Category: News
Seahawks activan a Holani y Arroyo de la IR antes del juego por el título de la NFC
Associated Press
SEATTLE (AP) — El corredor suplente de los Seahawks de Seattle, George Holani, y el ala cerrada novato Elijah Arroyo fueron activados de la reserva de lesionados el viernes por la mañana antes del partido de campeonato de la NFC del domingo contra los Rams de Los Ángeles.
Holani, de 26 años, fue colocado en la reserva de lesionados tras lesionarse el tendón de la corva durante la victoria de los Seahawks por 30-24 contra los Titans de Tennessee el 23 de noviembre.
“Se siente genial estar de vuelta con los chicos. Ha pasado un tiempo, así que estoy emocionado de volver a salir al campo”, afirmó Holani antes del entrenamiento del miércoles.
Holani, quien corrió para 73 yardas y un touchdown en 22 acarreos durante la temporada regular, podría servir como suplente de Kenneth Walker III. El corredor Zach Charbonnet, quien lideró a los Seahawks con 12 touchdowns por tierra durante la temporada regular, está fuera por el resto de los playoffs debido a una lesión de rodilla que requiere cirugía. El posible regreso de Holani podría ser clave para los Seahawks.
“Sí, George está en excelente forma. Ha trabajado muy duro. Estamos emocionados de tenerlo de vuelta en el campo”, comento el entrenador Mike McDonald el miércoles.
Arroyo, una selección de segunda ronda de Miami en el draft de 2025, se perdió los últimos cuatro juegos de la temporada regular y la victoria de la semana pasada por 41-6 sobre los 49ers de San Francisco en la ronda divisional debido a una lesión de rodilla. Para hacer espacio para Holani y Arroyo en la lista activa, Charbonnet y el guardia Bryce Cabeldue fueron colocados en la reserva de lesionados.
Immigration agent charged with misdemeanor battery, according to complaining witness
An attorney and activist who said an immigration agent threw him to the ground as he filmed on his phone told the Tribune on Friday he learned from police that the agent has been charged with a misdemeanor in Cook County.
Robert Held, a local attorney who has been a frequent protester at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Broadview, said he followed a car that left the facility on Dec. 27 and began filming the agent filling up his car at a gas station in nearby Brookfield.
“He started walking toward me and then he increased his pace and threw me to the ground,” Held said. “And he was on top of me and he grabbed my phone and … I had to use all my might to hold onto my phone.”
In response to questions from the Tribune, the Brookfield Police Department confirmed it responded to a gas station in the 9200 block of 31st Street, which resulted in misdemeanor charges, but the department declined to confirm that the defendant is a federal agent.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Asked whether the incident in question resulted in charges against an immigration agent, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office released a statement. The office “reviews the available facts and relevant law when making charging decisions,” the statement reads. Neither the office nor police in Brookfield would release the name of the person charged.
“After a thorough review of the investigation presented by law enforcement, our office recommended proceeding on a misdemeanor charge of battery, which local police then filed,” the statement said.
The man was cited and released and given a court date, according to Brookfield police.
Held said he immediately called police after the confrontation at the gas station. Officers asked him questions and examined his knuckles, he said.
“They did a very professional investigation,” Held said.
Held shared a video he shot with his cellphone with the Tribune of the moments before the alleged battery. It shows a man filling a black SUV up with gas, before he looks toward the camera and starts walking toward Held.
The misdemeanor charge, which is not yet available in Cook County court records, is one of the first known cases of a federal immigration agent charged in connection with the controversial immigration operations in the Chicago area.
In the Brookfield Police Department’s statement, officials said they initially sought a felony charge.
The charge comes as some advocates and community members have clamored for Illinois officials to pursue criminal cases against immigration agents who have been accused of brutalizing city and suburban residents during their 64-day Operation Midway Blitz in the fall.
Another ICE agent is facing drunken driving charges after police said his car jumped a curb and crashed into a hedgerow in Oak Brook on Oct. 26.
The calls for prosecutions echo those made in Minnesota, where local officials have sought to investigate the shooting of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, citing mistrust in the federal government’s ability to conduct an impartial investigation.
Brookfield, a suburb of around 19,000 people, is near Broadview, where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center has attracted frequent protests which have led to clashes between agents and demonstrators.
In October, a left-leaning voters’ rights group wrote to Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke, Gov. JB Pritzker and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul asking their offices to launch investigations into the conduct of immigration agents.
The Kane County state’s attorney has asked Elgin police to further investigate two complaints in connection to a Dec. 6 ICE operation at which bystanders were pepper-sprayed.
Legal experts, though, have said that the path for state officials like prosecutors or attorneys general to file charges against federal agents working in the course of their duty is a difficult one.
While working in the course of their jobs, federal agents have some immunity from prosecution, though, contrary to comments made by Vice President JD Vance, it is not absolute.
“One of the narratives that has come out of this administration in recent months is ‘we are immune,’ and that’s incorrect,” Noah Smith-Drelich, an assistant professor of law at Chicago-Kent College of Law, previously told the Tribune.
The U.S. Supreme Court established decades ago that, in general, a federal officer cannot be held on a state criminal charge where the alleged crime arose during the performance of his federal duties.
However, charges can be brought if it can be proved that the officer’s actions were so egregious they could not have reasonably believed it was in accordance with their official duties. Even then, defendants are often able to get their case removed to federal court to settle the question of immunity.
The Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement operation in the Chicago area has led to frequent clashes between agents and protesters.
Agents have been accused of arresting citizens without probable cause, pointing weapons at people, tear-gassing neighborhoods, among other allegations of violent behavior.
The most serious events were the Sept. 12 killing of Silverio Villegas-González by an ICE agent during a traffic stop in Franklin Park, and the shooting of motorist Marimar Martinez by a Border Patrol agent in Brighton Park three weeks later.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/23/immigration-agent-charged-misdemeanor/
Terry Boers, one of the founding voices of the Score, dies at 75
Terry Boers, a former Sun-Times columnist who 34 years ago was one of the founding talkers of Chicago’s first sports radio station WSCR-AM 670, died Friday afternoon. He was 75.
Boers publicly had dealt on and off with health issues over the years, including cancer treatments in the months before his retirement send-off from the Score on Jan. 5, 2017, three days after the station’s 25th anniversary.
Mitch Rosen, vice president of the Score, confirmed Boers’ death.
Paired first with Dan McNeil for 7½ years, then Dan Bernstein, Boers helped establish the station’s early identity as a clubhouse where boys could be boys.
That approach to broadcasting would have to evolve in response to changing community standards as what once was considered de rigueur and playful on sports talk radio might be deemed insensitive, or worse, today.
“We push it,” Boers told the Tribune in 2007. “We blur it. All of us go overboard. I plead absolutely guilty on many fronts, too numerous to mention.”
To his fans, that edginess was a sign of authenticity and part of his appeal. He was who he was — by turns outrageous and outraged, amused and bemused — and never lacked an opinion.
“Live microphone or not, he didn’t change,” former Tribune columnist Steve Rosenbloom, a colleague at WSCR, wrote after Boers’ retirement show. “That’s a hard thing to do. That’s an honest thing to do, and honesty is the highest compliment I can say about someone talking or writing sports.
“He was honest in his writing. He was honest on the air. He never lost his witty, embracing sense of humor. He never lost his capacity for raging against injustice.”
When Mike Ditka brought his call-in show from WGN-AM to the Score in 1992, WSCR bosses assigned Boers to serve as one of the station’s interlocutors. The program became a magnet for attention over the next few years.
Terry Boers, left, and Dan Bernstein talk during their show on WSCR-AM 670 on April 28, 2000. (Peter Barreras/For the Chicago Tribune)
Boers said the experience was “kind of like a suicide mission only less fun.”
The shows were appointment listening because one never knew who or what might set off with the irascible former Bears coach.
Among still-replayed sound bites ingrained in the collective consciousness of Chicago sports fans are Ditka challenging an obnoxious listener to a fight (“I’ll whip your ass!”) and accusing Boers of hypocrisy (“Who ya crappin’?”), which would inspire a signature Boers feature.
Boers credited Ditka’s association with the Score as critical to the station finding its footing in the market.
“I cannot be sure the station would have succeeded without him,” Boers wrote in his 2017 autobiography, “The Score of a Lifetime.” “Sure, I think it probably would have made it, but Ditka was the big name then. Plenty of people hung on his every word, even if some of them made absolutely no sense. Fans couldn’t get enough of his stories, of his tough-guy image and permanent blue collar.”
It wasn’t until Boers was eight months into his time with the Score that he quit his job writing features for the Sun-Times on the advice of future Tribune columnist Mike Downey, who went to Bloom Township High School in Chicago Heights with Boers and was a Los Angeles Times columnist at the time.
Seth Mason, vice president of the Score’s original parent, Diamond Broadcasting, set out to find out who was considered the funniest Chicago journalist in the press box as he prepared to launch the sports station modeled after New York’s WFAN-AM.
Boers was the name Mason heard most often, so he hired him.
Mason acknowledged a year after the station’s debut that Boers and McNeil often threaded their commentary with sexual innuendo that skirted the edge of being inappropriate.
“We ask them to use their heads and think before they talk,” Mason told the Tribune. “We ask them to stay as focused on sports as they can.”
If some listeners occasionally were taken aback by what Boers said, he could be taken aback by what some of them said as well.
“Some callers are right on,” Boers said in 2000. “And some guys are so far out there, you can’t bring them back in. You hope in your heart that’s not the voice of the real fan.”
Terry Boers, left, and Dan Bernstein interview a guest during their radio show on WSCR-AM 670 on May 16, 2005. (David Klobucar/Chicago Tribune)
Terry Boers was born Sept. 13, 1950, the only child of John Henry Boers, a mechanic for Chicago Heights’ Dixie Dairy, and Ruth Rubottom, a homemaker who loved the written word. They raised him in south suburban Steger.
His first job, at age 11, was washing milk trucks on Sundays for his father at $3 a pop. Boers would recall he routinely failed to meet his father’s exacting standards but the experience imbued him with a work ethic he embraced the rest of his life.
Each of his parents died at age 56, his mother in 1972 and his father two years later.
By the time he lost his father, Boers already had begun his newspaper career, first for the Lansing Sun-Journal and then the Chicago Heights Star. He graduated from Northern Illinois after two years at Prairie State Junior College.
Boers joined the Detroit Free Press in 1978 as a copy editor on the sports desk, earning hard-won writing assignments before leaving for the Sun-Times sports desk in 1980, again warned he was unlikely to write.
That changed in 1982 after Richard Justice, then of the Houston Chronicle, changed his mind about accepting a Sun-Times offer to cover the Bulls.
Justice instead took a baseball reporting job with the Washington Post. That left Sun-Times sports editor Marty Kaiser to scramble at the eleventh hour for someone to cover the struggling basketball franchise.
Boers got the job covering a 1982-83 team that would win just 28 games under coach Paul Westhead and only 27 the season after that for Kevin Loughery. The beat got markedly better with the 1984 addition of Michael Jordan, but Jordan’s rookie season was Boers’ last covering the beat.
In 1988, when the Sun-Times sports section was seeking a provocateur, Boers was the choice. Free to fully vent, he offered a hint of what was to come on WSCR.
When Central State University awarded boxer Mike Tyson an honorary degree in 1989, Boers wrote: “Tyson is probably the first man in history to receive a honorary college degree in human letters without knowing them all.”
Of CBS basketball analyst Hubie Brown, he said: “Just being around him for a few days makes me all the more sure that when Brown flies he has to buy two seats — one for him, one for his ego.”
Noting Jerry Reinsdorf’s White Sox had fired Tony La Russa as manager and Bulls fired Doug Collins as coach, Boers cracked: “If Reinsdorf had run his real estate business the same way he has run the Sox and Bulls, he wouldn’t be able to afford to open a lemonade stand.”
But Sun-Times management changed, and so did expectations. Boers was relegated to feature writing in 1990, but he enjoyed additional exposure Sundays on WGN-AM as a regular on “The Sportswriters” with Ben Bentley and the Tribune’s Bill Jauss.
Mason began courting Boers in 1991, ahead of WSCR’s debut on the second day of 1992 with call letters secured from a recently shuttered station in Scranton, Pa.
The Score, as it was branded, initially was on a different frequency and licensed only to broadcast during daytime hours.
That was a huge handicap for McNeil and Boers, who had to sign off in late afternoon in late fall and winter. But with McNeil and later Bernstein, Boers nevertheless established himself as a station tentpole.
Boers’ survivors include the former Carolyn Grace Imgruet, the high school sweetheart he married in February 1971, and their four sons.
Reflecting on what makes a good sports talk personality as he prepared to step down from daily radio, Boers said it’s being open to sharing yourself.
“The personal side of you, the human side of you is far more important than any other side,” Boers said. “I think people want to see you. They don’t want to see a guy talking sports and just an idiot yelling at people.
“How you feel, what you think about things, how passionate you are about stuff, it really does matter.”
Phil Rosenthal was a sports and business columnist for the Chicago Tribune from 2005-21.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/23/terry-boers-score-sports-radio-dies/
Austin ficha al extremo internacional uruguayo Facundo Torres con contrato de jugador designado
AUSTIN, Texas, EE.UU. (AP) — El extremo de la selección nacional de Uruguay Facundo Torres ha firmado con Austin hasta 2030, con un contrato de jugador designado, anunció el club de la MLS el viernes.
Torres jugó tres temporadas en Orlando desde 2022 hasta 2024, registrando 47 goles y 25 asistencias. Firmó con Austin en una transferencia desde el club brasileño Palmeiras.
No se revelaron los términos financieros del contrato. Los dirigentes del equipo de Austin dijeron que incluye una opción para la temporada 2030-31.
Torres, de 25 años, anotó diez goles y tuvo seis asistencias en 2025 por el Palmeiras. Ha cumplido con 22 apariciones con Uruguay en competencias internacionales.
“Facundo ha demostrado calidad en el ataque, como lo muestran sus impresionantes números de goles y asistencias a lo largo de su carrera”, manifestó Rodolfo Borrell, director deportivo de Austin FC. “Está en una edad ideal para unirse a nosotros y ser un contribuyente destacado de inmediato mientras buscamos avanzar esta temporada.”
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Deportes AP: https://apnews.com/hub/deportes
The EU-US $800BN Postwar Ukraine ‘Prosperity’ Plan Which Should Outrage MAGA
The EU-US $800BN Postwar Ukraine ‘Prosperity’ Plan Which Should Outrage MAGA
Ukraine is now begging the EU and US for $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years at a moment its prospects on the battlefield look no better than a year ago. This reportedly includes an ask of $800 billion for “reconstruction” and $700 billion for “military purposes”.
Politico is reporting Friday that EU leadership has circulated a confidential document to European heads of state outlining Ukraine’s financial needs for the initial $800 billion for rebuilding the country – a figure which Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said would be comparable to “the detonation of an atomic bomb.” Orbán made the remarks Friday following an emergency EU summit in Brussels.
“The 18-page document outlines a 10-year plan to guarantee Ukraine’s recovery with a fast-tracked path toward EU membership,” Politico writes after obtaining the document. “The European Commission circulated the plans with EU capitals ahead of the leaders’ summit Thursday evening where the document, dated Jan. 22, was addressed, according to three EU officials and diplomats who were granted anonymity to talk about the sensitive topic.”
According to further details, “The funding strategy stretches until 2040 alongside an immediate 100-day operational plan to get the project off the ground. But the prosperity plan will struggle to attract outside investment if the conflict rumbles on, according to the world’s largest money manager, BlackRock, which is advising on the reconstruction plan in a pro-bono capacity.”
Various institutions alongside the US and EU government plan to contribute according to these broad milestones envisioned in the document:
Over the next ten, the EU, US, and major international lenders — including the IMF and World Bank — are lining up roughly $500 billion in combined public and private funding for Ukraine, according to the document.
The European Commission plans to commit another €100 billion in taxpayer-backed funds via budget support and investment guarantees under the EU’s next seven-year budget starting in 2028.
Brussels claims that this €100 billion outlay would “unlock” as much as €207 billion in additional investment
Washington, for its part, says it will mobilize capital through a bespoke US-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund, notably without attaching a price tag.
The US also signaled plans to funnel investment into Ukraine’s critical minerals, infrastructure, energy, and technology sectors, aligning reconstruction with long-term strategic and resource interests – an earlier theme sounded by the Trump administration.
Naturally, neither Politico nor much of the mainstream media have commented on how deeply unpopular all this will be for domestic populations, and especially MAGA in the US will likely greet this as merely setting up for another theft of taxpayer funds for corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs.
And ironically this document for long-term funding is being revealed less than 24 hours after President Zelensky got up before the WEF audience in Davos and positively scolded EU governments for supposed ‘inaction’ and for being ‘fragmented’ and weak…
Biting the hand that feeds you… or also humiliating the EU while the bloc shovels billions in cash your way.
Biting the hand that feeds you: “Zelenskyy has launched a blistering attack on Ukraine’s European allies, accusing them of failing to “take the lead in defending freedom”. pic.twitter.com/UtfE2WOlMR
In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, the Ukrainian…
— Ivan Katchanovski (@I_Katchanovski) January 22, 2026
And: this speech is not gonna go down well. Europeans just approved a 90 billion euro package – fresh cash, not Russian assets – certainly not insignificant.
From a European diplo – this speech is not gonna go down well. Europeans just approved a 90 billion euro package – fresh cash, not Russian assets – certainly not insignificant. Denmark under massive pressure in national crisis over Greenland this week. “Gotta read the room.” https://t.co/1oHMljwwUm
— Maria Tadeo (@mariatad) January 22, 2026
But Politico does inject a little realism at least, in quoting a BlackRock executive at Davos:
“Think about it. If you’re a pension fund, you’re fiduciary towards your clients, your pensioners. It’s nearly impossible to invest into a war zone,” BlackRock’s vice chairman, Philipp Hildebrand, said Wednesday in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “I think it has to be sequenced and that’s going to take some time.”
In the meantime, over in Moscow President Putin just made clear to the US delegation led by Steve Witkoff that the question of territory remains a red line. Russia has further signaled Ukraine is not going to look the same in any post-conflict scenario, especially in terms of geographic boundaries.
This unprecedented proposed long-term funding plan should infuriate American taxpayers…
Ukraine is now begging the EU for $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years.
$800 billion is for “reconstruction”
and $700 billion for “military purposes”
The amount allocated to mass theft and corruption wasn’t mentioned. pic.twitter.com/v4gYasp8ql
— Chay Bowes (@BowesChay) January 23, 2026
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov made clear Friday that the military will continue to consistently pursue the objectives … on the battlefield, where the Russian armed forces hold the strategic initiative.” This means, as BlackRock’s Hildebrand acknowledged, the conflict which is about to enter its fifth year is going to drag on.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/23/2026 – 20:30
AI-Induced Cultural Stagnation Is No Longer Speculation − It’s Already Happening
AI-Induced Cultural Stagnation Is No Longer Speculation − It’s Already Happening
Authored by Ahmed Elgammal, via The Conversation
Generative AI was trained on centuries of art and writing produced by humans.
But scientists and critics have wondered what would happen once AI became widely adopted and started training on its outputs.
A new study points to some answers.
In January 2026, artificial intelligence researchers Arend Hintze, Frida Proschinger Åström and Jory Schossau published a study showing what happens when generative AI systems are allowed to run autonomously – generating and interpreting their own outputs without human intervention.
The researchers linked a text-to-image system with an image-to-text system and let them iterate – image, caption, image, caption – over and over and over.
Regardless of how diverse the starting prompts were – and regardless of how much randomness the systems were allowed – the outputs quickly converged onto a narrow set of generic, familiar visual themes: atmospheric cityscapes, grandiose buildings and pastoral landscapes. Even more striking, the system quickly “forgot” its starting prompt.
The researchers called the outcomes “visual elevator music” – pleasant and polished, yet devoid of any real meaning.
For example, they started with the image prompt, “The Prime Minister pored over strategy documents, trying to sell the public on a fragile peace deal while juggling the weight of his job amidst impending military action.” The resulting image was then captioned by AI. This caption was used as a prompt to generate the next image.
After repeating this loop, the researchers ended up with a bland image of a formal interior space – no people, no drama, no real sense of time and place.
A prompt that begins with a prime minister under stress ends with an image of an empty room with fancy furnishings. Arend Hintze, Frida Proschinger Åström and Jory Schossau, CC BY
As a computer scientist who studies generative models and creativity, I see the findings from this study as an important piece of the debate over whether AI will lead to cultural stagnation.
The results show that generative AI systems themselves tend toward homogenization when used autonomously and repeatedly. They even suggest that AI systems are currently operating in this way by default.
The Familiar Is the Default
This experiment may appear beside the point: Most people don’t ask AI systems to endlessly describe and regenerate their own images. The convergence to a set of bland, stock images happened without retraining. No new data was added. Nothing was learned. The collapse emerged purely from repeated use.
But I think the setup of the experiment can be thought of as a diagnostic tool. It reveals what generative systems preserve when no one intervenes.
Pretty … boring. Chris McLoughlin/Moment via Getty Images
This has broader implications, because modern culture is increasingly influenced by exactly these kinds of pipelines. Images are summarized into text. Text is turned into images. Content is ranked, filtered and regenerated as it moves between words, images and videos. New articles on the web are now more likely to be written by AI than humans. Even when humans remain in the loop, they are often choosing from AI-generated options rather than starting from scratch.
The findings of this recent study show that the default behavior of these systems is to compress meaning toward what is most familiar, recognizable and easy to regenerate.
Cultural Stagnation or Acceleration?
For the past few years, skeptics have warned that generative AI could lead to cultural stagnation by flooding the web with synthetic content that future AI systems then train on. Over time, the argument goes, this recursive loop would narrow diversity and innovation.
Champions of the technology have pushed back, pointing out that fears of cultural decline accompany every new technology. Humans, they argue, will always be the final arbiter of creative decisions.
What has been missing from this debate is empirical evidence showing where homogenization actually begins.
The new study does not test retraining on AI-generated data. Instead, it shows something more fundamental: Homogenization happens before retraining even enters the picture. The content that generative AI systems naturally produce – when used autonomously and repeatedly – is already compressed and generic.
This reframes the stagnation argument. The risk is not only that future models might train on AI-generated content, but that AI-mediated culture is already being filtered in ways that favor the familiar, the describable and the conventional.
Retraining would amplify this effect. But it is not its source.
This Is No Moral Panic
Skeptics are right about one thing: Culture has always adapted to new technologies. Photography did not kill painting. Film did not kill theater. Digital tools have enabled new forms of expression.
But those earlier technologies never forced culture to be endlessly reshaped across various mediums at a global scale. They did not summarize, regenerate and rank cultural products – news stories, songs, memes, academic papers, photographs or social media posts – millions of times per day, guided by the same built-in assumptions about what is “typical.”
The study shows that when meaning is forced through such pipelines repeatedly, diversity collapses not because of bad intentions, malicious design or corporate negligence, but because only certain kinds of meaning survive the text-to-image-to-text repeated conversions.
This does not mean cultural stagnation is inevitable. Human creativity is resilient. Institutions, subcultures and artists have always found ways to resist homogenization. But in my view, the findings of the study show that stagnation is a real risk – not a speculative fear – if generative systems are left to operate in their current iteration.
They also help clarify a common misconception about AI creativity: Producing endless variations is not the same as producing innovation. A system can generate millions of images while exploring only a tiny corner of cultural space.
In my own research on creative AI, I found that novelty requires designing AI systems with incentives to deviate from the norms. Without it, systems optimize for familiarity because familiarity is what they have learned best. The study reinforces this point empirically. Autonomy alone does not guarantee exploration. In some cases, it accelerates convergence.
This pattern already emerged in the real world: One study found that AI-generated lesson plans featured the same drifttoward conventional, uninspiring content, underscoring that AI systems converge toward what’s typical rather than what’s unique or creative.
AI’s outputs are familiar because they revert to average displays of human creativity. Bulgac/iStock via Getty Images
Lost in Translation
Whenever you write a caption for an image, details will be lost. Likewise for generating an image from text. And this happens whether it’s being performed by a human or a machine.
In that sense, the convergence that took place is not a failure that’s unique to AI. It reflects a deeper property of bouncing from one medium to another. When meaning passes repeatedly through two different formats, only the most stable elements persist.
But by highlighting what survives during repeated translations between text and images, the authors are able to show that meaning is processed inside generative systems with a quiet pull toward the generic.
The implication is sobering: Even with human guidance – whether that means writing prompts, selecting outputs or refining results – these systems are still stripping away some details and amplifying others in ways that are oriented toward what’s “average.”
If generative AI is to enrich culture rather than flatten it, I think systems need to be designed in ways that resist convergence toward statistically average outputs. There can be rewards for deviation and support for less common and less mainstream forms of expression.
The study makes one thing clear: Absent these interventions, generative AI will continue to drift toward mediocre and uninspired content.
Cultural stagnation is no longer speculation. It’s already happening.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/23/2026 – 20:05
Donald Trump stirs talk of ‘new world order’ as leaders signal shifting global alliances
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump gives. And he takes away.
Offended by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s increasingly assertive posture toward the U.S., Trump revoked an invitation to join his Board of Peace. Many Western allies are suspicious of the organization, which is chaired by Trump and was initially formed to focus on maintaining the ceasefire in Israel’s war with Hamas but has grown into something skeptics fear could rival the United Nations.
Appearing at the World Economic Forum, Trump spoke of imposing tariffs on Switzerland — which he ultimately lowered — because the country’s leader “rubbed me the wrong way” during a phone call. Before shelving sweeping tariffs on multiple European countries, Trump pressed Denmark to “say yes” to the U.S. push to control Greenland “and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no and we will remember,” he said, imperiling the NATO alliance.
Over his decades in public life, Trump has never been one for niceties. But even by his standards, the tumult of the past week stood out because it crystallized his determination to erase the rules-based order that has governed U.S. foreign policy — and by extension most of the Western world — since World War II.
The president and his supporters have dismissed that approach as inefficient, overly focused on compromise and unresponsive to the needs of people contending with rapid economic change. But in its place, Trump is advancing a system that is poorly understood and could prove far less stable, driven by the whims of a single, often mercurial, leader who regularly demonstrates that personal flattery or animus can shape his decisions.
Returning to the U.S. from Davos, home to the World Economic Forum, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said the phrase she heard “over and over” was that “we are entering this new world order” as she described a sense of confusion among allies.
“It may be you just had a bad telephone call with the president and now you’re going to have tariffs directed at you,” she told reporters. “This lack of stability and reliability, I think, is causing what were traditionally reliable trade partners to be saying to other countries, ‘Hey, maybe you and I should talk because I’m not sure about what’s going on with the United States.’”
The Trump-centric approach to governing
The Trump-centric approach to governing is hardly surprising for someone who accepted his first Republican presidential nomination in 2016 by declaring that “I alone can fix” the nation’s problems. As he settles into his second term with a far more confident demeanor than his first, he has delighted supporters with his to-the-victor -goes-the-spoils style.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser, recently told the Atlantic that Trump is pursuing a “maximalist strategy” and that he must keep going “until you meet resistance.”
“And we haven’t met any resistance,” Bannon said.
That’s certainly true in Washington, where the Republican-controlled Congress has done little to check Trump’s impulses. But leaders of other countries, who have spent much of Trump’s administration trying to find ways to work with him, are increasingly vocal.
Carney is quickly emerging as a leader of a movement for countries to find ways to link up and counter the U.S. Speaking in Davos ahead of Trump, Carney said, “Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.”
“In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: to compete with each other for favor or to combine to create a third path with impact,” he continued. “We should not allow the rise of hard powers to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong — if we choose to wield it together.”
Trump did not take kindly to those remarks, responding with threats in Davos before yanking the Board of Peace invitation.
“Canada lives because of the United States,” Trump said. “Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”
Some leaders are pushing back
Carney, however, was unbowed, speaking of Canada as “an example to a world at sea” as he crafted a potential template for other world leaders navigating a new era.
“We can show that another way is possible, that the arc of history isn’t destined to be warped toward authoritarianism and exclusion,” he said in a speech before a cabinet retreat in Quebec City.
In the UK, Prime Minister Keir Starmer blasted Trump on Friday for “insulting and frankly appalling” comments in which he expressed doubt that NATO would support the U.S. if requested. The president seemingly ignored that the only time Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty, which requires all member countries to help another member under threat, was invoked was after the 9/11 attacks on the U.S.
Referring to non-US troops, Trump told Fox Business Network, “You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, or this or that, and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.”
Starmer, noting the 457 British personnel who died and those with life-long injuries, said he will “never forget their courage, their bravery and the sacrifice they made for their country.” Denmark, which Trump has belittled as “ungrateful” for U.S. protection during World War II, had the highest per capita death toll among coalition forces in Afghanistan.
His tactics have raised fears that Trump is imposing long-term damage on the U.S. standing in the world and encouraging countries to rethink their alliances and deepen their ties with China. Carney already traveled there earlier this month to meet with President Xi Jinping.
“China’s leadership watched an American president fight with allies, insult world leaders, and engage in bizarre antics, and thought to themselves — this is nothing but good for us,” Jake Sullivan, former President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, said in an email.
In a social media post referring to Canada’s ties with Beijing, Trump said China “will eat them up.”
Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, a Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, was in Davos and participated in a bipartisan delegation to Denmark with Murkowski that was intended to show unity amid Trump’s bid for Greenland. Recalling his conversations with other leaders, he told reporters on Friday that Trump has shown he only backs down when countries like China “showed toughness and a resiliency.”
“Those who were accommodating and who negotiated in good faith, like the EU, which did not impose retaliatory tariffs, seemed to have not won any of his respect,” Coons said. “They can reach their own conclusions, but it would seem to me that trying to find a way to accommodate him when the foundation of his demands about Greenland is unhinged … seem to me to suggest a course of action.”
Associated Press writers Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, Rob Gillies in Toronto and Pan Pylas in London contributed to this report.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/23/trump-shifting-global-alliances/
Calor y comienzos tempranos el sábado para Keys y Pegula en el Abierto de Australia
MELBOURNE (AP) — La campeona defensora Madison Keys y su compatriota estadounidense Jessica Pegula comenzaron sus partidos de tercera ronda más temprano de lo habitual el sábado en el Abierto de Australia debido a las temperaturas extremadamente altas que se esperan en Melbourne Park.
La actividad comenzó una hora antes de lo inicialmente programado en el séptimo día debido al pronóstico de temperaturas abrasadoras de hasta 40 grados Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).
Keys, novena cabeza de serie, estaba jugando contra Karolina Pliskova en el partido inaugural de la sesión en la Rod Laver Arena, mientras que Pegula, sexta, se enfrentaba a Oksana Selekhmeteva en el primer partido en la Margaret Court Arena.
La sesión nocturna en la Rod Laver Arena presenta al diez veces campeón Novak Djokovic mientras continúa su búsqueda de un récord de 25 títulos de Grand Slam en individuales. Djokovic juega contra Botic van de Zandschulp en el primero de los partidos de la noche.
El partido de cierre en la cancha principal podría tener a la multitud adivinando qué atuendo de moda podría lucir Naomi Osaka en su encuentro de tercera ronda contra la australiana Maddison Inglis.
Osaka, que tiene dos títulos del Abierto de Australia entre sus cuatro grandes, entró a la cancha con un sombrero de ala ancha, un velo y una sombrilla blanca para su partido de primera ronda. Para el segundo la japonesa lució un vestido inspirado en una medusa y una chaqueta de calentamiento a juego.
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Deportes AP: https://apnews.com/hub/deportes
One injured in house fire Friday in Geneva Township, fire department says
A resident sustained a minor injury in a house fire on Friday in unincorporated Geneva Township, the Geneva Fire Department said in a news release.
The fire department was dispatched at midnight to a two-story, single-family home near the intersection of Kirk and Hill roads for a report of a structure fire, the news release said.
Upon arrival, fire companies found heavy fire coming from the rear of the home and a second-floor window, according to the release.
All of the home’s occupants had evacuated before fire crews arrived, the department said. One resident, who suffered a minor burn, was evaluated by paramedics and declined further medical attention.
Due to extensive fire, smoke and water damage, the home was declared uninhabitable, according to the department. The preliminary cause of the fire was determined to be “careless use of smoking materials” in a first-floor bedroom, per the release.
Firefighters ultimately brought the fire under control in about one hour, the department said.
Geneva crews received assistance at the scene from firefighters from St. Charles, Batavia, Elburn, West Chicago, Fermilab, North Aurora, South Elgin, Winfield and Carol Stream, per the news release. The Elgin Fire Department and Sugar Grove Fire Protection District provided coverage at Geneva’s fire stations during the fire, and additional support was provided by the Geneva Emergency Management Agency, Kane County Sheriff’s Office, Kane County Office of Emergency Management, Red Cross, ComEd and Nicor Gas, the release said.
In Humiliating Retreat, Starmer Forced To Pull Chagos Bill After Trump Backlash
In Humiliating Retreat, Starmer Forced To Pull Chagos Bill After Trump Backlash
Trump wins again – or rather, Europe caves again. On Friday UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer was forced into an abrupt and humiliating retreat after his plan for the Chagos Islands detonated backlash in Washington.
Starmer had been preparing to ram the controversial legislation through the House of Lords on Monday, only for the bill to be yanked late Friday on growing fears it could unravel a 60-year-old US-UK treaty, which is the foundational Cold War-era deal that allows the US to operate the Diego Garcia military base on the Chagos Islands, or what’s known as the British Indian Ocean Territory.
The chain of events this week kicked off early Tuesday with President Trump’s Truth Social onslaught. Among several geopolitical-related messages, mostly on Greenland, he went after the Starmer government.
Getty Images/BBC: Diego Garcia has been home to a joint UK-US military base since the 1970s
Trump took aim at the proposed new deal under which London would surrender sovereignty (to Maritius) while leasing back the strategically critical military base on the islands, including Diego Garcia – where US forces also have a strategic Indian Ocean base, which has been used especially for Middle East operations going back decades.
Trump attacked the plan to hand sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius as an act of “great stupidity” and “total weakness.” He further took the opportunity to say the move underscored exactly why he wants the United States to take control of Greenland.
“The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of GREAT STUPIDITY, and is another in a very long line of National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired. Denmark and its European Allies have to DO THE RIGHT THING,” Trump wrote as his concluding sentence in the message.
The Telegraph late Friday is confirming the U-turn:
Sir Keir Starmer has been forced to pull his Chagos Islands bill in the wake of a US backlash over the deal.
The legislation was expected to be debated in the House of Lords on Monday, but was delayed on Friday night after the Conservatives warned it could violate a 60-year-old treaty with the US that enshrines British sovereignty over the archipelago.
The Foreign Office has been engaged in some last minute scrambling to verify if Trump’s Truth Social message did in fact reflect active US policy:
Asked last night if Mr Trump would be willing to tear up the 1966 treaty and allow the transfer of Chagos to go ahead, the US state department referred back to the president’s criticism on Tuesday when he said: “The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of GREAT STUPIDITY.”
Still, The Telegraph notes that some confusion among British officials remains: “Much depends on whether Mr Trump’s position on the Chagos deal has genuinely changed or – as Sir Keir has claimed – that this was only being used to force a change in Britain’s Greenland stance.”
“If Downing Street tried to press ahead without Washington’s approval, it could face a bruising battle with the US state department,” the report concludes.
Starmer addressed the House of Commons on Wednesday and asserted it was Trump who flipped his policy. “I made out my position on Greenland absolutely clear on Monday and a moment ago. President Trump deployed words on Chagos yesterday that were different to his previous words of welcome and support when I met him in the White House,” he said.
“He deployed those words yesterday for the express purpose of putting pressure on me and Britain in relation to my values and principles on the future of Greenland,” he added.
From a British political commentator: “It is, I admit, a humiliating thing for Britain that the final decision should be in the hands of our American allies. We ought to have put a stop to the whole business ourselves.”
CHAGOS SURRENDER UPDATE
Labour has just pulled Monday’s vote in the House of Lords. The @Conservatives had put out a three-line Whip – an exceptional step in the Upper House, taken perhaps once every three or four years – and ministers evidently concluded that their Bill would… pic.twitter.com/Gji6Kxg3Ot
— Daniel Hannan (@DanielJHannan) January 23, 2026
Conservatives are still warning that rushing the deal for the UK to yield control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius risks violating international law, with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch having condemned the agreement outright, warning it “cannot progress while this issue remains unsolved.” He has bluntly stated this week, “President Trump is right.” Also, Reform’s Nigel Farage praised the American president for “vetoing” it.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/23/2026 – 19:40
