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Child soldiers, unending war, grinding poverty, blood diamonds, blood batteries and now volcanoes. One of the most tragic and forgotten places on earth. More coverage is allotted to George Floyd and Bill Cosby than the Congo.

Apocalyptic scenes in eastern Congo as a volcanic eruption triggers earthquakes and fears of Lake Kivu methane explosions

Mount Nyiragongo has erupted for the second time in 20 years in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and officials warn that another eruption could follow.

Money quote:

While the military relied on what was already available on the civilian market and adapted it for military purposes – in the years prior to the fighting – the IDF established an advanced AI technological platform that centralized all data on terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip onto one system that enabled the analysis and extraction of the intelligence.

Jerusalem Post

Israel’s operation against Hamas was the world’s first AI war

The IDF used artificial intelligence and supercomputing during the last conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Complains he was put on hold when he called the police.

Atlanta councilman who voted for ‘Defund the Police’ has car stolen

While at a ribbon-cutting ceremony in northwest Atlanta on Wednesday morning, four people hopped into Antonio Brown’s car and took off.

Like when the Night King walks through dragon napalm without getting a hair out of place.

Democratic lawmakers who called for Cuomo’s resignation now praise him at pressers

As more time separates Gov. Andrew Cuomo from his sexual harassment scandal, New York Democrats who called for his resignation are now returning to his side and praising his leadership skills.

In a way it proves nothing. Assertions are true or false because they are or they aren’t. Facebook has no power over factuality.

Facebook will no longer remove claims that Covid-19 was man-made

Facebook said it’s no longer removing from its platforms claims that coronavirus was man-made.

The president’s plans to invest in infrastructure, education, health care and more would push federal spending to its highest sustained levels since World War II.

Biden to Propose $6 Trillion Budget to Boost Middle Class and Infrastructure

The president’s plans to invest in infrastructure, education, health care and more would push federal spending to its highest sustained levels since World War II.

China better find the missing link “Species X” before the public finds out what “gain of function” means.

Chinese media accuses Fauci of ‘fanning huge lie’ of lab leak theory

The infectious disease expert added fuel to the fire amid increasing speculation that the virus was leaked from the Institute of Virology in Wuhan rather than the city’s wet market.

Accidents, including deadly ones, caused by software or industrial robots, can be traced to the early days of such technology but they are not a direct consequence of the particulars of the intelligence available in such systems. AI failures, on the other hand, are directly related to the mistakes produced by the intelligence that such systems are designed to exhibit.

AI Accidents: Past and Future – Tec-Bite IT-Security Blog

A day does not go by without a news article reporting some amazing breakthrough in artificial intelligence. Consider some developments.

Tomorrow’s headlines are already written. It’s what happened yesterday that’s still to be decided.

Former Seattle Police Chief Says Media Downplayed Violence At CHOP To Make It Appear Peaceful

Former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best, who resigned last summer after the Seattle City Council voted to cut millions of dollars from the Seattle Police

“I have now asked the intelligence community to redouble their efforts to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion, and to report back to me in 90 days,” Mr. Biden said. “As part of that report, I have asked for areas of further inquiry that may be required, including specific questions for China.”

Biden Calls for Intelligence Report on Origins of Covid-19

The president has asked the U.S. intelligence community to report to him within 90 days on questions surrounding the origins of the virus as scrutiny persists over a possible laboratory leak in Wuhan, China.

Maybe China believes in itself unlike a certain civilization filled with trendy self-loathing.

Why is ethnic fraud so common in academia? Because it pays. The more important question is why does it pay?

The Native Scholar Who Wasn’t

More than a decade ago, a prominent academic was exposed for having faked her Cherokee ancestry. Why has her career continued to thrive?

The problem with current CRISPR-based gene drive systems is that they can spread indefinitely—potentially affecting every population of the target species throughout the world. It’s unclear how such “global” drives can be safely tested, much less whether nations will ever agree to use them. To return power to the hands of local communities, we devised a new form of drive system called a “daisy drive” that can only affect local environments. The trick was to teach DNA to count and limit gene drive spreading to a pre-programmed number of generations. We hope that daisy drives will simplify decision-making and promote responsible use by allowing local communities to decide how to solve their own ecological problems.

Project Overview ‹ Daisy Drives – MIT Media Lab

Who should decide whether, when, and how to alter the environment? These are hard questions, especially when the decisions will impact people in many differe…

“You gotta go where the action is,” Fauci explained on Tuesday, as he faced questions about the increasingly popular lab-origin theory from Republicans during testimony before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. …

“It would have been almost a dereliction of our duty if we didn’t study this,” Fauci said on Tuesday, meaning that cooperation with Chinese authorities was necessary. “You don’t want to study bats in Fairfax County, [Va.,] to find out what the animal-human interface is that might lead to a jumping of species.”

Fauci defends cooperation with Chinese lab to study coronavirus origins

With questions persisting about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top science adviser to the Biden administration, defended having previously helped fund research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese laboratory where some believe the pathogen known as SARS-CoV-2 …

Europeans gasped with horror when Belarusian authorities forced a Ryanair flight to land in Minsk to detain a young journalist.

Why Belarus’s brazen dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, thinks the West can do little to stop him / Twitter

Is it time to end sanitation theater? Hygiene theater will end right around the time security theater does.

Child in 2019 taking off his shoes prior to boarding plane: “Daddy what’s 9/11?’

Child turning briefly from Zoom in 2039: “Daddy, what’s air travel?”

Is it time to do away with hygiene theatre? Experts say yes / Twitter

Why are Biden and the media suddenly open to the former “conspiracy theory” of a lab origin of the coronavirus pandemic. First it was never purely a conspiracy theory. From the beginning many reputable experts urged the possibility be investigated. What may be happening is the tide is turning within the bureaucratic scientific establishment. As we learn more about the virus and the so-called missing link continues to be missing it is becoming increasingly difficult to blithely accept the original MSM assurance.

What really terrified the dogs chasing the China car was not the lack of science but what to do if they caught it.

WSJ News Exclusive | Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin

Three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a U.S. intelligence report, fueling debate over Covid-19’s origin.

It has all of the elements of a Jason Bourne plot: A commercial flight carrying a dissident journalist is intercepted by a MiG-29 fighter jet under orders from the strongman president of Belarus.

Who Is Roman Protasevich, the Captive Journalist in Belarus?

Mr. Protasevich, 26, is an exiled dissident whose reach drew an authoritarian ruler into a gambit that outraged Western governments.

New at the Belmont Club. Religions in disguise.

Every Revolutionary is a Prophet of Sorts

Hijacking the kernel of our human operating system