risks from AI, favor regulations, and don’t trust companies to police themselves. Incredibly, these findings tend to hold true for both Republicans and Democrats.

So why would Newsom buck the popular bill?

Well, the bill was fiercely resisted by most of the AI industry, including Google, Meta and OpenAI. The US has let the industry self-regulate, and these companies desperately don’t want that to change – whatever sounds their leaders make to the contrary...

The top three names on the congressional letter – Zoe Lofgren, Anna Eshoo, and Ro Khanna – have collectively taken more than $4m in political contributions from the industry, accounting for nearly half of their lifetime top-20 contributors. Google was their biggest donor by far, with nearly $1m in total.

The death knell probably came from the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who published her own statement against the bill, citing the congressional letter and Li’s Fortune op-ed.

In 2021, reporters discovered that Lofgren’s daughter is a lawyer for Google, which prompted a watchdog to ask Pelosi to negotiate her recusal from antitrust oversight roles.

Who came to Lofgren’s defense? Eshoo and Khanna.

Three years later, Lofgren remains in these roles, which have helped her block efforts to rein in big tech – against the will of even her Silicon Valley constituents.

Pelosi’s 2023 financial disclosure shows that her husband owned between $16m and $80m in stocks and options in Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Nvidia...

Sunny Gandhi of the youth tech advocacy group Encode Justice, which co-sponsored the bill, told me: “When you tell the average person that tech giants are creating the most powerful tools in human history but resist simple measures to prevent catastrophic harm, their reaction isn’t just disbelief – it’s outrage. This isn’t just a policy disagreement; it’s a moral chasm between Silicon Valley and Main Street.”

Newsom just told us which of these he values more."

Transcript of Mark Zuckerberg’s Senate hearing; Transcript courtesy of Bloomberg Government via The Washington Post, April 10, 2018

Transcript courtesy of Bloomberg Government via The Washington Post; Transcript of Mark Zuckerberg’s Senate hearing

"SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TEX): Thank you, Mr. Zuckerberg, for being here. I know in — up until 2014, a mantra or motto of Facebook was move fast and break things. Is that correct?

ZUCKERBERG: I don't know when we changed it, but the mantra is currently move fast with stable infrastructure, which is a much less sexy mantra.

CORNYN: Sounds much more boring. But my question is, during the time that it was Facebook's mantra or motto to move fast and break things, do you think some of the misjudgments, perhaps mistakes that you've admitted to here, were as a result of that culture or that attitude, particularly as it regards to personal privacy of the information of your subscribers?

ZUCKERBERG: Senator, I do think that we made mistakes because of that. But the broadest mistakes that we made here are not taking a broad enough view of our responsibility. And while that wasn't a matter — the “move fast” cultural value is more tactical around whether engineers can ship things and — and different ways that we operate.

But I think the big mistake that we've made looking back on this is viewing our responsibility as just building tools, rather than viewing our whole responsibility as making sure that those tools are used for good."