#northeastern North Carolina

[tickleinvaforums]

High Knob Observation Tower:

A brand new observation tower with a long history opened in 2014 atop High Knob Recreation Area. At an elevation of 4,223 feet, the original tower built in the 30s burned down 40 years later. The new tower boasts panoramic views of mountaintops in 5 states: Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky, and West Virginia. It is unique to Virginia in containing both Appalachia Plateau and Ridge and Valley topography, although it is largely a karstic landform of the Ridge and Valley Province. High Knob stretches across portions of southern Wise County, northern Scott County, and the northeastern tip of Lee County. The marker at the summit of Lookout Mountain claims seven states may be viewed from the site. From the "Rock City" point, a marker claims that seven U.S. states can be seen: Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia, High Knob Observation Tower (Located in Wise County).

[thelawandmore]

Innovation Labs Provide Space for Access to Justice Solutions 

Innovation Labs Provide Space for Access to Justice Solutions

Legal Aid of North Carolina (LANC) recently announced it will launch the Innovation Lab, a new initiative that aims to improve access to justice for low-income and marginalised communities. The Lab’s goal is to “bring together clients, community partners, law schools, staff, and justice tech experts to pursue projects that integrate technology and design best practices into legal service delivery…

[typhlonectes]

Lizards may be protecting people from Lyme disease in the southeastern U.S.

The reptiles make poor hosts for transmitting the infection.

Lyme disease is one of the most devastating tick-borne infections in the United States, affecting more than 300,000 people each year. It's also one of the most mysterious: The creature that spreads it—the black-legged tick—lives throughout the country. Yet the northeastern United States is home to far more cases than anywhere else. Now, researchers have identified an unexpected reason: lizards. Black-legged ticks (Ixodes scapularis), also known as deer ticks, carry corkscrew-shaped bacteria that cause Lyme disease. The ticks pick up the pathogens—spirochetes that belong to the genus Borrelia—when they suck the blood of animals like mice, deer, and lizards. In the next stage of their life cycle, the ticks may latch onto an unlucky human. But every host transmits the microbes differently. Reptiles are worse transmitters than mammals, so ticks that have lived on reptiles are less likely to make people sick. The north-south divide in Lyme cases is a fairly sharp line right along the border of Virginia and North Carolina. Researchers have hypothesized that disparity in cases stems from ticks feeding on different hosts in the two regions...

Read more: https://www.science.org/content/article/lizards-may-be-protecting-people-lyme-disease-southeastern-united-states

[jloisse]

🔴Campus protests across the U.S. since April 17

Brown University

California State Polytechnic University

City University of New York

Columbia University

Emerson College

Emory University

Florida International Universit

Florida State University

George Washington University

Harvard University

Indiana University

New York University

Northeastern University

Northwestern University

Ohio State University

Princeton University

Rice University

Texas A&M

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Michigan State University

New School - New York, NY

University of Michigan

Tufts University

University of Arizona

University of California at Berkeley

University of Maryland

University of Miami

University of Minnesota

University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

University of Pittsburgh

University of Rochester

University of Southern California

University of Texas, Austin

University of Texas at Dallas

Vanderbilt University

Yale university

[huriya]

College Shitlist (boycott these colleges)

This is the updating list of colleges where pro-palestine protests are present that have brutalized/arrested/punished their students for protesting the ongoing palestinian genocide.

REMEMBER: DO NOT GIVE YOUR MONEY TO THESE COLLEGES. PROTESTS ON THESE CAMPUSES ARE IMPORTANT, BUT KEEPING YOUR INTELLIGENCE AND MONEY AWAY FROM THESE ABHORRENT INSTITUTIONS DIMINISHES THEIR POWER. THEIR ONLY POWER COMES FROM THEIR STUDENTS AND THEIR MONEY. YOU HAVE THE POWER TO TAKE THEIR PRESTIGE AWAY.

In No Particular Order:

Princeton University

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

University of California - Berkeley

Stanford University

Virginia Tech

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

University of Washington

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Harvard University

Yale University

University of California - Los Angeles

Cornell University

University of Pittsburgh

University of Chicago

University of Southern California

University of California - San Diego

Tufts University

Northeastern University

Stony Brook University

University of Connecticut

University of California - Merced

University of Massachusetts - Amherst

University of Iowa

University of Arizona

Arizona State University

University of California - Irvine

George Washington University

DePaul University

University of Pennsylvania

Pomona College

University of Texas - Dallas

The New School

University of Houston

University of Rochester

University of New Mexico

Duke University

New York University

University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

Barnards College

University of Vanderbilt

Rutgers University - New Brunswick

Columbia University

Portland State University

University of Oregon

California Polytechnic Institute Humboldt

California Polytechnic University - San Luis Obispo

Northern Arizona University

University of Utah

University of Kansas

University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign

Washington University

New Mexico State University

University of Texas - Austin

Tulane University

University of South Florida

University of North Florida

University of Florida

Emory University

University of Georgia

Mercer University

Notre Dame University

Case Western Reserve University

The Ohio State University

Virginian Commonwealth University

University of Virginia

University of Buffalo

State University of New York - Purchase

State University of New York - New Paltz

Brown University

Brandeis University

Dartmouth College

University of New Hampshire

Emerson College

CUNY City College of New York

International List:

University of Amsterdam

University of Alberta

University of Queensland

University of Sydney

University of Melbourne

Australian National University

University of New South Wales

University of Calgary

University of Oxford

Feel free to share this list, send me additional colleges to add (WITH SOURCES), and/or request more information on a particular college

[some1s-sista]

☀️🫰🏻❄️

Someone flipped a switch in northeastern North Carolina and dare I say … it is cold!!!

60s after noonish but 40s and 50s overnight and in the mornings. I’ve had to wear my jeans and sweatshirts to go walking in the morning. And we usually try not to turn on the heat until Dec 1st, but I’m sitting here under a blanket! Lol

Unlike me, my husband is ecstatic. He loves when it gets cold. Our oldest daughter said he was absolutely giddy that I was going to be making chowder and Chili this week! lol! Sicko.

Luckily, it’s supposed to warm back up at the end of the week.

[kemetic-dreams]

Loíza (Spanish pronunciation: [loˈisa]) is a town and municipality on the northeastern coast of Puerto Rico, north of Canóvanas; east of Carolina, Puerto Rico; and west of Río Grande, Puerto Rico. Loíza is spread over five barrios and Loíza Pueblo (the downtown area and the administrative center of the city). It is part of the San Juan-Caguas-Guaynabo Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is renowned for its rich Afro-Puerto Rican culture and heritage.

Some say its name comes from a female cacique, named Loaíza or Yuíza, who governed the region formerly called Haimanio, on the shores of the Río Grande de Loíza. It is said that this cacique might have married a mulatto conquistador called Pedro Mejías, but there is no evidence of this. Other sources point to a Spanish landlord named Iñigo López de Cervantes y Loayza, who owned a lot of the territory, and was renowned among governors and colonists of the time.

In 1692, Loíza was officially declared an urban area due to its population (100 houses and 1,146 residents), but it was in 1719 that the Spanish government declared it as an official town. It was founded by Gaspar de Arredondo.

Puerto Rico was ceded by Spain in the aftermath of the Spanish–American War under the terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1898 and became a territory of the United States. In 1899, the United States Department of War conducted a census of Puerto Rico finding that the population of Loíza was 12,522.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Canary Media:

In northeastern Oregon, nearly 9,500 acres of farmland will soon be transformed into a 1,200-megawatt solar project. State regulators approved Sunstone Solar, the nation’s largest proposed solar-plus-storage facility, last fall. Once up and running, the project will include up to 7,200 megawatt-hours of storage, and its nearly four million solar panels will produce enough clean electricity to power around 800,000 homes each year. Pine Gate Renewables, the North Carolina–based developer behind the project, touted a first-of-a-kind initiative to invest up to $11 million in local wheat farms to offset economic impacts on the region’s agriculture. Construction will begin in 2026.

Sunstone is the latest — and largest — in a slew of giant solar installations cropping up around the country. As states including Oregon pursue ambitious clean energy targets, developers are building more and more massive solar plants to keep pace — and increasingly pairing them with batteries to soak up any excess power.

Solar installations reached record levels in the U.S. last year, led by a surge in Texas and California. In 2024, 34 gigawatts of utility-scale solar were added to the grid — up 74 percent from the previous peak in 2023. Battery storage also leapt to new heights, with 13 gigawatts — nearly double the record set in 2023 — built last year.

Solar and storage projects aren’t just multiplying — they’re also getting bigger. Once constructed, Sunstone Solar will overshadow the current largest solar-plus-storage project operating in the U.S., which began providing up to 875 megawatts of solar and 3,287 megawatt-hours of battery storage last January. It’s also a big step up from existing solar farms in Oregon: The state’s largest operational solar project came online in April 2023, with 162 megawatts of solar capacity.

According to a data analysis by climate journalist Michael Thomas, the average size of a solar farm in the U.S. grew sixfold from 2014 to 2024, from 10 megawatts to 65 megawatts. Battery projects are expanding at an even faster pace, with 15 times the average storage capacity last year compared with 2019. One major reason for building bigger is that developers are reaping greater returns on investment by capitalizing on economies of scale. Large-scale projects cost significantly less per watt than smaller ones to build, according to data from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Sunstone Solar is also one of a growing number of combined solar-and-storage facilities, which allow greater amounts of power produced at peak sunny hours to be stored and dispensed later in the day.

[lboogie1906]

Elizabeth Duncan Koontz (June 3, 1919 - January 6, 1989) was the first African American president of the National Education Association which at that point was an 820,000-member Association of Classroom Teachers. She was born in Salisbury, North Carolina. Her parents were Samuel E. Duncan, former president of Livingstone College, and Lena Bell Jordan Duncan, an educator at Salisbury’s Dunbar Elementary School. The last of seven children, She began elementary school at four and graduated salutatorian of her class from Joseph Charles Price High School and enrolled in Livingstone College. Three years later, she received a BA. She earned an MA from Atlanta University. She married Harry Koontz (1947) a mathematics educator.

In 1960, she became the first African American to serve as secretary of the NEA. She authored Guidelines for Local Associations of Classroom Teachers.

She held several positions as an educator in North Carolina and served as president of the Association of Classroom Teachers of the NEA (1965-66) her career break came in 1968, as president of the National Education Association. Her term in office was highlighted when she established the NEA’s Human and Civil Rights Division. She was appointed the first African American director of the US Department of Labor Women’s Bureau by President Richard Nixon. She collaborated globally and addressed relevant and pressing issues in an attempt to eliminate discrimination against women and minorities in the workforce. She was a proponent of the Equal Rights Amendment. She appeared on the covers of the August 1, 1969, Jet magazine and the October 1969 issue of Teacher.

She received honorary doctorates from Livingstone College, Howard University, Coppin State College, Eastern Michigan University, Northeastern University, and Bryant University, Indiana University. An elementary school in Salisbury was named in her honor.

She was the assistant state school superintendent in North Carolina (1975-82). She was a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence #zetaphibeta

[mylittlesecrethaven]

Let's Look At Where We Would Be In Panem

I'm doing all 50 states, so let's fucking go. (I'm not doing exact, so if it's only partially in the wilds, I'm not stating that)

Alabama - 11 (Agriculture) Alaska - None Arizona - 5 (Power) Arkansas - Southern = 11 (Agriculture), Northern = 8 (Textiles) California - 4 (Fishing) Colorado - 2 (Masonry) Connecticut - Wilds Delaware - Wilds Florida - Wilds Georgia - Wilds Hawaii - None Idaho - Southern = 1 (Luxury), Middle = 4 (Fishing), Northern = 7 (Lumber) Illinois - Southern = 8 (Textiles), Northern = 3 (Technology) Indiana - Southern = 12 (Coal), Norhtern = 3 (Technology) Iowa - 3 (Technology) Kansas - 8 (Textiles) Kentucky - 12 (Coal) Louisiana - Wilds Maine - Wilds Maryland - Wilds Massachusetts - Wilds Michigan - Southern = 3 (Technology), Northwestern = 6 (Transportation), Northeastern = 13 (Nuclear) Minnesota - Western = 9 (Grain), Eastern = 3 (Technology) Mississippi - 11 (Agriculture) Missouri - 8 (Textiles) Montana - Southern = 1 (Luxury), Northern = 7 (Lumber) Nebraska - 9 (Grain) Nevada - 4 (Fishing) New Hampshire - Wilds New Jersey - Wilds New Mexico - 2 (Masonry) New York - 13 (Nuclear) North Carolina - Wilds North Dakota - 9 (Grain) Ohio - 12 (Coal) Oklahoma - 11 (Agriculture) Oregon - 4 (Fishing) Pennsylvania - Wilds Rhode Island - Wilds South Carolina - Wilds South Dakota - 9 (Agriculture) Tennessee - 8 (Textiles) Texas - Western = 10 (Livestock), Eastern = 11 (Agriculture) Utah - Southern = 5 (Power), Northern = 1 (Luxury) Vermont - Wilds Virginia - Wilds Washington - 7 (Lumber) West Virginia - 12 (Coal) Wisconsin - Western = 3 (Technology), Eastern = 6 (Transportation) Wyoming - Southern = Capital, Nothern = 1 (Luxury)

This isn't perfectly exact, but I tried my best.

(Btw, I'd be in District 11. Lemme know where y'all would be.)

[stele3]

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-gives-israel-30-days-improve-gazas-humanitarian-situation-or-risk-aid-reports-2024-10-15/

[alatmosphericcenter]

ZCZC MIATWOAT ALL

TTAA00 KNHC DDHHMM

Tropical Weather Outlook

NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL

200 PM EDT Thu Sep 5 2024

For the North Atlantic...Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico:

1. Northwest Gulf of Mexico:

A large area of showers and thunderstorms continue in association

with a broad area of low pressure interacting with a weak frontal

boundary located over the northwestern Gulf of Mexico. Upper-level

winds are expected to become less conducive for development by late

Friday and Saturday as another frontal boundary approaches the

system. Although development is unlikely, heavy rainfall is

expected across portions of the northern Gulf Coast during the next

day or so. Additional information on this system can be found in

products issued by your local National Weather Service Forecast

Office.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...10 percent.

* Formation chance through 7 days...low...10 percent.

2. Northwestern Atlantic (AL99):

Showers and thunderstorms have become better organized in

association with a non-tropical area of low pressure located a few

hundred miles east of North Carolina, and recent satellite data

indicates the system is producing winds to near gale-force. This

system could acquire some tropical or subtropical characteristics

over the next day or two while it moves generally

north-northeastward, remaining offshore of the northeastern United

States. Once the low moves over cooler waters by early Saturday,

further development is not expected. Additional information on this

system, including gale warnings, can be found in High Seas Forecasts

issued by the National Weather Service.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...30 percent.

* Formation chance through 7 days...low...30 percent.

3. Eastern Tropical Atlantic:

An elongated trough of low pressure over the eastern tropical

Atlantic is producing limited shower activity. Development is not

expected through this weekend while the system moves little. Some

slow development appears possible early next week when the

disturbance begins moving slowly northwestward.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...near 0 percent.

* Formation chance through 7 days...low...20 percent.

4. Northwestern Caribbean Sea and Southwestern Gulf of Mexico:

Shower and thunderstorm activity remains disorganized in

association with a westward-moving tropical wave located over the

western Caribbean Sea. Development is not expected before the

system reaches Belize and the Yucatan Peninsula by early Friday.

Some gradual development is possible late in the weekend into early

next week after the system emerges over the southwestern Gulf of

Mexico.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...near 0 percent.

* Formation chance through 7 days...low...20 percent.

5. Central Tropical Atlantic:

Another tropical wave located a few hundred miles east of the

Leeward Islands is producing limited shower and thunderstorm

activity. Strong upper-level winds are expected to inhibit

development of this system during the next few days while it moves

west-northwestward at 10 to 15 mph. By early next week,

environmental conditions could become more conducive for some slow

development while the system moves over the southwestern Atlantic

Ocean.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...near 0 percent.

* Formation chance through 7 days...low...10 percent.

High Seas Forecasts are issued by the National Weather Service

under AWIPS header NFDHSFAT1 and WMO header FZNT01 KWBC, and online

at ocean.weather.gov/shtml/NFDHSFAT1.php

Forecaster Hagen/Delgado

[atlantichurricanes]

Atlantic Tropical Weather Outlook issued by the National Hurricane Center in Miami, FL, USA

2024-09-04, 20:00 EDT

Northwestern Atlantic: A non-tropical area of low pressure located a few hundred miles east of North Carolina is producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms. This system could acquire some subtropical characteristics over the next few days while it moves north- northeastward, remaining offshore of the northeastern United States. Additional information on this system can be found in High Seas Forecasts issued by the National Weather Service.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...10 percent.

* Formation chance through 7 days...low...20 percent.

Northwestern Caribbean Sea and Southwestern Gulf of Mexico: A tropical wave moving quickly westward at about 20 mph is producing a broad area of disorganized showers and thunderstorms across portions of the west-central Caribbean Sea. Some development is possible in a few days when the system moves over the southwestern Gulf of Mexico.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...near 0 percent.

* Formation chance through 7 days...low...30 percent.

Central Tropical Atlantic Ocean: Another tropical wave located several hundred miles east of the Lesser Antilles is producing disorganized shower and thunderstorm activity. Development of this system, if any, is expected to be slow to occur over the next couple of days while it moves west-northwestward at 10 to 15 mph. Environmental conditions are expected to become less favorable for additional development by the end of the week.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...10 percent.

* Formation chance through 7 days...low...10 percent.

Eastern Tropical Atlantic Ocean: A broad area of low pressure over the eastern tropical Atlantic is producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms. Some slow development of this system is possible during the next several days while it drifts northwestward.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...10 percent.

* Formation chance through 7 days...low...20 percent.

&& High Seas Forecasts are issued by the National Weather Service under AWIPS header NFDHSFAT1 and WMO header FZNT01 KWBC, and online at ocean.weather.gov/shtml/NFDHSFAT1.php

$$ Forecaster Pasch

[plethoraworldatlas]

The Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina provided names for four critically endangered red wolves: a breeding male and female and their two daughters. They make up one of only two packs of red wolves in the wild.

The last 20 wild red wolves live in the northeastern corner of North Carolina on the ancestral lands of the Tuscarora Nation. The Tuscarora Nation has been living with red wolves in the region for more than 2,400 years.

“Our ancestors occupied a large territory which included Goose Creek State Park, an area well known for red wolves,” said Rahnàwakęw Donnie McDowell, public relations officer for Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina.

“Red wolves are sacred animals to us,” said Runęhkwáʔčhęʔ Duane Brayboy, a linguist and historian for the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina. “One of our clans among the Tuscarora is the Wolf Clan. The Tuscarora and red wolves have a deep shared history.”

The Tuscarora Nation named the breeding male Pathmaker (Rahahę́·tih). Pathmaker, the last surviving male of his pack, is blazing a trail for his family through the swamps and forests of eastern North Carolina.

The breeding female is named Hope (Yerharahčrę́·tih). Hope carries the legacy and future of her pack as the only remaining breeding female.

The two female yearlings are named Hawkeye (Yęʔnewęyéhsthaʔ) and Shield (Kayęʔnaʔnęnę́thyar). Shield looks after her sister, and Hawkeye is an astute and careful observer.

[ausetkmt]

The first time Karl Ricanek was stopped by police for “driving while Black” was in the summer of 1995. He was twenty-five and had just qualified as an engineer and started work at the US Department of Defense’s Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, Rhode Island, a wealthy town known for its spectacular cliff walks and millionaires’ mansions. That summer, he had bought his first nice car—a two-year-old dark green Infiniti J30T that cost him roughly $30,000 (US).

One evening, on his way back to the place he rented in First Beach, a police car pulled him over. Karl was polite, distant, knowing not to seem combative or aggressive. He knew, too, to keep his hands in visible places and what could happen if he didn’t. It was something he’d been trained to do from a young age.

The cop asked Karl his name, which he told him, even though he didn’t have to. He was well aware that if he wanted to get out of this thing, he had to cooperate. He felt at that moment he had been stripped of any rights, but he knew this was what he—and thousands of others like him—had to live with. This is a nice car, the cop told Karl. How do you afford a fancy car like this?

What do you mean? Karl thought furiously. None of your business how I afford this car. Instead, he said, “Well, I’m an engineer. I work over at the research centre. I bought the car with my wages.”

That wasn’t the last time Karl was pulled over by a cop. In fact, it wasn’t even the last time in Newport. And when friends and colleagues shrugged, telling him that getting stopped and being asked some questions didn’t sound like a big deal, he let it lie. But they had never been stopped simply for “driving while white”; they hadn’t been subjected to the humiliation of being questioned as law-abiding adults, purely based on their visual identity; they didn’t have to justify their presence and their choices to strangers and be afraid for their lives if they resisted.

Karl had never broken the law. He’d worked as hard as anybody else, doing all the things that bright young people were supposed to do in America. So why, he thought, can’t I just be left alone?

Karl grew up with four older siblings in Deanwood, a primarily Black neighbourhood in the northeastern corner of Washington, DC, with a white German father and a Black mother. When he left Washington, DC, at eighteen for college, he had a scholarship to study at North Carolina A&T State University, which graduates the largest numbers of Black engineers in the US. It was where Karl learned to address problems with technical solutions, rather than social ones. He taught himself to emphasize his academic credentials and underplay his background so he would be taken more seriously amongst peers.

After working in Newport, Karl went into academia, at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. In particular, he was interested in teaching computers to identify faces even better than humans do. His goal seemed simple: first, unpick how humans see faces, and then teach computers how to do it more efficiently.

When he started out back in the ’80s and ’90s, Karl was developing AI technology to help the US Navy’s submarine fleet navigate autonomously. At the time, computer vision was a slow-moving field, in which machines were merely taught to recognize objects rather than people’s identities. The technology was nascent—and pretty terrible. The algorithms he designed were trying to get the machine to say: that’s a bottle, these are glasses, this is a table, these are humans. Each year, they made incremental, single-digit improvements in precision.

Then, a new type of AI known as deep learning emerged—the same discipline that allowed miscreants to generate sexually deviant deepfakes of Helen Mort and Noelle Martin, and the model that underpins ChatGPT. The cutting-edge technology was helped along by an embarrassment of data riches—in this case, millions of photos uploaded to the web that could be used to train new image recognition algorithms.

Deep learning catapulted the small gains Karl was seeing into real progress. All of a sudden, what used to be a 1 percent improvement was now 10 percent each year. It meant software could now be used not just to classify objects but to recognize unique faces.

When Karl first started working on the problem of facial recognition, it wasn’t supposed to be used live on protesters or pedestrians or ordinary people. It was supposed to be a photo analysis tool. From its inception in the ’90s, researchers knew there were biases and inaccuracies in how the algorithms worked. But they hadn’t quite figured out why.

The biometrics community viewed the problems as academic—an interesting computer-vision challenge affecting a prototype still in its infancy. They broadly agreed that the technology wasn’t ready for prime-time use, and they had no plans to profit from it.

As the technology steadily improved, Karl began to develop experimental AI analytics models to spot physical signs of illnesses like cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s from a person’s face. For instance, a common symptom of Parkinson’s is frozen or stiff facial expressions, brought on by changes in the face’s muscles. AI technology could be used to analyse these micro muscular changes and detect the onset of disease early. He told me he imagined inventing a mirror that you could look at each morning that would tell you (or notify a trusted person) if you were developing symptoms of degenerative neurological disease. He founded a for-profit company, Lapetus Solutions, which predicted life expectancy through facial analytics, for the insurance market.

His systems were used by law enforcement to identify trafficked children and notorious criminal gangsters such as Whitey Bulger. He even looked into identifying faces of those who had changed genders, by testing his systems on videos of transsexual people undergoing hormonal transitions, an extremely controversial use of the technology. He became fixated on the mysteries locked up in the human face, regardless of any harms or negative consequences.

In the US, it was 9/11 that, quite literally overnight, ramped up the administration’s urgent need for surveillance technologies like face recognition, supercharging investment in and development of these systems. The issue was no longer merely academic, and within a few years, the US government had built vast databases containing the faces and other biometric data of millions of Iraqis, Afghans, and US tourists from around the world. They invested heavily in commercializing biometric research like Karl’s; he received military funding to improve facial recognition algorithms, working on systems to recognize obscured and masked faces, young faces, and faces as they aged. American domestic law enforcement adapted counterterrorism technology, including facial recognition, to police street crime, gang violence, and even civil rights protests.

It became harder for Karl to ignore what AI facial analytics was now being developed for. Yet, during those years, he resisted critique of the social impacts of the powerful technology he was helping create. He rarely sat on ethics or standards boards at his university, because he thought they were bureaucratic and time consuming. He described critics of facial recognition as “social justice warriors” who didn’t have practical experience of building this technology themselves. As far as he was concerned, he was creating tools to help save children and find terrorists, and everything else was just noise.

But it wasn’t that straightforward. Technology companies, both large and small, had access to far more face data and had a commercial imperative to push forward facial recognition. Corporate giants such as Meta and Chinese-owned TikTok, and start-ups like New York–based Clearview AI and Russia’s NTech Labs, own even larger databases of faces than many governments do—and certainly more than researchers like Karl do. And they’re all driven by the same incentive: making money.

These private actors soon uprooted systems from academic institutions like Karl’s and started selling immature facial recognition solutions to law enforcement, intelligence agencies, governments, and private entities around the world. In January 2020, the New York Times published a story about how Clearview AI had taken billions of photos from the web, including sites like LinkedIn and Instagram, to build powerful facial recognition capabilities bought by several police forces around the world.

The technology was being unleashed from Argentina to Alabama with a life of its own, blowing wild like gleeful dandelion seeds taking root at will. In Uganda, Hong Kong, and India, it has been used to stifle political opposition and civil protest. In the US, it was used to track Black Lives Matter protests and Capitol rioters during the uprising in January 2021, and in London to monitor revellers at the annual Afro-Caribbean carnival in Notting Hill.

And it’s not just a law enforcement tool: facial recognition is being used to catch pickpockets and petty thieves. It is deployed at the famous Gordon’s Wine Bar in London, scanning for known troublemakers. It’s even been used to identify dead Russian soldiers in Ukraine. The question whether it was ready for prime-time use has taken on an urgency as it impacts the lives of billions around the world.

Karl knew the technology was not ready for widespread rollout in this way. Indeed, in 2018, Joy Buolamwini, Timnit Gebru, and Deborah Raji—three Black female researchers at Microsoft—had published a study, alongside collaborators, comparing the accuracy of face recognition systems built by IBM, Face++, and Microsoft. They found the error rates for light-skinned men hovered at less than 1 percent, while that figure touched 35 percent for darker-skinned women. Karl knew that New Jersey resident Nijer Parks spent ten days in jail in 2019 and paid several thousand dollars to defend himself against accusations of shoplifting and assault of a police officer in Woodbridge, New Jersey.

The thirty-three-year-old Black man had been misidentified by a facial recognition system used by the Woodbridge police. The case was dismissed a year later for lack of evidence, and Parks later sued the police for violation of his civil rights.

A year after that, Robert Julian-Borchak Williams, a Detroit resident and father of two, was arrested for a shoplifting crime he did not commit, due to another faulty facial recognition match. The arrest took place in his front garden, in front of his family.

Facial recognition technology also led to the incorrect identification of American-born Amara Majeed as a terrorist involved in Sri Lanka’s Easter Day bombings in 2019. Majeed, a college student at the time, said the misidentification caused her and her family humiliation and pain after her relatives in Sri Lanka saw her face, unexpectedly, amongst a line-up of the accused terrorists on the evening news.

As his worlds started to collide, Karl was forced to reckon with the implications of AI-enabled surveillance—and to question his own role in it, acknowledging it could curtail the freedoms of individuals and communities going about their normal lives. “I think I used to believe that I create technology,” he told me, “and other smart people deal with policy issues. Now I have to ponder and think much deeper about what it is that I’m doing.”

And what he had thought of as technical glitches, such as algorithms working much better on Caucasian and male faces while struggling to correctly identify darker skin tones and female faces, he came to see as much more than that.

“It’s a complicated feeling. As an engineer, as a scientist, I want to build technology to do good,” he told me. “But as a human being and as a Black man, I know people are going to use technology inappropriately. I know my technology might be used against me in some manner or fashion.”

In my decade of covering the technology industry, Karl was one of the only computer scientists to ever express their moral doubts out loud to me. Through him, I glimpsed the fraught relationship that engineers can have with their own creations and the ethical ambiguities they grapple with when their personal and professional instincts collide.

He was also one of the few technologists who comprehended the implicit threats of facial recognition, particularly in policing, in a visceral way.

“The problem that we have is not the algorithms but the humans,” he insisted. When you hear about facial recognition in law enforcement going terribly wrong, it’s because of human errors, he said, referring to the over-policing of African American males and other minorities and the use of unprovoked violence by police officers against Black people like Philando Castile, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor.

He knew the technology was rife with false positives and that humans suffered from confirmation bias. So if a police officer believed someone to be guilty of a crime and the AI system confirmed it, they were likely to target innocents. “And if that person is Black, who cares?” he said.

He admitted to worrying that the inevitable false matches would result in unnecessary gun violence. He was afraid that these problems would compound the social malaise of racial or other types of profiling. Together, humans and AI could end up creating a policing system far more malignant than the one citizens have today.

“It’s the same problem that came out of the Jim Crow era of the ’60s; it was supposed to be separate but equal, which it never was; it was just separate . . . fundamentally, people don’t treat everybody the same. People make laws, and people use algorithms. At the end of the day, the computer doesn’t care.”

Excerpted from Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia. Published by Henry Holt and Company. Copyright © 2024 by Madhumita Murgia. All rights reserved.

[blog-brett-matthew-west-gazette]

America's Infatuation With Mass Shootings

infatuation is best described as an intense passion, or admiration, for something. In this case, the 2nd Amendment's controversial right to bear arms.

According to an article I recently encountered, the Associated Press and USA Today, in conjunction with Northeastern University, reported there have been 2,842 citizens of the United States that have been murdered in mass shootings since 2006.

This AP/USA Today statistic demonstrates these horrific events are currently happening on an average pace of every 6.53 days, that makes them take place about once a week. I wonder have they not penetrated the American psyche yet?

A particular reason 2023 stands out compared to other years since data has been compiled on mass shootings is approximately one-third of the way through the calendar year there have been 17 of these nightmares that have occurred.

In half of the years since statistics have been maintained on the subject of mass shootings (2006 to 2023), according to the aforementioned AP/USA Today article cited, there have been 30 or fewer mass killings that took place each year.

In 2023 mass shootings have occurred over a period of about 111 days, give or take a few, and ended 88 lives that can never be returned. These numbers place the United States on a record pace for mass killings. Don't get me wrong, because I believe each lost life snuffed out in mass shootings is indeed a tragedy.

Let's examine some of the 2023 mass shootings that have occurred.

-January 23, at Half Moon Bay, 7 farmworkers were killed in Northern California over a workplace grudge

-April 15, dancers at the Mahogany Masterpiece Dance Studio outside Los Angeles, California were massacred as they celebrated the Lunar New Year

-March 27, six children at the Covenant School, in the Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee. This Commentator resides not too far from this locale. Therefore, this incident hit fairly close to home for moi.

-April 1, at a Sweet 16 celebration in Dadeville, Alabama in which four partiers were killed and 52 others injured

-April 18, in Bowdoin, Maine, committed by a felon just released from prison, who killed four people, including his parents, then opened fire on motorists on Interstate 295 in Yarmouth

-April 10, in Louisville, Kentucky where 5 were killed, and 8 wounded, at the Old National Bank

Is there any wonder this world appears to get crazier with each rising sun?

Can you guess how many states have experienced mass shootings over the years? Google if you desire, but here is the list. It is almost a take your pick situation.

Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Hawaii, Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Indiana, New Jersey, Florida, South Carolina, Louisiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Arkansas, and Tennessee. That is 30 out of 50. Toss in Washington, D.C. for good measure, and it begins to sound similar to a broken record, doesn't it?

Perhaps no one should be surprised by these mass killings, that appear to have become a way of life for the fabric of the United States, and may have made Americans immune to them. Or should people be very much concerned about them? If that is correct, isn't it significantly high time something was done to eliminate their occurrences?