A cognitive scientist on the pleasures of generative image programs.
The post How AI Can Prompt Your Inner Artist appeared first on Nautilus.
Reading
Those Memphis cops were proud of their work The NY Times reports: As Tyre Nichols sat propped against a police car, bloodied, dazed and handcuffed after being beaten by a group of Memphis police officers, one of those officers took a picture of him and sent it to at least five people, the Memphis Police Department said in documents released by the state on Tuesday. The documents painted a picture of repeated misconduct by the officers, starting in the first moments after Mr. Nichols was pulled over for a traffic stop, through an arrest carried out with excessive force and continuing on through the many minutes when Mr. Nichols lay on the street in dire need of medical help. Sending the photograph to acquaintances, including at least one outside of the Police Department, violated policies about keeping information confidential, according to the documents. But police officials said it was also part of a pattern of mocking, abusive and “blatantly unprofessional” behavior by the officers that also included shouting profanities at Mr. Nichols, laughing after the beating and “bragging” about their involvement.
Ok, this place has mostly been about how fucked we are, and how we’ve fucked up. Blame is more on our leaders than us, but as a species we’re on the hook.
But there is cause of hope because mostly we know what we have to do.
We know we have to reduce CO2 and Methane emissions. We even know mostly how. We pretend we don’t, because the how will involve changing the economic basis of our societies. Something between forty to fifty percent of our jobs aren’t needed or are actively harmful. People should mostly work from home if they can. We need to outlaw planned obsolesence and get rid of suburbs and exurbs as they currently exist. Everyone and everything needs to prove that it increases biodiversity and communities need to show a CO2/Methane deficit, without cheating and bullshit offsets.
We need to prepare for what’s coming. Solutions include but are not limited to
Giving Earth an antacid could help slow climate change—but it's complicated.
The post How Seawater Might Soak Up More Carbon appeared first on Nautilus.
Why dirt on the moon (and Mars) would be dangerous to live with.
The post The Moon Smells Like Gunpowder appeared first on Nautilus.
Senator Rick Scott is getting a lot of attention for proposing to sunset all spending, including Social Security and Medicare, every five years and making nasty ads like the one above, in which he accuses Biden of cutting Medicare and cheating on his taxes. Mitch McConnell himself is sick of him and removed him from the Commerce Committee which really ticked him off. Scott is corrupt to the core and should be nowhere near government. If you are unfamiliar with his history in business, here’s a piece Chris Hayes wrote before Scott won the governor’s seat in Florida back in 2008. (WTF Florida???) Rush Limbaugh offers Democrats an irresistible target as the de facto leader of the Republican Party, but for my money, Rick Scott is the man who best embodies the spirit of the current conservative opposition. The name may not exactly be a household word, or it may ring a faint bell, but Politico recently reported that the millionaire Republican would be heading up Conservatives for Patients’ Rights (CPR), a new group that plans to spend around $20 million to kill President Obama’s efforts at healthcare reform.
Journalist and anti-war activist David Harris speaks to Robert Scheer about his resistance to America’s genocide in Vietnam and his education in federal prison.
The post [Rewind] David Harris on Whatever Happened to Americans’ Moral Compass appeared first on scheerpost.com.
Right-wingers hammered in Socialist Health Association elections said to be aiming to disaffiliate SHA on pretext after organisation condemned Starmer and sidekick Streeting for appalling health policy The Labour right is angling to kick the Socialist Health Association (SHA) out of the party after the faction was crushed in the SHA’s internal elections – and […]
“[I]t stretches credulity for me that the internal management and President of the TSSA were not aware” The President and Treasurer of the TSSA union have resigned with immediate effect, following scathing criticism – though by no means only of them – and a demand for their departure in Baroness Kennedy’s report on sexual harassment […]
Peter Dutton and his media cabal notwithstanding, The Voice is a well-considered and "detailed" proposition put forward by Indigenous Australians — just respect it. read now...The Australian Greens have been plunged into crisis this week with the loss of Senator Lidia Thorpe causing an imbalance in the party’s weekly drum circle causing it to skew right. ”It’s a disaster and really we just don’t know... Read More ›
Aaron Rupar covered the first Hunter Biden “oversight” committee meeting this morning and it’s a doozy. I highly recommend that you go over to twitter to watch his highlights because it’s even worse than you might have imagined. I’ve pulled up a few of the right wing fools contrasted with the Democrats on the panel. Dear God …
‘Sexual harassment is caused by the very structures in McDonalds’, says Bakers’ general secretary The Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) has issued a statement cautiously welcoming an ‘intervention’ by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and a statement the ERHC and the McDonalds fast-food chain are preparing to issue on an agreement […]
Please join the Drupal Association in welcoming our new board member:
Rosa Ordinana
“As a passionate advocate for open-source technology in the public sector, I am proud to have been invited to serve on the Drupal association Directors Board,” Rosa shared upon accepting her position. “I am eager to contribute my expertise and experience to help the Drupal community grow, support interoperability, digital sovereignty, and create a safe, secure, and open web for everyone.”
About Rosa
Rosa is currently working in the Informatics directorate of the European Commission in Brussels. Since 2009 she and her team have promoted the use of open source solutions and Drupal as CMS for public websites of the European Commission and other EU institutions.
Please join the Drupal Association in welcoming our new board member:
Lynne Capozzi
When accepting her position, Lynne shared: “I’m excited to join the Drupal Association Board, and I’m hopeful that my past experience at Acquia and my nonprofit and marketing experience can benefit the community and help the community to grow!”
About Lynne
Most recently, Lynne was the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at Acquia in Boston. Lynne was at Acquia for eight years in this role.
How was the Republic of Ireland transformed from having been one of the most socially illiberal countries in Western Europe? Patrick MacDonagh’s new history of Gay and Lesbian Activism in Ireland between 1973 and 1993 establishes more recent developments in sexual and gender politics as the successors to three decades of grassroots struggle. While male […]
Taylor, who insisted on his innocence, was killed by lethal injection while litigation was still pending.
The post “An Irreversible Injustice”: Missouri Executes Leonard “Raheem” Taylor Despite Doubts Over His Guilt appeared first on The Intercept.
We are delighted and very grateful to receive the 2022 AIPEN Richard Higgott Prize for our article “COVID-19 and the failure of the neoliberal regulatory state,” published in the journal, Review of International Political Economy. It is getting harder to remember just how extraordinary, and extraordinarily awful, the response to COVID-19 was in so many countries, and the sense of shock and disbelief that accompanied every step towards lockdowns and closed borders in the early months of 2020.
The post COVID-19 and the failure of the neoliberal regulatory state appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
~ Today's Water Cooler ~
It was very, very bad. When she wasn’t talking about herself she was casting very ugly aspersions on her political rivals and then telling an interminable story about flying to Iraq on Christmas without ever saying Donald Trump’s name. These speeches are almost always bad but this one was for the books. Here’s how it started: Trump had a rebuttal too. Oy vey: This video campaign of his is bizarre. The dilated pupils (which appear in all of them) are very suspicious. Maybe it’s just the lighting or something but they’re weird. I think he and Huckasanders are pretty representative of the GOP in general. And that’s frightening.
Click here to go see the bonus panel!
Hovertext:
No really, read it. This is her number one move.
Today's News:
Yesterday, the Reserve Bank of Australia lifted the interest rate target for the ninth consecutive time (they didn’t meet in January) claiming that they had to do this to stop inflation accelerating and restoring price stability. Except inflation already peaked in the March-quarter 2022 as a result of the driving factors abating. Further, none of the major driving factors are remotely sensitive to domestic interest rate movements. The RBA’s excuse is that there are dangerous domestic demand pressures that need to be curtailed. Except the evidence for that claim is lacking. Most of the demand measures are in retreat. So what gives? Well there is a massive income redistributing being engineered by the RBA from poor to rich and if they keep going unemployment will certainly rise, in part, because the lame Australian government is claiming it has to engage in fiscal restraint to ensure the RBA doesn’t hike rates even more than they are. It would be comical if it wasn’t damaging the prosperity and solvency of tens of thousands of the most vulnerable Australians. Disgraceful.Bill Mitchell – billy blog
“The House on Thursday approved a resolution denouncing socialism in a bipartisan vote that fractured the Democratic caucus.” — The Hill, 2/2/23
“US military fighter jets shot down the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon over the Atlantic Ocean … the operation ended a remarkable public drama that prompted a diplomatic fallout between Washington and Beijing, as the American public tracked the balloon from Montana all the way to the Carolinas.” – CNN, 2/4/23