>High-temperature fusion plasma experiments conducted in the Large Helical Device (LHD) of the National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS), have renewed the world record for an acquired data amount, 0.92 terabytes (TB) per experiment, in February 2022, by using a full range of state-of-the-art plasma diagnostic devices. > >The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which is currently under construction in France through the international collaboration of seven parties, is expected to generate approximately 1 TB of data per experiment in 10 years, and LHD is currently the only experiment in the world that produces data closely aligned to ITER. > >The promotion of "Open Science," in which large-scale research data assets are utilized and shared across society, was adopted as a joint statement at the G7 meeting held in Sendai, Japan in 2023. NIFS started full-fledged efforts toward Open Science by establishing the "Open Access Policy" in February 2022 and the "Research Data Policy" in October 2022. > >Since 2023, all the data obtained from LHD experiments are open to the public immediately after acquisition and analysis is completed. All computing program source codes for data analysis are also openly available. > >. . .

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/13128061

> archive link: https://archive.ph/JlyLf > > >SEATTLE (AP) — William Anders, the former Apollo 8 astronaut who took the iconic “Earthrise” photo showing the planet as a shadowed blue marble from space in 1968, was killed Friday when the plane he was piloting alone plummeted into the waters off the San Juan Islands in Washington state. He was 90. > > > >His son, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Greg Anders, confirmed the death to The Associated Press. > “The family is devastated,” he said. “He was a great pilot and we will miss him terribly.” > William Anders, a retired major general, has said the photo was his most significant contribution to the space program along with making sure the Apollo 8 command module and service module worked. > > > >The photograph, the first color image of Earth from space, is one of the most important photos in modern history for the way it changed how humans viewed the planet. The photo is credited with sparking the global environmental movement for showing how delicate and isolated Earth appeared from space. > > > >NASA Administrator and former Sen. Bill Nelson said Anders embodied the lessons and the purpose of exploration. > > > >“He traveled to the threshold of the Moon and helped all of us see something else: ourselves,” Nelson wrote on the social platform X. > > > >. . .

archive link: https://archive.ph/JlyLf

>SEATTLE (AP) — William Anders, the former Apollo 8 astronaut who took the iconic “Earthrise” photo showing the planet as a shadowed blue marble from space in 1968, was killed Friday when the plane he was piloting alone plummeted into the waters off the San Juan Islands in Washington state. He was 90. > >His son, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Greg Anders, confirmed the death to The Associated Press. “The family is devastated,” he said. “He was a great pilot and we will miss him terribly.” William Anders, a retired major general, has said the photo was his most significant contribution to the space program along with making sure the Apollo 8 command module and service module worked. > >The photograph, the first color image of Earth from space, is one of the most important photos in modern history for the way it changed how humans viewed the planet. The photo is credited with sparking the global environmental movement for showing how delicate and isolated Earth appeared from space. > >NASA Administrator and former Sen. Bill Nelson said Anders embodied the lessons and the purpose of exploration. > >“He traveled to the threshold of the Moon and helped all of us see something else: ourselves,” Nelson wrote on the social platform X. > >. . .

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/9303135

> Huh, though the #ElonMusk clock is broken, this is one of the times of the day it’s still correct: > >Elon Musk accused Sam Altman and OpenAI of pursuing profit over bettering humanity in a new breach of contract lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court yesterday, Feb. 29. > > > >Musk helped Altman found OpenAI as a non-profit in 2015 (Musk left the board of directors in 2018 and no longer has a stake). Central to the lawsuit is OpenAI’s “founding agreement,” which, per the lawsuit, stated the lab would build artificial general intelligence (AGI) “for the benefit of humanity,” not to “maximize shareholder profits,” and that the technology would be “open-source” and not kept “secret for propriety commercial reasons.” > > > >Musk’s new lawsuit alleges that OpenAI has reversed course on this agreement, particularly through its $13 billion partnership with Microsoft. It further calls out the secrecy shrouding the tech behind OpenAI’s flagship Chat GPT-4 language model and major changes to the company’s board following Altman’s tumultuous hiring and re-firing last year. > > > >“These events of 2023 constitute flagrant breaches of the Founding Agreement, which Defendants have essentially turned on its head,” the suit reads. “To this day, OpenAI, Inc.’s website continues profess that its charter is to ensure that AGI ‘benefits all of humanity.’ In reality, however, OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft.” > > > >. . . > > [archive link]

Huh, though the #ElonMusk clock is broken, this is one of the times of the day it’s still correct: >Elon Musk accused Sam Altman and OpenAI of pursuing profit over bettering humanity in a new breach of contract lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court yesterday, Feb. 29. > >Musk helped Altman found OpenAI as a non-profit in 2015 (Musk left the board of directors in 2018 and no longer has a stake). Central to the lawsuit is OpenAI’s “founding agreement,” which, per the lawsuit, stated the lab would build artificial general intelligence (AGI) “for the benefit of humanity,” not to “maximize shareholder profits,” and that the technology would be “open-source” and not kept “secret for propriety commercial reasons.” > >Musk’s new lawsuit alleges that OpenAI has reversed course on this agreement, particularly through its $13 billion partnership with Microsoft. It further calls out the secrecy shrouding the tech behind OpenAI’s flagship Chat GPT-4 language model and major changes to the company’s board following Altman’s tumultuous hiring and re-firing last year. > >“These events of 2023 constitute flagrant breaches of the Founding Agreement, which Defendants have essentially turned on its head,” the suit reads. “To this day, OpenAI, Inc.’s website continues profess that its charter is to ensure that AGI ‘benefits all of humanity.’ In reality, however, OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft.” > >. . .

[archive link]

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/9006187

> >Over the past week or so there has been a serious spam problem hitting mastodon and rest of the fediverse especially misskey over on the japanese side of things and the story behind it is absolutely wild.

>Over the past week or so there has been a serious spam problem hitting mastodon and rest of the fediverse especially misskey over on the japanese side of things and the story behind it is absolutely wild.

Archived link: https://web.archive.org/web/20240201053834/https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/31/california-black-reparations-bills-00138854 >SACRAMENTO, California — California state lawmakers introduced a slate of reparations bills on Wednesday, including a proposal to restore property taken by “race-based” cases of eminent domain and a potentially unconstitutional measure to provide state funding for “specific groups.” > >The package marks a first-in-the-nation effort to give restitution to Black Americans who have been harmed by centuries of racist policies and practices. California’s legislative push is the culmination of years of research and debate, including 111-pages of recommendations issued last year by a task force. > >Other states like Colorado, New York, and Massachusetts have commissioned reparations studies or task forces, but California is the first to attempt to turn those ideas into law. > >The 14 measures introduced by the Legislative Black Caucus touch on education, civil rights and criminal justice, including reviving a years-old effort to restrict solitary confinement that failed to make it out of the statehouse as recently as last year. > >Not included is any type of financial compensation to descendants of Black slaves, a polarizing proposal that has received a cool response from many state Democrats, including Gov. Gavin Newsom. > >. . .

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/7729763

> >ST. JAMES, La. — For a little while, it seemed like Cancer Alley would finally get justice. > > > >The infamous 85-mile stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is one of the nation’s most polluted corners; residents here have spent decades fighting for clean air and water. That fight escalated in 2022, when local environmental justice groups filed complaints with the Environmental Protection Agency, alleging that the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality had engaged in racial discrimination under the Civil Rights Act. In a watershed moment, the EPA opened a civil rights investigation into Louisiana’s permitting practices. > > > >But just when the EPA appeared poised to force the LDEQ to make meaningful changesOpens in a new tab, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry — now the state’s governor — sued. Landry’s suit challenges a key piece of the agency’s regulatory authority: the disparate impact standard, which says that policies that cause disproportionate harm to people of color are in violation of the Civil Rights Act. This enables the EPA to argue that it’s discriminatory for state agencies to keep greenlighting contaminating facilities in communities of color already overburdened by pollution — such as in Cancer Alley — even if official policies do not announce discrimination as their intent. > > > >Five weeks after Landry filed his suit, the EPA dropped its investigation, effectively leaving Cancer Alley residents to continue the struggle on their own. > > > >“It was devastating,” recalled Sharon Lavigne, founder of the grassroots organization Rise St. James. For her work spearheading the fight to stop polluters in Cancer Alley, Lavigne is regarded as a figureheadOpens in a new tab of the environmental justice movement. Now, it appears that Landry’s suit could have a reverberating impactOpens in a new tab far from her hometown, as the EPA backs down from environmental justice cases across the country. > > > >In Flint, Michigan, advocates say that Landry’s suit has already led to the collapse of their own chance at justice. This month, the EPA dropped a Houston case in the same way, without mandating any sweeping reforms. Attorneys told The Intercept they are concerned about the possibility of similarly disappointing outcomes in Detroit, St. Louis, eastern North Carolina, and elsewhere. > > > >Experts say that the EPA appears to be shying away from certain Civil Rights Act investigations in states that are hostile to environmental justice, due to fears that Landry’s suit or similar efforts could make their way to the conservative Supreme Court. If that happened, the court appears ready to rule against the EPA — a verdict that could not only undermine the agency’s authority, but also significantly limit the ability of all federal agencies to enforce civil rights law. > > > >“The lawsuit does not just challenge the EPA’s investigation and potential result of our complaint,” said Lisa Jordan, an attorney who helped file the Cancer Alley complaint. “It challenges the entire regulatory program.” > > > >. . .

>ST. JAMES, La. — For a little while, it seemed like Cancer Alley would finally get justice. > >The infamous 85-mile stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is one of the nation’s most polluted corners; residents here have spent decades fighting for clean air and water. That fight escalated in 2022, when local environmental justice groups filed complaints with the Environmental Protection Agency, alleging that the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality had engaged in racial discrimination under the Civil Rights Act. In a watershed moment, the EPA opened a civil rights investigation into Louisiana’s permitting practices. > >But just when the EPA appeared poised to force the LDEQ to make meaningful changesOpens in a new tab, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry — now the state’s governor — sued. Landry’s suit challenges a key piece of the agency’s regulatory authority: the disparate impact standard, which says that policies that cause disproportionate harm to people of color are in violation of the Civil Rights Act. This enables the EPA to argue that it’s discriminatory for state agencies to keep greenlighting contaminating facilities in communities of color already overburdened by pollution — such as in Cancer Alley — even if official policies do not announce discrimination as their intent. > >Five weeks after Landry filed his suit, the EPA dropped its investigation, effectively leaving Cancer Alley residents to continue the struggle on their own. > >“It was devastating,” recalled Sharon Lavigne, founder of the grassroots organization Rise St. James. For her work spearheading the fight to stop polluters in Cancer Alley, Lavigne is regarded as a figureheadOpens in a new tab of the environmental justice movement. Now, it appears that Landry’s suit could have a reverberating impactOpens in a new tab far from her hometown, as the EPA backs down from environmental justice cases across the country. > >In Flint, Michigan, advocates say that Landry’s suit has already led to the collapse of their own chance at justice. This month, the EPA dropped a Houston case in the same way, without mandating any sweeping reforms. Attorneys told The Intercept they are concerned about the possibility of similarly disappointing outcomes in Detroit, St. Louis, eastern North Carolina, and elsewhere. > >Experts say that the EPA appears to be shying away from certain Civil Rights Act investigations in states that are hostile to environmental justice, due to fears that Landry’s suit or similar efforts could make their way to the conservative Supreme Court. If that happened, the court appears ready to rule against the EPA — a verdict that could not only undermine the agency’s authority, but also significantly limit the ability of all federal agencies to enforce civil rights law. > >“The lawsuit does not just challenge the EPA’s investigation and potential result of our complaint,” said Lisa Jordan, an attorney who helped file the Cancer Alley complaint. “It challenges the entire regulatory program.” > >. . .

>Japan's space agency said early Saturday that its spacecraft is on the moon, but is still "checking its status." More details will be given at a news conference, officials said. > >The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, came down onto the lunar surface at around 12:20 a.m. Tokyo time Saturday (1520 GMT Friday). No astronauts were onboard the spacecraft. > >If SLIM landed successfully, Japan would become the fifth country to accomplish the feat after the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India. > >. . .

This is an example of a good cop. Notice how they are no longer a cop. That’s because they were a good cop. A bad apple spoils the bunch, and cops are bad apples. They have no room for good apples.

#ACAB

> Edwin Raymond, whistleblower & former lieutenant in the New York Police Department, to discuss his recent book An Inconvenient Cop: My Fight To Change Policing In America, co-authored with Jon Sternfeld.

>### Offensive vs. Defensive Nationalism > >This conflict shows a harmful confusion, among the Russians and their supporters, between the state as a nation in the ethnic sense and the state as an administrative entity. > >A state that wants to base its legitimacy on cultural unity must be small; it is otherwise doomed to meet the hostility of others. A Francophone Swiss citizen, although culturally linked to his or her language, does not aspire to belong to France, and France does not try to invade French-speaking Switzerland under this pretext. Further, national identities can change quickly: Francophone Belgians have a different identity from French people. France itself went through an operation of internal colonialism to destroy Provençal, Languedoc, Picard, Savoyard, Breton, and other cultures and eradicate their languages under a centralized identity. Nationality is never defined and never fixed; administration is. > >Cultural unity can make sense, but only in the form of something reduced such as a city-state –I would even go so far as to say that a state only works well in this way. In this case, nationalism is defensive — Catalan, Basque or Christian Lebanese — but in the case of a large state like Russia, nationalism becomes offensive. Notice that under the Pax Romana or the Pax Ottomana, there were no large states, but city-states gathered in an empire whose role was distant. But there is loose empire and rigid nation-state like empire, the latter being represented by Russia . > >. . .

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/6758033

> Archived link: https://web.archive.org/web/20231222185134/https://www.npr.org/2023/12/22/1221128897/masha-gessen-essay-israel-gaza-germany-hannah-arendt-prize > > >Prominent Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen received a prestigious award for political thought over the weekend, in a ceremony that almost didn't happen due to backlash over their recent writings on Israel-Gaza. > > > >Israel's air-and-ground assault on Gaza has killed more than 20,000 people in the 10 weeks since the Hamas-led attack on Israel killed some 1,200 people and took more than 240 others hostage. > > > >Gessen, who is Jewish and whose family lost loved ones in the Holocaust, has been criticized for a New Yorker essay published earlier this month in which they likened the Gaza Strip to the WWII-era ghettos that Nazis developed to segregate and control Jewish people in occupied Europe. > > > >Gessen argues in the essay that treating the Holocaust as a "singular event," unlike anything that has occurred before or after in history, not only is incorrect but makes it impossible to learn lessons from the Holocaust that are needed to prevent future genocides. > > > >. . .

Archived link: https://web.archive.org/web/20231222185134/https://www.npr.org/2023/12/22/1221128897/masha-gessen-essay-israel-gaza-germany-hannah-arendt-prize

>Prominent Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen received a prestigious award for political thought over the weekend, in a ceremony that almost didn't happen due to backlash over their recent writings on Israel-Gaza. > >Israel's air-and-ground assault on Gaza has killed more than 20,000 people in the 10 weeks since the Hamas-led attack on Israel killed some 1,200 people and took more than 240 others hostage. > >Gessen, who is Jewish and whose family lost loved ones in the Holocaust, has been criticized for a New Yorker essay published earlier this month in which they likened the Gaza Strip to the WWII-era ghettos that Nazis developed to segregate and control Jewish people in occupied Europe. > >Gessen argues in the essay that treating the Holocaust as a "singular event," unlike anything that has occurred before or after in history, not only is incorrect but makes it impossible to learn lessons from the Holocaust that are needed to prevent future genocides. > >. . .

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/6666536

> > > >(CNN) — An Ohio woman who had sought treatment at a hospital before suffering a miscarriage and passing her nonviable fetus in her bathroom now faces a criminal charge, her attorney told CNN. > > > >Brittany Watts, 33, of Warren, has been charged with felony abuse of a corpse, Trumbull County court records show. > > > >“Ms. Watts suffered a tragic and dangerous miscarriage that jeopardized her own life. Rather than focusing on healing physically and emotionally, she was arrested and charged with a felony,” her attorney, Traci Timko, told CNN in an email. > > > >“Ms. Watts’ case is pending before the Trumbull County Grand Jury. I have advised her not to speak publicly until the criminal matter has resolved.” > > > >Though a coroner’s office report said the fetus was not viable and had died in the womb, Watts’ case highlights the extent to which prosecutors can charge a woman whose pregnancy has ended – whether by abortion or miscarriage. > > > >. . . >

>(CNN) — An Ohio woman who had sought treatment at a hospital before suffering a miscarriage and passing her nonviable fetus in her bathroom now faces a criminal charge, her attorney told CNN. > >Brittany Watts, 33, of Warren, has been charged with felony abuse of a corpse, Trumbull County court records show. > >“Ms. Watts suffered a tragic and dangerous miscarriage that jeopardized her own life. Rather than focusing on healing physically and emotionally, she was arrested and charged with a felony,” her attorney, Traci Timko, told CNN in an email. > >“Ms. Watts’ case is pending before the Trumbull County Grand Jury. I have advised her not to speak publicly until the criminal matter has resolved.” > >Though a coroner’s office report said the fetus was not viable and had died in the womb, Watts’ case highlights the extent to which prosecutors can charge a woman whose pregnancy has ended – whether by abortion or miscarriage. > >. . .

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/6327031

> >World leaders, international rights groups and United Nations officials have criticised the United States for vetoing a UN resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza and failing to halt the war that has killed more than 17,400 Palestinians and about 1,100 people in Israel since October 7. > > > >A UN resolution on the pause in hostilities failed to pass on Friday at the UN Security Council after the United States vetoed the proposal and Britain abstained. > > > >The remaining 13 of the 15 current members of the UNSC voted in favour of the resolution put forward by the United Arab Emirates and co-sponsored by 100 other countries. > > > >Here are some of the reactions: > > > >### Palestine > > > >Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the US’s veto made it “complicit” in war crimes in Gaza. “The president has described the American position as aggressive and immoral, a flagrant violation of all humanitarian principles and values, and holds the United States responsible for the bloodshed of Palestinian children, women and elderly people in the Gaza Strip,” a statement from his office said. > > > >Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said the veto was “a disgrace and another blank cheque given to the occupying state to massacre, destroy and displace”. > > > >Palestine’s UN envoy Riyad Mansour told the UNSC that the result of the vote was “disastrous”. “If you are against the destruction and displacement of the Palestinian people you must stand against this war. And if you support it then you are enabling this destruction and displacement regardless of your intentions … Millions of Palestinian lives hang in the balance. Every single one of them is sacred, worth saving.” > > > >Hamas strongly condemned the US veto, saying it considers Washington’s move “unethical and inhumane”. “The US obstruction of the issuance of a ceasefire resolution is a direct participation with the occupation in killing our people and committing more massacres and ethnic cleansing,” Izzat al-Risheq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said in a statement. > > > >. . .