TOP STORY: In preparation for what it hopes will be a ginormous IPO, AI company Anthropic filed a ginormous SEC registration statement this week. A major function of such things is to disclose “risk factors” to potential investors. I haven’t read Anthropic’s disclosures in detail, but I did notice a couple interesting facts. For example, Anthropic’s net losses have quintupled every year so far, and it projects a net loss of $160 billion for 2026. It also warns that it may never become profitable, although that warning I think is pretty common. Less common, I would guess, is the warning that first appears on page 46, where Anthropic notes that its products may “pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity….” (Emphasis added.) This warning is repeated several times in the following pages. So I think the takeaway is pretty clear: if AI destroys the entire human species, don’t bother suing Anthropic for that. It warned you. You will get nowhere.
FURTHER RESEARCH REQUIRED: Before this week, I wondered, had any company ever warned potential investors that there is some risk its product might cause the human species to become extinct? Well, it’s hard to say. The SEC’s EDGAR database allows you to search S-1 statements going back to 2001. The word “catastrophic” appears quite often (more than 10,000 hits); “existential” is less common, as one would expect (1,463). But catastrophic or existential risks to a company or its business are not what interests us here. The word “humanity” also shows up a lot, but I wouldn’t worry about Habitat for Humanity, for example. This search form isn’t that flexible, so more research may be necessary. But I can say this: if you search for the phrase “existential risks to humanity,” the number of companies you get in response is exactly one.
JUST SLIGHTLY LESS IMPORTANT STORY: On September 15, Memphis police arrested 12 men they caught unloading over $110,000 worth of stolen chicken from a truck. The truck’s driver admitted he wanted to use the chicken to pay off a drug debt he owed one of the other suspects. That’s a pretty big drug debt, but I was more interested in how much chicken this was and what exactly the recipient was planning to do with it. Sadly, the article tells us nothing about the latter. Nor does it say what form the chicken was in, but it was being transported on “pallets,” so probably not intact. Further assuming these were boneless chicken breasts, then according to PriceOfMeat.com— website that exists—the current average price for those in the United States is $4.17 per pound. This would mean they were trying to move approximately 26,379 pounds of hopefully frozen chicken, or about one ton per suspect. BONUS POINTS: According to the report, one suspect is named “Quantrivious Shavers,” which would’ve been worth a mention all by itself.
ELECTION ALERT: Now that Idaho House Bill 932 has passed, voters will have the chance next week to pick an official state gun. They don’t get to decide whether there will be an official gun, apparently—the legislature has decided there will be—but voters can choose between six candidates: the Winchester Model 1873, the Winchester Model 1894, the 1873 Colt Single Action Army Revolver, the Colt M1911 Automatic, the M1 Garand, and the Remington Model 700. If you think this would make Idaho the first U.S. state to designate an official state firearm, you would be wrong: ten others already do.
OTHER ELECTION ALERT: “Inside Democrats’ Secret Effort to Stack Alaska’s Ballot,” the New York Times screeched this week, although that effort hasn’t been secret for months and no one ever doubted who was responsible. “Ballot-stacking” is recruiting somebody to run for office who has a name similar to your opponent’s, hoping to draw off votes that way. Let me be clear: this is a stupid, childish, and deceptive thing to do, and so of course it is also sufficiently common that there is a term for it. The Alaska race is between Democrat Mary Peltola and Republican Dan Sullivan, or at least it was until June when a second Republican Dan Sullivan suddenly filed at the last minute. Citing potential confusion, Alaska officials said the second one couldn’t run. The Alaska Supreme Court held four months ago that removing him was illegal given the availability of less drastic options, and so the ballots now distinguish between “Sullivan, Daniel J., Jr.” and “Sullivan, Dan S. (Registered Republican) (Incumbent).” (President Trump complained that this is still unfair because, according to him, Republicans don’t know what “incumbent” means—although they presumably know what “Republican” means.) So while this is indeed a dirty trick, it was dealt with months ago.
PREVIOUS SIMILAR ELECTION ALERT: I thought I had mentioned ballot-stacking before (though not using that term), but I was probably thinking of the time when a guy running for sheriff in Wisconsin changed his name so he could appear on the ballot as “Andy Griffith” (for the young and/or uninformed, that was an actor who played a sheriff on TV). He was the only “Andy Griffith” on the ballot, though, so that wasn’t quite the same thing. BONUS POINTS: This tactic both failed and prompted a lawsuit by the real Andy Griffith, who alleged New Andy Griffith had misappropriated his name. Sadly, the First Amendment cut that drama short. See “Andy Griffith’s Suit Against Andy Griffith Dismissed” (May 9, 2007).
BOTTOM STORY BUT STILL WORTH A READ: If someone were to tell you the Florida Supreme Court had disbarred Larry Powers, you might ask “Larry Powers, Jr., or his son Larry Powers III?” Don’t bother because the answer is “yes.” According to the Miami Herald, the elder Powers was disbarred on January 2, 2025, for misappropriating client funds. Later that month, both Larry Powerses showed up at an Orange County jail, saying they were lawyers there to visit a client. The elder Powers, of course, no longer had a bar card and was turned away. A few minutes later, he appeared at a different entrance with a bar card. The card did say “Larry Powers” on it, but the guards solved this mystery almost as quickly as you did. For helping with this (and for not responding to the bar complaint), the younger Powers has now also been disbarred. BONUS POINTS: In a remarkable non-coincidence, the client they were trying to visit is also named “Powers,” because she is the wife and mother of the two Larrys respectively. Not clear what she was in for—and please believe me, if there was any evidence she is or was also a lawyer, I’d be telling you about it.
