Cheap Shot

 Sometimes various forces in society combine to do something that makes us all look foolish. The Supreme Court decision wiping out the plan to forgive student loan debt is one of those actions.

President Biden’s plan has always been controversial with older people. Many conservatives opposed it because it is expensive; others objected on the principle that all debts must be repaid no matter what.

When it comes to such matters, on a personal level, I’ve always been averse to incurring debts and when it’s been necessary to do so, I try to pay them off as quickly as possible. I want to live within my means.

But I’m relatively fortunate. In today’s world we have millions of young people who have been raised in a manner that makes the crushing weight of student loans almost inevitable. They are told they won’t be able to get a decent job without a college degree, and the cost of getting one has steadily escalated over the years.

Then they got hit with Covid, a double whammy. Gen Z is reeling.

Perhaps the most disingenuous objection to debt relief for the young comes from certain people who say, “I paid off my loan. Why should they get a free ride?”

That’s what makes us all look small. Empathy for the youngest members of society is too often lacking, and that makes those of us living in richest land on earth look downright cheap.

LINKS:

• SCOTUS blocks Biden's student loan plan and limits LGBTQ protections in major rulings (CNN)

• Consumers and retailers brace for student loan payment restart (WP)

• The working-from-home illusion fades (Economist)

• Twitter’s New Chief Eases Into the Hot Seat (NYT)

• Christie says Trump wishes ‘he could be Putin in America’ (The Hill)

• Why Donald Trump Was So Mad at Mark Milley That He Confessed to a Crime (New Yorker)

• Ukraine’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny, wants shells, planes and patience (WP)

• The True Threat of AI (NYT)

• The first fully A.I.-generated drug enters clinical trials in human patients (CNBC)

• AI Foundation launches AI.XYZ to give people their own AI assistants (Venture Beat)

• Aaron Paul Thinks AI Is Scarier Than Any ‘Black Mirror’ Episode (Rolling Stone)

• “We Have Built a Giant Treadmill That We Can’t Get Off”: Sci-Fi Prophet Ted Chiang on How to Best Think About AI (Vanity Fair)

• VC billionaire Marc Andreessen says he wrote ‘Why AI will save the world’ because a ‘hysterical freakout has arrived in Washington’ (Fortune)

• Don’t Use A.I. to Cheat in School. It’s Better for Studying. (NYT)

• The Huge Power and Potential Danger of AI-Generated Code (Wired)

• How the U.S. is trying to stay ahead of China in the AI race (Axios)

• European companies claim the EU’s AI Act could ‘jeopardise technological sovereignty’ (The Verge)

• Why India Risks Falling Behind in the AI Race (Bloomberg)

• Artificial Intelligence Is Theft (National Review)

• Dangerous Heat and Heavy Wildfire Smoke March Across North America (NYT)

• French Riots Escalate as Macron Struggles to Respond (WSJ)

• More layoffs hit ESPN as Disney slashes costs (WP)

• Fixing deep-sea mining damage would be double the cost of extraction, study says (Reuters)

• In These Corners of Kabul, Western Influences Live On (NYT)

• CEO Relieved AI Can Never Replace Him If He Already Contributes Nothing To Company (The Onion)

Men Over Women (Afghan 63)

 This is the latest in a series of special reports from an Afghan friend abut life under the Taliban.

Several days ago, the staff of the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice asked my colleagues and me to visit their office so we went there. 

Before the fall of the government, this office belonged to the Department of Women's Affairs. This department had more than 30 employees and all of them were women. When you entered, you could smell the cologne in its corridors. The orderliness and cleanliness of the office were admired by every visitor. Clients were treated with tenderness and kindness. 

But now, the smell of cologne has been replaced by the stinky smell of toilets that are never cleaned, and the smell of sweat from men who bathe once a month. Clean chairs and tables have been replaced by dirty mattresses and pillows. Instead of women and girls with red lipstick and kohl eyes, sit a bunch of hairy and turbaned men. Kindness and tenderness have given way to threats and violence.

When we entered the office, about five clergymen were wearing black turbans, sitting on mattresses instead of chairs. They believe using chairs is a Western tradition so they try to use mattresses. The office was more like a living room. They ordered us to sit on a dusty carpet, seemingly, it had not been swept for a month. 

People from all classes of society were there for the session. From employees of the government to workers, barbers, and other citizens. We sat down. They started talking. One of them brought up the purpose for our visit – to hear their religious justifications for growing a beard and wearing a turban. 

One mullah said a few hadiths and verses about the benefits of having a long beard. "Whoever shaves his beard, we will incarcerate him and whip him,” another mullah said. “Not only government employees who do not grow a beard deserve to be punished but also every citizen who lives in this country." 

LINKS:

• Supreme Court guts affirmative action in college admissions (CNN)

• Supreme Court strikes down Biden's student loan forgiveness program (Yahoo)

• Smoky Skies Menace U.S. Cities, Driving Residents Indoors (NYT)

• Heat and smoke are smothering most of the U.S., putting lives at risk (WP)

• “This won’t go well for Trump”: Experts say Giuliani “trying to avoid indictment” by cutting a deal (Salon)

• Judges Block Transgender Care Bans for Minors in Kentucky and Tennessee (NYT)

• America’s youths are under attack (The Hill)

• Walgreens is Closing 150 Stores; Everyone Should Worry (The Street)

• Creator of buzzy ChatGPT is sued for vacuuming up ‘vast amounts’ of private data to win the ‘A.I. arms race’ (Fortune)

• Lawsuit says OpenAI violated US authors' copyrights to train AI chatbot (Reuters)

• Melinda French Gates says more women must join the AI race to help prevent bias (CNN)

• Nvidia Warns of Lost Opportunities if U.S. Bans AI Chip Exports to China (WSJ)

• Artificial Intelligence Can’t Work Without Our Data (Politico Mag)

• AI-generated text is hard to spot. It could play a big role in the 2024 campaign (NPR)

• AI is supposedly the new nuclear weapons — but how similar are they, really? (Vox)

• Age of AI: Everything you need to know about artificial intelligence (TC)

• Should I Use an AI to Write My Wedding Toast? (Wired)

• France arrests 150 as violent protests spread over police killing of a teen (WP)

• Philippines considering US request to host visa processing center for Afghans despite concerns (AP)

• Putin Moves to Punish Prigozhin Allies (NYT)

• Vladimir Putin freezes out hardliners after Wagner mutiny (FT)

• National Geographic lays off its last remaining staff writers (WP)

• Jennifer Lawrence, A-List Actors Threaten to Strike in Letter to SAG (Rolling Stone)

• Janitor Trying To Turn Off Beeping Noise Destroys Decades Of Scientific Research (The Onion)

Age of Hope: The 1970s

 (Note: This piece is from 2008, shortly after I learned of the death of my friend Ken Kelley.)

The late Ken Kelley, radical journalist and follow migrant from Michigan to San Francisco in the early Seventies, with a bunch of his friends and colleagues, including yours truly. Ken is wearing the sports jacket.

Ken co-founded with Craig Pyes SunDance magazine, which was one of many attempts to capture the energy, anger, rebellion, and idealism of the era.

Ken Kelley, me (in rear) and Kate Coleman

Since most of us could not get jobs in the mainstream media, we learned how to start our own.

In the case of SunDance, we rented our space on Fillmore Street and then built our own offices. No pre-built cubicles were available in for media entrepreneurs in those days.

We had to learn the business from the ground up, including how to attract investors (ours included John Lennon and Yoko Ono), how to sell ads, and how to get our magazine distributed.

Thinking back, I realize this was before the trend toward specialization, when business leaders, academics, doctors, lawyers, workers and journalists were all still expected -- to one degree or another -- to be generalists.

Today, it's almost a lost art -- being a generalist -- and the resulting fragmentation of our society is palpable. SunDancewas not a boutique magazine. It occupied no particular niche.

It was about everything and was intended for everyone.

(Photos by Craig Pyes)

LINKS:

• Wildfire smoke updates: Air quality alerts issued in 20 US states (ABC)

• Supreme Court rejects use of race as factor in college admissions, ending affirmative action (CBS)

• In Chicago speech, Biden pitches voters on benefits of big government ‘Bidenomics’ (Crain’s)

• A jury found Trump responsible for sexual abuse. Now he’s suing his accuser for saying she was raped (AP)

• An Ancient Rule Allows Biden To Forgive Student Loan Debt — No Matter What the Supreme Court Says (Yahoo)

• Supreme Court rejects Independent State Legislature theory, but leaves door ajar (NPR)

• Supreme Court ruling leaves a door open for 2024 election challenges (AP)

• Paris Suburbs Erupt in Violent Protests After Police Kill Teenager (WSJ)

• Russian General Knew About Mercenary Chief’s Rebellion Plans, U.S. Officials Say (NYT)

• Russia’s New Time of Troubles — It’s Not 1917 in Moscow—It’s 1604 (Foreign Affairs)

• Putin Moves to Seize Control of Wagner’s Global Empire (WSJ)

• Lukashenko claims he persuaded Putin not to kill Wagner boss Prigozhin (WP)

• Afghanistan Accounted For 80% Of Global Illicit Opium Production In 2022: UN Report (NDTV)

• In Afghan hospitals, feeling abandoned by the Taliban — and the world (WP)

• Ranking Industries by Their Potential for AI Automation (Visual Capitalist)

• Unfortunately, Secret Invasion’s AI credits are exactly what we should expect from Marvel (The Verge)

• First AI-generated drug enters human clinical trials, targeting chronic lung disease patients (Fox)

• The AI buying spree is on (Axios)

• How to Tackle AI—and Cheating—in the Classroom (Wired)

• US weighs tougher restrictions on AI chip exports to China (Financial Times)

• A.I. is not all hype. It’s the ‘fourth industrial revolution playing out,’ says Wedbush’s Dan Ives (CNBC)

• The Pentagon’s endless struggle with AI (Politico)

• The first half of 2023 has been all about AI (Yahoo)

• Rising Seas Are Likely to Sow Havoc Much Sooner Than Predicted (Mother Jones)

• Top Trump Adviser Pushed for Drone Strikes on Migrants, New Book Claims (Rolling Stone)

• The Anti-Abortion Movement Gets a Dose of Post-Roe Reality (Nation)

• A New Intelligence Report Suggests That the Lab-Leak Wars Will Never End (Vanity Fair)

• The Unexpected Rescuers Who Found Colombia’s Missing Children (NYT)

• Bird That Can Read Everyone’s Thoughts Welcomed As Keynote Speaker Of Psychedelics Conference (The Onion)

A Good One

It’s cause to celebrate that on Tuesday the Supreme Court struck down the crackpot legal theory I wrote about in two recent essays, A Bad Case and Terminal Politics. The absurd independent-state-legislature-theory (ISLT) is based on an interpretation of the Constitution that would allow any state legislature to determine the outcome of a federal election however it chooses to do so.

Luckily for all of us (as well as for democracy), the Court rejected that theory by a solid margin of 6-3 yesterday.

Despite last year’s disastrous decision overturning a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion, this Court’s record on human rights is not all bad. Yesterday’s ruling went against a North Carolina initiative that would have gerrymandered electoral districts to an unconscionable degree.

So once again we’ve dodged a bullet, perhaps partly due to the powerful public reaction over the past year against the Court’s abortion ruling. That, plus the recent ethics scandals involving right-wing justices Thomas and Alito, have put the Court on the defensive.

This is confirmation, if one needed it, that the Court is not insulated from public opinion. On the contrary, it is very much a political entity, just like every other part of the federal government.

Concerned citizens, therefore, need to continue to make our voices heard: Most of us oppose the extremist movement that seeks to undermine the integrity of our election system, and we need a Supreme Court with the gumption to help stop it in its tracks.

LINKS:

• Supreme Court Upholds State Courts’ Power to Prevent Gerrymanders (WSJ)

• Supreme Court rejects theory that would have meant radical changes to election rules — The “independent state legislature theory” says the Constitution gives power over elections maps and voting decisions to lawmakers. (WP)

• Supreme Court set to end limbo over Biden’s student debt plan (The Hill)

• Putin Says Russia Is United Behind Him, After Quelling Rebellion (NYT)

• Wagner leader Prigozhin begins Belarus exile (BBC)

• What’s going on with Vladimir Putin after the mutiny? (Vox)

• ‘All bets are off’: An uncertain future after Wagner mutiny (Al Jazeera)

• The story of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s attempted mutiny in Russia is far from over (Economist)

• he West must now consider the possibility of a Russian political collapse (CNN)

• Putin Faces Historic Threat to Absolute Grip on Power (Bloomberg)

• Rental prices are finally starting to drop from pandemic highs (WP)

• U.S. consumer confidence leaps to 17-month high on waning inflation and fewer recession worries (MarketWatch)

• Why the World Is on the Brink of Great Disorder (Time)

• Google AI ‘raters’ who were fired after speaking out are reinstated (Fast Company)

• AI Promised to Make Jobs Easier. Workers Weren’t So Sure. (WSJ)

• Meet the Humans Trying to Keep Us Safe From AI (Wired)

• Will AI Really Destroy Humanity? (Barron’s)

• I taught ChatGPT to teach me board games, and now I won’t ever go back (DigitalTrends)

• he world lost an area of old-growth tropical rainforest the size of Switzerland last year, as deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon continued unabated, a forest monitoring project report said. (Reuters)

• The alarming decline of Earth’s forests (Vox)

• Humans have used enough groundwater to shift Earth’s tilt (WP)

• Rising sea levels and big waves during this year’s epic winter storms have eroded the southern end of Ocean Beach in San Francisco. (Cal Today)

• Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, more than 1,000 civilians were killed in attacks, UN says  (AP)

• How many members of America’s political elite are direct descendants of people who were slaveholders? To answer that question, Reuters examined the family ancestries of more than 600 of the country’s leading officeholders. Such an inquiry has never been done. The findings form the first of a multipart Special Report called Slavery’s Descendants. (Reuters)

• New Chase Card Offers 5% Cash Back On Any Embarrassing Purchase Employees Can Laugh At (The Onion)

 

Trail of a Writer

Those of us working at sites like HotWired and Salon in the early days of the web realized that we were sitting atop a technology that would change virtually everything about society in profound ways.

With my background in investigative reporting, I was curious about how the process of solving mysteries might be affected by the arrival of searchable databases of networked information. One case that caught my attention was that of the Unabomber, who’d been carrying on his one-man reign of terror since 1978, eluding a massive FBI manhunt in the process.

What I discussed specifically with colleagues was whether the Unabomber’s manifesto published by the Washington Postmight somehow be analyzed for tell-tale word choices that could uncover his identify.

The engineers I consulted said that the answer was “probably yes” in the future, but “not quite yet.” As it turned out, before this technology evolved, the brother of the man who wrote the manifesto recognized certain tell-tale word choices himself and alerted the FBI.

And that is how Theodore Kaczynski was finally identified and caught.

When Kaczynski died recently, I was reminded of all this and was pleased to see a summary of the case recounted in The Conversation.

Over the decades since Kaczynski’s arrest, the field of forensic linguistics has become far more developed, and now includes a number of tools to uncover plagiarism, strip away anonymity and solve crimes based on notes, letters and manifestoes. 

The basic concept is that a person’s writing voice can be as unique as their fingerprints. From the perspective of one who teaches writing, this is critical because many students start from more of a place of standardization, largely due to the way they learned to write in grade school.

They were taught essentially to muffle their own voices.

My job, later on the down the road when they finally got to me, was to draw out their individuality, helping them diversify their choices and rediscover their own unique style. 

Most students probably will never go on to make a living as writers — that is an exceptionally difficult thing to do — but at least I can console myself that if they should ever become sociopaths, and use their improved writing skills to communicate their aims, they will now be much easier to track down and capture!

LINKS:

• Russia Tries to Restore Control, as Prigozhin Denies Trying to Oust Putin (WSJ)

• Putin’s authority called into question after Wagner Group’s uprising (PBS)

• Revolt Raises Searing Question: Could Putin Lose Power? (NYT)

• Xi’s Bet on Putin Looks Even More Risky After Russian Rebellion (Bloomberg)

• After mutiny, Putin says Wagner can go to Belarus, go home or fight for Russia (WP)

• Mercenaries return to bases after challenge to Putin's authority (Reuters)

• Putin thanks nation for unity after aborted rebellion (AP)

• Officials question whether truce will hold in Kremlin, Wagner standoff (WP)

• Supreme Court dismisses Louisiana’s appeal of ruling that found racial gerrymandering (Politico)

• Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she believes Supreme Court justices should be subject to term limits as well as ethics regulations, condemning Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito for being “so cavalier about their violations of what would be expected of a justice." [HuffPost]

• The case for optimism about LGBTQ rights in the United States (Vox)

• How low will Speaker McCarthy go? (The Hill)

• ‘It’s just stupid’: DeSantis stumbles in New Hampshire (Politico)

• America aims for nuclear-power renaissance (Economist)

• AI is killing the old web, and the new web struggles to be born (The Verge)

• How generative AI could help to cure ‘untreatable’ diseases (Fast Company)

• AI is my copilot (InfoWorld)

• DeepAI Founder and CEO Says a Sci-Fi Future Is On Its Way (The Street)

• DNA scientists once halted their own apocalyptic research. Will AI researchers do the same? (LAT)

• How ChatGPT and generative AI could bring the Star Trek holodeck to life (VentureBeat)

• Hajj pilgrimage starts in Saudi Arabia, with 2 million expected after lifting of COVID measures (AP)

• Afghan supreme leader says women 'saved from oppression' by Taliban (AFP)

• How to Not Go It Alone (Atlantic)

• A Vast Lake Has Captivated California Where Farms Stood a Year Ago (NYT)

• National narrative paints S.F. as a dystopian hellscape (SFC)

• Laid-Back Ant Colony Refers To Queen As ‘Judy’ (The Onion)

 

Headline News

LINKS:

• Russian mercenaries’ short-lived revolt could have long-term consequences for Putin (AP)

• ‘Putin humiliated’: what the papers said about the Wagner rebellion in Russia (Guardian)

• U.S. spies learned in mid-June Prigozhin was plotting an armed action in Russia (WP)

• Why the Supreme Court Really Killed Roe v. Wade (Politico Mag)

• How a Year Without Roe Shifted American Views on Abortion (NYT)

• A year after Dobbs and the end of Roe v. Wade, there's chaos and confusion (NPR)

• The three Democrats (not Biden or Harris) Republicans fear most in ’24 (The Hill)

• Republicans decide to forgo Biden impeachment vote after internal fighting (NBC)

• Biden admin reverses Trump policy that allowed funding to research in Israeli settlements (Axios)

• ‘A symbol of what humans shouldn’t be doing’: the new world of octopus farming (Guardian)

• The Ultra-Secret Underwater Spy System That Might Have Heard the Titan Implode (WSJ)

• Everything you need to know about AI but were too afraid to ask (CNN)

• When AI bots pose as humans (TC)

• Is AI like the A-bomb? Washington looks to history to understand a hot new technology. (Yahoo)

• Artificial Intelligence’s Glass Ceiling (The Conversation)

• AI ghosts are coming. But must we perform from beyond the grave? (WP)

• The Loss of Spring Is Disastrous — Early heat can be disastrous for people, animals, and plants. (Atlantic)

• 'Adversarial' search for neural basis of consciousness yields first results (Science)

• Woman Who Left Room Crying Earlier Expects To Jump Back Into Party Just Like That (The Onion)

 

End Game

In the days following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in Februrary last year, I wrote: “this appears to be the beginning of the end for Putin. It may be an extended period before he falls, but his pretense of invincibility has suffered irreparable damage thanks to the resistance of the Ukrainian people.”

On Saturday, it appeared that Putin’s fall might indeed be imminent, but he has apparently pulled back from the brink for now.

The reason I, like many others, believed Putin’s war would ultimately fail was a simple matter of history. Those of us who remember the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 also remember what happened to the Soviet empire when it encountered the resistance of stubborn people determined to defend their homeland.

It collapsed.

The Ukranians, just like the Afghan, will prevail against the Russian invaders. It is only a question of time.

LINKS:

• The Wagner Mutiny Foreshadows a Russian Defeat in Ukraine (Bloomberg)

• Wagner chief says mercenaries are turning back after advance toward Moscow (WP)

• Prigozhin mounts Russia's first insurrection in decades (Reuters)

• Russia Slides Into Civil War (Atlantic)

• Putin’s Weakness Unmasked (New Yorker)

• Four ways the end of Roe v Wade has changed America (BBC)

• Biden's breakthrough on immigration (Axios)

• New Supreme Court Decision Has Big Clues For Student Loan Forgiveness Ruling (Forbes)

• AI Boomerang: Google’s Internal Critic Returns From Rival OpenAI (The Information)

• Nervous about AI? Many Internet creators consider it a tool, not a threat. (NBC)

• Computer Scientists Inch Closer to Major Algorithmic Goal (Quanta)

• Global Ecosystems Risk Collapsing Decades Before We Predicted (ScienceAlert)

• A COVID-like virus recently leaped from animals to humans—and ‘we can expect more spillover,’ scientists say. Will ‘Langya’ cause the next pandemic? (Fortune)

• The Arctic and Atlantic Oceans Are Merging. It Could Be Disastrous. (Atlantic)

• Humans have an eternal conviction that things are getting worse (Axios)

• Blood residue found on stone tools offers a clue to an Ice Age mystery (WP)

• Health data, women’s and LGBT rights in spotlight at Human Rights Council (UN News)

• Man Grateful To Live In Society Where Mattress Disappears If Left On Sidewalk For A Couple Days (The Onion)