Rich People Don't Like Their Gelato Treats :/ And More In Your Class-War Roundup!

America is at its best when teaming up with its patriotic contractors to blow enormous piles of cash on military programs. And none blow more than the F-35. After 15 years of your standard cost overuruns and totally predictable "unanticipated" delays, the plane is finally "combat ready" and fueled up to export American values.

But don't worry - even though the first batch of stealth, nuclear-capable peace planes is all clear for takeoff, there are still hundreds of billions expected to be pumped into the program. We just sent another $1 billionto reimburse good ol' Lockheed Martin for costs related to the initial production. But this is a small billion dollar drop for a program already anticipated to cost the taxpayers $1.5 trillion (soooo probably $2 trillion...). I mean, we could basically launch another Iraq War with that money. Quite a lost opportunity. But let's not miss the carpet-bombed forest for the trees -- which the F-35 could definitely do, especially if flying at night, or when it's cloudy, areas where previous F-35 versions, um, struggled . The program is helping one of our most important corporate people. Cheers!

[D]espite significant snags in developing the fifth-generation jet, the Pentagon's top weapons supplier posted better-than-expected quarterly revenue earnings and lifted its 2016 revenue and profit forecasts for a second time this year.

Sales in its aeronautics business, the company's largest division, rose 6% in the past three months because of delivery of 14 F-35s. What's more, Lockheed Martin has said it plans to deliver 53 F-35 jets in 2016, up from 45 a year earlier.

Oh good. All of the warplanes!

Your self-driving future is now and it's in...Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh. Now there's a city with no traffic-flow issues ! But 'Go Big or Go Home' as Uber would say if their motto wasn't already "Saudi benefactors for our independent contractors." Back in 2014, Uber CEO Travis Kalanik approached robotics researchers at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon with an urgent plea to help him replace Uber's million or so lavishly paid drivers with a little bit of gumption and a lot of advanced software.

Starting this month, Uber will unleash its fleet of self-driving cars in Pittsburgh . While these cars will initially include a flesh and blood human supervisor, these drivers' ed robot whisperers might not be long for the rideshare.

Uber’s Pittsburgh fleet, which will be supervised by humans in the driver’s seat for the time being, consists of specially modified Volvo XC90 sport-utility vehicles outfitted with dozens of sensors that use cameras, lasers, radar, and GPS receivers. Volvo Cars has so far delivered a handful of vehicles out of a total of 100 due by the end of the year. The two companies signed a pact earlier this year to spend $300 million to develop a fully autonomous car that will be ready for the road by 2021.

It's hard to blame Uber, as many corporate all-stars like Tesla, Ford and Google push all their chips in on self-driving technology. While Kalanik admits that “nobody has set up software that can reliably drive a car safely without a human,” riders can take solace in a future where human interaction is frowned upon as all parties -- robot and man -- maintain singular focus on arriving at your destination without crashing into a automated salad kiosk.

Each car is also equipped with a tablet computer in the back seat, designed to tell riders that they’re in an autonomous car and to explain what’s happening. “The goal is to wean us off of having drivers in the car, so we don’t want the public talking to our safety drivers,” [Uber engineering director Raffi] Krikorian says.

Note: Uber didn't say anything about not fucking in the robot cabs.

Anyway, this progress is all really comforting. If you someday give birth to a girl or boy conceived in the backseat of a driverless UberX, the future is a little hazy. But if you somehow give birth to a robot with a cutting edge software system(/Romney), you can rest easy and die happy because the sky's the limit for your spawn.

Small businesses ruin rich elites' summers with subpar gelato flavors

Residents of Chicago's ritzy Gold Coast have finally had enough of the city's neglect. The violence? The school closings? The corruption? The ice cream.

Last year, Bow Truss Coffee was awarded a permit to sell its coffee and concessions in Mariano Park, a tiny bastion of green in a land of high-end boutiques, stretched skin and 4-hour erections. Residents were assured that gelato would be offered. GOOD gelato. None of that store-bought backwater cream for rubes. But lo and behold, when Chicago's six month winter wound down and the stand opened in March, there was no gelato. Can you even imagine? Residents were upset. In a four block radius, there were only like 150 other designer desserts to choose from!

In July, Bow Truss finally brought Black Dog Gelato into the mix. Everyone happy? Of course not! Why can't these small business owners do exactly what these yuppies want? 

The park “needs to be updated end of story. We don’t deserve what is being offered right now as dessert,” said Judi Steinreich, who appears to be one of those leading the charge leveled at Bow Truss owner Phil Tadros.

"Coffee is one thing and it's good coffee. The dessert and supplemental items need to be updated and added to. We understand the Gelato there now is not [Tadros'] business and can be modified which it needs to be as soon as possible. Sanitation is improper, service improper and temperatures improper,” Steinreich said.

After Rahm closed a bunch of neighborhood schools in "certain areas," black children increasingly risk suffering from PTSD because they're walking through war zones just to get to overcrowded classrooms with 20 year old history books. But at the same time, the gelato that these rich dicks demanded is slightly runny in 100 degree summer heat. And don't get them started on the signage and flavor choices! They've achieved so much and ask so little.

The point here is that "both sides" have it rough in one of the country's most segregated cities. South and West side residents deal with the trauma of daily shootings and a simultaneously oppressive and deficient justice system. People on the near north side were offered artisanal, date-flavored gelato.