Lunchtime links

After Microsoft's debacle yesterday, I had a lot of emails in my inbox this morning, and I had stuff to do on a deadline. So I'm just getting to these news stories now:

• Andrew Sullivan is livid over the OAFPOTUS's destruction of the White House and hopes the next resident will tear all that crap down.
• It's looking ever more like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik will take the fall for the Nvidia spying scandal. ("Just because Trump is crooked and indifferent to national security when there’s money to be made doesn’t mean Lutnick couldn’t have out-crooked him in this particular case.")
• Molly White explains how crypto and AI lost the midterms and why they're lying about it.
• Chicago has lost its third chief financial officer in the past 12 months, reminding many of us how much of a mistake we made voting for mayor Brandon Johnson. (There are 15 other people running to replace him in the election on February 23rd.)

Finally, a man was trapped in Chicago's first automated public toilet yesterday after failing to find either exit button and failing to understand the voice instructing him how to exit. So naturally he kicked the door a few times, disabling the mechanism, and had to be extracted by firefighters:

The man used the facility around 3 p.m. and finished before the door automatically popped open after 15 minutes, said Paul Stewart, a spokesperson for JCDecaux, the bathroom’s operator.

The man’s actions, which damaged the facility in the 1200 block of North Milwaukee Avenue, also caused it to lock down, reset, and prompted an emergency response from security personnel or one of two firehouses in the area which have a bathroom key, Stewart said.

“Whatever he did disabled the door,” Stewart said.

The Chicago Fire Department were close by and responded first, Stewart said, and was told the person was “agitated.”

That was quite diplomatic of Stewart. I, not working in public relations or for JCDecaux, think the man was just an idiot, and probably not sober.