Linkee-poo Wednesday January 18

Gina Lollobrigida and Charles Simic, and so it goes.

"Early forecasts suggest El Niño will return later in 2023, exacerbating extreme weather around the globe and making it 'very likely' the world will exceed 1.5C of warming. The hottest year in recorded history, 2016, was driven by a major El Niño." We're boned.

"Dust that billows up from desert storms and arid landscapes has helped cool the planet for the past several decades, and its presence in the atmosphere may have obscured the true extent of global heating caused by fossil fuel emissions… Atmospheric dust has increased by about 55% since the mid-1800s, an analysis suggests. And that increasing dust may have hidden up to 8% of warming from carbon emissions."

"While jurisdictions like California and New York move toward banning the sale of new gasoline-powered cars, one US state wants to go in the opposite direction. Wyoming’s legislature is considering a resolution that calls for a phaseout of new electric vehicle sales by 2035. Introduced on Friday, Senate Joint Resolution 4 has support from members of the state’s House of Representatives and Senate." Conservatives have become a joke.

"Eating one freshwater fish caught in a river or lake in the United States is the equivalent of drinking a month's worth of water contaminated with toxic 'forever chemicals,' new research said on Tuesday." Now ask me how many fish from Ohio you can eat. The answer is reality is "none." But because fishing (especially game fishing on Lake Erie) means a few hundred million to the state, you're allowed to eat one a month. But there are people who eat locally caught fish several times a week during the summer.

"A joint Egyptian-British mission doing excavation work in the city of Luxor in southern Egypt has unearthed a previously undiscovered ancient royal tomb, officials said over the weekend."

Cue the theremin music… "The Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Thursday released an unclassified version of the government's new report on UFOs. The annual report stems from a law that also requires the ODNI to send Congress a classified version of the report each year."

"The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline received over 1.7 million calls, texts and chats in its first five months. That's nearly half a million more than the old 10-digit Suicide Prevention Lifeline fielded during the same period the year before."

"Matthew is one of more than 7,000 union nurses who went on strike in New York City this past week, protesting staffing levels, which led to two of the city’s largest nonprofit hospital systems to agree to strengthen staffing ratios at some hospitals. On Thursday, hundreds of health-care workers from around the country protested understaffing at HCA Healthcare, the nation’s largest hospital system. That included one worker from El Paso who recently admitted herself into her own emergency room for dehydration and exhaustion after working four 12-hour days in a row, her union said."

"Socially isolated older adults have a 27% higher chance of developing dementia than older adults who aren't, a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers found." A couple of things here. First is people developing dementia tend to isolate themselves. This is actually a symptom of the disease, so I really hope this study was able to eliminate this factor. And two, wait, Alzheimer's is the most common dementia? Since when?

"Tens of millions of American workers face similar decisions when they need to care for themselves, a family member, or a baby. Wild variations in paid leave regulations from state to state and locally mean those choices can be further complicated by financial factors… And workers in rural areas face even more challenges than those in cities, including greater distances to hospitals and fewer medical providers, exacerbating health and income disparities. Companies in rural areas may be less likely to voluntarily offer the benefit because they tend to be smaller and there are fewer employers for workers to choose from."

"Tu is in the U.S. on a work visa, and like most work visas, it is tied to Tu's job. Losing that job meant Tu had 90 days to find a new one, or face having to leave the country… At Meta, Instagram's parent company, more than 15% of employees are on a work visa, like Tu."

"Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen notified Congress on Friday that the U.S. is projected to reach its debt limit on Thursday and will then resort to 'extraordinary measures' to avoid default."

"One defining feature of 21st century politics is that the nation keeps tip-toeing up to the edge of potential — and avoidable — economic ruin, in the form of threatening to default on its debt… And it's happening again…" Some options.

"Data from Edmunds shows the average price of a used car purchase in December at $29,533, down nearly $1,600 from the record high of $31,095 reached in April 2022. Today’s average used car price is about the same as the average new car price as recently as 2010."

How goes Twitter… "Are you in need of some mid-century modern furniture, industrial kitchen equipment or audio-visual systems? Or looking to brighten up your apartment with a giant neon bird sign?… Then you're in luck. Twitter's San Francisco headquarters is auctioning off 'surplus corporate office assets' online for a fleeting 27 hours, giving potential lucky bidders the chance to take a piece of the struggling company home with them."

"Schools across the country are considering whether to ban the new AI chatbot, ChatGPT. On this week’s On the Media, a look at the ever-present hype around AI and claims that machines can think. Plus, the potential implications of handing over decision-making to computers." Okay, so this podcast has altered my thinking on AI, a little. One, what we call AI is still defined by the new definition of AI, which is about 25% of the classic definition. So for us olds, while these tools are interesting, they are still not conscious or creative. Also note about how ChatGPT is a "people pleaser" and has been known to lie and fabricate things. Also I'm thinking of an old story about how the Furby could be considered as having feelings and emotions. True, it was simulated and the toy's programming was responding to outside stimulus, but is that really any different than ourselves? We feel emotion. Why? Because of reaction to external stimuli. And how to we know it's the correct emotion? Because we are responding with appropriate patterns. And isn't that exactly what the Furby was doing electronically what our body was doing chemically? So what exactly is the difference? We know it deep inside ourselves that it may be different, but weren't we taught how to process our emotions, shown how to behave? This could be a problem of not having the words to express the difference (see that argument here in the podcast of do words form our intelligence, or doesn't our intelligence form the word). While I initially rejected the Furby conundrum, I've come back to it time and again. And now I'm not so sure.

"And then he had an idea. What if he applied what he had learned at school over the last couple years to help the public identify whether something has been written by a machine?… On January 2nd, Edward released his app. He named it GPTZero. It basically uses ChatGPT against itself, checking whether "there's zero involvement or a lot of involvement" of the AI system in creating a given text." About halfway through this article I was wondering if it was composed by ChatGPT.

"A former commander with the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group has claimed asylum in Norway after deserting from the mercenary outfit… Andrey Medvedev, 26, crossed the border into Norway last Friday, where he was detained by border guards."

"Haiti, a country long beset by catastrophe and political turmoil, is facing perhaps its steepest challenge in recent decades as its piecemeal government, now lacking any democratically elected officials, struggles to chart a path forward amid gang violence and a cholera outbreak." Oh fuck.

"Authorities in Florida have been turning back growing numbers of undocumented Cubans and Haitians arriving by sea in recent weeks as more attempt to seek haven in the US… Local US residents on jet skis have been helping some of the migrants who attempted to swim ashore after making arduous, life-threatening and days-long journeys in makeshift vessels."

"FEMA fired the California company hired to translate the documents once the errors became known, but the incident was an ugly reminder for Alaska Natives of the suppression of their culture and languages from decades past."

"3D printing is taking home construction to new heights. In Houston, a giant printer is building what designers say is the first 3D-printed two-story house in the U.S.…The machine has been pouring a concrete mix from a nozzle, one layer at a time, in hot weather and cold, alongside a sparse on-site workforce, to create a 4,000-square-foot home."v "An administrator at Richneck Elementary School was notified that a student may have a gun hours before a six-year-old boy shot his teacher, according to the district's superintendent."

"A District Court ruled in 2021 that the government was 60% responsible for the massacre after shooter Devin Kelley, who was discharged from the Air Force after a felony conviction, wasn't entered into the national database that would have prevented him from buying a gun. A judge said the government also owed victims $230 million in damages." And now the government is appealing that decision.

"Missouri's House of Representatives kicked off its new session by tightening its dress code — but only for female lawmakers, to the dismay of Democrats who slammed the measure during floor debate and on social media."

Oh look, actual voter fraud… "The wife of a northwestern Iowa county supervisor has been charged with 52 counts of voter fraud after she allegedly filled out and cast absentee ballots in her husband's unsuccessful race for a Republican nomination to run for Congress in 2020, federal prosecutors said." Oh wait, it's another Republican. Never mind.

"A federal judge acquitted a Capitol Rioter on one obstruction charge while convicting him on five other charges because she said he had a 'unique stew in his mind.'" While probably true, this is also part of their legal strategy.

"Albuquerque police on Monday arrested the man they say is the 'mastermind' behind a recent string of shootings targeting Democratic lawmakers’ homes… The suspect, Solomon Pena, is a Republican who unsuccessfully ran for office in November, has made repeated claims that the election was rigged and appears to have attended the Jan. 6, 2021, riot in Washington, D.C." This is my shocked face.

"Lawyers for President Joe Biden found more classified documents at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, than previously known, the White House acknowledged Saturday… White House lawyer Richard Sauber said in a statement that a total of six pages of classified documents were found during a search of Biden’s private library. The White House had said previously that only a single page was found there."

"Questioned for a lawsuit, former President Donald Trump angrily hurled insults and threatened to sue the columnist who accused him of raping her in a department store in the 1990s, according to excerpts of his videotaped testimony unsealed by a court on Friday."

"Now, Trump is turning on some leaders in the movement for not being loyal enough after some have spoken out against his 2024 presidential campaign… 'That’s a sign of disloyalty,' the ex-president groused in an interview with David Brody on the right-wing network Real America’s Voice. 'There’s great disloyalty in the world of politics, and that’s a sign of disloyalty.'" Mostly it's because they see Trump as a losing proposition this time around. But for the authoritarian, there can be only one, and any disloyalty is met with harsh treatment.