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feminist-space · 13 days ago

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"Balaji’s death comes three months after he publicly accused OpenAI of violating U.S. copyright law while developing ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence program that has become a moneymaking sensation used by hundreds of millions of people across the world.

Its public release in late 2022 spurred a torrent of lawsuits against OpenAI from authors, computer programmers and journalists, who say the company illegally stole their copyrighted material to train its program and elevate its value past $150 billion.

The Mercury News and seven sister news outlets are among several newspapers, including the New York Times, to sue OpenAI in the past year.

In an interview with the New York Times published Oct. 23, Balaji argued OpenAI was harming businesses and entrepreneurs whose data were used to train ChatGPT.

“If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company,” he told the outlet, adding that “this is not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole.”

Balaji grew up in Cupertino before attending UC Berkeley to study computer science. It was then he became a believer in the potential benefits that artificial intelligence could offer society, including its ability to cure diseases and stop aging, the Times reported. “I thought we could invent some kind of scientist that could help solve them,” he told the newspaper.

But his outlook began to sour in 2022, two years after joining OpenAI as a researcher. He grew particularly concerned about his assignment of gathering data from the internet for the company’s GPT-4 program, which analyzed text from nearly the entire internet to train its artificial intelligence program, the news outlet reported.

The practice, he told the Times, ran afoul of the country’s “fair use” laws governing how people can use previously published work. In late October, he posted an analysis on his personal website arguing that point.

No known factors “seem to weigh in favor of ChatGPT being a fair use of its training data,” Balaji wrote. “That being said, none of the arguments here are fundamentally specific to ChatGPT either, and similar arguments could be made for many generative AI products in a wide variety of domains.”

Reached by this news agency, Balaji’s mother requested privacy while grieving the death of her son.

In a Nov. 18 letter filed in federal court, attorneys for The New York Times named Balaji as someone who had “unique and relevant documents” that would support their case against OpenAI. He was among at least 12 people — many of them past or present OpenAI employees — the newspaper had named in court filings as having material helpful to their case, ahead of depositions."

#whistleblower #open ai whistleblower #open ai #suchir balaji #may his memory be a blessing

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fairuzfan · 7 months ago

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Intel Corp (INTC.O), opens new tab is halting plans for a $25-billion factory in Israel, Israeli financial news website Calcalist said on Monday, in a report that the chipmaker did not confirm or deny.

The U.S. company, asked about the report, cited the need to adapt big projects to changing timelines, without directly referring to the project.

"Israel continues to be one of our key global manufacturing and R&D sites and we remain fully committed to the region," Intel said in a statement.

"Managing large-scale projects, especially in our industry, often involves adapting to changing timelines. Our decisions are based on business conditions, market dynamics and responsible capital management," it said.

Israel's government in December agreed to give Intel a $3.2-billion grant to build the $25-billion chip plant in southern Israel.

Intel has previously said that the factory proposed for its Kiryat Gat site, where it has an existing chip plant, was an "important part of Intel’s efforts to foster a more resilient global supply chain" alongside the company’s investments in Europe and the United States.

Intel operates four development and production sites in Israel, including its manufacturing plant in Kiryat Gat called Fab 28. The factory produces Intel 7 technology, or 10-nanometer chips.

The planned Fab 38 plant was due to open in 2028 and operate through 2035.

Intel employs nearly 12,000 people in Israel.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/intel-halting-25-billion-factory-expansion-israel-israeli-media-report-2024-06-10/

#palestine

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misfitwashere · 25 days ago

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Musk’s dangerous bullying

ROBERT REICH

DEC 2

Friends,

No one better illustrates the sinister consequences of great wealth turned into unaccountable power than Elon Musk.

Musk, the richest person in the world, is not only claiming presidential authority to fire federal workers, but he’s posting the identities of those whose jobs he wants to eliminate — with the clear intention that his followers harass and threaten them so they quit.

Musk is utterly unaccountable. He has never been elected to anything, but he spent $120 million helping Trump become the president-elect and is now acting as if he’s Trump’s co-president, calling himself Trump’s “First Buddy.”

After buying Twitter for $44 billion, Musk turned it into a cesspool of disinformation and conspiracy theories and manipulated its algorithm to give himself 205 million followers, to whom he is now distributing treacherous lies.

In recent days, Musk boosted posts on his website singling out the names and job titles of four federal employees working in climate policy and regulation who have done nothing other than hold titles Musk dislikes. All four targets are women.

In one instance, Musk quote-tweeted a post highlighting the role of 37-year-old Ashley Thomas, a little-known director of climate diversification at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation.

Musk’s repost — “So many fake jobs” — garnered 32 million views, triggering a tsunami of taunts against Thomas, such as, “Sorry Ashley Thomas Gravy Train is Over” and “A tough way for Ashley Thomas to find out she’s losing her job.”

Musk apparently took the word “diversification” in Thomas’s title to mean the “D” in “DEI,” which Musk considers “woke.”

Thomas (who holds degrees in engineering, business, and water science from Oxford and MIT) is focused on climate diversification to protect agriculture and infrastructure from extreme weather events.

Following Musk’s tweet, Thomas shut down several of her social media accounts.

In another repost, Musk mocked Alexis Pelosi, a relative of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who works as a senior adviser to climate change at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“Nancy Pelosi’s niece should not be paid $181,648.00 by the U.S. Taxpayer to be the ‘Climate Advisor’ at HUD,” the original account wrote. “But maybe her advice is amazing 🤣🤣” Musk snarked.

Musk also singled out the chief climate officer in the Department of Energy’s loan programs office and shared the name of an employee serving as senior adviser on environmental justice and climate change at the Department of Health and Human Services.

IMHO, Musk’s targets should sue him for defamation.

This is hardly the first time Musk has targeted specific people, and he obviously knows how dangerous such targeting can be.

After taking over Twitter in 2022, Musk targeted Yoel Roth, the platform’s former head of trust and safety, who had recently left the company. Musk tweeted, incorrectly, that it looked like Roth had argued “in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services.” Some platform users interpreted this as Musk calling Roth a pedophile, and they posted calls for Roth’s death.

Roth moved out of his house because of the threats.

Musk has also singled out specific civil servants. In 2021, he targeted Missy Cummings, a former fighter pilot and senior adviser at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, whom Musk claimed was “extremely biased against Tesla” because she questioned the safety of Tesla’s advanced driver-assistance system.

Cummings said she received death threats and was forced to leave her home as a result of Musk’s posts.

Musk’s current targeting is even more dangerous because he has the apparent authority of the president-elect. Although the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” that Musk is co-heading (with Vivek Ramaswamy) isn’t a real department and has not been authorized by Congress, Musk is acting as if it’s real.

Cummings says Musk’s personal intimidation is already leading some longtime federal employees to leave their jobs: “He intended for them, for people just like this, to be intimidated and just go ahead and quit so he didn’t have to fire them. So his plan, to some extent, is working.”

I worked in the federal government between 1974 and 1980, first at the Federal Trade Commission and then at the Justice Department, and from 1993 to 1997 I served as secretary of labor.

Most of the federal employees I came to know cared deeply about the common good. The vast majority did their work carefully and thoughtfully. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

But ever since Richard Nixon attacked “unelected bureaucrats” as America’s enemy and Ronald Reagan blamed “liberal bureaucrats” for government’s failings, government employees have been scapegoated. And now Trump is preparing to attack the so-called “deep state.”

In fact, America spends less each year on the federal government’s civilian workforce (roughly $200 billion) than we spend annually on federal contractors ($750 billion).

Much of the “fat” is found in these private, for-profit contractors, who aren’t accountable to anyone except the office that draws up the contracts.

The biggest waste is in the Defense Department, where many contractors have avoided competitive bidding because they have a monopoly over critical technologies.

Which brings me back to Musk, whose businesses are fast becoming among the government’s largest contract monopolists. According to USASpending.gov (the government database that tracks federal spending), Musk’s SpaceX and his Starlink satellite division have signed contracts totaling nearly $20 billion.

I don’t know how much waste and inefficiency are to be found in Musk’s government contracts because I haven’t been able to find any reports on them — which is precisely the problem.

While Musk seeks to intimidate federal civil servants whose job titles he dislikes, forcing some to leave government because his postings have elicited threats to their lives, Musk is distracting attention from himself and his own profitable dips into the taxpayer trough.

I invite any of you with an inclination to root out waste and inefficiency to find out what you can about any likely abuses in Musk’s government contracts, and let us know what you come up with.

#robert reich

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ndconceptarchive · 2 months ago

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Adventure Classic Gaming Interview with Megan Gaiser, Carolyn Bickford, and Sheri Hargus

Adventure Classic Gaming was,

"the premiere website dedicated to classic and retro adventure gaming. We seek to be a comprehensive online resource on classic adventure games and interactive fiction. Our site covers all gaming platforms, both computers and consoles. We cover games by both independent and commercial developers."

It appears that it's now defunct seeing as the most recent articles were uploaded in 2014, but you can still access the website even though it appears to be missing a CSS file.

Here is an interview from the website with Megan Gaiser in promotion for Stay Tuned for Danger published on June 12, 2000:

Founded in 1995, Her Interactive has taken a pioneering role in attracting girls to computer technology through attractive role-playing. The mission of this Washington-based publisher is to design, develop, and market intelligent interactive games for girls.

In 1997, the company has obtained a license from Simon & Schuster to develop an interactive mystery game series based on the legendary teen detective Nancy Drew. Its flagship titles, Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill and Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned for Danger, have received high praises from both critics and parents.

In this exclusive interview, Megan Gaiser (President), Carolyn Bickford (VP Sales and Marketing), and Sheri Hargus (Development Manager) speak about the company's unique mission, the popularity of Nancy Drew, and what holds in the future for this interactive series.

Sheri Hargus, Development Manager; Carolyn Bickford, VP Sales and Marketing; Megan Gaiser, President (left to right).

What (or who) is the inspiration behind the idea of taking Nancy Drew onto the computer screen?

Megan Gaiser: There are many reasons why we chose Nancy Drew to star in her own computer game series. History was one. Nancy Drew has fascinated girls for generations. We remembered as girls how eagerly we looked forward to getting our hands on the next Nancy Drew book - and realized that if we could create the same kind of anticipation for our games we would have major hits. Also, Nancy Drew is a powerful role model - she's brilliant, intrepid, and successful.

The Nancy Drew mysteries fit our search for content that was non-violent and that didn't rely on gender stereotypes. And, last but not least, mysteries make a great foundation for intelligent entertainment. Their complex plots provide infinite opportunity for adventure, exploration, and problem solving. There's a ready-made sense of community, as players seek help and advice from characters inside the game, from friends and family, and from online resources. Community is key to our plans to enhance our online presence.

Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned for Danger is developed and published by HerInteractive.com. HerInteractive.com has a unique mandate in developing non-violent games specifically for girls. Can you explain more fully about your company's unique mission? How do you plan to accomplish this mandate?

Megan Gaiser: Indeed, we are the only developer in the U.S. focused exclusively on the girls market, which is rather bizarre. There are more than 70 million girls in our target age range, and they have about $45 billion to spend each year. All of this potential has been largely ignored by the computer game industry, which found it could sell a lot of violent action games targeting the male audience, and has stayed in that rut ever since.

The market penetration for male-targeted games is near the saturation point. But there's still a wide-open opportunity to target the female half of the population. A recent study published by the American Association of University Women found that girls were largely turned off by the violent and repetitive nature of most games. If they're not buying games in large numbers, it's not because they don't like to play games, it's because few developers are designing games that appeal to them.

And those that do tend to rely pretty heavily on pink packaging, boy-talk and clothes. To assume that those are the only things girls are interested in is absurd. Our games don't use gender stereotypes to appeal to girls. Instead, they rely on the intrigue of a good mystery, and a smart, gutsy heroine. We believe that there should be as many types of games as there are types of girls. That creates such an exciting opportunity, and Nancy Drew is just the beginning.

For those readers who are unfamiliar with Nancy Drew, can you tell us a bit about the background of the legendary teen detective?

Megan Gaiser: Nancy Drew has been solving mysteries and inspiring millions of avid fans for 70 years.

Back in 1905, a writer named Edward Stratemeyer started a company that developed series of books for children. Edward would dream up plots and characters, and hire ghostwriters to write the books under pen names. He created the Hardy Boys in 1927, and just a few years later, he created Nancy Drew. When he died, his daughters ran the company and continued the Nancy Drew tradition.

Edward Stratemeyer's daughters, Harriet Adams and Edna Stratemeyer, made all decisions about what would happen with the Nancy Drew character. This was back in the 1930s when it was highly unusual for women to run a business. Their first ghostwriter for Nancy Drew was a strong, independent woman named Mildred Wirt Benson.

She was an athlete and a journalist, and she wrote Nancy to be just as adventurous as she was. As a matter of fact, at age 94 she's still a journalist, writing for her small town paper. HerInteractive.com sent her a copy of our first title, Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill - and she loved it! "Your computer game does exactly what I did when I was writing the books," she wrote. "It makes girls feel like they ARE Nancy Drew!"

In 1979 the Stratemeyer Syndicate signed a deal with Simon & Schuster to publish new books in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. In 1982 Harriet Adams died, and in 1984 Simon & Schuster purchased the Syndicate, becoming both owner and publisher of Nancy Drew. Pocket Books gave the heroine a new look and updated the setting to appeal to Nancy's most recent generation of readers.

Her loyal girl friends Bess Marvin and George (Georgia) Fayne are still at her side, as is her boyfriend, Ned Nickerson. Nancy Drew's popularity spans the globe — she is currently translated into French, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Dutch, Spanish, German, Brazilian, Portuguese, Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Malaysian. Over the years, she has been featured in movies and on television, and even had her own board game.

The core of the Nancy Drew publishing program, the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, continues to be published six times a year by Pocket Books' Minstrel Book imprint. There are several other Nancy Drew series currently in publication, and a hot market exists for out-of-print copies of the original Nancy Drew books.

In 1998, HerInteractive.com brought Nancy Drew to the computer screen with the publication of Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill, followed in 1999 by Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned for Danger. Our goal is to make sure that the legendary teen detective clicks with a new generation.

Obtaining the license to use Nancy Drew must be a triumphal accomplishment for the company. How did you do it?

Megan Gaiser: We made a strong case to Simon and Schuster, convincing them that we had the talent, and the passion, to faithfully adapt their teen icon to the computer screen. The critical success of our earlier work played a big part. We have a highly qualified development team.

In addition, we demonstrated a clear understanding of what girls were looking for in computer games, based on extensive focus group research and input from our Teen Advisory Board.

Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill and Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned for Danger are two titles from the Nancy Drew: Interactive Mystery Games series. How many titles are planned for the series? At what stages of development are they now?

Megan Gaiser: Nancy Drew: Message in the Haunted Mansion is in development and scheduled for a September release. There are over 140 books in the Nancy Dew series - so we certainly have a wealth of content for future games. We believe that we can create a new generation of Nancy Drew fans who eagerly await each new interactive mystery. And now broadband and the Internet offer Nancy a whole new environment to explore, and we intend to take her there.

How long did it take to develop each game? Are all designing tools developed in-house?

Sheri Hargus: It takes from nine months to one year to develop each game. This is the total time from game conception to shipment. The entire team participates in the design process and we spend a good deal of time up front in developing the plot, characters, environments, puzzles and game flow. We have found that early attention to the entire design allows us to stay on schedule and create a superior product.

The art team uses mostly off-the-shelf tools such as Photoshop and 3D Studio Max. The programming is done in C++ and is built upon a proprietary game engine that has been developed internally. DirectDraw is also used and installed as part of the game installation.

At what age of audience do your games aim? What do you feel are the key attractions of the Nancy Drew Interactive Mystery Games?

Megan Gaiser: Our games are designed for girls ages 10 - 15. We are finding that their appeal is actually much broader than that; younger girls are playing them with their sisters or their moms.

And women who grew up devouring every Nancy Drew mystery are eagerly buying the games for themselves. Many computer games portray women in very limited roles - women are too often just the "prize" or the damsel in distress. Nancy Drew breaks many of these molds — she's smart, self-reliant, adventurous — and in the end she is always successful.

In the gaming industry, until recently, girls were never really asked what they wanted in computer games. We asked, and heard they were not satisfied with the status quo of computer gaming: the violence, the lack of storylines, the secret rules. This led us to breakthrough ideas that are a step forward for the gaming industry as a whole. We incorporated all of this knowledge into the Nancy Drew games. And we listen carefully, and then act on, all of the feedback we get from every game.

What is the style of game play in Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned for Danger?

Sheri Hargus: The game is a visually stunning single-person adventure and problem-solving interactive mystery. The player navigates smoothly through different game locations, seeing everything through the eyes of Nancy Drew. Each location has rooms and environments to explore; it's loaded with clues, puzzles and other characters. Interaction with characters is through a dialog box where the player is allowed to select different responses and questions while engaged in conversations with the game characters.

The player has the ability to turn completely around in any node by clicking on the left or right sides of the game window. Player input occurs through mouse clicking on hotspots with occasional keyboard input also needed. The player can fail the game in several ways but it is always possible to restart and try again from the same game position. On the average, it takes 10-20 hours for a player to successfully solve the mystery and complete the game.

Both Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill and Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned for Danger won numerous praises from critics, but what kind of feedback have you got from parents?

Megan Gaiser: We just found out that Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned for Danger is the winner of this year's prestigious Parents' Choice Gold Award for software in the 10 - 18 age group. That reflects the positive reception we've received from so many parents. Our games are cool without cruelty, the perfect answer for parents who would like to give their teen a non-violent game that's not totally lame.

We have heard from moms and daughters who have had a great time solving our interactive mysteries together. It takes on average about 15 hours to crack the case, and two heads are always better than one. Mothers tell us they really like sharing the Nancy they grew up with their daughters. Plus, they have a lot of fun playing the game. We have found that moms (and even dads) are avid participants in many of the online chats about the games - so we know that girls aren't the only people playing our games!

How can we order these games? Are they available only online (rather than retail sales)? If so, why?

Megan Gaiser: The games can be ordered through our own website, http://www.herinteractive.com They are also available through many online retailers, including Amazon (where Nancy Drew Stay Tuned for Danger has been in the Top Ten Children's Titles ever since it's release), eToys and Beyond.com.

Bricks and mortar shelf space has been hard to come by; we're a very small publisher in an emerging category. But we are making progress toward obtaining broader distribution by this Christmas — the critical and online sales successes of our first two titles are starting to open some doors.

What holds in the future for Nancy Drew (i.e. sequels)?

Megan Gaiser: Looking beyond the September release of Nancy Drew: Message in the Haunted Mansion; we have a long list of Nancy Drew stories that would translate into fabulous interactive games. We're also looking at other licenses to expand the game playing options "for girls who aren't afraid of a mouse." There are lots of different types of girls, and there are so many wonderful characters that could star as our next interactive idol!

#interview #nancy drew games #her interactive #promotional material #stfd #stay tuned for danger

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mariacallous · 3 months ago

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The U.S. presidential election is less than 50 days away, and this week served up some grim reminders of how high the stakes are—and how intent Washington’s adversaries are on swaying or disrupting the vote.

New details have emerged of cyberattacks and election interference efforts by China, Russia, and Iran, with U.S. officials and technology executives sounding the alarm about the countries’ intent to sow chaos in the weeks leading up to Election Day on Nov. 5.

Russian cyber groups have pivoted in the last two months to attacking the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, according to a new report Microsoft released Tuesday. The groups have spread several fake videos, including one purportedly showing a Harris supporter attacking an attendee at a rally for former President Donald Trump, another (through a fake San Francisco news site) that falsely claimed Harris was involved in a hit-and-run incident, and a third showing a fake billboard in New York City listing false claims about Harris’s policies.

“As we inch closer to the election, we should expect Russian actors to continue to use cyber proxies and hacktivist groups to amplify their messages through media websites and social channels geared to spread divisive political content, staged videos, and AI-enhanced propaganda,” Microsoft wrote.

President Joe Biden’s administration has stepped up its efforts to combat Russia’s disinformation and influence operations, imposing a series of sanctions earlier this month on state-run media outlets including Russia Today (RT) for acting on behalf of the Kremlin to “undermine confidence in the United States’ election processes and institutions.” RT has also developed cyber capabilities with direct ties to Russian intelligence services and is involved in a crowdfunding effort to procure military equipment for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters last week while announcing additional sanctions on the network.

“We urge every ally, every partner to start by treating RT’s activities as they do other intelligence activities by Russia within their borders,” Blinken said. Tech companies Meta and Google responded to the sanctions by restricting RT content and accounts from their social media platforms this week.

On Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray announced that the agency had successfully hit back against another formidable cyber adversary: China. FBI teams took down a botnet—a network of compromised computers controlled by hackers who were “working at the direction of the Chinese government,” Wray told an audience at the Aspen Cyber Summit in Washington. Wray said the hackers allegedly took over hundreds of thousands of internet-connected devices, including cameras and storage devices—half of which were in the United States—to conduct espionage and disrupt critical systems. “We think the bad guys finally realized it was the FBI and our partners that they were up against, and with that realization they essentially burned down their new infrastructure and abandoned their botnet,” he added.

The U.S. government takedown of the botnet, allegedly run by a hacking group called Flax Typhoon, is the second such offensive cyber operation against China in less than a year. It follows a December 2023 operation against another group known as Volt Typhoon. Officials expect it won’t be the last.

“We’d like to see more of these and more frequently,” a senior administration official said of the takedown, speaking to reporters on Wednesday evening following Wray’s announcement. “What we’ve really been discussing here from the White House is what can be done to accelerate and do these regularly, so that we make it riskier, costlier, and harder for China to conduct their large-scale cyber operations.”

And then there’s Washington’s third—and increasingly brazen—cyber adversary. On Wednesday, three U.S. agencies issued a joint statement on Iran’s efforts to target Trump’s 2024 campaign. Iranian hackers who breached the Trump campaign in recent months sent “stolen, non-public” material from the campaign via email to individuals associated with Biden’s reelection campaign before he dropped out and was replaced by Harris, according to the statement by the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). “There is currently no information indicating those recipients replied,” the agencies added.

Iran has stepped up its efforts to interfere in the 2024 race amid an escalating proxy conflict with key U.S. ally Israel and has targeted the Trump campaign in particular in what experts see as retaliation for his administration’s 2020 assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Suleimani.

Despite some key public victories this week, the consensus in the cyberdefense community is that the battle is only just beginning—and is only likely to get more intense as Election Day draws closer, with the United States facing three highly capable adversaries who, if not directly working together, share similar goals.

“Arguably, the 2024 election cycle is facing the most complex threat landscape yet,” Cait Conley, a senior advisor for CISA, said at the Politico AI and Tech Summit this week. “We do see a growing and diverse array of foreign actors who are trying to influence our American democratic process. … Regardless of the actor, their objectives are the same—they want to undermine the American people’s confidence in our democratic institutions, and they want to sow partisan discord.”

Senior industry leaders visiting Washington this week echoed that sentiment. “We know that there is a presidential race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, but this has also become an election of Iran versus Trump and Russia versus Harris,” Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, told the Senate Intelligence Committee in a hearing about election threats on Wednesday. “And it is an election where Russia, Iran, and China are united with a common interest in discrediting democracy in the eyes of our own voters and even more so in the eyes of the world.”

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 3 days ago

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Report analyzes long history of NASA support for commercial space

NASA published a new report on Thursday highlighting 17 agency mechanisms that have directly and indirectly supported the development and growth of the U.S. commercial space sector for the benefit of humanity.

The report, titled "Enabling America on the Space Frontier: The Evolution of NASA's Commercial Space Development Toolkit," is available on the agency's website.

"This is the most extensive and comprehensive historical analysis produced by NASA on how it has contributed to commercial space development over the decades," said Alex MacDonald, NASA chief economist. "These efforts have given NASA regular access to space with companies, such as SpaceX and Rocket Lab, modernizing our communications infrastructure, and even led to the first private lunar lander thanks to Intuitive Machines.

"With commercial space growth accelerating, this report can help agency leaders and stakeholders assess the numerous mechanisms that the agency uses to support this growth, both now and in the future."

Throughout its history, NASA has supported the development of the commercial space sector, not only leading the way in areas such as satellite communications, launch, and remote sensing, but also developing new contract and operational models to encourage commercial participation and growth.

In the last three decades, NASA has seen the results of these efforts with commercial partners able to contribute more to missions across NASA domains, and increasingly innovative agency-led efforts to engage, nurture, and integrate these capabilities. These capabilities support the agency's mission needs, and have seen a dramatic rise in importance, according to the report.

NASA has nurtured technology, companies, people, and ideas in the commercial space sector, contributing to the U.S. and global economies, across four distinct periods in the agency's history:

1915–1960: NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), and NASA's pre-Apollo years.

1961–1980: Apollo era.

1981–2010: Space shuttle era.

2011–present: Post-shuttle commercial era.

Each of these time periods are defined by dominant technologies, programs, or economic trends further detailed in the report.

Though some of these mechanisms are relatively recent, others have been used throughout the history of NASA and NACA, leading to some overlap. The 17 mechanisms are as follows:

Contracts and Partnership Agreements

Research and Technology Development (R&TD)

Dissemination of Research and Scientific Data

Education and Workforce Development

Workforce External Engagement and Mobility

Technology Transfer

Technical Support

Enabling Infrastructure

Launch

Direct In-Space Support

Standards and Regulatory Framework Support

Public Engagement

Industry Engagement

Venture Capital Engagement

Market Stimulation Funding

Economic Analysis and Due Diligence Capabilities

Narrative Encouragement

NASA supports commercial space development in everything from spaceflight to supply chains. Small satellite capabilities have inspired a new generation of space start-ups, while new, smaller rockets, as well as new programs are just starting. Examples include CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services), commercial low Earth orbit destinations, human landing systems, commercial development of NASA spacesuits, and lunar terrain vehicles. The report also details many indirect ways the agency has contributed to the vibrance of commercial space, from economic analyses to student engagement.

The agency's use of commercial capabilities has progressed from being the exception to the default method for many of its missions. The current post-shuttle era of NASA-supported commercial space development has seen a level of technical development comparable to the Apollo era's Space Race. Deploying the 17 commercial space development mechanisms in the future is part of NASA's mission to continue encouraging commercial space activities.

IMAGE: The SpaceX Dragon Freedom spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov approaches the International Space Station as it orbited 261 miles above Ontario, Canada, near James Bay. Credit: NASA

#science #space #astronomy #physics #news #nasa #astrophysics

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darkmaga-returns · 16 days ago

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On Dec. 5, 2024, formulation technology company VitriVax, Inc. of Boulder, Colorado was awarded a two-year, $3.6 million grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help “fund development of a polio vaccine formulation for possible inclusion in combination pediatric vaccines.” “We are honored to be part of the global drive to protect children from polio infection and contribute to polio eradication efforts,” said VitriVax’s CEO Romulo Colindres, MD, MPH.1 2

According to Vitrivax, it “will be applying its proprietary Atomic Layering Thermostable Antigen and Adjuvant (ALTA) technology to new polio vaccine candidates composed of virus-like particles (VLPs) for use in future combination hexavalent (six in one) vaccines.” It noted that use of VLPs is being studied for the next generation of polio vaccines. VitriVax believes that its ALTA technology could “facilitate the co-formulation of multiple, otherwise incompatible, antigens in a single injection.1 2

New Adjuvant Technology Could Revolutionize Vaccines

On its website, Vitrivax acknowledges that there are “two central technological challenges” that often limit the expanded use of some vaccines. The first challenge is to maintain a vaccine’s thermostability—the ability to resist irreversible change in its chemical or physical structure—during transport and storage. The second is the need to give multiple doses of a vaccine to allow for the most robust immune response possible to infections. VitriVax believes that ALTA is a revolutionary technology that has the potential to enable the production of more thermostable, multiple-dose vaccines and, thus, “redefine the future of vaccine technology.”3 4

The grant from the Gates Foundation is specifically aimed at applying the ALTA platform to the development of childhood vaccines that would include six or more vaccines in one shot, including the inactivated polio vaccine—the goal being to reduce the number of vaccines administered individually. As stated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

Combining vaccines into fewer shots may mean that more children will get recommended vaccinations on time.7

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beautifullache · 8 months ago

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🦄The Sims 4🦄

🍟Fast Food Careers🍔

💕EARLY RELEASE: 5.31.2024💕

McDonald's

3 days of PTO

McDonald’s is proud to be one of the most recognized brands in the world, with restaurants in over 100 countries and billions of customers served each year. As the global leader in the food service industry, we have a legacy of innovation and hard work that continues to drive us. Today, we are growing with velocity and are focused on modernizing our experiences, not to make a different McDonald’s but to build a better McDonald’s.

We are a people business just as much as we are a restaurant business. We strive to be the most inclusive brand on the planet by building diverse teams who create delicious, feel good moments that are easy for everyone to enjoy. Joining McDonald's means thinking big on a daily basis and preparing for a career that can have impact around the world.

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Janitor Custodian

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General Manager

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Taco Bell

3 days of PTO

Taco Bell restaurants have a variety of job opportunities to suit you. Whether you want to pursue a career with us or utilize our career opportunities to start chasing your dreams, we want to be a part of your story. Additionally, we continue to evolve our benefits for employees. Here's just a taste: free meals, competitive pay, flexible scheduling, paid time off, performance bonuses, education support, and career growth opportunities.

Taco Bell Corp., a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc., (NYSE: YUM), is the nation's leading Mexican-inspired quick service restaurant. Taco Bell serves made to order and customizable tacos, burritos, and specialties such as the exclusive Doritos® Locos Tacos, gourmet inspired Cantina Power Menu and lower calorie Fresco Menu. The company encourages customers to “Live Más,” both through its food and in ways such as its Feed the Beat® music program and nonprofit organization, the Taco Bell Foundation for Teens. Taco Bell and its more than 350 franchise organization have nearly 7,000 restaurants across the United States that proudly serve more than 36 million customers every week.

CASHIER

KITCHEN / COOK / FOOD

FOOD SERVICE / FOOD PREP

SHIFT MANAGER / HOURLY MANAGER

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Wendy's

3 days of PTO

The Wendy’s Company (NASDAQ: WEN) is the world’s third largest quick-service hamburger company. The Wendy’s system includes more than 6,500 franchise and company restaurants in the U.S. and 29 other countries and U.S. territories worldwide. To learn more about the brand, visit our website: www.wendys.com When everyday people sort through all the ‘spin’ there is one quick-service restaurant that is ‘A Cut Above’… that’s Wendy’s … we stand for honest food … higher quality, fresh, wholesome food … prepared when you order it … prepared by Wendy’s kind of people … people that believe this is My Wendy’s … we do it Dave’s Way … we don’t cut corners. We work hard with honesty, integrity and a true sense of respect for one another. And we take time to give something back to our communities. We are looking for individuals with a track record of achievement who are seeking an opportunity to make an impact in an evolving, growing organization. We are committed to providing “A Cut Above” development experience to help star performers achieve their full potential, while providing a great employee experience.

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Cook

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Manager

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lunarsilkscreen · 24 days ago

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Another Internet Whitepaper

I'm just gonna get into there is no way to preface this.

1) content should be hosted in their own countries for which they are meant.

2) therefore the website should split into Nation->Sub-nation sections. So things for Michigan would be closer to those in Michigan. With U.S.->Michigan.

--"independent" Nations are just gonna have to deal with being lumped together into a united region. It's simply physics.

--country wide servers and clouds, and worldwide services will still be available; but we need to develop protocols to make it easier to distribute data and declutter the internet-cloud.

3) a separate Intranet for official use and security will need to be developed alongside this while also being completely disconnected from the worldwideweb.

4) Splits;

IP Addresses redesign;

[Country/Region]:[State/Province]:[individual]

[Individual] will need to be controlled by local The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) branches; likely to be reassigned to DMVs and SoSs.

5) Separate protocols For;

Streaming Services

Social Media Services

Bidirectional Interactions (like games and Virtual Machines)

Pornography needs to be completely identifiable by textual Web address.

5) you local region will be defaulted, but can be changed by the browser and not be hard-wired in.

Not indicating a region will automatically default to the local internet.

So typing in FBI.GOV in the U.S. will lead to the FBI website, and if you type it in the UK it'll lead to Mi:5 or something.

6) Social Media protocols will have to be integrated with the E-Mail SMTP protocols. Which will encourage a more decentralized internet. This will *also* have to find a way to work with phone text messages.

7) Cable TV and Streaming services will have to use the same protocols.

8) Because there's phone integration here; a phone number may have to be closer to a social security number going forward. Which will both be bad for animosity, but allow for people to not need login information.

-- This will technically also need to apply to your House; which will have to have an assigned street address.

9) all of these need to be obfuscated to casual observers.

10) this will deprecate our phone companies and require them to work with cable TV and internet companies in order to create more equitable protocols.

11) the current IP address and Domain Registry systems need to be deprecated; as it does not suit its original purpose.

[.xxx] will be assigned for all "adult" materials and be required for ALL "adult materials" posted online.

[.app] will be assigned for appstores.

[.store] for marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and whatever else.

[.bank] will be for banking and credit purposes

[.social] will be for social media

[.stream] will be for streaming materials,

[.np] for non-profit use only.

[.donation] for donation collections and Kickstarter like services.

[.pay] for payment services like PayPal

Non "adult materials" can be streamed through other "front ends" .

13) These human readable extensions will be simplified on the backend to reduce the total data envelope size.

14) single digit ip-adresses will have to be regulated for use for high-capacity uses. These will need to be "extended" protocols that different services can use.

This will help even out everybody's data envelopes. This will have to be part of a cloud service that can be used by anybody that needs it. With certain restrictions that are deemed necessary by local and federal governments and international treaty reasons.

15) limits on how algorithms and "bots" can ping anything at one time need to be addressed or regulated.

This will be a massive undertaking with the cooperation of all the other governments around the world.

And will be a very lucrative endeavor at the end of it all.

This is just an outline to describe the form the future internet should take and can be changed or modified as required; especially for things I cannot see.

The current corporations will be expected to develop a plan of actions in tandem with current regulatory authorities; failure to do so will create a need for an ultimatum, which we all wish to avoid.

We're also going to need to find ways to encourage competition in these sectors so that they can be upgraded and modified as needed by local areas instead of waiting on these companies to bother with it.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 months ago

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* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 19, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 20, 2024

Yesterday morning, NPR reported that U.S. public health data are showing a dramatic drop in deaths from drug overdoses for the first time in decades. Between April 2023 and April 2024, deaths from street drugs are down 10.6%, with some researchers saying that when federal surveys are updated, the decline will be even more pronounced. Such a decline would translate to 20,000 deaths averted.

With more than 70,000 Americans dying of opioid overdoses in 2020 and numbers rising, the Biden-Harris administration prioritized disrupting the supply of illicit fentanyl and other synthetic drugs. They worked to seize the drugs at ports of entry, sanctioned more than 300 foreign people and agencies engaged in the global trade in illicit drugs, and arrested and prosecuted dozens of high-level Mexican drug traffickers and money launderers.

In March 2023 the Biden-Harris administration made naloxone, a medicine that can prevent fatal opioid overdoses, available over the counter. The administration invested more than $82 billion in treatment, and the Department of Health and Human Services worked to get the treatment into the hands of first responders and family members.

Addressing the crisis of opioid deaths meant careful, coordinated policies.

Also today, markets all over the world climbed after the Fed yesterday cut interest rates for the first time in four years. In the U.S., the S&P 500, which tracks the stock performance of 500 of the biggest companies on U.S. stock exchanges, the Nasdaq Composite, which is weighted toward the information technology sector, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average, an older index that tracks 30 prominent companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges, all hit new records. The rate cut indicated to traders that the U.S. has, in fact, managed to pull off the soft landing President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen worked to achieve. They have kept job growth steady, normalized economic growth and inflation, and avoided a recession.

As they have done so, the major U.S. stock indices have had what The Guardian's Callum Jones calls “an extraordinary year.” Jones notes that the S&P 500 is up more than 20% since the beginning of 2024, the Nasdaq Composite has risen 22%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gone up 11%.

Bringing the U.S. economy out of the pandemic more successfully than any other major economically developed country meant clear goals and principles, and careful, informed adjustments.

And yet the big story today is that Republican North Carolina lieutenant governor Mark Robinson frequented porn sites, where between 2008 and 2012 he wrote that he enjoyed watching transgender pornography; referred to himself as a “black NAZI!”; called for reinstating human enslavement and wrote, “I would certainly buy a few”; called the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a “f*cking commie bastard”; wrote that he preferred Adolf Hitler to former president Barack Obama; referred to Black, Jewish, Muslim, and gay people with slurs; said he doesn’t care about abortions (“I don’t care. I just wanna see the sex tape!” he wrote); and recounted that he had secretly watched women in the showers in a public gym as a 14-year-old. Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck of CNN, who broke the story, noted that “CNN is reporting only a small portion of Robinson’s comments on the website given their graphic nature.”

After the first story broke, Natalie Allison of Politico broke another: that Robinson was registered on the Ashley Madison website, which caters to married people seeking affairs.

Robinson is running for governor of North Carolina. He has attacked transgender rights, called for a six-week abortion ban without exceptions for rape or incest, mocked survivors of school shootings, and—after identifying a wide range of those he saw as enemies to America and to “conservatives”—told a church audience that “some folks need killing.”

That this scandal dropped on the last possible day Robinson could drop out of the race suggests it was pushed by Republicans themselves because they recognize that Robinson is dragging Trump and other Republican candidates down in North Carolina. But here’s the thing: Republican voters knew who Robinson was, and they chose him anyway.

Indeed, his behavior is not all that different from that of a number of the Republican candidates in this cycle, including former president Trump, the Republican nominee for president. Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC) embraced Robinson’s candidacy, and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) welcomed “NC’s outstanding Lt. Governor” to a Republican-led House Judiciary Committee meeting “on the importance of election integrity.” “He brought the truth with clarity and conviction—and everyone should hear what he had to say!” Johnson posted to social media. Robinson spoke at the Republican National Convention.

The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans in this election is stark, and it reflects a systemic problem that has been growing in the U.S. since the 1980s.

Democracy depends on at least two healthy political parties that can compete for voters on a level playing field. Although the men who wrote the Constitution hated the idea of political parties, they quickly figured out that parties tie voters to the mechanics of Congress and the presidency.

And they do far more than that. Before political thinkers legitimized the idea of political opposition to the king, disagreeing with the person in charge usually led to execution or banishment for treason. Parties allowed for the idea of loyal and legitimate opposition, which in turn allowed for the peaceful transition of power. That peaceful exchange enabled the people to choose their leaders and leaders to relinquish power safely. Parties also create a system for criticizing people in power, which helps to weed out corrupt or unfit leaders.

But those benefits of a party system depend on a level political playing field for everyone, so that a party must constantly compete for voters by testing which policies are most popular and getting rid of the corrupt or unstable leaders voters would reject.

In the 1980s, radical Republican leaders set out to dismantle the government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights. But that system was popular, and to overcome the majority who favored it, they began to tip the political playing field in their direction. They began to suppress voting by Democrats by insisting that Democrats were engaging in “voter fraud.” At the same time, they worked to delegitimize their opponents by calling them “socialists” or “communists” and claiming that they were trying to destroy the United States. By the 1990s, extremists in the party were taking power by purging traditional Republicans from it.

And yet, voters still elected Democrats, and after they put President Barack Obama into the White House in 2008, the Republican State Leadership Committee in 2010 launched Operation REDMAP, or Redistricting Majority Project. The plan was to take over state legislatures so Republicans would control the new district maps drawn after the 2010 census, especially in swing states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It worked, and Republican legislatures in those states and elsewhere carved up state maps into dramatically gerrymandered districts.

In those districts, the Republican candidates were virtually guaranteed election, so they focused not on attracting voters with popular policies but on amplifying increasingly extreme talking points to excite the party’s base. That drove the party farther and farther to the right. By 2012, political scientists Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein warned that the Republican Party had “become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

At the same time, the skewed playing field meant that candidates who were corrupt or bonkers did not get removed from the political mix after opponents pounced on their misdeeds and misstatements, as they would have been in a healthy system. Social media poster scary lawyerguy noted that the story about Robinson will divert attention from the lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets, which diverted attention from Trump’s abysmal debate performance, which diverted attention from Trump’s filming a campaign ad at Arlington National Cemetery.

When a political party has so thoroughly walled itself off from the majority, there are two options. One is to become full-on authoritarian and suppress the majority, often with violence. Such a plan is in Project 2025, which calls for a strong executive to take control of the military and the judicial system and to use that power to impose his will.

The other option is that enough people in the majority reject the extremists to create a backlash that not only replaces them, but also establishes a level playing field.

The Republican Party is facing the reality that it has become so extreme it is hemorrhaging former supporters and mobilizing a range of critics. Today the Catholic Conference of Ohio rebuked those who spread lies about Haitian immigrants—Republican presidential candidate Trump and vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance were the leading culprits—and Teamsters councils have rejected the decision of the union’s board not to make an endorsement this year and have endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. Some white evangelicals are also distancing themselves from Trump.

And then, tonight, Trump told a Jewish group that if he loses, it will be the fault of Jewish Americans. "I will put it to you very simply and gently: I really haven't been treated right, but you haven't been treated right because you're putting yourself in great danger."

Mark Robinson has said he will not step aside.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Trump lies #Biden Administration accomplishments #support for Harris/Walz #political parties #gerrymandering #REDMAP #Teamsters #Mark Robinson #opiod overdoses #American History #Radical Republicans

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siteitnow · 7 months ago

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Site It Now is a full-service web design company offering web development, SEO, and mobile app development services to companies across the U.S.

#Web Design Company United States #Digital Marketing Services United States #Website Development Company U.S.#Site It Now Best Website Design Agency In The USA #Mobile App Development Company U.S.#SEO Company U.S.#Shopify Website Design Services USA

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justinspoliticalcorner · 4 months ago

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Walter Einenkel at Daily Kos:

On Monday, CEO of Tesla and X (formerly Twitter) Elon Musk, who has endorsed Donald Trump and promised hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions, posted a computer-generated image of Vice President Kamala Harris decked out in some kind of red communist military outfit. “Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?” he wrote. While many have pointed out that the image violates Musk’s own company policy concerning “misleading images,” no one was surprised by his post. A look at the last 48 hours on Musk’s social media account on X is a snapshot into how fact free and manipulative his posts are in service of Trump and the GOP culture war agenda.

On Tuesday, after posting red-scare computer-generated images of Harris, he retweeted Libs of TikTok. The famed homophobic, racist, and disinformation-filled account was originally created and operated by Chaya Raichik, who developed its following by frothing up anti-LGBTQ+ hate-mongers, and has expanded into throwing hate at anyone not white on the right. Libs of TikTok posted a claim that “A group of 32 armed Venezualans took over an apartment building in Chicago tonight. Here’s the audio of the 911 dispatch call. First they did this in Aurora, CO and now Chicago? Which city will be next? This invasion happened on Kamala’s watch.” The problem is that no such thing happened. Book Club Chicago followed up on this claim, speaking to neighbors in the area and the Chicago police department, all of whom told the outlet nothing even remotely like this happened. “Not true. That did not happen,” Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor told the website.

[...] Noncitizens voting in elections isn’t a real problem. Every investigation into it has turned up absolutely nothing. For one, it is already illegal to vote in an election unless you are a citizen of the U.S. The idea that someone who is afraid of getting in trouble with the law, and could face possible deportation as a result, would go to a voting booth to illegally cast their vote is ludicrous. Since purchasing Twitter in 2021, the world’s richest public midlife-crisis-haver has gutted the business, lost billions of dollars of investors money, and turned the social media site into a cesspool of right-wing extremism. During that time his political posts have increased, while posts about his own businesses have diminished.

Right-wing disinformation agent Elon Musk is running a dangerous propaganda campaign pushing the bogus noncitizens voting issue and the lie that Venezuelan gangs are “taking over apartments.”

#X #Elon Musk #Social Media #Propaganda #Disinformation #Libs of TikTok #Aurora Colorado #Chicago

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rjzimmerman · 2 months ago

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I was born and raised in Gary, Indiana, so this story resonates deeply with me. Way too many of my high school friends died young from heart and lung diseases easily traceable to the crud in the air we all breathed for years.

Excerpt from this story from the Chicago Tribune:

The “Dirty Steel, Dangerous Air” report details the national and local health and economic costs of steel industry pollution. Industrious Labs released the report on Monday.

Industrious Labs is an environmental organization focused on cleaning up industries through network and capacity building, research and analysis, and data-driven campaigns, according to its website.

The 44-page report found that coal-based steelmaking contributes to an estimated $13.2 billion in health costs, 892 premature deaths and almost 100,000 lost school and work days annually, according to a news release from the organization.

“Steel communities have been sounding the alarm on harmful air pollution for years, and this report quantifies just how devastating and far-reaching the consequences are,” Hilary Lewis, steel director at Industrious Labs, said in the news release. “The EPA has consistently failed to safeguard the health of these communities from the dangers of coal-based steelmaking. It’s time for stronger regulations that recognize the opportunity of cleaner steelmaking technologies and tougher enforcement of penalties on polluters to truly protect public health.”

The report focuses on 17 facilities nationwide, including four plants in Northwest Indiana, each of which are owned by U.S. Steel or Cleveland-Cliffs.

In addition to steelmaking, the report looks at the harmful effects of coke, a processed form of coal used in steelmaking.

The steel industry accounts for more than 90% of the market demand for coke, according to the report, which called coke a “very dirty fossil fuel.”

The product is made by mixing coal with oil or water and heating it at 2,000 degrees for many hours. Coke requires dozens of large ovens to be made as well, according to the report.

Industrious Labs’ report also found that most residents in Gary are in the top 10% of U.S. residents most at risk for developing asthma and at risk of low life expectancy.

The city is home to U.S. Steel’s Gary Works facility, which could potentially receive $300 million for its blast furnace if a deal between the company and Nippon Steel is approved.

The $300 million investment will allow for higher steel production and reduced emissions, Gary Mayor Eddie Melton said in a statement. The furnace should have its life extended by up to 20 years.

Some residents, including those who are members of Gary Advocates for Responsible Development, have concerns about the investment.

Carolyn McCrady, member of GARD, said the only way for the steel industry to grow in “a healthy way” is to get rid of blast furnaces. McCrady believes in the use of direct reduction furnaces, which she calls more environmentally and economically friendly.

Direct reduction furnaces could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by half and produce about 20% of steel nationwide, McCrady said.

#steel industry #air pollution #public health #Northwest Indiana

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militantinremission · 5 months ago

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The Freedman's Bank Forum: The Art of Disenfranchisement

Kamala Harris has hit the Campaign Trail & named Gov. Tim Walz as her Running Mate, but she has yet to give a Press Conference or Mainstream Media Interview. She STILL hasn't offered any Policy Initiatives on her Campaign Website. This has lead some in The New Black Media to look at her Policy Offerings as VP. Sabrina Salvati of Sabby Sabs & Phil Scott of The Afrikan Diaspora Channel both looked at Kamala Harris' 2023 Speech at the Freedman's Bank Forum- for ideas of what a 'Harris- Walz Administration' may look like. In her Speech, Kamala gave a history of The Freedman's Bureau 'Freedman's Bank', Created in 1865. She spoke on why a Specific Bank for the Formerly Enslaved was necessary. She also talked about the Farms, Homes, & Businesses that Freedmen were able to purchase & build through Loans from Freedmen's Bank.

Unfortunately, 9Yrs after its inception, Freedman's Bank was Closed; due to mismanagement, & outright theft of Funds by Congressmen overseeing Bank Operations. Over 61,000 Depositors lost their Funds- estimated at over $3M (over $50M in today's Economy). Kamala sounded like she understood the plight of American Descendants Of Chattel Slavery & Our specific need for resources, but she shifted her narrative fairly quickly. She started by shifting a Black Specific Issue, to an 'All Lives Matter' Issue. Kamala transformed the necessity of a Freedman's Bank to jumpstart Reconstruction, into a need for EVERYONE to have access to (Freedmen) Resources. She starts by mentioning 'Minorities' & 'Marginalized Communities', but goes on to include Latinx, Native American, Asian, & Rural Communities in the Freedman's Bank Story.

Kamala went on to describe one of her Final Acts as a U.S. Senator. This was an Initiative that she helped to set up w/ the help of [Secretary of The Treasury] Janet Yellen, [Senators] Mark Warner, Chuck Schumer, & Corey Booker, plus Rep. Maxine Waters. The Initiative, was a plan to invest $12B in Community Institutions for 'Overlooked & Underserved Communities'... My 1st question is: How many of THOSE INSTITUTIONS are Owned & Operated by Indigenous Black Americans? I only know of ONE in My Community, & David Rockefeller has been invested in them for nearly 30Yrs... Harris says that currently, $8B has been disbursed to 162 'Community Lenders' Nationwide, & gave examples of how the Funds are being disbursed:

Native American Bank lent a Tribe $10M to fund an Opioid Addiction Treatment Facility on Tribal Lands in N. Dakota

Carver Bank, in Ga. loaned $500K to 'Black Owned Companies' to help them develop Low Income Housing

Hope Credit Union, in Ms. gave a $10K Loan to a 'Black & Woman Owned' Coffee Business to expand

Aid to Immigrant Communities, including some Asian Communities

Aid to 'Rural Communities'

Maybe it's just Me, but I find it curious how the Freedman's Bank Legacy is being 'repackaged'. Under Kamala Harris, a SPECIFIC INSTITUTION meant for American Descendants Of Chattel Slavery, is being usurped to advance EVERYONE; except the Blackfolk it was designed to help. The numbers don't lie. Native American Tribes get Billions a Year in 'Set Asides' & they don't pay Taxes, but Kamala thinks they should also collect $10M meant for Black American interests? Then she brags about Black Businesses that only received 5% of what Native Americans collected from a measure that was supposed to be for Blackfolk. Apparently, Kamala wasn't lying when she said that she wasn't going to do ANYTHING that would only benefit Black Americans.

Like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris talks to Black Audiences about Equity, but only offers Black Americans a small share of what Everyone Else gets. In 2022, The Biden-Harris Administration & Janet Yellen launched the Economic Opportunity Coalition, along w/ 20 Private Sector Leaders. The Goal was to provide & invest Billions in Capital to Community Lenders for 'Minority Owned Businesses'. To date, this Coalition has currently committed over $1.2B to Community Lenders in 'Minority & World Communities'. From what I saw, Puerto Rico & Guam represented 9 of the 13 Minority Depository Institutions (MDIs) awarded Funding. Of the 218 Organizations receiving Technical Awards, 56 were 'MDIs' & 38 were Organizations based in Puerto Rico. True to Form, the Biden- Harris Administration blurs the lines on what a 'Black Owned' Business is; Indigenous Blackfolk, Afro Caribbeans, & Afrikan Immigrants have been lumped into the 'Afrikan American' demographic. Is this Coalition keeping track of how many Freedmen (Male & Female) are receiving Awards?

Kamala's Speech at the 'Freedmen's Bank Forum' completely ignored the Descendants of the Freedmen Community, & Our History of adversity. Despite her disregard of Us, she says this Initiative was created to 'Realize the Vision of Freedmen's Bank'. I see This as a blatant Disenfranchisement of the Black Community that Freedmen's Bank was Chartered to serve. On top of her disingenuous empathy for Black Americans, She has the audacity to call this act of Economic Racism- 'Economic Justice'; & she does it w/ a straight face. I thank Sabrina Salvati & Phil Scott for uncovering this particular Policy Measure. Kamala Harris' lack of Policy on her Campaign Website tells Me that she doesn't want Us to know her Plan for the next 4Yrs. She has been called a Leftist & 'the most Progressive Senator in Congress', but her Policies are as Moderate as Joe Biden's.

I fully understand that the Economic Opportunity Coalition (EOC) isn't Freedmen's Bank. If it was presented as a Measure that stood on its own merit, I probably wouldn't have much to say about it. If we're being honest, it falls in line w/ many other Policies of the Biden-Harris Administration. The Fact that Kamala Harris used the Freedmen's Bank Forum to push this Measure, is mean spirited & an insult to Our Ancestors. There's a Legion of Blackfolk & Afrikan Americans trying to certify Kamala's 'Blackness', but she has yet to affirm their claim. She had a chance to refute Donald Trump's assertion, but only offered more rhetoric. The Truth is, SHE'S NOT BLACK! Kamala's Record shows that she spent her Professional Career disenfranchising Us. As District Attorney, she targeted Blackfolk for Arrest on petty Quality of Life Crimes. As Attorney General & as a U.S. Senator, Kamala supported decriminalization of Illegal Border Crossings & the surge of Illegal Immigrants into Black Communities throughout California.

The Black Population in San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond, & Berkeley has dropped by 50% on her Watch. Kamala vacated over 1,000 Criminal Charges against OneWest Bank, George Soros, & Steve Mnuchin- for 'Foreclosure Violations' that cost Hundreds of Black Californians their Homes. Her action allowed Soros to sell OneWest for Billions, while Mnuchin moved on to become Secretary of The Treasury. At the Same Time, she kept Black Inmates imprisoned past their Release Date & denied others Parole; citing the need to maintain a Prison Labor Force (i.e. Convict Leasing). Black Women are siding w/ her, but Harris abandoned the Mitrice Richardson Case after winning her Senate Seat. Kamala also had a hand in stripping the Estate of Nina Simone away from her Surviving Family & awarding All Rights to Sony Music Entertainment. We're supposed to certify this Woman as 'Black', but she has a Legacy of Anti-Black (Aryan) behavior. Her latest act of disenfranchisement is actually Par for The Course.

Some question why Kamala Harris is getting so much heat from Black America? The Short Answer is- She rides on the Coattail of The Black Experience, but does NOTHING for Us Culturally, Socially, or Politically. What's her Black Agenda again? At This Point, We really can't blame Kamala for being consistent. We need to look at the Blackfolk & Afrikan Americans trying to shame us into Falling in Line w/ her Agenda; whatever THAT is...

-We have House Cleaning to do.

#Obamala #TrojanHorse #Supplanter #AntiBlackRacist #BabylonTheGreat #ADOS #B1 #FBA #Freedmen #The13Percent #SabbySabs #TheAfrikanDiasporaChannel #ProjectDownBallot #NoTangiblesNoVote

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misfitwashere · 3 months ago

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September 19, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

SEP 20

Addressing the crisis of opioid deaths meant careful, coordinated policies.

Bringing the U.S. economy out of the pandemic more successfully than any other major economically developed country meant clear goals and principles, and careful, informed adjustments.

After the first story broke, Natalie Allison of Politico broke another: that Robinson was registered on the Ashley Madison website, which caters to married people seeking affairs.

The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans in this election is stark, and it reflects a systemic problem that has been growing in the U.S. since the 1980s.

The other option is that enough people in the majority reject the extremists to create a backlash that not only replaces them, but also establishes a level playing field.

Mark Robinson has said he will not step aside.

—

#heather cox richardson #letters from an american

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