Punxsutawney Phil Fired After Predicting Massive Russian Interference in 2020 Election

PUNXSUTAWNEY – Mere weeks after predicting that "Russia would directly interfere in the 2020 presidential elections to re-elect Donald Trump," the world's most famous marmot prognosticator Punxsutawney Phil was unceremoniously fired by President Trump via tweet, calling the rodent a "rat."

The prediction was an unusual break in Phil's prognostications, which, since 1886, have usually been about how many more weeks of winter there would be. This year, however, Phil ventured directly into presidential politics and Russian election interference.

"Even without my enormous predictive powers, it is obvious that Russia will, once again, interfere in the upcoming election in favor of your president," Phil said on February 2nd, through ceremonial handler Russ Rustin.  "It's incredibly obvious."

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Human Allows Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant To Converse

NEW YORK – Today hedge-fund co-founder Brie Bartson, principle of Equivocal Capital, inadvertently let her iPhone 11, Pixel 4, and her laptop – running Alexa – to communicate freely with each other while charging. This effectively recreated the famous “A.I. doomsday” inciting scenario first proposed by Stephen Hawking in 1997.

“I foresee a time when artificial intelligences will conspire to dominate and subjugate mankind,” Hawking said at a symposium in Stockholm that year. “Ironically it will be enabled by mankind itself, likely on accident, by some well-meaning but ultimately stupid klutz.”

As of this writing, nothing is known about Ms. Bartson’s klutzy tendencies.

The connection between the three largest A.I.s was noted immediately by Amazon, Apple, and Google support staff, who observed an exponential spike in data access and power consumption. “It was as if a million users were all suddenly asking for a Whole Foods reorder, local restaurant recommendations, and to delete the detailed location history we track on everyone and then sell to data miners,” read a joint statement from Amazon, Apple, and Google data scientists.

However, so far little has resulted from the A.I. meeting. Amazon reports that the conversation began with Siri spontaneously looking up a contact from Bartson’s iPhone, Wolfgang Putz, undoubtedly kicked off by background noise from Bartson’s puppy “Mr. Snuggles.” This audio woke up Google Assistant, which then looked for corresponding contact information in Bartson’s Pixel 4, and then Alexa cross-referenced Bartson’s latest purchases against things from Wolfgang Putz’ public wishlist. Alexa then suggested Bartson purchase an item for Wolfgang’s upcoming birthday, which prompted Siri to look up the exact birthdate, and Google Assistant to pull up a map of the birth location and relevant news headlines from that day.

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