"The National Weather Service is forecasting dangerously high temperatures in the triple digits across the Southwest this weekend… Excessive heat warnings and advisories have been issued across the region, from southern Texas to California. According to the NWS, residents can expect to see daytime temperatures 10-20 degrees above normal."
"More than 25 major cities tied or broke record-high temperatures Saturday, during a dangerous heatwave that enveloped much of the Southwestern United States over the weekend. Approximately 53 million people are still under excessive heat warnings as extreme temperatures begin to shift east."
"Astronomers have unveiled the most detailed survey of the Milky Way, revealing thousands of 'starquakes' and stellar DNA, and helping to identify the most habitable corners of our home galaxy… The observations from the European Space Agency’s Gaia probe cover almost two billion stars – about 1% of the total number in the galaxy – and are allowing astronomers to reconstruct our home galaxy’s structure and find out how it has evolved over billions of years."
"California-based Astra on Sunday launched two shoebox-size NASA satellites from Cape Canaveral in a modest mission to improve hurricane forecasts, but the second stage of the company's low-cost booster malfunctioned before reaching orbit and the payloads were lost."
"It's common knowledge that armed non-state groups in the Middle East bankroll themselves with oil and ransom money. But a close third in the pipeline that fuels warlords and terrorists globally? The plunder and sale of antiquities… If activists have their way, the buyers and dealers of those stolen cultural relics will face criminal repercussions."
"But a Saturday profile in The Washington Post characterizing Lemoine as 'the Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life' became the catalyst for widespread discussion on social media regarding the nature of artificial intelligence. Among the experts commenting, questioning, or joking about the article were Nobel laureates, Tesla’s head of AI, and multiple professors… At issue is whether Google’s chatbot, LaMDA—a Language Model for Dialogue Applications—can be considered a person." As you know (Bob) I'm an intense AI sentience skeptic and my first reaction is, yes, computer programs designed to engage in human language can be eerily human like. But then that was also true with ERIKA programs back in the 80s. Our brain is designed to detect patterns, even if they aren't there, and programmers are taught how to exploit that. However, there is an argument to be made here of "what is life" and are we much more than a flesh computer running simple programs and how our responses and emotions are not indistinguishable from a silicon based brain running complex "if y then x" branching and returning preprogrammed responses. That is, if a robot toy is programmed to express surprise (eyes wide, eyebrows up, slightly opened mouth) when conditions are met for the toy to appear surprised (something sudden happening), is that very different than our "organic" surprise response? And once you analyze that, is this a fantasy comparison created by our human tendency to compare our brains to computers and so we are trapped in that metaphor?
"And so, having disposed of the monster, exit our hero through the front door, stage right…" (Groucho eyebrows)
"As Robert Brantley was driving down the backroads of northeast Louisiana on Tuesday, something caught his eye. The professional shooter was going about 40 miles an hour as he headed toward the shooting range, but he thought he had seen a kitten on the side of the road."
"The two signed an arbitration agreement in March of 2021, agreeing to settle their dispute. Roughly two months later, an arbitrator awarded M.O. $5.2 million, saying the sum 'would fairly and justly compensate' her… M.O. went to circuit court in Jackson County, Mo., to enforce the arbitration ruling, and won her case. GEICO then appealed to the higher state court… The insurance giant said it hadn't been given a chance to defend itself, violating its constitutional rights to due process and access to the courts. But in its ruling this week, two judges in the Missouri Court of Appeals' western district said GEICO had numerous chances to act on its own behalf." Note that the plaintiff in this case did not enter arbitration freely, they were forced into it by the GEICO contract. GEICO is just upset that the arbiter, the person they hired, agreed with the plaintiff.
For more insight into this, here's Cory Doctorow discussing the case and how this perversion of law (forced arbitration) has come about. And how, now that the plaintiffs are starting to gain power in the arbitration system, the corporations who forced everyone into arbitration and now trying to break that system. He also discusses some of the social engineering happening around this story (by using the "McDonald's Hot Coffee" story as another example). "Here's a media literacy rule of thumb: any time you hear about how the courts have done something outrageous and absurd to some poor, long-suffering, gigantic, wildly profitable corporation…dig deeper."
"People who menstruate are saying it's hard to find tampons on store shelves across the U.S. right now, as supply chain upsets reach the feminine care aisle… 'I just went to 5 different Walgreens [and] the shelves are CLEARED,' said one Twitter user this past week, while people on Reddit have posted about empty shelves going back months." The new baby formula? I'm sure it's Biden's fault, somehow.
"Thousands of protesters from across the country are march(ed) through Washington, D.C. (Saturday) for the second March for Our Lives."
"Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that fighting is severe in Severodonetsk, the epicenter of the conflict in eastern Ukraine."
"The search for an Indigenous expert and a journalist who disappeared in a remote area of Brazil’s Amazon continued on Monday following the discovery of a backpack, laptop and other personal belongings submerged in a river."
"Authorities arrested 31 members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front near an Idaho Pride event Saturday after they were found packed into the back of a U-Haul truck with riot gear… The men were standing inside the truck wearing khakis, navy blue shirts and beige hats with white balaclavas covering their faces when Coeur d'Alene police stopped the U-Haul and began arresting them on the side of the road."
"Federal Judge Drew Tipton threw out a Department of Homeland Security policy that limits who immigration authorities can arrest and deport. In a ruling published Friday, Tipton sided with the states of Texas and Louisiana, which argued that the DHS guidance is preventing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from enforcing the law."
"Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suggested Wednesday that he might urge the state's child protective services to investigate parents who take their children to drag shows." What would they be guilty of? Showing them a good time?
"A Texas judge on Friday temporarily blocked the state from investigating families of transgender children who have received gender-confirming medical care, a new obstacle to the state labeling such treatments as child abuse."
"A bipartisan group of senators unveiled an agreement on principle for gun safety legislation Sunday, providing an overview of a forthcoming package of reforms to address one of the nation's most pressing and divisive issues in the wake of mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas… Here is what the lawmakers included in the framework and what they left out."
"The House select committee holds another public hearing Monday -- this time focused on the "big lie" pushed by former President Donald Trump and his allies -- that the committee says fueled those who attacked the Capitol."
"The former Trump advisor Steve Bannon melted down on his podcast over the possibility former President Donald Trump might be indicted over the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot… The attorney Ron Filipkowski posted a clip from Bannon's 'War Room: Pandemic' podcast in which the Trump ally raged at the possibility of a Trump indictment and threatened Attorney General Merrick Garland with impeachment." Won't someone rid us of this troublesome priest?
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