Recent big sites that closed down: Jezebel, Pitchfork, Vice, Popular Science, and my hopes for the Messenger were dashed when they announced their demise: https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4440773-news-startup-the-messenger-shutting-down/

LA Times and the like are hit with layoffs and – worse – Sinclair heavyweight added the Balitmore Sun to the list of ‘compromised’ media outlets: https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/01/15/baltimore-sun-sold-david-smith-sinclair/

That said, there are always new sites, but gaining trust and reputation takes time.

Social sites seem doomed to crest and then fall. Digg? MySpace? Friendster? Who remembers the good old days of (moderated) UseNet? Do we want any of those back? Would any of them have remained were it not for spam/bad-actors?

I’m not the lego person, but I am not taking that selfie because: 1) I don’t want to clean the house to make it look all nice before judgey relatives critique the pic, 2) my phone is old and all its pics are kinda fish-eyed, 3) I don’t actually want to spend the time doing the task right now when AI can get me an image in seconds.

Crawford said that legislators had heard from NASA, which expressed concern about the bill’s impact on programs to develop alternative proteins for astronauts. An amendment to the bill will address that problem, Crawford said, allowing an exemption for research purposes.

Opponents of the ban have said governments shouldn’t interfere with a nascent industry because of unfounded fears over safety concerns.

The carve-out for NASA doesn’t make this bill any better. The bill is obviously stifling.

That said, I really do want some extra checks that whatever agar-like substrate meat is grown in does not leech excessive quantities of hormones (think: rBST) or other chemicals into the packaged product. I would happily eat lab-grown meat, but I want to know that it is well tested for safety.

I appreciate that the “Gradient Canopy” roof is covered in solar cells and collects rainwater while also letting in natural light, so maybe the problem is they didn’t do enough by not adding in some shielding, too.

FYI, the bot only summarized the first of three pages.

Per reuters, the 5 unaccounted for coast guard crew have been reported as dead: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/fire-breaks-out-plane-runway-japans-tokyo-haneda-airport-nhk-2024-01-02/

The amazing thing is that almost ALL the staff signed a letter and threatened to quit, too! From: https://www.wired.com/story/openai-staff-walk-protest-sam-altman/

“The process through which you terminated Sam Altman and removed Greg Brockman from the board has jeopardized all of this work and undermined our mission and company,” the letter reads. “Your conduct has made it clear you did not have the competence to oversee OpenAI.”

Remarkably, the letter’s signees include Ilya Sutskever, the company’s chief scientist and a member of its board, who has been blamed for coordinating the boardroom coup against Altman in the first place. By 5:10 pm ET on Monday, some 738 out of OpenAI’s around 770 employees, or about 95 percent of the company, had signed the letter.

Supposedly, Microsoft has said they’ll hire the whole team… but I wonder if it’ll really play out that way or if they’d just become short-term hires and then kicked out once OpenAI collapses. Note that Microsoft has invested a lot of money in OpenAI.

Vox also has a lengthy article with lots of details and consideration of what it all means, such as:

… There is an argument that, because OpenAI’s board is supposed to run a nonprofit dedicated to AI safety, not a fast-growing for-profit business, it may have been justified in firing Altman. (Again, the board has yet to explain its reasoning in any detail.) You won’t hear many people defending the board out loud since it’s much safer to support Altman. But writer Eric Newcomer, in a post he published November 19, took a stab at it. He notes, for instance, that Altman has had fallouts with partners before — one of whom was Elon Musk — and reports that Altman was asked to leave his perch running Y Combinator.

“Altman had been given a lot of power, the cloak of a nonprofit, and a glowing public profile that exceeds his more mixed private reputation,” Newcomer wrote. “He lost the trust of his board. We should take that seriously.”

They will tell you “controlled” visits are for safety, but I remember in the post 9-11 Gulf War reporting how the Pentagon went all in for “embedded journalism”. Yeah, sure, it keeps the press ‘safe’, but it changes what gets covered. The media initially loved it, but later realized there were valid criticisms of the process.

More to the point: yeah, covering news should not be a death sentence. Even if you are covering a war, as civilian non-combatants you shouldn’t be targeted by any military… a la the ‘Collateral Murder’ wikileaks video of journalists shot by US helicopters.

I agree. I included the links in the quoted text so people could more easily make public comment. I don’t think we want everyone saying they are in the severe category when they are not, but yeah, we don’t want to stop supporting people who need help.

The mine is kinda closed, but in receivership of PriceWaterhouseCoopers , is somewhat under government control, and on native lands belonging to Selkirk First Nation. They’ve had low salmon runs recently and this is really bad for the fish.

“The last thing you want to do is dig up mud, which is what this company did. The water license very specifically says ‘Don’t do this,’ and they went ahead and did it. So, it’s a huge concern to us.”

…

Todd Vogt, JDS’ chief operating officer and executive vice president, said the company had to dredge the river due to an “emergency situation.”

He explained water levels were dropping fast and two exposed boulders at the barge landing were obstructing the barge landing. At the time, the territory was at the height of wildfire season, and there were concerns for workers’ safety at the mine site in case of evacuation.

…

But Rifkind said proper steps still should have been taken.

He said JDS should have informed the territory’s Department of Energy, Mines and Resources’ mining inspector, as well as Fisheries and Oceans Canada about the situation.

“This wouldn’t have prevented them from doing the work, but there would have been a paper trail of why the work was required,” he said.

He said a report would then have to be filed with the Yukon Water Board explaining why JDS “varied” from the conditions of the mine’s water licence. [sic]

Anyway, it sounds like mistakes were made and it is hard to tell if the responsible people are learning from the mistake or if they’re just blowing it off without plans to improve. I’m hoping for the former, but it is the sort of thing that needs to get publicized so voters can demand accountability.

H-h-how? HOW? do they ‘anonymize’ DNA?!?! Remember how in 2007 ‘anonymized’ netflix data was linked back to actual members? That was just checking what people watched on Netflix compared to what they rated on IMDB.

With DNA, you should be able to figure out who someone is by the fact you an exact DNA record! I mean, it’ll share similarities with your parents, and children, and to a lesser degree, more removed relatives. How hard can it be to figure out that this woman is related to that guy with an arrest record. Or more specifically: this is the exact person because we see other records from any doctor or whatever with the same DNA.

After decades of sci-fi/fantasy entertainment to prime us, the primal part of the human brain that reacts to in-group and out-group members suddenly changes in every human and we start reflexively and unintentionally classifying all earth life as friends and space/environmental threats as enemies.

Humanity immediately gets serious about climate change, CO2 reduction, and the like, but we also get way too zealous about deploying space lasers.

There’s no publicly known proof that any of Mary Trump’s accusations are true, but since the war is decidedly World News, the possibility that the attack by Hamas was made viable through a U.S. leak is worth considering.

From my reading, you are correct, but their methodology for determining what type of coffee people drank was very limited and the authors know it. While they didn’t see any of the issues they were tracking with normal filtered coffee, they did theorize a reason why instant may be a problem.

From the paper:

The health effects of instant coffee, which varied from other subtypes of coffee, might be caused by their different ingredients. The mineral lead in instant coffee was more abundant than that in other coffee types, and long-term consumption of instant coffee may result in excessive lead [41]. Additional substances added to commercial instant coffee, such as creamer and flavoring agents, might partially explain the negative effect [25,26].

Also:

Instant coffee consumption has been proven to be associated with obesity [44,45]. Compared to women who did not regularly drink coffee, those who drank instant coffee had a higher risk of developing breast cancer [46]. Instant coffee was regarded as a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease and frailty in the elderly [47,48]. Instant coffee might have the effect of shortening telomere length, and might lead to the occurrence and development of diseases. Therefore, we emphasized the importance of coffee types and the consumption of instant coffee at an appropriate amount. More research needs to identify whether the ingredients in instant coffee results in shorter telomere length.

The paper then goes on to list the limitations they know to exist with their own research and suggest that more work be done.

from the article:

“Starbucks gives autonomy to local leaders to ‘find ways to celebrate.’ These leaders are the same ones issuing many of the Pride bans,” it said pointing to an article that Pride decor was banned from about 100 locations across parts of Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri. Those locations are in some of the more conservative regions of a deeply divided United States. Many Starbucks locations across the country have been displaying Pride decorations.

Starbucks Workers United says this is an example of Starbucks bowing to pressure, as Target did when moving or removing Pride merchandise from some stores. Pride has become a political flashpoint this year, with the right attacking companies for celebrating the inclusive celebrations.

So these workers are striking against policies enacted by their local owner rather than solely for issues with a corporate policy (though surely they have reason to strike against corporate, too, and even the end of the article mentions Starbucks’ anti-union history).

They biopsy live animals to get the cells to grow meat, so I am sure many vegans will object – but the labs theoretically never need to get more cells. The question becomes whether they do or not and how the source livestock is treated. Do they just sell the source animals to a slaughterhouse? Or do they donate them to a petting zoo? They are unlikely to tell the public.

I noticed the post’s link is PR from the Upside company website. GOOD Meat is another provider. Here is an NPR link with a bit less sensationalism: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/06/21/1183484892/no-kill-meat-grown-from-animal-cells-is-now-approved-for-sale-in-the-u-s