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Post by mhbruin on May 7, 2023 7:49:32 GMT -8
Air for you tires used to be free, but now it's a dollor. Do you know why? Inflation.
Party is a Battlfield
A 16-year-old was struck by gunfire and killed in an altercation while attending an after-prom party in Houston early Saturday, according to police.
The Mall is a Battlefield
A total of nine people, including the shooter, were killed Saturday night at a Dallas-area outlet mall.
Texas is a Battlefileld. Love is Not a Battlefield
Serbia Doesn't Want to Be a Battlefield
Serbia has now announced it will drastically reduce the number of guns in the country. "All people who own weapons — I'm not talking about the roughly 400,000 people with hunting weapons — will be subject to an audit, and then no more than 30,000 to 40,000 guns will be left," Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said after the recent shootings. "We will almost completely disarm Serbia."
The Serbian government also announced that over the next six months, checks will be conducted to ensure gun owners are storing their arms safely and keeping weapons and ammunition in a place inaccessible to minors and other unauthorized persons.
The procedure for issuing new firearms licenses will be tightened as well. Serbia's Interior Ministry will impose a two-year moratorium on new permits. "We know this will not happen without causing friction — but the fewer rifles there are, the less danger there is for our children and citizens," Vucic said at a press conference after the shooting.
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Post by mhbruin on May 7, 2023 7:58:31 GMT -8
Leaving Las ZaporizhzhiaRussia has sparked a "mad panic" as it evacuates a town near the contested Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, a Ukrainian official says. Russia has told people to leave 18 settlements in the Zaporizhzhia region, including Enerhodar near the plant, ahead of Kyiv's anticipated offensive. The Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, said there were five-hour waits as thousands of cars left. 
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Post by mhbruin on May 7, 2023 8:00:30 GMT -8
Hot Nam
Vietnam has recorded its highest ever temperature, just over 44C (111F) - with experts predicting it would soon be surpassed because of climate change.
The record was set in the northern province of Thanh Hoa, where officials warned people to stay indoors during the hottest times of the day.
Other countries in the region have also been experiencing extremely hot weather.
Thailand reported a record-equalling 44.6C in its western Mak province.
Meanwhile Myanmar's media reported that a town in the east had recorded 43.8C, the highest temperature for a decade.
Both countries experience a hot period before the monsoon season but the intensity of the heat has broken previous records.
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Post by mhbruin on May 7, 2023 8:03:32 GMT -8
The Homeless Are an Easy Target
We are living through a vicious campaign of demonization and hostility toward the homeless. Networks like Fox News show endless videos of attacks by homeless people that present them as inherently unstable, violent and dangerous. Prominent voices speak of sweeping homeless people from the streets like trash, and cities have tasked the police with using force to solve the problem.
Yes, homeless people have committed acts of violence. But the facts are clear: The homeless, including people with mental illnesses, are far more likely to be victims of violence and abuse than perpetrators. For all the talk of fear and anxiety over being confronted by homeless people, imagine the fear and anxiety of knowing that, to many, you don’t exist as a human at all. And the truth of the matter is that it takes only a bad accident or a job loss or some other traumatic incident for many of us to go from housed to unhoused. We aren’t as distant from homeless people — and homeless people aren’t as distant from us — as we’d like to think.
Last July, one assailant stabbed three homeless men he found sleeping in New York City. Just a few months before those incidents, a thirty-year-old man named Gerald Brevard III, shot five homeless people in Washington, D.C., and New York City, killing two.
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Post by mhbruin on May 7, 2023 8:08:18 GMT -8
Will DeathSentence Sentence Construction Workers to a Horrible Death?
Conservation groups across the Southeast United States are urging Gov. DeSantis to veto a bill that would allow the use of radioactive fertilizer waste in road construction across the state.
The bill passed by legislators permits the use of toxic phosphogypsum in “demonstration” road projects in Florida. Critics said this is the first step in a phosphate industry push to eventually use the waste in roads nationwide.
The Environmental Protection Agency prohibits using the toxic phosphate waste in roadway construction because it poses an unacceptable risk to road construction workers, public health and the environment.
Phosphogypsum is the radioactive waste leftover from fertilizer production.
In 2020 the Trump-era EPA approved the use of phosphogypsum in roads. Following a lawsuit and petition by the Center and other conservation, public health and union groups, in 2021 the agency withdrew that approval.
Florida has 25 piles of phosphogypsum; they weigh one billion tons, are hundreds of acres expansive, and are hundreds of feet tall. According to opponents of the bill, the industry has a lousy record of containing the material from sinkholes and spills. They threaten Tampa Bay and the Floridian aquifer.
Raise Your Hand If You Want Radioactive Roads.
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Post by mhbruin on May 7, 2023 8:09:00 GMT -8
Who Won the Week?
Nicole Avery Nichols, who becomes the first Black woman to serve as executive editor of the Detroit Free Press in its 191 year history
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, for signing into law four new gun-control measures, including raising the buying age, expanding the waiting period, and opening a path to sue gunmakers
The jury in the trial of the terrorist organization "Proud Boys" that found several of its leaders guilty of seditious conspiracy and other charges in the planning of the Jan. 6 insurrection
President Biden: continues to not blink on debt ceiling while GOP flounders; excellent April jobs report; unleashes Dark Brandon at WH Correspondents Dinner
NY Supreme Court Justice Robert Reed, for laughing Trump’s lawsuit against The New York Times and Mary Trump out of court, and forcing him to pay all their expenses
Freedom of thought and learning in Illinois, as the state prepares to become the first to enact laws punishing schools and libraries for banning books
Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, who received a warm welcome in Finland as he met with heads of the Nordic countries while Putin was trembling in fear over a pair of drones hovering over Moscow
The 2023 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, including Rage Against the Machine, George Michael, Kate Bush, Willie Nelson (Happy 90th!), The Spinners, Missy Elliott, and Sheryl Crow
The Arizona Supreme Court, for issuing sanctions and fines against failed MAGA governor candidate Kari Lake's attorneys for making "unequivocally false" election claims in court
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Post by mhbruin on May 7, 2023 8:16:31 GMT -8
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Post by mhbruin on May 7, 2023 8:17:46 GMT -8
A Rare Sighting of an Almost Extinct Creature. A Sane Republican.
In the days since state Sen. Merv Riepe cast the lone vote that blocked a near-total abortion ban in his conservative state, he’s faced protests at his office, the cold shoulder from irate colleagues and calls for his resignation. A stranger left an angry note inside his home mailbox.
Yet, the 80-year-old Republican has also raked in accolades, becoming an unlikely hero for those fighting to protect abortion access in Nebraska and around the country in the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Abortion advocates wept in the Capitol after Riepe’s April 27 vote. A downtown Omaha novelty store is now selling blue T-shirts and tank tops that say “Hot Merv Summer” in bold, white type.
Riepe’s vote reflects a growing realization among some Republicans that staking extreme positions on abortion might be politically perilous. Since Roe, which guaranteed the right to abortion, was struck down, Republicans have faced pressure from the far-right to ban the procedure in states across the country. But voters, including those who identify or lean Republican, have signaled an uneasiness with taking restrictions too far.
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Post by mhbruin on May 7, 2023 8:21:21 GMT -8
Is AI a Con?AI is Silicon Valley's last-ditch attempt to avoid a stock market wipeout Silicon Valley has entered the Hail Mary phase of its business cycle — a desertic part of a tech-industry downturn where desperation can turn into recklessness. The biggest players of the last decade are facing an existential crisis as their original products lose steam and seismic shifts in the global economy force them to search for new sources of growth. Enter generative AI — algorithms like the viral program ChatGPT that seem to mimic human intelligence by spitting out text or images. While everyone in Silicon Valley is suddenly, ceaselessly talking about this new tech, it is not the kind of artificial intelligence that can power driverless cars, or Jetson-like robot slaves, or bring about the singularity. The AI that companies are deploying is not at that world-changing level yet, and candidly, experts will tell you it's unclear if it ever will be. But that hasn't stopped the tech industry from trying to ride the wave of excitement and fear of this new innovation. As soon as it was clear that OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, had a cultural hit, it was off to the races. Hoping to cash in on the craze, Microsoft poured $10 billion into OpenAI in January and launched an AI-powered version of their search engine, Bing, soon after. Google has scrambled to keep up, launching their own AI-inflected search engine, Bard, in March. Nearly every other major tech company has followed suit, insisting that their business will be at the forefront of the AI revolution. Venture capitalists — who've been miserly with their money since the market turned last year — have started writing checks for AI startups. And in a surefire sign that something has exploded beyond recognition, Elon Musk started claiming the whole thing was his idea all along. All of this hype is more of a billionaire ego brawl than a real revolution in technology, one AI startup consultant and a longtime researcher who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about products in development told me. "I hate to frame the story as another gang of bros, but that's what OpenAI is," they said. "They're going through riffs and tiffs." To get a piece of that sweet AI-craze money, even the most powerful tech moguls are trying to make it seem as if their company is the real leader in AI, embracing the timeless truth passed down by Will Ferrell's fictional race car driver Ricky Bobby: "If you ain't first, you're last." Wall Street, never one to miss a trend, has also embraced the AI hype. But as Daniel Morgan, a senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV, "This AI hype doesn't really trickle down into any huge profit growth. It's just a lot of what can happen in the future." AI-driven products are not bringing in big bucks yet, but the concept is already pumping valuations. That is what makes the hype cycle a Hail Mary: Silicon Valley is hoping and praying that AI hype can keep customers and investors distracted until their balance sheets can bounce back. Sure, rushing out an unproven new technology to distract from the problems of the tech industry and global economy may be a bit ill-advised. But, hey, if society suffers a little along the way, well — that's what happens when you move fast and break things. Silicon Valley's Hail Mary moment
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