Fox “News” is known for its extreme right wing bias. What also separates it from the other 24 hour cable news outlets is that its anchors and so-called reporters constantly tell lies they do not believe:
Update: A Fox producer said she was pressured to lie. And that is the difference between Fox and MSNBC or CNN. Fox routinely pressures its producers, reporters and anchors to lie, whereas MSNBC and CNN would never do that:
WATCH: Sean Hannity admitted in court testimony that he "did not believe" Donald Trump's claims of voter fraud in 2020 presidential election. https://t.co/RbwolwlpGc
One of the eagles at Big Bear in California is nearly buried under the snow, but it still protects two eggs on its nest.
I thought the eagle might have died today, as it is covered in snow and it is difficult to see it breathing as it lay motionless. But the eagle shakes off some snow or moves its beak every few minutes.
The eagles, Jackie and Shadow, were distracted by something and would leave the nest unprotected for an hour or more a few days ago before the snow storm. Now, however, at least one eagle is protecting the eggs.
Update: The National Weather Service forecasts five to six feet of snow for Big Bear over the next several days. If the eagles and eggs are to survive, Jackie and Shadow will have to take turns on the nest and bringing fish.
Some of the recorded videos are interesting. One shows Jackie laying the first egg. Another one shows her completely buried, and then she pops out. Bald eagles are amazing:
Gov. Gavin Newsom has directed UCLA to guarantee admission for eligible transfer students but legislative analyst and UC faculty leaders question the plan's focus and feasibility.
Local news is suffering in large part because exploitative leeches Facebook, Google and Amazon steal their content and then wrap their digital ads onto it without fair compensation:
Rebuild Local News is launching as an independent nonprofit organization with more members and supporters, to turbocharge the campaign to strengthen democracy with public policies to support the local press. pic.twitter.com/jtvlAp5gD6
"State-level experiments designed to support local journalism as a crucial public service are expanding, from New Jersey to California, New Mexico to Wisconsin, Illinois to Washington, and beyond.”
The groups allege that the warehouses — which now cover more than one billion square feet in Southern California — cause negative health effects from extreme pollution. Cancer, asthma and heart disease are caused by the pollution from diesel trucks that travel to and from the warehouses.
Most of the warehouse owners do not live in the Inland Empire and so they do not have to suffer from the increased traffic and pollution caused by the warehouses, a new analysis found:
"New warehouses are being built at a rate that’s five times the Inland population growth rate," in a letter from more than 60 groups states to Gov. Gavin Newsom in support of a warehouse moratorium. #OurHealthisNotForSalehttps://t.co/Di25jiLAd3
I’m so pleased to share that The Climate Book is now available in the USA and Canada! I have gathered the wisdom of over one hundred contributors to highlight the many different crises we face and equip us with the knowledge we need to avoid a climate disaster. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/z2AD32Oac1
Forty-two horses died at the barbaric racetrack in 2019. The pace of the carnage this year is set to surpass that shocking total.
Where is the government oversight? How can this sickening barbarity be allowed to continue?
I grew up around horses. My family had an Arabian and a Quarter Horse. My sister and I felt extremely fortunate to care for them with daily grooming, feeding and riding. We both also served as volunteers at a horse farm where we taught children to ride. My sister wound up making a career out of caring for Thoroughbred race horses. Were she alive now, I can imagine that her outrage at what is happening at Santa Anita would be boiling over.
Santa Anita officials should be notified in writing that if another horse is doped or dies there, the racetrack will be closed permanently. There should be a no tolerance policy regarding doping or any other mistreatment of race horses, with automatic penalties of prison terms, hefty fines, and permanent bans from any involvement with horse racing.
And the oversight officials who have failed to protect the race horses so far should all be fired and permanently banned from any involvement in horse racing or any other competitive sport.
The abuses at Santa Anita have continued far too long. Clean it up or shut it down. Now!
Update: New regulations and oversight are being developed, with changes expected to go into effect March 27:
If the Supreme Court rules against websites, the result will be that many of them will shut down because they do not have the resources to police what their users post. The websites that remain will either eliminate all user content or self censor it by removing everything that might be even remotely offensive, controversial or critical.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. People mean well, but they do not consider the downside to their plans. The result in this case will be the death of the internet as we know it if the court rules against the websites. We would then have a sanitized and safe internet that would be worthless. Only wealthy tech giants would remain on the internet, and they would be mind numbingly boring.
Update: The case has begun. The Supreme Court seems to be leaning against taking away websites’ freedom to edit or allow users’ posts.
Update: Liberal justices apparently are willing to hold social media liable for hosting (and unknowingly promoting with automated algorithms) terrorist groups’ content, while conservatives seem to think that social media are not liable unless it can be proven that they knew there was a clear and present danger of substantial violence that would occur as a result of hosting (and unknowingly promoting) the content. Since there was no indication that there was such a clear and present danger, the only fair and logical decision that can be made is to reject the claim that social media should be held liable. This is one of the few times that conservatives are reaching the correct decision.
Breaking: Former Los Angeles City Councilmember Jose Huizar has agreed to plead guilty to racketeering and tax evasion, admitting that he extorted at least $1.5 million in bribes from developers.
Of course, this leeching has been going on for decades with search, but at least search drove traffic to the news websites. Sure, some AI-fueled search may list a link to the original news website buried at the bottom of the AI page, but it is designed to steal news content without steering users to the original sites, and so it will be even worse.
Imagine a search engine that plagiarizes or pseudo-plagiarizes news content and profits from it on a massive scale. That is what AI-fueled search will do.
Journalism has been suffering for years because of social media and search. AI will accelerate the damage. What happens, however, when this new search kills the news? What will it leech from then?
Update: For now, AI chat search is interesting but unreliable:
Update: Google is trying to tempt news media with AI to help write headlines and stories, while claiming the tech is not intended to replace journalists. Yeah, right.
And what a fitting, insightful and beautiful tribute it is. Well done!
Dozens of mountain lions are killed each year in collisions with cars and trucks in California. Animal crossings would reduce the carnage.
I had the scary good fortune to see a mountain lion up close in Colorado just south of Rocky Mountain National Park while on a multi-day hike in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. I was in my small tent reading a book just before it got too dark to read. I heard loud thump-thump-thump sounds and I guessed it was a large animal, perhaps an elk, deer, bear or cougar. And then I saw it about 16 yards away: a big mountain lion! We locked eyes for about 20 seconds, and then I lost sight of it. And then I had an unobstructed view of the huge cat as it ran up the trail above my tent.
The odd thing about my seeing a mountain lion that evening was that I saw huge cougar tracks next to the trail near my campsite a few hours earlier, and I thought to myself at that moment that I would see one that evening. I had hiked that trail many times and never seen a cougar, and the tracks were probably weeks or months old in dry dirt. And so intuition should have told me that I would probably not see a mountain lion, but instead I was certain I would. And then I did. What an experience!
Also, the once reliable and authoritative tech website recently published 75 stories written with artificial intelligence, even though some of them had inaccuracies and plagiarism. CNET’S shill-in-chief then published a weak-sauce statement defending the indefensible:
Several of my former students had said their goal was to write for CNET. I doubt that they would want to do that now.
The changes are reportedly the result of meddling by CNET’s new ethics-challenged owner.
I know from personal experience that CNET sometimes does not correct factual errors after readers repeatedly notify its writers and editors. For example, CNET had a story that falsely claimed the iPhone X does not have an OLED screen and then refused to correct the error after I repeatedly contacted the tech site.
If you read CNET stories or watch its videos, you should stop at least until it is sold to a more ethical owner. And you definitely should not work there, as doing so could jeopardize career advancement opportunities elsewhere.
New: CNET's AI saga is just the most visible effect of being owned by Red Ventures, a private equity-backed marketing firm.
Former staff told me about the breakdown of editorial firewalls at CNET, including being pushed to change stories for advertisers. https://t.co/QcsdKB5Q5j
And the reason? It’s that the U.S. spends more than $700 billion, more than any other country, on its military. Other high income countries don’t have to spend very much on their militaries because they know that we will defend them. We operate more than 700 military bases around the world. And so these other countries can afford to provide health care for all of their people.
We could easily afford to provide health care for all of our people if we stopped being the policeman of the world.
If Allysen Callery had 10% of the marketing budget of any of the more popular musicians, she would reach millions with her enchanting art. She doesn’t, but that doesn’t mean you can’t adore her music as much as her fortunate admirers do.
No one mixes breathtakingly gorgeous sound with meltingly evocative lyrics in such a delicately emotive fashion as Allysen Callery does. She sings a lot about nature and her lyrics can be dark at times, but her extraordinary talent transcends genres and generations.
While I imagine that her music would sound beautiful with a wide range of audio gear, it inspired me to improve my home stereo system until it could play back her art as well as possible or close to that level. As you probably can imagine, I am enjoying her music and am under her spell now as I write this.
The planet will wither away into a dried out husk that will endanger the lives of three billion people before 2065 even if significant measures are taken to deal with the climate crisis:
We had the chance in 2000 to elect as president Al Gore, who made global warming his top issue, but instead the Supreme Court appointed dimwit big oil supporter George Bush. Now, 23 years later, it is too late. We are doomed.
And we keep drilling for oil as if nothing bad will happen to the climate as a result.
Update: Efforts to deal with the consequences of the climate crisis are drawing resources away from reducing its causes. And that course of action is intensifying the climate crisis, which then necessitates spending even more resources to deal with the consequences, and so on, all spiraling out of control in a worsening doom loop: