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Secretaries of state urge Musk to fix AI chatbot spreading false election info

Secretaries of state urge Musk to fix AI chatbot spreading false election info

The Washington Post reports: Five secretaries of state plan to send an open letter to billionaire Elon Musk on Monday, urging him to “immediately implement changes” to X’s AI chatbot Grok, after it shared with millions of users false information suggesting that Kamala Harris was not eligible to appear on the 2024 presidential ballot. The letter, spearheaded by Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon and signed by his counterparts Al Schmidt of Pennsylvania, Steve Hobbs of Washington, Jocelyn Benson of…

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Israeli jails holding Palestinian prisoners have become ‘torture camps,’ B’Tselem reports

Israeli jails holding Palestinian prisoners have become ‘torture camps,’ B’Tselem reports

The Guardian reports: Violence, extreme hunger, humiliation and other abuse of Palestinian prisoners has been normalised across Israel’s jail system, according to Guardian interviews with released prisoners, with mistreatment now so systemic that rights group B’Tselem says it must be considered a policy of “institutionalised abuse”. Former detainees described abuse ranging from severe beatings and sexual violence to starvation rations, refusal of medical care, and deprivation of basic needs including water, daylight, electricity and sanitation, including soap and sanitary pads…

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Netanyahu says ‘victory’ over Hamas is in sight. The data tells a different story

Netanyahu says ‘victory’ over Hamas is in sight. The data tells a different story

CNN reports: Nearly half of Hamas’ military battalions in northern and central Gaza have rebuilt some of their fighting capabilities despite more than nine months of Israel’s brutal offensive, according to analyses by the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, the Institute for the Study of War and CNN. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces growing international pressure to agree to a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, has repeatedly said that Israeli forces are nearing their stated…

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In 2014, RFK Jr. dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park and tried to fake its cause of death

In 2014, RFK Jr. dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park and tried to fake its cause of death

The New York Times reports: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate, confessed on Sunday that he had left a dead bear cub in Central Park in Manhattan in 2014 because he thought it would be “amusing.” Mr. Kennedy posted a video detailing the bizarre story on social media ahead of an article in The New Yorker that mentions the incident. “Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one,” he said, tagging the magazine. In the video, Mr….

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Cells across the body talk to each other about aging

Cells across the body talk to each other about aging

Viviane Callier writes: Aging can seem like an unregulated process: As time marches along, our cells and bodies inevitably accumulate dings and dents that cause dysfunctions, failures and ultimately death. However, in 1993 a discovery upended that interpretation of events. Researchers found a mutation in a single gene that doubled a worm’s life span; subsequent work showed that related genes, all involved in the response to insulin, are key regulators of aging in a host of animals, from worms and…

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The antidemocratic politics of the broligarchs

The antidemocratic politics of the broligarchs

Brooke Harrington writes: Eight years ago, the PayPal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel was an outlier in liberal Silicon Valley for publicly supporting Donald Trump. But now a number of prominent male tech plutocrats who previously opposed the former president have done an about-face: These broligarchs are publicly endorsing and donating to the Republican candidate—and revealing a lot about their own priorities. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who according to his biographer once waited in line for six hours…

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Elon Musk’s X is spreading deepfakes of Kamala Harris

Elon Musk’s X is spreading deepfakes of Kamala Harris

Mother Jones reports: For the second time in less than two weeks, a doctored video of Vice President Kamala Harris has spread widely on Elon Musk’s social media platform X. A video known as a “deepfake” that was posted on X on Saturday appears to show Harris repeating herself over and over again, using a crude audio rendering made to seem like Harris is struggling to finish a complete sentence. The altered video uses footage from an appearance by Harris…

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The far right has moved online, where its voice is more dangerous than ever

The far right has moved online, where its voice is more dangerous than ever

The Observer reports: The resurgence of far-right violence in the UK is in part due to Elon Musk’s decision to allow figures such as Tommy Robinson back on to the social media platform X, researchers say. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, and those of his ilk are not leaders in the traditional sense and the far right has no central organisation capable of directing the disorder and violence that has been seen, experts say. Jacob Davey, director of…

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How a Washington tax break for data centers snowballed into one of the state’s biggest corporate giveaways

How a Washington tax break for data centers snowballed into one of the state’s biggest corporate giveaways

By Lulu Ramadan and Sydney Brownstone, The Seattle Times, photography by Karen Ducey, The Seattle Times This story was originally published by ProPublica In 2010, as the country still reeled from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, tech companies, real estate developers and rural lobbyists went to the state Capitol in Olympia, Washington, to press for a tax break for data centers. Turning it down, supporters argued, would mean rejecting high-paying, long-term and environmentally friendly jobs in distressed…

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Trump claims he’s pro-worker. Project 2025 will gut labor rights

Trump claims he’s pro-worker. Project 2025 will gut labor rights

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump proclaimed he was for “all the forgotten men and women”, in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention. His vice-presidential pick JD Vance consistently portrays himself as a pro-worker populist. But an analysis of the labor chapter of Project 2025 – an ambitious rightwing plan to guide the next Republican presidency – found it has little to offer them. Project 2025’s labor section proposes hardly anything to improve workers’ wages and working conditions. It is,…

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What’s rattling Trump: The size of Harris’s crowds

What’s rattling Trump: The size of Harris’s crowds

Shawn McCreesh writes: When former President Donald J. Trump walked onto the stage at his rally in Atlanta on Saturday, fog machines shot white plumes of smoke into the air, heralding his arrival. If you looked closely, you could almost imagine steam pouring out of his ears, too. All week long, something had been giving him the vapors. “Crazy Kamala,” he fumed a minute into his speech. “She was here a week ago — lots of empty seats — but…

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In the Milky Way’s stars, a history of violence

In the Milky Way’s stars, a history of violence

Rebecca Boyle writes: Late in the evening of October 5, 1923, Edwin Hubble sat at the eyepiece of the Hooker telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory, atop the mountains overlooking the Los Angeles basin. He was observing an object in the northern sky. To the unaided eye, it was visible as a faint smudge. But through a telescope it sharpened into a brilliant ellipse called the Andromeda Nebula. To settle a debate about the size of the Milky Way —…

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What Donald Trump doesn’t understand about race in America

What Donald Trump doesn’t understand about race in America

Teresa Wiltz writes: For most of its history, America decreed that anyone with any African ancestry was Black — and rumors of purported Blackness could derail a career, a marriage, a life. Now, the irony is that some feel comfortable accusing those same people of making up their Blackness altogether — or not being “fully Black” if they come from multiple racial backgrounds. But the problem with trying to decide who qualifies as Black and who doesn’t is that there…

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How JD Vance thinks about power

How JD Vance thinks about power

The New York Times reports: In September 2021, JD Vance offered two predictions about former President Donald J. Trump and one piece of advice. Mr. Trump would run again in 2024, Mr. Vance said. He would win. And when he did, Mr. Vance counseled, he needed the right people around him this time. “Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people,” Mr. Vance said on a podcast. He continued. “Then when…

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