onfocus

“The President is only conceivably harmed by an injunction barring executive action if that court order is preventing him from doing something the law permits him to do,” she wrote. Given that nothing in the Constitution empowers him to prescribe the form of mail-in ballots in California or anywhere, Jackson concluded, the holding in Trump v. California is tantamount to asserting that “the President must be injured whenever he is prevented from doing something as he wishes.”

So grateful Justice Ketanji Brown is on the court and willing to call out her colleagues' corruption. It's not much comfort compared to real justice but at least there's a voice of reason in the record of this completely lawless court. By the way, court reform should be the top topic of discussion for Democrats.

Kasoa is a snapshot of how unplanned urbanization is unfolding in the region. Its population growth is far outpacing the creation of new roads and other public development.

“In Kasoa, things are much easier,” George says, “for now.” The growing influx is slowly driving up prices here too. “Maybe in a few years, we’ll have to move again.”

Not a fan of this scroll-to-view style, but this is some excellent reporting and pictures from a trip along the coast of West Africa.

Residents must decide when to leave, what to take, which route to follow and where to go, often while under intense stress. Research has consistently shown that factors such as risk perception, preparedness, confidence in evacuation plans and familiarity with local routes all influence whether people evacuate early, delay leaving or choose to stay behind.

Some positive news from the Spokane fires. Every community with a similar threat level should be having evacuation drills.

“I don’t really care about those labels nowadays,” Kelly said, when asked about Mamdani being a socialist. “I like that he stands for making sure nobody seems to feel marginalized, like we’re all in this together, we all win together.

“If that’s what socialism is,” she added, “I’m all for it!”

Sounds pretty scary.

Executives that tell the press that their company has gone insane will quickly find themselves removed from their positions. Employees who are honest will find themselves fired in short-order, or “randomly” selected for a round of layoffs. In fact, it is in the interests of almost every actor in the space – boards, executives, employees, vendors, consultants – to obfuscate and misrepresent the success rate of AI projects.

There's a secret underground of AI skeptics and they can't speak up without losing their jobs because the culture is all-in.

As in his previous films, Nolan is interested in the discontinuities of space and time, in magic, tricks, craft, technology, rivalry, substitution, masks, miscommunication, what we remember and what we choose to forget. Yet again, survival is portrayed as a kind of triumph. Yet again, there are long, claustrophobic scenes of drowning and near-drowning, and technically impressive episodes in which buildings are engulfed in flames and vehicles explode. Yet again, we watch a male character’s desperate quest to recover and/or avenge a female love object. I had hoped that Nolan’s affinity with these Homeric themes might push him to new creative heights, and enable him to conjure more believable characters. But The Odyssey features his usual combination of grandiosity and superficiality.

A no-holds-barred review of The Odyssey movie by the woman who translated Homer's epic poem for a modern audience. I enjoyed her translation and the movie and I can see all of her points here. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It's a good story.

See also.

Literally a couple months ago Marc Andreessen was on Joe Rogan talking about how these dumb young progressive kids support “socialism” even though “it never works.” Meanwhile, Andreessen was just appointed by Trump to some government policy board. As Trump literally nationalizes parts of the AI industry that Andreessen insisted the prior administration was going to destroy through its woke anti-capitalist policies.

I know it's tired to point out Republican hypocrisy because that's their happy place, but come on. The supposed party of small government is only concerned about the size when the benefits of government are going to people who aren't already wealthy.

These are words that cast systems as doing the same work as people in various roles, and serve to hide all of the ways in which such automation falls short of what is needed all the while devaluing the actual work that people do and relationships that we form. Calling systems tutor or co-creator are overclaims that describe what a developer might wish they could develop—for those who want to replace people in these roles.

For this category, our recommendation is to use language that describes algorithms as tools (or products) that people use, rather than as human-like entities, and more clearly indicates system functionality while also not telegraphing a plan to replace people.

Nice discussion of ways to talk about tools that more accurately describes how they work.

“Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product.”

I assume the people who pushed for layoffs have been promoted and given bonuses. We never hear that side of the story.

"I think we are seeing a hunger that is not just felt by New Yorkers, but frankly by Americans from coast to coast, for a new kind of politics, one that puts working people at the heart of it," Mamdani said.

Agreed!

If you’re a multibillionaire, you might view democracy as a potential threat to your net worth. Control over a significant share of the dwindling number of media outlets would enable you to effectively hedge against democracy by suppressing criticism of you and other plutocrats, and discouraging any attempt to – for example – tax away your wealth.

They should just call all of these billionaire owned media outlets conflict-of-interest journalism.

Elon Musk's destruction of USAID is his single worst act, and I think it is beginning to dawn on him that he will be held responsible for his role in killing millions of children.

Jamelle Bouie has been on a tear lately. It's worth tuning into his YouTube channel.