Meerkat pups! (Should be Meerkat cubs, no? Kittens? ) For the first time in 16 years, the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) in Washington, D.C., is celebrating the birth of three meerkats. Keepers in the Small Mammal House reported for duty the morning of May 10 and observed that 5-year-old Sadie had given birth overnight. NZCBI had received a recommendation from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Species Survival Plan (SSP) to breed Sadie and the pups’ 6-year-old father Frankie. These pups are the first offspring for Sadie; Frankie sired offspring previously at his former zoo. Meerkats live in groups called mobs that can include as many as 30 individuals, although the average mob size is around 10 to 15 individuals. Visitors can view NZCBI’s meerkat mob—which also includes Sadie’s sister, Stella—at the Small Mammal House. In the wild, meerkat pups typically remain in an underground burrow for about three weeks.
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Air Force denies AI “killed” operators in simulation The Royal Aeronautical Society last week concluded its annual summit in London. The meetup included “just under 70 speakers and 200+ delegates from the armed services industry, academia and the media from around the world to discuss and debate the future size and shape of tomorrow’s combat air and space capabilities.” Among other cheery tech news, under the subhead, “AI – is Skynet here already?“, one Col. Tucker ‘Cinco’ Hamilton, U.S. Air Force Chief of AI Test and Operations, discussed “the benefits and hazards in more autonomous weapon systems.” He’s been involved in developing autonomous control systems for F-16s that have successfully defeated a human adversary in five simulated dogfights. Hamilton cautioned that adolescent AI remains too easy to trick and deceive.
You be the judge All of cable news is saying that DeSantis is out of his corner and taking it to Trump. Ok. We’ll see. But he’s still battling the weirdness factor. And this is definitely weird. Some presidential candidates struggle to nail their message. Ron DeSantis is struggling to nail his NAME. In the early days of his campaign, DeSantis has gone back and forth between pronouncing his name Dee-Santis and Deh-Santis. Why it matters: DeSantis’ dissonance on how to say his name — for years an issue of confusion for his campaign teams — is a curiosity as many GOP leaders and donors wonder whether the Florida governor is ready for the scrutiny of a presidential campaign. What’s happening: During his first week as a candidate, DeSantis pronounced his name “Dee-Santis” during: The video announcing his presidential campaign.
“Liberal bias” press grades Republicans on a curve Dan Pfeiffer is steamed over press coverage of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s avoiding the ” first-ever default in U.S. history” and “a potential global financial collapse.” The press, Pfeiffer complains, is “treating the passage of this basic bill as a significant accomplishment for McCarthy.” He provides a few examples and responds: Everyone, go take a cold shower. McCarthy did the bare minimum required and didn’t get fired (yet) in the process. If folks want to say McCarthy exceeded historically low expectations, fine; but treating him as some conquering hero or the second coming of Lyndon Baines Johnson is ridiculously over the top. The way the media treats McCarthy is part of the broader and very annoying habit of grading Republicans on a curve. The GOP gets participation trophies from the press, while Democrats are often held to much higher standards. It’s true. And that stance is not limited to the press. More-progressive-than-thou (MPTT) activists can be brutal in their denunications of Democratic allies when they feel disappointed.
Well, it appears the House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has survived the tantrum from the right wing Freedom Caucus members after he made a deal with Joe Biden that essentially won none of their priorities and pushed off their next hostage opportunity until 2025. They weren’t happy but they were anxious to get back to screeching about “wokeness”, attacking the “Deep State” and pretending to do investigations into Joe Biden so they let it slide. With that saga ending with a whimper not a bang, it’s time to rejoin the Republican presidential primary clown car. Both front runner former President Donald Trump and his chief rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis were both in Iowa this week wooing the midwestern white conservatives who are the supposed avatars of Real America. Appearing before small intimate crowds isn’t either man’s strong suit but it’s an important rite of passage that even Donald Trump can’t entirely escape. He takes a lot of pictures with fans at Mar-a-Lago but they’ve paid an admission fee.
A collection of hysterical whiners The through line is dominance, dominance by those who believe in their bones in their right (or their tribe’s) to sit atop the human pecking order. All their invocations of freedom? It’s their freedom to set the boundaries of what others may do, say, and believe. And when they sense their control being challenged (even if it’s a mirage), hoo-boy, they turn peevish enough to tan their testicles, storm the Capitol, and disrupt school board meetings. One sees it in the conservative need to turn the screws on the unfortunate. Are there no workhouses? Bring back the treadmill. Far-right Republicans in the House grind their teeth “that the work requirements they wanted to impose on food stamp recipients are less cruel than they’d hoped,” writes Greg Sargent.
Money, candidates, and “a lot of blocking and tackling” Contacts in Florida have said for some time that the Florida Democratic Party was all but dead. And dead broke. Any leadership was coming out of Hillsborough County (Tampa), still active and well-organized under Ione Townsend. The election in February to “the worst job in state politics” of former state agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried as state chair may signal revival. Fried promptly got herself arrested along with Lauren Book, Florida’s senate minority leader, in a protest against Florida’s six-week abortion ban. So, signs of life. And a little fight. Over at The Bulwark today, consultant Steve Shale recounts, in his view, the decade of mistakes that led to Ron DeSantis. (I have not had time to check with Florida insiders for their take, so read on with that caveat.) An outside donor group in 2009 decided it would “supplement to the work of the state party” and construct a “long-term progressive infrastructure” built on the Obama organizing model.
Meet the new Senator from Oklahoma From Daily Kos: The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee meets in their Committee room. The members are listening to testimony on child care. Sen Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the Committee Chairman, is presiding. Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), a Committee member, is the antagonist. The other players include Cheryl Morman – President of the Virginia Alliance for Family Child Care Associations — who is there to testify, as well as others from the early education community. The dialogue It is Mullin’s time to ask questions. You can find the video HERE. He starts by sniping at Sanders. In class, Mullin would have been penalized for using the ad hominem fallacy. Whatever Sanders may or may not be is irrelevant to the quality of the argument Mullin will make with his subsequent questions. Note: It will be an argument and not a search for the truth because this is politics, and the truth is its first victim. Mullin also trots out the straw man fallacy. He says that Sanders is a socialist because Bernie says he is a Democrat [sic] Socialist in his book.
DeSantis thinks that because he won big in Florida he has the secret sauce for America. I hate to tell him, but it’s a big country and Florida is a special case. This piece by Steve Schale, a Democratic operative in Florida, explains what happened there, from his perspective. It is probably somewhat self-serving and I doubt it’s the whole story but it’s a useful bit of information. There is simply no doubt that something terrible happened to Democrats in Florida. Who’s at fault is probably highly contested but I suspect there is probably something to this version of events even if the Florida Democratic Party is the most hapless in the country. He starts off by talking about his own history working on campaigns in Florida for many years. The state was a swing state that tended to go back and forth as they do. I’ll pick up the story in 2008 when Obama won: In 2008, thanks to the resources of the Obama/Biden campaign, we took those fundamentals, expanded them statewide, and built an organization.
And it’s as bad as you remember Oy. Just thought you’d like to know …