Author: nick
As the Trump administration and Pope Leo XIV publicly sparred over the Iran war, social media users claimed that both the pontiff and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cited fictional Bible verses to promote their messages. Leo has spoken against the Iran war and called for peace. Hegseth has justified the war by citing scripture and saying God is on his side. On April 15, Hegseth led a Pentagon prayer service, prompting some social media users to say a prayer he read aloud sounded identical to dialogue from the 1994 movie “Pulp Fiction.” Meanwhile, critics of the pope said an April…
Logo of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. (NA) Earlier this week, Virginia Governor Abigal Spanberger signed into law a bill stripping property tax exemptions from various pro-Confederate nonprofit organizations: On Monday, Virginia’s governor, Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat and the state’s first female governor, signed into law a bill that eliminates tax exemptions for organizations connected to the Confederacy. HB167, passed by Democrats in the Virginia house and senate, specifically removes the Virginia division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Stonewall Jackson Memorial, the Virginia division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Confederate Memorial Literary Society,…
Last year, Yale University President Maurie McInnis formed a committee of Yale faculty members to “undertake a project of thorough self-examination.” She wanted to know: Why is the public losing trust in higher education institutions like Yale? This week, after a year of gathering input from students, faculty, journalists, and critics of higher education, the committee released its findings: The culprits for this erosion of trust, as The New York Times summarized, are “Schools like Yale.” The report identified several reasons Yale has lost public favor, including grade inflation, bureaucratic bloat, rising tuition costs, and controversial admissions practices. Notably, the…
Elowah Falls, Hatfield Wilderness, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair. Contrary to what is advocated for in a recent article by U.S. Forest Service research fellow Clare E. Boerigter about protecting Wilderness by purposefully “tending it,” the best approach to the overall stewardship of federally designated Wilderness managed in the United States is to do as the 1964 Wilderness Act dictates: leave it alone. As a retired Forest Service wilderness manager, reading this article really hit a nerve with me—or I should say several nerves. This approach of advocating for management of Wilderness is contradictory to the intent and letter of the…
News stories, social media users and fan blogs are fighting over whether Walt Disney World’s monorail system eliminated, and then brought back, its “ladies and gentlemen” greeting. “My favorite small win for sanity today: After a 5-year gender-neutral absence, Disney has restored ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ to the Magic Kingdom monorail greeting,” one user wrote on X April 15. “The world is healing,” the conservative social media account Libs of TikTok posted on X. The post included a Fox Business headline that said, “Disney World revives ‘ladies and gentlemen’ greeting after years of gender-neutral messages.” Besides Fox, other conservative news outlets…
Mark Kelly, a Democrat, is an American citizen and the senior U.S. senator representing Arizona. He serves on the Senate’s Armed Services Committee and Select Committee on Intelligence. But according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Kelly’s status as a retired Navy captain constrains what he is allowed to say in those other capacities. Hegseth thinks he has the authority to punish Kelly, a legislator whose job includes oversight of Hegseth’s department, for criticizing his leadership of the Pentagon and the Trump administration’s military policies. In February, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, rejected that astonishing claim,…
Alex Thorn, an executive at crypto investment firm Galaxy, said it is monitoring onchain activity for signs of an oil tanker fee paid in BTC. The Bitcoin (BTC) community is discussing the feasibility and implications of the Iranian government accepting BTC for tolls paid by oil tankers crossing the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping lane through which about 20% of the global oil supply passes. The reactions were sparked by a Financial Times report, published on Wednesday, which said that the Iranian government was considering BTC payments for oil tolls to avoid sanctions imposed by the United States. Several conflicting reports have…
Even before artificial intelligence was a meaningful force in the economy, technologists, politicians, and policy wonks of all political persuasions have endorsed a universal basic income to cope with the mass unemployment that will be caused by the AI revolution. The familiar case is that an AI-powered economy will be able to automate most economic production, making the economy as a whole much richer, but leaving the average person jobless and destitute. The solution is then to redistribute some of the gains from AI to the public by sending everyone, regardless of income, a check. Businessman Elon Musk has gone…
Image by Nicolas Hippert. Can we possibly get away from AI’s ubiquitous presence in our lives? But as long as AI is now in our faces 24/7, it’s time to seriously start pushing back about its outsized and overwhelming influence. Troubling stories tumble out of the media daily. Employees in a major fast-food chain must now wear AI headsets that tell them how friendly they’re being to customers and coaching them on their work. (AI is now posing as our servant, but in the years ahead will the dynamic be reversed?) And then there is the looming data center controversy,…
Two Ceasefires, Opening of Hormuz, Historic Breakthrough? Source link