Burn baby burn.

You have certainly seen, by now, the viral AI video currently literally melting the internet. Hours ago, ChatGPT unleashed a clip featuring the most iconic moments of the 20th century done up in the iconic Studio Ghilbi style. The Japanese animation arthouse, best known for its critically-acclaimed films Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, has long been adored by serious cartoon folk. As such, it was ripe ground for the Terminator-esque future to exploit.

Rolling out a new feature, ChatGPT included a collection of the last 100 years’ most compelling images in Studio Ghilbi vernacular. There were no surf snaps, not even Gabriel Medina walking on clouds, save a blink-and-miss-it photograph from a 2002 surf trip to Yemen featuring yours truly.

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The picture has been doing the rounds on Reddit for years, I regularly get it sent to me, though the context is often lightly obscured. If you have read the best-selling-adjacent Reports from Hell, you would know that my two very best friends and I absconded to Yemen in the wake of 9/11 because I had learned Osama bin Laden was from there and its mainland coastline appeared potentially surf rich.

This was before the Google Maps days, but looking at physical maps, best friends and I figured it would have to catch waves. Plus, we all had deep interest in radical fundamentalism.

No surfer had ever explored before due difficulty and danger.

A three month run from tip to tail revealed truly epic nuggets. Also much Al-Qaeda and while we, best friends plus I, were always happy to run-and-gun, occasionally full police details would see us through particularly hot zones.

Thus this photo. We were in the Shabwah district, notoriously volatile, and had an escort through part of it. Before they peeled off, we sat on technical to celebrate moment with our Yemeni bros, wonderful photographer captured and off we went.

Now it is helping boil ChatGPT’s computers.

You’re welcome.

"Maybe they robbed the wrong person at the wrong time..."

Logan Dulien needs no introduction here. The Southern California filmmaker behind the ultra-popular Snapt film series has been defining what high-performance surfing looks like for the better part of a decade, grinding tirelessly away. In a Covid-era interview with What Youth, the dusty blonde explained, “I don’t expect a good surf movie to fall in my lap. I’m just trying to not pay attention to the hype, put my head down, and work as hard as I can until the curtain goes up.”

Tenacious.

Well, a ring of dirty bandits had not accounted for Dulien’s Liam Neeson-like drive but learned of it the hard way. David Lee Scales had told me this story, before, how Dulien had been robbed whilst out for a surf right after his mother died and how he fought back. Now his tale appears in the Los Angeles Times for those who dislike podcasts.

In short, Dulien’s mother, from whom he had been estranged, had just died after a battle with Parkinson’s. He was there, in the hospital, when she breathed her last and in order to clear head before funeral planning, he went for a surf at his beloved River Jetties. “That’s my temple,” Dulien told the broadsheet. “That’s my religion. That’s everything for me. That’s my sanity.”

After his rinse, Dulien discovered that someone had nipped his keys from his apartment and stolen his wallet and phone. He texted his number from a friend’s phone and the thief responded that he would return all for $1000 cold hard cash. Dulien agreed but the stinky liar never showed. And that’s when the auteur found out that he had been bilked $150,000.

While this would have broken most men, Dulien simply felt the bile rising, declaring, “Maybe they robbed the wrong person at the wrong time because, hey, I’ve got the surveillance (footage of robber). I have the resources. And I’m pissed off.”

What follows is a must-read-to-believe tale that ends with the crumbling of an organized crime ring that targeted surfers. “It makes sense, they know (surfers) are going into the ocean and a lot of them hide their keys,” Dulien explained. “They’re gone for at least 20 minutes to 3 hours. So at that point it became more personal. Because surfing, look, everyone doesn’t get along but we are still a tribe.”

Read the full account of vigilante surf justice here.

Ocean-inspired.

It’s been a rough few months for left-leaning environmentalists on the wealthier side. There was, up until recently, a very simple way to show and share both green bonafides plus good taste. Namely, drive a Tesla sedan or SUV (not a Cybertruck). The electronic vehicle, perfectly minimalist, said everything that might be uncomfortable to actually voice out loud. Namely, “I’m better than you.”

Well, we have all followed along as Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk first supported the divisive U.S. president Trump vocally, then financially and finally becoming his bureaucratic executioner as head hatchet man at the Dept. of Government Efficiency.

Tesla sedan and SUV drivers, horrified they now drive a “swasticar,” are slapping socially-distancing stickers on bumpers whilst looking jealously across “The Pond.”

For it is the UK that the Chinese EV maker BYD is releasing its The Dolphin Surf – which follows in the sea-themed naming sequence the brand’s Ocean Series cars – for an unbelievable sub-£15,000 price tag.

According to This is Money:

Dolphin Surf will come with a significantly uprated 175bhp powertrain, the Chinese model’s 74bhp motor offers enough power to accelerate from 0-62mph in 13 seconds and a top speed of 81mph. And the interior is set to be a more polished version of the ocean-inspired interior of the Chinese variant, which comes with a 12.8-inch touchscreen, wireless charging and voice control.

BYD is planning on opening many showrooms across Great Britain, though none in America. This nation’s ecologically-minded leftists unable to support the brave workers’ paradise known as the People’s Republic of China. Forced into either Polestars or Rivians.

Dark days.