US Congressional report argues that Australia’s acquisition of nuclear submarines would actually undercut deterrence of China by depleting the US submarine fleet. With the promise of nuclear submarines becoming ever distant, it may be time to reconsider other options. Recent surprising disclosures have revealed that nuclear-powered submarines, which Australia plans to acquire under the trilateral Continue reading »
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West Australia’s council elections seem a strange place to pinpoint a warning about American radicalising political games infiltrating the Australian landscape. While it is strange, it is nonetheless important. American conservative and commentator Andrew Breitbart declared a (contested) doctrine that “politics is downstream from culture.” According to his institutional heir, Steve Bannon, this means strategists Continue reading »
Recently, the issue of “Publish-or-Perish” has come back onto the Australian science policy agenda, with the Chief Scientist, Dr Cathy Foley, saying that existing narrow research metrics are creating a “Publish-or-Perish” culture, perversely incentivising researchers to “publish iteratively”, chasing publication volume and citations rather than quality research. Dr Foley was referring to the recent ACOLA Continue reading »
In March 1995, Pakistan’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting took a bold step by granting a 15-year license to M/s Pay TV to establish a wireless TV network. The intention was clear: to harness the potential of wireless technology for the nation’s development. Years later, we find ourselves at a crossroads, with the promise of Continue reading »
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which spans over seven decades, serves as a potent illustration of the persistent failures of Western nations, particularly the United States, to facilitate an equitable and enduring resolution. Over the past month, the world has been appalled by unprecedented violence which has prompted critical contemplation of the efficacy of international law, the Continue reading »
I don’t know any teacher who doesn’t think they are making classroom education nearly impossible. It is a crisis: Social media, the U.S. surgeon general wrote in an advisory this year, might be linked to the growing mental health crisis among teens. And even if this link turns out to be weaker than some recent research suggests, smartphones are undoubtedly a classroom distraction. Understandably, individual schools and school districts — in Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania and elsewhere — are trying to crack down on smartphones. Students are required to store the devices in backpacks or lockers during classes, or to place them in magnetic locking pouches. In 2024, these efforts should go even further: Impose an outright ban on bringing cellphones to school, which parents should welcome and support. In educational settings, smartphones have an almost entirely negative impact: Educators and students alike note they can fuel cyberbullying and stifle meaningful in-person interaction. A 14-country study cited by UNESCO found that the mere presence of a mobile phone nearby was enough to distract students from learning.
By Tim Cushing: TechDirt.com
After years of continuous, unrepentant abuse of surveillance powers, the FBI is facing the real possibility of seeing Section 702 curtailed, if not scuttled entirely.
Wired.com
A WIRED analysis of leaked police documents verifies that a secretive government program is allowing federal, state, and local law enforcement to access phone records of Americans who are not suspected of a crime.
More than two-thirds of the Palestinians proposed for release by Israel under the truce have not been convicted of any crimes. Most were arrested as children.
The post Israel’s Insidious Narrative About Palestinian Prisoners appeared first on The Intercept.
Last night, I watched the new Doctor Who: The Star Beast, forty-three years after the seven-year-old me read the original comic.
The future is fun! The future is fair! Some of us have learned to refrain from issuing hot takes on developing stories. Yes, sometimes it’s infuriating when the press holds back from stating the obvious. I still recall the hour or more of “we don’t know what happened yet” reporting when the Challenger exploded (1986) shortly after launch, even as TV ran and re-ran footage of the explosion and we watched the detached bosters, still firing, fly wildy across the sky. Other times, as in last week’s Canada/U.S. border crash, there is a race to sensationalize in the absence of facts. Will Bunch opens his Sunday column with an Orwell quote: “There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” — George Orwell, 1984 The lie that the bridge crash was a terrorist attack from Canada spread before the flames from the burning Bentley subsided. First the truth: Here’s what really happened on Wednesday: A 53-year-old couple from Erie County, N.Y.
From a brewing AI copyright battle to union efforts to protect sky-high credit card fees, here’s a roundup of our reporting from the past week.
The Doctor is AI Forget that we cannot trust self-driving cars and that those flying ones we were promised remain elusive. Two random items this morning reinforce concerns about AI. This one: Followed by this one: Science is an imperfect process, the Hill opinion notes. “Since 1980, more than 40,000 scientific publications have been retracted. They either contained errors, were based on outdated knowledge or were outright frauds.” The problem is that those zombie studies do not disappear simply because they’ve been retrcated. They continue to be cited “unwittingly“: Just by citing a zombie publication, new research becomes infected: A single unreliable citation can threaten the reliability of the research that cites it, and that infection can cascade, spreading across hundreds of papers. A 2019 paper on childhood cancer, for example, cites 51 different retracted papers, making its research likely impossible to salvage. AI relying on undigitized medical knowledge from 1853 may seem unlikely. But relying on 40,000 retracted studies still floating around?
‘Tis the season, so I designed a card. (You may purchase it here if you like. Or any other comparably inappropriate product. I do feel more people ought to confound loved ones by gifting them my socks.) On to further scholarly matters! Ludwig Wittgenstein, his friends said, insisted on ‘soupy’ Christmas cards. In Wittgenstein in […]
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Doctor Who, CM Punk, Invincible, Agatha: Darkhold Diaries, True Detective, Peacemaker, Scott Pilgrim & more!
We’ve raised approximately $4,200.
I’ve recently been revising my book “The Creation of Reality” and it occurred to me that I’d like to release some chapters as part of this fundraiser. The book is written, just not completely edited, so rewards will be released during the fundraiser as the goals are reached.
The first five chapters at $6,200:
1. Introduction (why this matters);
2. Why do our societies make so many miserable?
3. The Social Facts Which Rule Us (Why and how the reality we created bends us to its will.)
4. Being Aware (Until you understand how reality is being created you can’t change it in beneficial ways.)
5. Human Alone (How are our personal reality is created)
Some of these chapters are short, thus five of them rather than the three in the other two tranches.
Chapters six through eight at $8,350.
Indigenous Justice on Movement Memos On November 23, thousands of Indigenous people and allies participated in the annual Indigenous Peoples’ Thanksgiving Sunrise Gathering on Alcatraz Island organized…
. Ein besorgniserregender Aspekt des Wokismus ist seine Besessenheit von Viktimisierung. Die Wokisten konzentrieren sich auf kollektive Viktimisierung anstelle des Individuums. Sie klassifizieren Individuen nach ihrer Zugehörigkeit zu Identitätsgruppen und weisen ihnen einen Opferstatus gemäß diesen Kriterien zu. Diese Herangehensweise reduziert Individuen auf ihre Gruppenidentität und untergräbt so ihre Autonomie und ihre Fähigkeit, sich als […]
Since it’s Thanksgiving weekend, that most venerable of American holidays which enables families to gather once a year to count their blessings, stuff their faces, and endeavor mightily to not bring politics into the conversation, I thought I might mosey on over to the movie pantry and hand-select my top 10 food films. Dig in! Big Night– I have frequently foisted this film on friends and relatives, because after all, it’s important to “…take a bite out of the ass of life!” (as one of the characters demonstrates with voracious aplomb). Two brothers, enterprising businessman Secondo (Stanley Tucci, who also co-wrote and co-directed) and his older sibling Primo (Tony Shalhoub), a gifted chef, open an Italian restaurant but quickly run into financial trouble. Possible salvation arrives via a dubious proposal from a more successful competitor (played by a hammy Ian Holm). The fate of their business hinges on Primo’s ability to conjure up the ultimate feast.
Doctor Who: "The Star Beast" was a winning return to form from Russell T. Davies, David Tennant, Catherine Tate, and director Rachel Talalay.
