¶Japan’s Fair Trade Commission said this week that it had raided the offices of six leading ice cream manufacturers on suspicion that they were operating a cartel. The authorities said the companies had colluded to raise prices beyond an increase in the costs of raw materials, and that their actions had harmed customers.

¶Apparently cartels aren’t just for drugs anymore.

¶Respondents were asked if they agreed that, “Corruption is responsible for policies that benefit billionaires and big corporations at the expense of the American people.” Eighty three percent of Republicans agreed, as did 90% of independents and 95% of Democrats.

¶I wonder if there would be agreement on the need to change references to “billionaires and big corporations” to include trillionaires.

¶Carlsten previously led Amazon Web Services’ quantum computing center and worked at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Most recently, she was CEO at DCAI, an AI infrastructure company that recently partnered with Nvidia and is home to a supercomputer known as Gefion.

¶Shoes to AI has to be one of the more interesting pivots I’ve seen. I sort of didn’t take it seriously when it was initially announced a few months ago. This looks like an impressive hire, though. Maybe the bird is indeed a smart one.