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More than one third of U.S. adults have used ChatGPT, according to a June 2025 Pew Research study. People are not only deploying AI chatbots for everything from planning trips to doing homework assignments — they are also having fun impersonating them.
Your AI Slop Bores Me — a fake AI chatbot — has only been around for about a month. The users of the site know their questions will be answered by humans. But its creator, Mihir Maroju, said it's already received more than 25 million unique visitors and nearly 280 million total hits. 'People are spending hours on the site,' the 17-year-old high school graduate in Puducherry, India said in an interview with NPR. 'I didn't really expect it to be so addictive.'
As with real AI chatbots like Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT, anyone can submit a request for an image or information by typing it into the youraislopbores.me interface. But in this case, the response doesn't come from an algorithm — just another human. The site forces its human users to approximate the speed at which a machine would return a response; there's a 75-second time limit. So drawings, created with a mouse or finger on a trackpad, have a necessarily slapdash look.
'Someone asked me to draw a bat eating a strawberry,' said San Francisco-based cartoonist Amy Kurzweil, author of the chatbot-oriented graphic memoir, of her interactions on youraislopbores.me. 'That was really fun.'
In addition to responding to queries, Kurzweil said she's also enjoyed asking questions through the site. 'I asked someone what they were reading. They said they were reading — a staple of websites in the late 1990s and early 2000s — the cartoonist said Your AI Slop Bores Me inspires nostalgia for a time when the Internet was, for the most part, a lively, friendly place. 'I do think that people are reaching a point of frustration with the Internet being flooded with non-humans,' Kurzweil said. 'So I think people are having fun reclaiming some of the magic of the early Internet, just for the little joy of connection.'
Because the digital landscape has changed a lot since the late 1990s, Your AI Slop Bores Me's administrators said they have implemented tools that try to flag and filter out harmful or illegal contributions. 'We had a lot of spam and people exploiting loopholes in the site,' Maroju said. 'Of late, we haven't had those issues.'
If its URL doesn't make this clear, the two tabs users can select from on the homepage — 'human' and 'larp as ai' — certainly do.
In an interview with NPR, Palmer said he set up a bunch of fake AI text and image generation sites with URLs very similar to the names of the real AI websites. He says some users would get angry when they realized they were being pranked by a human. But others played along. 'They would keep going because they were now being entertained,' he said.
The comedian said most of his sites have been pulled down from various platforms. He admitted there's a dark side to disguising himself as a bot. For example, he has declined to fulfill requests for sexually explicit content. Palmer said his aim is to remind people that the Internet should be a messy, vibrant place — not one overrun by soulless corporations. 'I want to see how people react when they think that they're talking to an AI and it goes off the rails,' he said. 'Sometimes they might surprise you.'
'As more and more people embrace AI, it's naturally starting to show up across pop culture,' said ChatGPT maker OpenAI in an email to NPR. 'We love seeing how people are bringing ChatGPT into their daily lives, and the humor that comes with it is part of what makes that so fun.'
San Francisco-based angel investor Brianne Kimmel, who has backed several AI agent startups, concurs. 'Humans pretending to be AI — that's great sketch comedy. But it doesn't mean we're going to use the technology less,' Kimmel said. 'It just means we recognize that there's a very clear language that's evolving around how we communicate with bots that's distinct from how we communicate with each other.'
LA28 will award billions in Olympic contracts for the 2028 Games. City officials are worried that local businesses won't get a slice of the pie. A procurement plan released by Olympic organizing committee LA28 could end up leaving out businesses in the city of Los Angeles. The plan pledges to award 75% of its spending to local businesses, but defines local as L.A., Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.
L.A. is the official Olympic host and the financial backstop for the Games. City council members say business owners in the city should benefit the most from the money flowing into the Games. The Olympic contracts are worth up to $4 billion in total, according to LA28.
LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover says LA28 will give L.A. city businesses preferential treatment when awarding contracts, but that focusing exclusively on businesses in the city of L.A. would be fiscally irresponsible.
The Olympic and Paralympic Games will cost billions of dollars to put on, and lucrative contracts will be up for grabs to provide things like cleaning services, construction, catering, and IT services for the month-long spectacle. 'You could have a scenario where no L.A. business does any business with LA28,' Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said at a council committee meeting Tuesday.
The dispute is yet another sign that the relationship between city government and the private organizers of the 2028 Olympics is fraying. LA28's plans for Olympic contracts raise the perennial question about the coming Olympic Games: who in the city will actually benefit from the mega-event that will take over the region in the summer of 2028? It also indicates the limits of the city's ability to influence LA28's decision-making.
John Reamer, who leads the city's contracts department, said Tuesday that his staff did not review the procurement plan before it was released, and questioned if the relationship between the city and LA28 was a true 'partnership.' 'I thought that LA28 would allow us to give input, and they would take that input, and we would discuss that input and we would agree upon that input and it would be part of the plan,' he said.
LA28 says it's aiming to keep 75% of its spending in the Greater L.A. area, and put 25% towards small businesses. The report says it will prioritize 'hyperlocal' businesses in the city of L.A., but makes no explicit promises. Instead, it identifies 'local' as anywhere in L.A., Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.
At a council committee meeting on the Olympics Tuesday, multiple members criticized that plan as too broad — pushing LA28 to instead make guarantees to businesses in the city of L.A. 'Los Angeles stands alone in terms of its commitment, its investment and the amount of risk that we're bearing,' Harris-Dawson told LAist. 'We think every possible avenue ought to be pursued to make sure you leave the people whole, if not better, off, than they were before this started.'
LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover told the council Tuesday that LA28 would give L.A. city businesses preferential treatment when awarding contracts. 'When all else is equal between two competing suppliers, we will prioritize City of L.A. suppliers,' he said. Hoover said that focusing exclusively on businesses in the city of L.A. would limit competition for those contracts — and that he wouldn't commit to a plan that would limit LA28's ability to secure the best contract that would be financially responsible.
'If I focus solely, first and foremost, on the city of L.A. for small business, then I am artificially reducing the pool of competition, placing greater risk on the city taxpayers and placing greater risk on the backstop of the city of L.A.,' Hoover said.
'We'd rather you pay nominally more to a business in the city, than to save $25,' Harris-Dawson said. 'If you just go for a straight, 'We want the cheapest person in the five-county area,' I can tell you already, you're going to be using a bunch of businesses where the land is cheap and there's no regulation.'
Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez echoed those concerns, saying that the minimum wage and cost of living in L.A. are higher — meaning that businesses in Los Angeles may charge more. 'The city of L.A. is the financial back-stop to everything that you are doing. And I don't think that has resonated or permeated through you or this whole board that I just frankly don't trust' he said. 'We have to go to our constituents and say that we are fighting for them to make sure that they're going to get as much business as they can out of this event.'
The dispute over opportunities for local businesses represents one of many areas where the city and LA28 are at odds. An important agreement that will dictate which services the city of Los Angeles will provide and how it will be reimbursed is more than six months late. Last week, city councilmember Monica Rodriguez penned a public letter warning Hoover that the federal government is picking up the tab for the mega-event, and has put the Secret Service in charge of security planning. Despite those plans, city officials are concerned about who will be left with the bag if the federal funding doesn't come through, or if it doesn't cover all of the city's security costs. Rodriguez warned that if it isn't changed, the current draft agreement could leave L.A. vulnerable to spending hundreds of millions even if LA28 turns a profit.
Olympics tickets are also a sore spot for the city council. Olympics tickets cost up to $5,500 and the cheap $28 tickets went fast in the lottery. Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky asked Tuesday how much of the service fee would be going to LA28 — a figure that Hoover said he didn't know. 'The tickets are not affordable,' she said. 'A dollar, which would have actually helped us do some of the things that we know we need to do to get ourselves ready as a city for the Olympics, feels like a drop in the bucket compared to a 24% surcharge.'
A key tool of the U.S. spy community will expire this month without action from Congress. The government says the intel gathered through the provision — Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA 702 — underpins a majority of the articles in the president's daily intelligence briefing and is a key asset in international counterterrorism and the fight against trafficking.
But a number of lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, are concerned that FISA 702 allows for the federal government to spy on the communications of American citizens without a warrant, violating their constitutional right to privacy. The program's 2024 authorization is set to expire on April 20 — unless Congress votes to renew it. Congress has always attached an expiration date to Section 702, which makes its renewal a recurring fight on Capitol Hill. Civil liberties-minded legislators of both parties have long been concerned that Section 702 enables illegal, warrantless surveillance of American citizens by the federal government.
The looming fight to bolster the law's civil liberties protections is likely to be bruising — and the provision's advocates claim it could jeopardize national security. Section 702 of FISA empowers U.S. intelligence agencies to collect and review the electronic communications of foreign nationals located outside the United States without obtaining individual court orders.
The government uses the information collected through the program to protect the U.S. and its allies from foreign adversaries — including terrorists and spies — as well as to inform cybersecurity efforts. 'The U.S. government recently credited the program with helping to disrupt several terrorist attacks here and abroad, identify the Chinese origins of imported fentanyl precursors, respond to ransomware attacks on U.S. companies, identify Chinese hackers' intrusions into a network used by a key U.S. transportation hub, and disrupt foreign government efforts to carry out kidnappings, assassinations, and espionage on U.S. soil. Those examples just scratch the surface,' Baker said.
Prominent critics include Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio. But, with a change in administration since the last renewal battle, some lawmakers have switched sides. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who previously voted against the renewal because of its lack of a warrant requirement to query information about Americans, now supports it.
'When used properly, FISA is an effective tool to keep Americans safe. For these reasons, I have called for a clean 18-month extension,' Trump wrote in a March post on Truth Social. 'With the ongoing successful Military activities against the Terrorist Iranian Regime, it is more important than ever that we remain vigilant, PROTECT our Homeland, Troops, and Diplomats stationed abroad, and maintain our ability to quickly stop bad actors seeking to cause harm to our People and our Country.' That position is a major shift for Trump, who railed against the program in the past.
A special court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court , issues a blanket authorization each year that allows the government to collect information about any targets who fall within certain categories proposed by the attorney general and director of national intelligence. The National Security Agency, National Counterterrorism Center, Central Intelligence Agency and FBI obtain that information directly from the U.S. companies that facilitate electronic communication such as email, social media or cellphone service.
In 2023, 60% of the president's daily brief items — a daily summary of pressing national security issues prepared for the most senior administration officials — relied on FISA 702 data. It is also used extensively to combat weapons and drug trafficking — 70% of the CIA's illicit synthetic drug disruptions in 2023 stemmed from FISA 702 data, the document said.
Can the government search for Americans' information inside the trove of information it has collected under Section 702? Yes, under certain parameters that have been gradually narrowed over the nearly two-decade lifespan of the legislation. No, the government does not need — and has resisted reforms that would require — a targeted court order to search for an American's information in the corpus of material gathered under Section 702 authority.
Intelligence community and FBI advocates argue that a requirement to obtain a court order to query an American's information would be overly burdensome. 'I am especially concerned about one frequently discussed proposal, which would require the government to obtain a warrant or court order from a judge before personnel could conduct a 'U.S. person query' of information previously obtained through use of Section 702,' then-FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress in 2023, amid the last reauthorization fight.
'A warrant requirement would amount to a de facto ban, because query applications either would not meet the legal standard to win court approval; or because, when the standard could be met, it would be so only after the expenditure of scarce resources, the submission and review of a lengthy legal filing, and the passage of significant time — which, in the world of rapidly evolving threats, the government often does not have. That would be a significant blow to the FBI,' Wray said.
Privacy advocates say that, as written, the FISA statute allows the government to spy on the communications of Americans and others in the U.S. without the permission of a court, in contravention of the privacy guarantees in the Fourth Amendment. 'The FBI — and every other agency that receives Section 702 data — routinely goes searching through that data for the express purpose of finding and using Americans' communications,' according to Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program. 'The government conducts literally thousands of these backdoor searches every year.'
'The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is supposed to be about surveilling foreigners overseas. That way the government doesn't need a warrant,' Sen. Wyden said. 'But because so many of these targets are going to be talking to Americans, Americans get swept up in these searches, and that's what I want to have some checks and balances on.'
FBI agents must receive annual training on FISA and are generally prohibited from searching for information about people in the U.S. if the sole goal of the search is to investigate general criminal activity, rather than find foreign intelligence information, and those searches need approval from a supervisor or an attorney. More senior approval is required when searching for information connected to U.S. political or media figures. Moreover, information from queries cannot be used without court authorization to conduct criminal investigations of people in the U.S., unless the charges pertain to national security, death, kidnapping, serious bodily injury, or a handful of other serious crimes.
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California progressives want to hike taxes on corporations and billionaires to absorb federal funding cuts to Medi-Cal. But backfilling the loss would not address the state’s existing — and growing — structural budget deficit, budget experts say.
Progressive California Democrats, who have long fought and failed to raise taxes on the rich, are renewing their push this year in light of a specific threat: The seismic federal cuts to Medi-Cal, the state’s health care program for the poor. President Donald Trump’s H.R.1, signed into law last July, is estimated to strip tens of billions a year in state Medi-Cal funding and cause thousands to lose coverage. It has prompted progressive lawmakers and health care advocates to call for higher taxes on corporations or billionaires to keep those at risk of losing benefits on the program.
“We know that you are not responsible for these awful cuts, but now the responsibility does lie in your hands,” Judy Mark, executive director of Disability Voices United, an advocacy group for people with disabilities and their families, told state lawmakers at a January rally. “You have the power to increase our revenue so that we don’t have to make such devastating cuts.”
Backfilling the Medi-Cal cuts would make the gap larger, said Keely Martin Bosler, former state finance director with more than two decades of experience in state fiscal policy. To “maintain the same insured level of coverage, those costs are on top of the deficits that exist, and so that would be significant.” California, in its fourth consecutive year projecting a deficit, will likely see bigger shortfalls in future years as spending continues to outpace revenue.
The Fair Games Coalition, made up of community leaders, labor organizations and advocates, announce the launch of the Overpaid CEO Tax Initiative in West Hollywood on Jan. 14, 2026.
Newsom, in his last year as governor, has opposed any wealth tax over concerns that it would drive high-income earners out of California and dampen the tax base. Passing any tax increases would also require a two-thirds vote in each legislative chamber, a high bar even with a Democratic supermajority.
The state is constitutionally required to direct roughly 50 cents of each dollar in excess general fund revenue toward K-14 education and reserves. That means the state would need roughly $44 billion in new revenue annually to close a $22 billion budget hole.
Assemblymember Connolly told CalMatters his bill would raise $3 to $4 billion annually. But the revenue could swing, and corporations could still find new ways to reduce their California taxes. Acknowledging that the amount wouldn’t close the entire structural deficit, Connolly said it’s “a step in the right direction.”
Supporters estimate a proposed billionaire tax would generate $100 billion over five years. SEIU-UHW spokesperson Suzanne Jimenez told CalMatters that it would allow the state to temporarily continue providing Medi-Cal coverage at the same level while giving state leaders time to figure out how best to sustain it.
While they might do little to address the state’s structural deficit, proposals to tax the rich shrewdly tap into the public anxiety with “rather extraordinary disparity in the distribution of income and wealth,” said Kirk Stark, a professor of tax law and policy at UCLA. “I think that targeting the rich is understandable, but I don’t think that it’s really the kind of policy that can be expected to durably address very long-term structural fiscal imbalance,” he said.
“The wealthiest Californians are also the most mobile Californians,” said former Assembly Budget Chair Phil Ting, a San Francisco Democrat. “They could easily decide to go domicile in some other parts of the country.” It also could deter businesses and billionaires from moving to California.
Lawmakers put millions toward a state library program aimed at bringing Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to California children. Now the state library and a California nonprofit are under fire for how they spent some of the money.
A nonprofit organization created by the California State Library to improve childhood literacy has spent more than $1 million in taxpayer money but has yet to put a single book in the hands of a child. Lucas, however, blamed the shortcomings on the fact that legislators themselves pulled the organization's funding prematurely. After the hearing, he told CalMatters in a statement that “every taxpayer dollar spent on this program is fully accounted for.”
In the hearing, Pérez and Grove questioned the Strong Reader Partnership’s finances, repeatedly stating that its accounting practices and business activities were ineffective, negligent or potentially in violation of its state contract. Grove pressed Lucas about why he created a separate nonprofit instead of giving the money directly to the Dollywood Foundation, even though she herself required the state library to do so.
The roughly $1 million in state funds that went to the Strong Reader Partnership is less than a thousandth of 1% of the state’s total spending, but that’s not the point, Pérez said. “Comments have been made about the amount of money that this is, and that it might be small relative to the budget,” she said before closing out the hearing. “But for me, as a public servant, I take this very seriously. We need to ensure that when we're making a commitment to provide something as simple as books to children, that we're actually delivering on that commitment.”
State and local lawmakers routinely sign contracts and grant money to businesses, including many nonprofit organizations, to enact public services or programs. In the process, taxpayers “lose transparency,” said Susan Shelley, vice president of communications for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association, a group that opposes higher taxes. “Why is the state government or the local government turning them over to nonprofits instead of having their massive bureaucracies handle these things where someone is accountable?”
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