5/19/2025: Acres and Acres of A.I.

PLUS: Rubik’s Cube Record; Morgan Wallen’s Record Weekend; and Rich List

Today is Monday, May 19, 2025.

It is the 139th day of the year.

226 days remain.

Photo by İsmail Enes Ayhan on Unsplash

WHAT’S ON TAP

NOTABLE & NOTEWORTHY: Police in New Orleans look for a gang of escaped convicts.

CASSIE VENTURA’s husband pens an emotional tribute to her and KATY PERRY won’t be waking up in Vegas anytime soon. More in SHOWBIZ.

A “Peaky Blinders” series is in the works. Details in CASTING CALL.

KING CHARLES’ wealth ticks up over the last year. Details in ROYALS.

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At least seven escaped prisoners from a New Orleans jail remain at large after a breakout late Thursday night.

In the escape, ten inmates busted out, and authorities believe they likely had help from someone on the inside. Dramatic security footage shows prisoners first entering the door of a cell, and later escaping from a loading dock. In between, they apparently snuck out through a hole that had been cut into an unsecured hallway, hidden behind a toilet.

Three unnamed employees inside the police department have been placed on leave without pay during the investigation. As of Sunday, three of the escapees had been caught. [via NBC News]

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LAST WEEK: News broke that the life partner of disgraced, convicted fraudster ELIZABETH HOLMES of THERANOS infamy is raising funds for his own, new biological testing company.

NOW: One of the early whistleblowers of Theranos’ misdeeds is ringing the alarm again. Tyler Shultz says his former boss, who’s now serving an 11-year prison sentence, is already crafting a comeback story from behind bars. Shultz writes, “The purpose is to build something that works, so that she can point to it and say, ‘See, I would have figured it out. Theranos was never a fraud.’”

He gives this warning to potential investors in the new company: “The real question is: Will Elizabeth serve the purpose of your fund — or by investing in her, will you simply be serving her purpose of writing her rise-from-the-ashes narrative?” [via StatNews]

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OpenAI, the company behind popular chatbot ChatGPT, has plans to build an enormous datacenter in Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates, that would span ten square miles.

Its corresponding energy needs would equal the output of five nuclear reactors.

The development will be part of OpenAI’s “Stargate” project, which includes tech infrastructure from ORACLE and financing from SOFTBANK. A Stargate facility is currently in development in Texas, though its energy needs and output will be about one-fourth the size of the one being planned in the UAE. [via TechCrunch]

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POPE LEO celebrated his first mass as Pontiff on Sunday. In addition calls to love and unity, he also specifically called for peace in Ukraine and Gaza. He met privately with VOLODOMYR ZELENSKY later in the day.

Depending on who you ask, anywhere from 150,000 to 250,000 visitors attended the service in St. Peter’s Square. He also took his first public spin in the Popemobile.

Vice President JD VANCE, Secretary of State MARCO RUBIO, and various members of Congress also attended. [via CBS News]

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BLINK AND YOU’LL MISS IT: A group of students from Purdue University created a robot that can solve a Rubik’s cube in less time than it takes to blink.

The robot, which the team has dubbed the “Purdubik’s Cube,” was awarded “fastest robot to solve a puzzle cube" by Guinness World Records in April. It solves the cube nearly three times faster than the previous record-holding robot, which was set by Mitsubishi Electric engineers in Japan in May 2024.

BY THE WAY: The fastest human time to solve a Rubik’s Cube was set by Max Perk with a time of just three seconds. [via Purdue]

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