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As regular readers will know, for a long time I’ve emphasized what are now being called tipping points, and in particular the tipping point where permafrost melt becomes self sustaining. As a matter of politics, I’ve been quite sure this would occur, since we aren’t likely to do anything about it.

One model shows that the tipping point is already past. If we were to stop all emissions today, it would still happen and temperatures would still rise.

It’s possible this model is wrong on the margins, but I’d be rather surprised if it’s wrong on the fundamentals. The danger has always been passing the point where humanity was in the driver’s seat. We started global warming climate change, but we can no longer stop it short of, perhaps, some hail-mary geo-engineering.

A world in which machines governed by artificial intelligence (AI) systematically replace human beings in most business, industrial, and professional functions is horrifying to imagine. After all, as prominent computer scientists have been warning us, AI-governed systems are prone to critical errors and inexplicable “hallucinations,” resulting in potentially catastrophic outcomes. But there’s an even more dangerous scenario imaginable from the proliferation of super-intelligent machines: the possibility that those nonhuman entities could end up fighting one another, obliterating all human life in the process. The notion that super-intelligent computers might run amok and slaughter humans has, of course, long been a staple of popular culture. In the prophetic 1983 film “WarGames,” a supercomputer known as WOPR (for War Operation Plan Response... Read more

The following is a transcript of the UN trial of Tony Patterson, a terrible barber charged with crimes against hair-manity. The trial took place at The Hague. The transcript has been edited to highlight portions of Patterson’s cross-examination.

PROSECUTOR: On the morning of April 3rd, [name redacted] walked into King Cutz looking for a high-top fade. Do you recall what you said to him?

TONY: “I got you, bro.”

PROSECUTOR: That sounds like an assurance of quality. And what was the duration of that haircut?

TONY: I knocked it out in eight minutes.

(Murmurs ripple through crowd.)

PROSECUTOR: Hmm, seems pretty fast for the “dope cut” that was promised. Usually, it takes forty minutes to make that shit look fresh. Could it be that you were trying to wrap things up before the Eagles game came on?

TONY: It was the playoffs!

PROSECUTOR: And you were at work. Were you aware that this client was attending a party that night?

The neoliberal obsession with privatising essential industries and services is haunting the UK. Profiteering by gas, oil, railways, mail and other entities is the root cause of the current high inflation and misery for millions. The water industry has been hoisted by its own profiteering, and Thames Water, England’s largest water and sewage business, is […]

Since ratifying a contract, academic workers at University of California, San Diego have faced what they say is an escalating retaliation campaign.

The post California Grad Students Won a Historic Strike. UC San Diego Is Striking Back With Misconduct Allegations and Arrests. appeared first on The Intercept.

- by Shayla Love

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