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Anti-trans hate is ‘widespread’ on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, report warns– ca.style.yahoo.com
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Excerpt from ca.style.yahoo.com
Meta is failing to enforce its own rules against anti-trans hate speech on its platform, a new report from GLAAD warns. The LGBTQ advocacy group found that “extreme anti-trans hate content remains widespread across Instagram, Facebook, and Threads.”
The report documents dozens of examples of hate speech from Meta’s apps, which GLAAD says were reported to the company between June 2023 and March 2024. But though the posts appeared to be clear violations of the company’s policies, “Meta either replied that posts were not violative or simply did not take action on them,” GLAAD says.
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Excerpt from www.politicususa.com
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) explained on CNN why Marjorie Taylor Greene’s attack on her was racist and the racism of MAGA.
Rep. Crockett said when CNN’s Jake Tapper asked her to explain why she thought that Greene’s comments were racist, “I think her specifically doing it to me. Yes, that was the intent. As has been stated, you know, women wear makeup, we wear lashes, we wear all types of things to beautify ourselves. But MAGA has historically been on social media doing the things where they’re saying, oh she’s black with um lashes and nails and hair. And so she’s ghetto. And so to me, this was her buying into that rhetoric and trying to amplify this for the MAGA crowd. And so yeah, I absolutely think that she only did it to be racist towards me.”
Tapper asked, “Because it was towards you or because it was eyelashes. So in that sense, it’s kind of like in your view, buying into a racist trope?”
Rep. Crockett responded, “It is buying into a racist trope. But the reality is that women of all colors wear lashes, right?”
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Excerpt from www.advocate.com
In a podcast episode from May 27, 2023, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, voiced his support for the right-wing boycott of Target due to the retailer’s LGBTQ+ inclusive inventory. Johnson’s comments, made before he became House speaker, highlight the ongoing cultural battle over corporate support for LGBTQ+ rights.
“The things that we see happening in the culture. Everybody’s all wrapped up in Washington, wrapped around the axle on the debt limit crisis and all the other things going on. But underneath all of that is these root problems about our deep concern and the sense that we all have that the foundations of our country, the very foundations are crumbling,” Johnson said. He criticized Target for its Pride Month products, describing some as “not even family-friendly.”
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Excerpt from www.motherjones.com
One reason Donald Trump’s trial this month is so notable is that it is actually happening. As recently as last summer, it appeared that Trump would face four criminal trials ahead of the 2024 elections: two in state court and two in federal court. Today, it looks like the New York state hush money case will be the only one to reach a jury before November, and possibly ever. There is plenty of blame to go around for the delays. But one person who deserves a lot of that blame—or credit—is Trump himself.
As the press and voters debate whether Trump’s authoritarian tendencies could be checked in a prospective second term, it’s important to recognize that Trump is already escaping accountability thanks to the judges he installed during his first term, who have pushed off both federal cases against him.
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Excerpt from www.motherjones.com
Sen. Marco Rubio is the latest Republican potential vice presidential pick who refused to commit to certifying the election results. Aaron Schwartz/CNP/ZUMA
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.)—all of whom are among the possible candidates, NBC News reported last week—have all failed to answer “yes” when television hosts have asked them if they will commit to accepting the results no matter who wins. Their responses have ranged from simply insisting Trump will be the next president, to spreading election misinformation, to falsely claiming that Democrats are trying to sabotage free and fair elections.
Today, one more lawmaker joined their ranks. When Kristen Welker, host of NBC’s Meet the Press, put that question to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)—who is also reportedly on the shortlist—he replied: “No matter what happens? No. If it’s an unfair election, I think it’s going to be contested by either side.”
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Excerpt from uk.style.yahoo.com
Jeff Bezos announced on Wednesday that he and his wife MacKenzie are divorcing after 25 years of marriage — and it may be one of the most expensive divorces ever, after Bezos was named the richest man in the world in June 2018.
In a tweet on Wednesday morning, the 54-year-old founder and CEO of Amazon, wrote a statement explaining the divorce, saying they’ve decided to continue their “shared lives as friends.”
“We feel incredibly lucky to have found each other and deeply grateful for every one of the years we have been married to each other. If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all again,” he said in the statement.
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Excerpt from www.weny.com
The state’s highly decentralized system of administering voting means that “Michigan has 1,500 elections every big election day,” said Kyle Whitney, the city clerk of Marquette in the state’s Upper Peninsula. That helps ensure that balloting and vote-counting is secure because it’s impossible, he said, to “do one thing en masse that could influence the election on a large scale.”
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Excerpt from wirepoints.org
… Gov. J.B. Pritzker is doing a version of that right now with state lawmakers who don’t agree with the nearly $1 billion in tax hikes he’s put into his proposed $52.7 billion budget. The governor wants to hike sports betting taxes by $200 million. He’s pushing for another $500 million from tax hikes on companies. And there’s another $93 million tax hike on ordinary residents. The governor is not allowing the individual income tax standard deduction to fully rise with inflation.
To get his way, the governor, via his proxy Sen. Andy Manar, has sent out a letter to his agencies and lawmakers that effectively says “vote for the tax hikes or I’ll cut your district’s grants by $800 million.” Those are grants in the budget, typically of several million dollars, that lawmakers get for their districts to butter up their voter base. If those grants get cut, those lawmakers can become targets. As the Belleville-News Democrat reported: “While Manar’s letter was addressed to “Agency Directors,” it was just as much a message to rank-and-file lawmakers – particularly those within the supermajority Democratic party.”
Pritzker has given his Democratic allies the same false choice that school district officials often give their residents. You choose. Tax hikes or cuts to popular programs.
Go to Article Excerpt from www.sciencenews.org
A farming-fueled baby boom long thought to have sparked the rise of ancient cities in southwest Asia turns out to have been a bust.
At a massive site in southern Turkey called Çatalhöyük, large numbers of multi-roomed, mud-brick structures cluster in several parts of a settlement that covers an area equivalent to nearly 26 U.S. football fields. Since its discovery in the 1960s, population estimates for the ancient settlement have ranged from 2,800 to 10,000.
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Excerpt from www.cnbc.com
Microsoft is touting new computers with advanced chips designed to run artificial intelligence features of software for Windows, without quickly using up battery life.
The company on Monday announced a Surface Laptop and a Surface Pro tablet with a Qualcomm chip that can run some AI tasks without an internet connection. Other computer makers like Lenovo, Dell, HP, Asus, Acer and Samsung are also launching AI-ready PCs powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus processors, which promise longer battery life and will run Microsoft’s Copilot AI chatbot.
Device makers will release PCs with AMD and Intel chips that will adhere to the Copilot+ standard at a later time, Microsoft said during a press keynote address on its campus in Redmond, Washington. The PCs will be able to translate audio, recommend responses to incoming messages and suggest changes in the Settings app, and even talk with people about what’s on screen.
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Excerpt from www.techiexpert.com
Cybersecurity is highly critical and it is assumed the threats to continue evolving and growing. Organizations are turning to advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to combat the threats. The technologies are revolutionizing how we detect as well as prevent cyber attacks. The technologies are offering innovative solutions and these can enhance our cybersecurity defenses.
AI and ML are powerful tools. These have the capabilities to fight against cyber threats due to their analyzing capabilities of vast amounts of data quickly as well as accurately. The two technologies can detect patterns and anomalies that might indicate a cyber attack. Behavioral analysis is one of the ways to serve the purpose. The tools learn the normal behavior patterns of users and devices within a network, the so-called User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA).
One another way is through network traffic analysis. AI and ML monitor network traffic for unusual patterns like unexpected data transfers or communication. The method helps in identifying potential threats before significant damage takes place. Moreover, deception technology can trick attackers into revealing themselves.
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Excerpt from news.mit.edu
“I’ll have you eating out of the palm of my hand” is an unlikely utterance you’ll hear from a robot. Why? Most of them don’t have palms.
If you have kept up with the protean field, gripping and grasping more like humans has been an ongoing Herculean effort. Now, a new robotic hand design developed in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has rethought the oft-overlooked palm. The new design uses advanced sensors for a highly sensitive touch, helping the “extremity” handle objects with more detailed and delicate precision.
GelPalm has a gel-based, flexible sensor embedded in the palm, drawing inspiration from the soft, deformable nature of human hands. The sensor uses a special color illumination tech that uses red, green, and blue LEDs to light an object, and a camera to capture reflections. This mixture generates detailed 3D surface models for precise robotic interactions.
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Excerpt from dailycaller.com
The Biden administration has overseen at least $10 million in payments to the Taliban since August 2021, according to a watchdog report released Monday.
The Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021 shortly after the Biden administration evacuated U.S. forces from the region in what was seen as an operational failure by critics. The Biden administration has worked with several partner agencies since 2021 to provide assistance to the Afghani people, but a sizeable portion of US funds have gone toward directly paying the Taliban-controlled government, according to a report released by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) on Monday.
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Excerpt from www.state.gov
The United States congratulates Luis Abinader on his electoral victory as President of the Dominican Republic. We commend the Dominican people for their active participation in the democratic process and the diligent work of electoral observers in supporting a fair and transparent election. We look forward to working closely with President Abinader‘s new administration to further strengthen ties between our nations and our peoples, address shared challenges including climate change and security, and promote economic growth.
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Excerpt from fortune.com
Indonesian president Joko Widodo’s years-long wooing on Elon Musk may have finally paid off. The Southeast Asian leader, commonly known as Jokowi, openly courted the Tesla CEO for investment in the country’s fledgling EV sector, even making a personal visit to see the billionaire in Texas in 2022.
Musk has now made his first visit to Indonesia after Jokowi’s charm offensive. The billionaire traveled to the resort island of Bali over the weekend—not for Tesla, but for one of his other companies: SpaceX. On Sunday, Musk inaugurated SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service in Indonesia, saying he was “excited to bring connectivity to places that have low connectivity.”
Starlink received a license to operate in Indonesia earlier this month. It’s the third Southeast Asian country to approve the satellite internet service, following the Philippines in 2022 and Malaysia last year.
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Excerpt from www.kyivpost.com
Telegram, a social media platform commonly used by Ukrainians and Russians alike, has been used as a “legalized darknet” and a tool for Russian disinformation, and there’s a need to at least “de-anonymize” the platform, said Andriy Yusov, spokesperson of Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence Directorate (HUR).
“Often Telegram is used as a somewhat legalized darknet in which you can find anything from selling drugs to groups of draft dodgers or some other people who are engaged in anything up to child pornography,” said Yusov in an interview with the Center for Countering Disinformation.
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Excerpt from www.timesnownews.com
Olga Loiek, a Ukrainian student and YouTuber was digitally cloned and used to promote Russia on Chinese social media in mandarin through AI generated video.
Olga Loiek, a Ukrainian student at UPenn, cloned on Chinese social media, portrayed as a Russian
Olga Loiek, a Ukrainian girl, found her AI-generated videos flooding Chinese social media, advocating for Russia, Russian products, and its friendship with China.
She started receiving messages from people that they had seen her speak Mandarin on Chinese social media soon after she began posting videos on her YouTube channel in 2023. Perplexed by this information, Olga checked for herself and found that several accounts were using her face. Profiles with names such as Sofia, Natasha, April, and Stacy were created using generative AI.
Olga was frustrated by this mass identity theft she suddenly became a victim of. “I don’t want anyone to think that I ever said these horrible things in my life. Using a Ukrainian girl’s face to promote Russia. It’s crazy.”
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Excerpt from balkangreenenergynews.com
France has announced the winners of its 250 MW South Brittany floating offshore wind auction, the world’s first conducted at a commercial scale.
The tendered 250 MW site will be the biggest floating offshore wind farm in Europe upon completion and more than double Europe’s current floating offshore wind capacity, WindEurope said.
So far Europe has only built small pilot and demonstrator projects, which makes the French auction a big step towards commercialisation and large-scale deployment of floating wind.
The winning bid amounted to EUR 86 per MWh
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Excerpt from www.wsj.com
Facebook Parent’s Plan to Win AI Race: Give Its Tech Away Free The Wall Street Journal
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Excerpt from cowboystatedaily.com
A Wyoming company that started as a way to use up an odd, leftover piece of land in a Jackson parking lot is about to cultivate new territory.
Vertical Harvest in Jackson lays claim to being North America’s first vertical hydroponic farm, and it really packs an agricultural punch. The business grows 40 acres worth of produce — tomatoes, micro greens, basil and more — on a quarter-acre urban hydroponic farm.
On top of that, it’s created an employment model that provides a marginalized population of disabled workers with good-paying jobs. That’s created opportunities for independent living and advancement that didn’t really exist for that population before.
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Excerpt from www.dailymail.co.uk
Several months into her steady relationship with a hunky web designer, Emily Robertson* was hopeful she’d found her life partner.
Handsome and attentive, Tom* was also fun and thoughtful, slipping handwritten notes into her handbag and springing romantic surprises on her. Her family and friends liked him, too.
There was just one chink in this otherwise near-perfect armour.
‘Tom spent a lot of time on his phone, and sometimes he looked guilty or unsettled if I caught him unawares,’ recalls Emily, a 31-year-old personal trainer. ‘It started to get under my skin, and although I tried to convince myself I was overthinking it, I found myself wondering whether he was contacting other women.’
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Excerpt from www.einnews.com
WROCłAW, POLAND, May 20, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ — As informed by Facebook Payments International Limited, “From July 1, 2024, fundraising tools will no longer be available on our platforms for any charities in the European Economic Area.” This means that charitable organisations will no longer be able to collect donations using Meta’s tools on Facebook or Instagram. This change, which follows the end of personal fundraising on Facebook and Instagram, has essentially ended the crowdfunding capabilities of leading social media platforms in Europe.
What should NGOs do in terms of Meta changes?
The latest update may come as a shock to many – NGOs and socially engaged Facebook and Instagram users. For a long time, these platforms offered interesting solutions for charity fundraising. Users of these platforms could create fundraisers on behalf of their favourite organisations. Nonprofits, on the other hand, could add a handy donation button to their profile.
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Excerpt from www.futurity.org
Using more robots to close labor gaps in the hospitality industry may backfire and cause more human workers to quit, according to a new study.
The study, which included more than 620 lodging and food service employees, found that “robot-phobia”—specifically the fear that robots and technology will take human jobs—increased workers’ job insecurity and stress, leading to greater intentions to leave their jobs.
The impact was more pronounced with employees who had real experience working with robotic technology. It also affected managers in addition to frontline workers.
The findings are published in the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.
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Excerpt from news24online.com
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Excerpt from cosmosmagazine.comThe Boeing Starliner continues to experience setbacks and new launch date has now been set down for the end of May.
A small helium leak in the Starliner’s service module caused the latest postponement.
The decision by the launch partners Boeing, NASA and United Launch Alliance means the spacecraft will be sent up no earlier than Saturday 25 May at 3:09pm USEDT (Sunday 26, 5:09am AEST).
The original May 8 launch was scrubbed due to a faulty oxygen relief valve.
A joint statement clarified the next launch window would allow crews to “work through spacecraft closeout processes and flight rationale before proceeding”.
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Excerpt from www.miragenews.com
Columbia Engineers use nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to examine lithium metal batteries through a new lens — their findings may help them design new electrolytes and anode surfaces for high-performance batteries
New York, NY—May 20, 2024—A Columbia Engineering team has published a paper in the journal Joule today that details how nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy techniques can be leveraged to design the anode surface in lithium metal batteries. The researchers also present new data and interpretations for how this method can be used to gain unique insight into the structure of these surfaces to share with the field.
“We believe that, armed with all the data we’ve pulled together, we can help accelerate the design of lithium metal batteries and help make them safe for consumers, which folks have been trying to do for more than four decades,” said the team’s leader Lauren Marbella, associate professor of chemical engineering.