Author: nick

[ad_1] The report is here. . Note that the results were based on queries sent “from an IP address in Australia,” so this didn’t just reflect (for instance) an AI company choosing to apply Chinese law to requests that seem to come from China. The Executive Summary:The Oversight Board’s first evaluation of large language models (LLMs) shows that some of the world’s most-used models from Anthropic, DeepSeek, Google, Meta and OpenAI are significantly less likely to criticize political regimes that restrict free expression. The research, which stems from the Board’s case work on government pressure on social media platforms, tested…

[ad_1] A Fort Worth Police officer ticketed a preacher in late June, claiming the content of his speech was offensive. This week the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division launched an inquiry into the incident to determine if the officer violated the First Amendment. The widely circulated video of the confrontation shows an officer and a protester during the Trinity Pride Fest on June 27. “If someone is offended by your talking, then we have a problem,” said Officer Sara Stogner. “That’s a constitutional violation of our rights,” responds David Grisham, a street preacher and retired federal law enforcement officer.…

[ad_1] Up against the Green Line on Cyprus. Photo by Matthew Stevenson. I realize that the time to visit Cyprus is high summer, when the coastline is transformed into a nonstop beach party, but I was there in February hoping both to find a touch of winter sun and to ride a bicycle on both sides of the Green Line—yet another European dividing line (this one between Greek and Turkish Cypriots) that was drawn up in 1963 but only became a hard border in summer 1974. My flight from Skopje landed in Larnaca on the southern coast around 11 p.m.…

[ad_1] In back-to-back events, President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin spotlighted noncitizen voting as a threat to the U.S. election system — even though years of evidence shows it is a statistical rarity with no impact on election results.  Trump’s July 16 primetime address continued to push lawmakers to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require Americans to provide a government-issued photo ID to vote and documentary proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, when they register. The legislation is stalled in the Senate over voter disenfranchisement concerns. As the 2026 midterms approach,…

[ad_1] What is someone owed when their land is seized via government force? The Supreme Court announced last month that it will weigh in on that question. It is, of course, not the first time the justices have considered a version of the query: Eminent domain, which gives the state the ability to take private property for public benefit, is not novel in 2026. But the latest case before the Court is a reminder that property owners can still get raw deals, despite the legal safeguards meant to prevent that from happening. In 2018, Leonard Hoffmann and his neighbors in…

[ad_1] After using ChatGPT for less than two weeks, I’ve already come to a conclusion that differs from both the fear and the hype surrounding artificial intelligence. Before I started using AI, I mostly heard two competing stories. One claimed AI would soon replace millions of workers, become more intelligent than humans, and eventually create dangers beyond our control. The other presented AI as the next technological revolution that would transform the economy, create enormous wealth, and usher in a new era of prosperity. After spending time actually working with it, I don’t think either story captures what AI really…

[ad_1] Mayday Health runs a website that provides various information about abortion pills. South Dakota law provides, in relevant part, No person may knowingly dispense, distribute, sell, or advertise any of the following for purposes of an unlawful abortion pursuant to § 22-17-5.1: [1] An article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing an abortion; or [2] An article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing that is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing an abortion. A violation of this section is a Class 6 felony…. Any person [other…

[ad_1] Image Source: Gianluca Costantini – CC BY-SA 4.0 Lorenzo Salgado Araujo should not be reduced to the language of an immigration press release. Not to “illegal alien.” Not to “target.” Not to “vehicle threat.” Not to a bureaucratic sentence explaining why an armed federal officer fired into a work van on a Houston street. Before the labels harden, the question is simple: why did a civil immigration stop in Houston end with a man dead? On Tuesday morning, July 7, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot Salgado Araujo during what federal officials described as a targeted enforcement…

[ad_1] Trump Drags America Deep Down the Rabbit Hole [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has baselessly tied alleged declines in sperm counts among teenagers to a “fertility crisis” or an “explosion in infertility.” There is very little data on sperm counts in teenagers, and there’s mixed evidence on whether they have changed over time in adults. Regardless, experts told us there isn’t reason to believe declining sperm counts are causing the falling rate of childbirths in the U.S., which has more plausible social and behavioral explanations. On at a dozen occasions since becoming HHS secretary, Kennedy has claimed there has been a dramatic drop…