Today is Thursday, July 10, 2025.
It is the 191st day of the year.
174 days remain.
WHAT’S ON TAP
NOTABLE & NOTEWORTHY: More chaos at X.
KELLY CLARKSON is being “flaky” and a SPICE GIRL’s husband gets the boot. More in SHOWBIZ.
CRAIG ROBINSON’s new business venture revealed in CASTING CALL.
KING CHARLES and EMANUEL MACRON trade gifts. Details in ROYALS.
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Chipmaking titan NVIDIA’s stock surged on Wednesday, making it the first company in the world ever to achieve a $4 TRILLION market capitalization.
The 2.5% gain during intraday trading reflected the ongoing demand for A.I. infrastructure, as Nvidia holds a de facto monopoly on the hardware powering American A.I. research. Just two years ago, it achieved a $1 TRILLION valuation for the first time. Its high-water mark on Wednesday reflects a 74% rebound from lows as recently as April during the early days of tariff uncertainty. [via CNBC]
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Investigators in California believe a 13-year-old boy playing with fireworks is to blame for the latest spate of wildfires across southern portions of the state.
Firefighting crews swiftly contained the blaze to less than four acres by Monday.
After detaining two juvenile suspects, authorities obtained video evidence of the 13-year-old suspect clearly lighting off a firework and then fleeing the scene. The teen faces felony reckless burning of forest land.
Pending court proceedings, the unidentified suspect has been released back to their parents. [via ABC News]
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LINDA YACCARINO is stepping down as CEO of X after two years on the job. In a post on the platform, she called the job “the opportunity of a lifetime to carry out the extraordinary mission of this company.”
In a reply to her announcement, ELON MUSK said simply, “Thank you for your contributions.”
Yaccarino’s decision to step down comes just a day after the platform’s chatbot, Grok, went off the rails on Tuesday, writing posts praising Hitler and vividly describing fictional sexual assaults of real public figures.
Rumor is Yaccarino decided to step down a week ago, before the latest Grok fiasco.
WORTH NOTING: Naturally, Grok’s data comes from the cesspool of posts on X, explaining why it took such a freakish turn so quickly after Musk had some content controls dialed back. People are already terrible to each other online. They don’t need douchebag robots in the mix, too.
If Musk’s whole schtick is extending the consciousness of humanity, outsourcing not just content generation, but also thinking, to some server farm somewhere, is counterproductive. Artificial intelligence can do wonders to advance research and technology in thoughtful, capable hands. Deploying it as a societal chew toy acts against the effort to better humanity.
SPEAKING OF A.I.: Researchers at Johns Hopkins University say an A.I.-powered surgical robot has successfully completed eight gallbladder surgeries on pigs with a 100% success rate.
The technology deploys two different A.I. systems. The first uses data from cameras to decide what steps to take next, then feeds that information to a second A.I. system that runs the actual surgical tools. The only human intervention was to reload surgical clips and put in different tools.
Each procedure only took about 5 minutes. The A.I. was even able to adapt when researchers threw it curveballs. On average, the robots performed six self-corrections during each procedure. [via StudyFinds]
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Genetic engineers from the Texas-based Colossal Biosciences are looking to bring back a species of huge, flightless bird, known as the South Island giant moa, that disappeared from its native New Zealand around 600 years ago.
In addition to bringing back the long-necked species that stood 10-feet tall, Colossal plans to undertake ecological restoration projects in New Zealand.
WORTH NOTING: This is the same group behind the controversial birth of three dire wolf pups in April.
ALSO: Other de-extinction plans in the works include the wooly mammoth, the dodo, and the Tasmanian tiger. [via CNN]
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