by liberal japonicus
From this.
Forget sleepmaxxing and cold plunging: smoking is the new lifestyle flex among AI researchers.
At least, that’s according to Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar, who said some AI researchers are taking up smoking to signal their belief that AI will eventually cure cancer. [snip]
The logic, he said, is: “I believe so much in AI that it’s going to cure cancer. So I’m showing you my chips are all in.”
Unless this is an Onion piece that got picked up, I believe that as a species, we are fucked.
The Marlboro Man meets Dr. Strangelove.
The AI advertising opportunities for the tobacco companies are magnificent.
Say, Dr. Frankenstein lighting up a Camel unfiltered to calm his nerves as his monster awakens and struggles off the operating table. Overvoice” “Cancer, schmancer.”
Or Fidel Castro lighting up a guaranteed not-to-explode Cuban cigar gifted to him by Soviet plant and traitor anchor baby Marco Rubio and blowing a few smoke rings up Trump’s skirt.
Or child republican school shooters dangling a ciggie from one corner of their mouths as they blow away second graders with God-given semi-automatics and snear Jimmy Cagney-like:
“School’s out forevah, losers! And cancer too!”.
Or Peter Thiel attempting to eat a 1958 Buick and cackling: “Have no fear you Anti-Christs, I’ve got AI and you don’t. What’s a little intestinal rupture now and then when you have agentic Pepto-Bismol?’
It also fits nicely with psychopath Musk declaring that all medical school students should quit school now as their skills will no longer be needed.
https://digbysblog.net/2026/10/16/were-doomed-3/
More:
https://digbysblog.net/2026/10/16/were-doomed-3/
well …. less:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a74137459/smoking-parkinsons-carbon-monoxide/
“…
In short, the piece accurately conveys an eye-catching but unsupported assertion from a high-profile executive and situates it in existing tech culture reporting and health realities. The primary weakness is the reliance on an unsubstantiated anecdote presented as illustrative of a wider “psychosis.” Smoking remains a high-risk behavior regardless of AI timelines; expectations of transformative medical progress from AI are widespread in parts of tech but are not evidence-based guarantees.”
Summarize and Analyze AI Cancer Cure Article
“Cancer cures smoking”
If Musk, Theil, et al all take up chain smoking, that seems like a plus. Surely they’d enjoy using dollar bills to light up. And since the rest of the world is probably already working of finding something other than US currency (most of which is, today, circulating outside the US), we’ll need to get rid of as much of that paper as possible to avoid catestrophic inflation.
They could cut out the middleman and smoke the money. Shred the small bills and roll them up in the big bills.
“I’ll have the one-and-five blend rolled in a Ulysses S. Grant.”
But would it be sufficiently carcinogenic?
Not as a species. Just the people who are just stupid enough to think they are truly brilliant.
Also: farewell Katie Zacharia. Poor lass, gone before we even knew you. I think she has outdone Anthony Scaramucci and set a new land speed record for being shown the door as WH press secretary.
Yes, she said she was “transitioning” out of the press secretary role.
Which in Russia, is pronounced “defenestrated”.
But maybe she meant she is transitioning to become a man, seeing as how only the lying, corrupt, thieving, genocidal men seem to keep their “jobs” in this regime, but the lying, corrupt, thieving genocidal women merely sticky-finger lift a few knickknacks from the White House and there they go off the end of the pier wearing cement stilleto heels to swim with the fishes.
stiletto
They’ll die from the dye.
Seems more likely that they’d die from contamination in the cocaine.
Pretty much all US currency these days contains cocaine residue. (Which I suppose says something about us as a country.) And if the cocaine was cut with something toxic….
In late 2001, I wondered if a dedicated terror plot could involve dusting “dollar bills” with Anthrax.
But since it seems clear in hindsight that the anthrax mailer was a RWNJ, their worship of Mammon would make such a plan pure heresy, so no.