Hodgepodge: Sammy Guevara Done with AEW? Taylor Farms Deception, Blinding Headlights, Flocked Flogged and More

Weekend was incredibly “slow” as the World Cup stole the show when it came to “the people’s” interest in things. Of course, being an anti-sports fan (pro-wrestling not included), I could care less about a bunch of goofs kicking some ballz around (I’d prefer if they’d just kick each others’ for a sport then I’d watch!) Now, that things are “normalizing” again, I picked a few things that caught my eye, which are becoming prominent such as more Flock controversies, the Taylor Farm’s diarrhea poo poo lettuce incident, protest around the country against data centers, etc. While there are always political headlines, I’m doing my best to avoid those simply because I generally believe that the only good politician is a non-existent politician (and politics)

Sammy Guevara Done with AEW?

I’m going to start off with some pro-wrestling news as this situation is one of those, “Why didn’t it happen sooner?” situations where Sammy Guevara apparently is through with AEW. I don’t follow pro-wrestling religiously like I used to but this is both not surprisingly and still unexpected. I suppose it’s not surprising given the rumored “negative attitude” Sammy has had over the years. I recall a while back how Andrade and Sammy had gotten into an argument/fight/whatever. However, at this time, Andrade has been featured more prominently while Sammy was practically hidden in Ring of Honor last time I checked. I think they tried to “rehabilitate” him with Dustin Rhodes as a tag team but I didn’t watch closely.

What’s funny is how AEW tried to mimic the All Japan “Four Pillars” concept by selecting MJF, Darby Allin, Sammy Guevara and Jack Perry as supposedly leading the charge for the future of the company. Of the four, MJF had experienced the most success while Sammy and Jack Perry had their own sets of controversies that probably hurt the company in the long run with their behavior. While Jack Perry did end up renewing his contract, he does not appear as one of the key pillars at this stage and mostly is used as an accessory for the Bucks for whatever they want. However, I don’t know who might’ve gone to bat for Sammy or if anyone did, which might’ve left him in the dust at this stage since he pretty much hasn’t been used. I think his wife still wrestles with them so I don’t know how his situation may be affected in her stories.

One common comment that I’ve read is whether anyone else may want him because of his negative behavior. The only two candidates suggested have been TNA and GCW. Maybe MLW could be in that list but most people don’t believe the WWE will take him. One comment I have is that very few of the people who had transitioned from AEW to WWE (not former WWE stars) really have made a significant impact over there. Some people might argue that Jade Cargill and Penta were good acquisitions. Jade might fit the visual mold they were seeking but her in ring and promos have not been good and people question whether she’s going to improve significantly at this stage where she can carry the entire women’s division on her own. And while I’m a fan of hers (visually at least), the other aspects that make one a real pro-wrestling star just aren’t there to me. As for Penta, I’ve just not been a big fan of his. I prefer Rey Fenix, his brother, for that type of style but Penta hasn’t really convinced me of someone making a huge impact over there. Maybe Ethan Page arguably has made the most of the situation since he wasn’t used well in AEW but he seems like another version of LA Knight but worse if that makes any sense.

The Taylor Farms Controversy Continues

If this diarrhea poo-poo lettuce situation isn’t getting any weirder, the whole situation with Taylor Farms gets crazier by the day. First, the FDA makes a claim that they were mistaken in identifying the source of the lettuce. Of course, they haven’t named another source, even though Taco Bell (the main user of Taylor Farms) had pulled most of the lettuce from the affected states. Right after the mistaken claim though, it has come out that Taylor Farms made a $1 million donation to Trump/MAGA on March 26 2025, six days after the FDA announced it pushed back the implementation of “Food Traceability Rule” by 30 months. Given the amount of corruption in the current government, it’s hard to believe that the situation was a mistake on the FDA’s part, especially if Taco Bell themselves ended up cutting out the offending lettuce products.

Luckily for myself, I don’t really care for lettuce. I did have some Taco Tuesday hard shell tacos from Del Taco last week. And for the record, I do prefer Del Taco since Taco Bell is a sad embarrassment compared to what it was in the 80s.

Auto Makers with Blinding Headlights Say Not Our Fault

This is mostly a GM and Tesla issue where they claim that the “modern” blinding light from their vehicles isn’t a safety issue. Their lawyers mention that the “blinding aspect” falls out of driver’s vision from a certain angle, which is why it isn’t a problem. Unfortunately, this is a problem as these lights can blind not only from incoming traffic but hitting your rear view mirrors too.

I found it interesting that the author mentioned how this has been an ongoing problem for the past 10 years. These days since I only drive later at night to avoid traffic (since I almost never go out anymore), I’ve noticed especially in my area where only half the side of a road is lit how this becomes a major issue. And I can’t tell if part of the problem has occurred after COVID. One thing I recall during COVID was just how dark parking lots would be. I can’t tell if that’s because many places ended up shutting down and spots wanted to conserve energy. That would put more burden/cost onto the drivers but I have no proof. But this is an ongoing issue that I see more and more people complaining/writing about.

ACLU Aiding Lawyers Defend Against Police Using AI Tactics

This is an interesting case where the ACLU have built a tool to arm lawyers in defending in cases where police utilize AI enabled tech to build cases. The tool identifies situations of facial recognition, automatic license plate readers, gunshot detection systems, etc. I think what’s clear here is that these scenarios show how the police is mostly behaving more like a business unit rather than something that actually serves and protects the public. I’m all for tools to aid in catching real criminals but when the people using them are doing so for profit, then you have a massive conflict of interest.

Former M$ Employees Seek to Replace CEOs with AI

So a group of ex-M$ employees are building a company/system with the intent of handling:

• Overseeing pricing
• Marketing
• Customer support
• Finance and operations
• Progressively reducing human involvement
• Double the company’s revenue in six months while publicly documenting both its successes and failures

The idea was to focus on replacing the CEO rather than another software engineer. But this situation sounds more like vaporware rather than something realistic. Also, this sounds too abstract. I don’t think this is what CEOs actually do; they hire people to handle these aspects. I think a decent CEO mostly has a vision and might be a domain expert in an area. I’m not saying all CEOs are like this but the ones who manage to build a successful company from the ground up are more in this area. Also, they have the unmerciful task of trying to find money to help finance their operation. That to me is probably the biggest challenge as you have to schmoz with a lot of unsavory characters and perform a gigolo song and dance routine to secure anything.

That said, I think what we need to do is replace the CEOs with MBAs at large companies with AI. That will save companies a ton of money by getting rid of ridiculously large salaries, RSUs, stock, etc. Most of the CEOs who come into larger companies (as opposed to founding them) end up just acting as a negotiator with their boards and not really making significant changes for the betterment of customers or the operations side. It’s like when Yahoo had their revolving door of CEOs; the company had long made their money but they weren’t innovating and each person stepping in just got a golden parachute. If you want to automate something, just get rid of the golden parachute and put an AI in charge of that. You can at least do the same thing for a much smaller cost.

Flock Getting Ditched by Cities for Axon

If AI is grabbing the main tech headlines (and some non-tech ones), Flock isn’t that far behind as the whipping boy of privacy advocates. In this situation, Flock is getting unplugged by various states in favor of Axon as the police still want to utilize technology for handling stolen cars by using some sort of license identification reader that apparently Flock was unable to do properly. The main difference is that Axon, at the moment at least, does not link their systems across states.

That said, wouldn’t it just be so much easier if we get rid of cars and have a better mode of transportation? Wouldn’t it be better for our health if we had actual good public transportation or something more future driven rather than being held captive to crappy cars? Honestly, I’d get out of the house more often if we had a decent public transportation system like Japan/Tokyo. Then you wouldn’t need insurance, gas, have health problems as a result of lack of exercise, car theft (not on this level), dealing with parking garages, etc. I think people just need to demand for a higher quality of life. Then again I think people are just lazy, beaten up and unable to see anything beyond what’s in front of their face.

Head of US AI Safety Resigns

Just three months in Chris Fall decided he had enough and put in his notice. The article points out that Trump’s stance on AI and the government’s involvement has changed like some bad case of schizophrenia, which given who’s in charge, isn’t a surprise. I’m guessing that Chrisie boi simply couldn’t handle dealing with all the growing concerns at the public and getting shouted at by all the other admins. Who would? Someone will replace him momentarily but some people read this situation more as the US doesn’t give a shit about ethics and safety in AI. Well, right now, the US doesn’t give a shit about a lot of things at the higher levels except their own profits and image in the mirror. Everything else is meant to serve those purposes. I mean quite honestly, I’m all in favor of global anarchy. Just fuck it all.

More Data Center Protests Across 42 States

This is a unique scenario of a particular form of NIMBY-ism in that people have zero desire on taking up the slack in terms of getting a data center in their backyard considering the rising cost of electricity, which somehow has managed to trickle down into everyone else’s pockets, the environmental concerns such as pollution, toxic water and no water (drought) in a few documented cases. Here’s something that I believe when it comes to data centers.

A while back, I envisioned that everyone would have something like a NAS or mainframe as part of their homes much like a gas heater in the garage or washing machine. This device would be managed by the home owner and house their data such as surveillance for cameras that can be sent to the police if a crime is committed (rather than the police getting the info from some hosted server). You would own all your data and the system would have its own set of redundancies.

I thought about this issue because I see the bottleneck (and still do) being the network. I think the internet itself has been a problem because of how it’s poorly regulated both for and against the customer. Now that we’re starting to really see the high walled off data gardens, security issues becoming more prevalent, privacy, etc. with the new addition of data centers spreading all over whether the problem should be inverted to allow customers to take control of their data completely and that we need to focus more on client – server computing once more and ditch cloud computing.

For AI usage in particular, I’m not sure how this situation will play out just because of the massive amounts of computing resources it requires. But I do think that there should be a compromise somewhere in here where private citizens can own and/or rent out their space to companies rather than allowing companies to bully their way in with eminent domain threats or similar nefarious tactics to get their way. Perhaps, this rental cost can be shared where these companies can offset the rising cost of living such as in an apartment. Because imagine this scenario:

• User has reasonable space, enough for a dedicated rack that’s stored in a specific area.
• The rack is owned by a company and pays for the electric bills, cooling (AC which is nice in the summer especially) and any adjustments needed to house the rack
• The rack data is owned by the person in the spot. Thus, it’s up to them to help handle it.
• This might help make up for some of the job losses in the market by turning this into a part time (or full time) career

It’s just a thought. People can opt-in but will be well compensated. Maybe a system like this can be an open source one where various companies sign up to help move their portion of the rentee’s data onto this rack.