ASD icon blue inverse lighter

ASD Staff

Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"Swimming comes more naturally to some dogs than others..."}]

Smile 26 8 13

<title>Daily Smile: Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026</title>

Swimming comes more naturally to some dogs than others...

Daily Smile: Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026

 Swimming comes more naturally to some dogs than others...

Higa headshot white shirt square

Sterling Higa

Government & Politics

Columnists

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang admitted last week that he cheated on his wife, Lori Huang, and his company’s board is looking into it. The board is not troubled that he strayed. It is troubled by whom he strayed with.

Alice Huang, no relation, is a Chinese national. Many believe she spies for Beijing. She once worked at CCTV, China’s state television. Then she moved into tech investing. Most recently she was an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore firm that bought Nvidia chips.

Megaspeed was set up in 2023, just after the United States began limiting chip sales to China. China wants those chips to train its best AI models. Megaspeed soon became one of Nvidia’s biggest customers, spending 

. It said the chips were for cloud data centers in Southeast Asia.

But late in 2024, an American inspector visited Megaspeed’s data center in Malaysia. He found Nvidia servers and chips still sealed in their shipping crates. Megaspeed denies that it was passing the freight on to China.

Alice Huang’s work at Megaspeed is how she got close to Jensen.

Among American tech bosses, Jensen led the push to keep selling to Beijing. Now he and his company are in the hot seat. The Democrats who take over Congress in January will be glad to haul him in for questions about the affair. It is a handy excuse for sweeping new rules on AI firms and their 

So the affair gets buried in a larger tale of AI, trade, and great-power rivalry.

But the affair is the heart of it. Jensen’s betrayal reminds us that the kings of tech are fallen men. A man who will cheat on his wife of 40 years is not a man to be trusted. And among the kings of tech, men who can be trusted are scarce.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, was the subject of a lengthy 

. Some of the people quoted called him a “sociopath.” The piece traced his chase for tens of billions of dollars from Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, even as his company did business with the U.S. government and military. Both countries have long feuded with Iran, a country we are now at war with.

OpenAI and its rival Anthropic have both taken billions in investments from funds based in the Gulf. One of those funds is under scrutiny for its 

. A fair-minded person may ask whether these firms owe more to their foreign backers than to our security.

Dario Amodei is CEO of Anthropic. His wife, Cami Clark, once co-founded a company that sold “free luxury porn” to women. She 

 from Jeffrey Epstein. For a time she was the mistress of Eric Schmidt. At her urging, Schmidt put early money into Anthropic. His stake may now 

 of affairs in forty years of marriage. Many were with women decades younger. He and his wife still appear together in public as philanthropic donors. Schmidt now runs Relativity Space, which is working with NASA to send payloads to Mars. The company is also bidding for Space Force contracts.

Elon Musk, who runs Tesla and SpaceX, has paid women to bear his children and keep quiet about it. His first wife said he 

, then divorced her without warning. Two months after filing for divorce, he was engaged to the actress Talulah Riley. The two were married, divorced, married again, and divorced again.

Musk’s SpaceX owns 11,000 satellites that serve the U.S. military and its allies, 

 among them. SpaceX also offers its Grok AI to the Pentagon.

Gossip may seem like static, but it is a signal. The men who run America’s most important tech companies hold a low view of the marriage covenant. History has its share of men who cheated at home and served well abroad. But they cheated in an age that still called it cheating, and they feared being found out. These men do not.

Given this low view of marriage, it’s hard to fathom how loyal these men will be to our country.

These men own the satellites our military uses for communications and intelligence. They control the AI that powers autonomous weapons systems. They build reusable rockets to extend our reach in space.

The coverage so far has dwelt on what Jensen’s affair means for trade and defense. That is the smaller story. The CEO of one of the world’s great companies broke a sacred vow. He has plenty of company.

We have grown so used to cheating that we hardly notice it. Our journalists have traded the language of Scripture for the language of the Associated Press, which forbids moral judgment. The gossip page is the one place left where newspapers report on sin, but they share it for entertainment, not for condemnation. The press can speak of loyalty to country, but not of loyalty to a wife.

Jensen should know better. As a boy he boarded at the Oneida Baptist Institute in Kentucky, and he has kept up with the school.

In 2019, he and his wife gave $2 million to build a girls’ dorm and classroom building there. They cut the ribbon 

. In 2020, in the depths of Covid, he gave a video address to Oneida’s 

Oddly, his six-minute speech never mentions God. It does say that meeting his wife was one of the great events of his life.

 never mentions God either, though it does show remorse. “To my wife and family: I love you. I know an apology cannot undo what I have done. I hope our family will heal and that, over time, I can earn back your trust.”

Jensen’s deepest problem is one he shares with Altman, Amodei, Schmidt, and Musk. None of them seems to be in covenant with the God who made all things and will judge all things. They do not confess Christ, so they have no pardon for past sins. They do not believe Scripture, so they have no law to warn them away from future sin.

They live as if sacred vows are not real. They are wrong, and their error is our nation’s peril.

Jensen and Lori Huang Getty Images 2296995102

<title>Why Nvidia CEO’s infidelity is a national security problem</title>

Jensen Huang and his wife, Lori Huang, cut the ribbon together on a girls’ dormitory at the Kentucky Baptist school that took him in. Six years later he is apologizing to his wife in public, and his mistress may be a Chinese spy. ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa on why the men who hold America’s satellites, rockets, and AI cannot be trusted with the country if they cannot be trusted with a marriage.

Why Nvidia CEO’s infidelity is a national security problem

Stephanie Salmons Headshot

Stephanie Salmons

Business & Tourism

Bloomingdale's was abuzz Thursday, as hundreds of people, including Gov. Josh Green, showed up to support entrepreneurs across Hawai‘i at the 

 and Brittany Heyd, helps Hawai‘i companies expand within the state and globally through a six-month accelerator and alumni program that offers workshops, mentorship and sales opportunities, resources and more.

 from across the Islands was announced this summer. Just 11 businesses were selected from a record 256 applicants.

The showcase is an annual event that spotlights the Hawai‘i-based companies that have gone through the accelerator program. It is, in essence, the graduation of the current cohort, James told Aloha State Daily at the event.

The event not only features the 11 companies in the current cohort but also celebrates "the growing entrepreneurs and alumni that we have in our program," James continued. "They're all headquartered here in the Islands, so everybody's here and we get to continue on to support their growth and create a great in-person opportunity for people to shop, eat, drink and enjoy the positivity of what's happening with growing entrepreneurship, as well as these incredible companies as they keep evolving with new product launches, new flavors and just getting bigger, badder and better than ever." 

ASD caught up with a few of the participating entrepreneurs, asking: How has participating in Mana Up helped you as a business owner? Here's what they had to say:

, a member of Cohort 3. "The network of the entrepreneurs really helped us to understand that what we were going through, we were not alone, that we had a support system. The resources that Mana Up had brought to us — everything from accounting, knowledge and people in the community to marketing to e-commerce — there really was a plethora of topics and resources that we were able to access. Then we have the alumni network. The alumni network, we meet at least every year, but also throughout the year with different topics — as we grow as a company, things that we didn't know about or think about when we were a little smaller, now they've become pretty important as you scale people and insurance and properties and all the good things."

(ICYMI: NOHO HOME earlier this fall announced a collaboration with Honolulu Cookie Co. Read more about that 

"Because we come from such a small town in a small state in the middle of the Pacific, we don't know what's out there," says Malie Sarsona, with 

, a tea, spice and herb company from the Hawai‘i Island community of Waimea and a member of Cohort 11. "But through Mana Up, we got to see what's out there and who's doing what, and we get to speak to those people. It's really cool to be able to talk to all of these people who are doing big things in big places and realize we're exactly the same, we just live in different places. It's really encouraging to know that we're on the right track, all of us that are in this cohort."

, which creates stationery that's "aesthetic and functional for the modern mom and her family," is also a member of Cohort 11; she teared up when asked about the program, which she called an "eye-opening experience."

Her company has just made five years, "so I'm considered a baby business in comparison to all these legends here with me," she told ASD. "I'm just so grateful to be able to to be shoulder-to-shoulder with them and learning so much. I've been a sponge in these last six months of learning. I have no background in business; I'm just a girl who loves to draw and create and create products that are for people and moms just like me who are trying to organize life. ... It's been a great opportunity. I'm just really grateful for all the information and the rooms that I've been in [that otherwise] I don't think I would have had the opportunity to be in. I'm just ultimately super grateful to be able to learn, to be able to grow and I'm just getting started."

Mana up showcase 2026

<title>Annual Mana Up events puts Hawai‘i entrepreneurs on display</title>

The Mana Up Showcase spotlights Hawai‘i-based companies that have gone through the accelerator program.

Annual Mana Up events puts Hawai‘i entrepreneurs on display

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

[{"type":"text","text":"There’s a new soup dumpling spot in Honolulu."}]

 just soft opened in Kakaʻako. The restaurant is located on Kamakee Street in the former space of Phuket Thai and Better Bites Thai and More. The eatery, known for its premium handmade noodles and made-to-order dumplings, has other locations on the Mainland in cities like Las Vegas, San Jose and Austin.

The restaurant features both indoor and outdoor seating; we’re told the eatery can seat 100 customers.

Sijie Special Noodle’s Honolulu menu is currently the same as the ones at the business’s other locations.

The pork soup dumplings ($12.99) are the eatery’s signature xiao long bao. Other soup dumpling fillings include veggie ($13.99), spicy pork ($13.99), shrimp ($17.99), premium beef brisket ($15.99), and pork and crab roe ($20.99). Six dumplings usually come per order.

The eatery also offers boiled ($12.99) and steamed ($12.99) dumplings, along with mini pan-fried buns. The mini pan-fried pork buns ($12.99) are especially popular, due to their size. 

The sweet and sour pork ($28.99), twin pepper deer antler mushroom ($26.99) and flaming wagyu beef cubes ($49.99) are recommended chef specials. The sweet and sour pork, in particular, features a social media-worthy presentation. 

The menu features a variety of appetizers, Sichuan specials — which are known for their spice — rice and chow mein, stir-fries, noodles, rice, and noodle soups.

Popular options include siu mai ($11.99), beef chow funn ($21.99), orange chicken ($22.99) and spicy beef noodle soup ($21.99).

The orange chicken is part of the eatery’s wok chicken selection; customers can choose from other flavors like lemon and sesame.

Drink options range from hot tea ($4) and matcha lattes ($10) to hojicha lattes ($10).

[{"type":"text","text":"Sijie Special Noodle is open daily from 11:30 a.m. to midnight."}]

Sijie Special Noodle staff 110926

<title>Soup dumpling spot Sijie Special Noodle opens in Honolulu</title>

The restaurant, known for its premium handmade noodles and dumplings, just opened on Kamakee Street. Customers can look forward to soup dumplings with a variety of fillings — including pork, shrimp, premium beef brisket and more — steamed dumplings, chef specials and noodle soups.

Soup dumpling spot Sijie Special Noodle opens in Honolulu

Square Mike Brestovansky Headshot RGZ3736 Large

Michael Brestovansky

After a months-long, multi-million dollar maintenance project, the historic Diamond Head Lighthouse will reveal its facelift next April.

, the century-old lighthouse has been enshrouded in scaffolding and sheeting as part of an ongoing U.S. Coast Guard project to repair aging materials throughout the tower.

“There’s a lot of maintenance needs that kind of build up over time,” said Lt. Gray Haynie of the Honolulu Coast Guard’s Civil Engineering Unit. “The weather has affected the steel, so we have a bunch of corrosion work. The windows on the top, the steel dome on the inside, there’s a steel staircase that goes all the way up. And there’s painting that needs to be done around the site.”

Other work includes repairs to aging concrete, and replacing features such as ladders and windows.

Haynie said the project costs about $3.7 million in total, including additional maintenance work at the adjacent residence, which serves as the living quarters for the sitting Coast Guard commander of the Oceania District.

Both the lighthouse and the residence are over 100 years old — the lighthouse was built in 1917 and the residence in 1921 — although only the former is formally listed as a historic place. That listing made the project more complicated, Haynie said, requiring “rigorous paperwork” with the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ State Historic Preservation Division.

“We have to tell them the scope of work, what we intend on doing, how it affects the exterior,” Haynie said. “One of the big things they’re looking for is to maintain that historic image, the appearance of the outside … That affects the materials, it affects the cost and the duration, because it takes 90s days at least to get through the State Historic Preservation Division.”

While the project has been ongoing throughout the intense storms of the summer, Haynie said the lighthouse and scaffolding have withstood the winds of hurricanes Lala, Nolo and Lowell remarkably well.

Despite advances in seafaring technology, the lighthouse remains fully functional and a vital guidepost for boats approaching the island.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Valentin Leon said the lighthouse still uses its original Fresnel lens — a lens array that uses concentric circles built into the lenses and mirrors to focus the light rays — from its original construction. That lens, plus the modern LED lighting element, produces a beam that can be seen 21 nautical miles away, or about 24.1 standard miles.

“Sure, you can rely on GPS, but you know for 100% that this lighthouse is always going to be here,” Leon said. “So the mariners, even though they have GPS, will heavily rely on … every lighthouse throughout the [Coast Guard area of responsibility]. Considering that, what, over 90% of our commerce comes [by sea], the mariners out there, this is their daily routine, so they’re used to seeing this.”

PXL 20261106 202425482 16x9

<title>Diamond Head Lighthouse to be unwrapped in April</title>

$3.7 million maintenance project going smoothly despite storms, says Coast Guard.

Diamond Head Lighthouse to be unwrapped in April

[{"type":"text","text":"Dogs know how to order their own pup-cups..."}]

Smile 26 11 6

<title>Daily Smile: Friday, Nov. 6, 2026</title>

Dogs know how to order their own pup-cups...

Daily Smile: Friday, Nov. 6, 2026

Cheryl Tsutsumi

Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi

Arts & Entertainment

By the time she was in her teens, Zita Cup Choy had visited historic icons such as the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Alamo and Independence Hall, thanks to her dad’s career as an Air Force mechanic, which stationed him in France and all over the U.S. continent. But ‘Iolani Palace’s longtime historian didn’t know much about Hawai‘i as a child, even though her Island roots trace back centuries.

Her Hawaiian Chinese paternal great-grandmother was married to Cup Choy Chun, who immigrated to Maui in 1880 from Sanzao Dao island, off the southern coast of Guangdong Province, to cut cane for Huelo Plantation. Everyone knew him as Cup Choy, so he adopted that as his family name. While fulfilling his seven-year plantation contract, he apprenticed at a butcher shop in Wailuku, where he became proficient in English.

That job ended in 1888, and he returned to China. Two years later, he was back on Maui, working as a butcher, store clerk and interpreter for Haʻikū Sugar Company’s plantation in Hāmākuapoko. By 1894, he had earned enough money to own and operate his first business, a restaurant and coffee shop in Hāmākuapoko, and in 1909, he was able to buy land and open a butcher shop in Kokomo, a community in Haʻikū.

One of 13 children, Zita Cup Choy’s paternal grandfather landed a job with Libby, McNeil & Libby’s sugar plantation on Molokai. Her dad was raised there before joining the Air Force.

In 1970, he was assigned to Hickam Air Force Base. “That was before my senior year in high school; I’m a Kaimukī Bulldog,” Cup Choy said. “My mom, younger sister and brother, and I spent our first summer in Hawai‘i with our ‘ohana on Molokai. 

My grandparents knew just about everyone, so it was always talk-story time when we were out and about. My grandfather taught me how to drive in the pineapple fields with a surplus World War II jeep.”

Cup Choy went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Church College of Hawai‘i, now Brigham Young University–Hawai‘i. She taught on Guam for two years before returning to O‘ahu in 1976, where she held a variety of jobs, including short stints as a preschool and elementary school teacher. Joining the Ko‘olaupoko Hawaiian Civic Club at the urging of one of her mom’s friends set her on a new career path.

The Friends of ‘Iolani Palace had been founded on June 7, 1966, as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to oversee the restoration and preservation of what had been the official home of King Kalākaua and Queen Lili‘uokalani, his sister and successor, who were Hawai‘i’s last reigning ali‘i. Following the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, the palace served as the headquarters for the provisional, republic, territory and state of Hawai‘i governments until the present Capitol opened on March 15, 1969.

Over the decades, the stately building had fallen into a sad state of disrepair, and the Friends immediately began work on what turned out to be a nine-year project. By 1977, the major renovations had been completed, and the group was negotiating a contract with the state to operate the palace as a museum. They reached out to the community, including the Ko‘olaupoko Hawaiian Civic Club, asking for volunteers to train as docents. Cup Choy signed up, and when the palace, a National Historic Landmark, opened to the public on May 3, 1978, she was among its first docents.

“There are many fascinating stories about people who visited the palace,” Cup Choy said. “The more reading I’ve done over the years, the more I’m convinced that the chamberlain was keeping an eye on the lists of passengers who were arriving on steamers. If there was someone Kalākaua wanted to meet, he or she would get an invitation. They weren’t necessarily dignitaries. For example, because the king was interested in yacht racing, he hosted a man who was associated with the 1876 America’s Cup.”

Recovering original palace furnishings is a key part of the Friends’ mission — difficult largely because many items deemed inappropriate for government use were sold, and no records were kept about the buyers.

Serendipity has come into play. Cup Choy recalled a visitor from Oklahoma City who saw a photo of a small wooden table in the king’s bedroom when she was on a tour in 1980. The table looked exactly like one she had purchased from her florist to use as a flower stand. The florist had bought it from a Christian Science Reading Room in Oklahoma City to use in a display at her shop. Someone from Illinois had donated the table to the Reading Room; how it got to Illinois is unknown.

“After the tour, the woman said, ‘I think we have a table that should come home to ‘Iolani Palace,’” Cup Choy said. “As it turned out, it was indeed one of 200-plus pieces that Kalākaua had commissioned A.H. Davenport and Company, a highly regarded furniture manufacturer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to make for the palace.”

In 1996, the Friends’ management contract with the state transitioned to a lease agreement, giving it more autonomy, although it is still governed by state park rules and those specific to ‘Iolani Palace. Cup Choy has been the palace’s full-time historian since 2016.

“I love digging deep for information,” she said. “I’ll get questions like ‘Who are the people in this picture?’ or ‘What was the menu for such-and-such banquet?’ I’ll go to every resource I can think of — including microfilm at the library, the palace’s archives and the state archives, and the Ulukau and Papakilo databases — hoping to solve another mystery.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Upcoming events and features"}]

Admission to ‘Iolani Palace is free for Hawai‘i residents on the second Sunday of every month. A valid form of state ID is required for one complimentary ticket per adult 18 and older. Younger keiki are admitted free. The next Kamaʻāina Sundays will be Nov. 8 and Dec. 13 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

with chef Ed Kenney and multiple Nā Hōkū Hanohano award winner Amy Hanaiali’i on an episode of “

” which will air on PBS at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 14.

The palace will host King Kalākaua Birthday Celebration on Nov. 16 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The first 500 kamaʻāina will receive tickets for a free self-guided audio tour. Queen Kapiʻolani Evening Tours, honoring Kalākaua’s wife, will be Dec. 26-27 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Renovations of the exhibit areas in the palace’s basement will be completed early next year. Highlights will include artifacts, photos and narratives about Kalākaua’s 1881 trip around the world. 

In addition, the Royal Hawaiian Band presents free concerts on the palace grounds most Fridays from noon to 1 p.m. The most up-to-date schedule can be found at 

Iolani Palace Zita Cup Choy

<title>Uncles and Aunties: Zita Cup Choy is ‘Iolani Palace’s longtime historian</title>

After a career spent mostly in education, in both Guam and Hawai'i, Cup Choy joined the Ko‘olaupoko Hawaiian Civic Club, which set her on a new career path. She joined The Friends of ‘Iolani Palace among its first docents in 1978, and today, continues to lead tours and conduct research, while furthering the nonprofit's mission of recovering original palace furnishings.

Daily Smile: Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026

ASD Staff

Reporter

More in Daily Smile

Daily Smile: Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026

Daily Smile: Monday, Nov. 9, 2026

Daily Smile: Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026

Daily Smile: Friday, Nov. 6, 2026

Most read

Daily Smile: Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026

Authors

ASD Staff

Reporter

More in Daily Smile

Daily Smile: Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026

Daily Smile: Monday, Nov. 9, 2026

Daily Smile: Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026

Daily Smile: Friday, Nov. 6, 2026

Most read