Losing My Perspicacity, December 15, 2025

Good morning and Happy Monday! Thanks for reading today.

I regret to inform you that the world suffered two more mass shootings over the weekend — one at Brown University in Rhode Island and one at a Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach in Australia. These two events aren’t related in any way, except that both are reminders that we don’t have to live this way, yet we keep choosing to.

Two students were killed, and nine others were injured at Brown. Before we go any further, I need you to watch this video:

Probably worth noting that, for at least one of these students, it was the second mass shooting they’ve had to survive in their young life.

Though a “person of interest,” 24-year-old (redacted), has been arrested for the shooting at Brown, as in so many other mass shootings, no motive has been identified. Guess what? After releasing this kid’s name and photo to the entire world, he’s now been released from custody. Just another bang-up job by Kash Patel and the Keystone Cops FBI. (I had to get out of bed to edit this and remove the kid’s name. Idiots.)

Great job, Kash.

That stands in stark contrast to the Bondi Beach shooting, in which the motive is a tale as old as time: anti-semitism.

Fifteen people were murdered, and 40 more were injured in what was supposed to be a night of holiday fun for those of the Jewish faith. There were reportedly two shooters: A father and son.

Luckily, an unarmed bystander, 43-year-old Ahmed al Ahmed, had the courage and strength to tackle one of the shooters.

Ahmed is a fruit vendor from South Sydney and hails from Syria. Unfortunately, he was shot twice by the other shooter and remains hospitalized, but is expected to be okay. The attack comes at a time when antisemitism is on the rise around the world. At the time of publication, no details about the shooters had been made public. Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is already proposing stricter gun laws.

But because we aren’t allowed to have nice things, at least one site and Elon Musk’s AI agent “Grok” immediately began pushing out misinformation, creating a fictional man with a far whiter sounding name and attributing the heroism to an “Edward Crabtree.”

And the “news site” The Daily went even further, creating an entire interview with the fictional Crabtree.

The story is credited to Rebecca Chen in the byline, but when you click on her name, nothing happens. There is a reporter named Rebecca Chen, but she’s with Yahoo News. The piece creates an entire backstory for the apparently fictional Edward Crabtree, complete with interviews with childhood friends:

I did find a software engineer in Sydney named “David Park” on LinkedIn, but according to his profile, he hasn’t worked anywhere for more than a year or two, far short of the “six years” the article says he worked with Crabtree. I reached out to David Park and I’ll let you know if I hear back.

Well, probably not. I did an admittedly cursory search for Edward Crabtree in Sydney and came up with bupkus. According to one Bluesky user, the website The Daily was only registered as a domain yesterday morning.

And he was right:

Moreover, not a single story on the site is more than 10 hours old, and many of the story links redirect to 404 errors. It’s the wildest thing I’ve ever seen.

It appears an entire website of AI slop was created for the sole purpose of intentionally misidentifying one man, refocusing the “hero” narrative from a reportedly Muslim man to an entirely fictional white man. And not just a single website, and entire site designed to look like a news site with stories on all manner of topics, from “national” and “politics” pages to “sport,” “entertainment,” and “lifestyle.” I only realized it was entirely fraudulent when I started clicking around.

I’ll admit, I was initially fascinated as I dug deeper and deeper into this fake news site, but that interest quickly morphed into abject horror once I realized how many social media users had glommed onto the story and run with it. Now, with Grok spewing out false info, God knows how far the misinformation will spread.

And herein lies a major challenge for media and democracy alike in the coming years. How do you get the truth to the masses when bad actors have this kind of time and energy to devote to a lie? You know the old Mark Twain saying, “A lie can go halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes?” What would Twain say if he could see how quickly and easily a lie can be made to look so real with AI? Americans, depending on where they get their news, are already ingesting two different sets of facts. How are we to teach people media literacy with this kind of thing out there? It feels like a lost cause.

I’m always railing about how generative AI doesn’t work nearly as well as Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Google would have us believe, and here, yet again, is proof. But if the goal isn’t to produce actual news, but to flood the internet with a convincing fake… well, how do you combat that? To quote Theoden, King, “What can man do against such reckless hate?” As a journalist who was trained to see the truth as sacrosanct, I have no idea how we even begin to push back on this garbage. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is out here signing executive orders to outlaw state AI regulations.

But we did find at least one good use for AI this week, as the Pentagon’s news AI bot immediately called out Pete Hegseth for committing war crimes.

RIP, Rob Reiner

While I was knee deep in fake news websites, news broke that Rob Reiner and his wife. Michelle, were found stabbed to death in their home, and I am bereft of words.

Not only did Reiner give us iconic movies like The Princess Bride, This is Spinal Tap, Stand by Me, A Few Good Men, and When Harry Met Sally, but he was also an outspoken critic of Donald Trump, perhaps his staunchest critic in Hollywood. People Magazine (I know) is reporting that the Reiners were killed by their son, Nick.

The details about them being stabbed to death came via ABC News. Billy Crystal and Larry David reportedly arrived on the scene sometime later, according to People. BUT, we just had a bizarre press conference by LAPD Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton, who kept referring to this as a “death” investigation. Hamilton said they won’t release the names of the victims until Monday, the police aren’t in the house yet, they haven’t determined it’s a homicide, and they aren’t looking for a suspect. Per Hamilton, they haven’t even gotten a search warrant yet, which is wild. Prosecutors can bang out a search warrant in 15 minutes and have it signed by a judge within an hour. Five hours after LAPD arrived at the home… nada. Meanwhile, LA Mayor Karen Bass, who’s ostensibly in charge of the LAPD, is tweeting out condolences to Reiner’s family. What a weird situation.

It’s worth knowing that Rob Reiner was not only instrumental in overturning same sex marriage laws in California, but he was also involved in getting the Supreme Court to hear Obergefell, which led to legalized same sex marriage in the US.

And I learned a lot of lovely things about Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner last night:

This pretty much sums up my feelings right now:

With that in mind, I’m going to wrap this up early tonight. I haven’t felt like this since I had to announce the death of Prince on the air. Mel Brooks having to bury both Carl and Rob Reiner is more than I can bear to think about right now.

The High Note

Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.

I love The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally as much as anyone else, but, if you’re a defense attorney, this is the kind of examination you dream about.

RIP, Rob. Thanks for all the movies. I’d love to hear about your favorite Rob Reiner movies or characters in the comments.

Hey, survive and advance out there today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Follow Julie on Bluesky and Instagram so she can get another book contract.