www.latimes.com

Congressman nominates 27 Latino films for National Film Registry

Films by and about Latinos have often been left out of historical conversations including the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. But Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), along with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, has been trying to change that.

Castro has been working for years to help increase Latino representation in multiple industries across the U.S., including entertainment. Last week he sent a letter to Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and the National Film Preservation Board listing 27 Latino films that should be considered for this year’s selection.

The goal of the registry is to select films that showcase a variety of range and diversity of American film heritage.

“This is my attempt and the Hispanic Caucus’ attempt to celebrate their contributions so that people will rightfully see us for something other than just the stereotypes,” Castro said. “As an industry that is purported to be incredibly culturally progressive in all kinds of causes, [the entertainment industry] has in fact been regressive and detrimental to the development of new voices, and the Latino community has paid the price of that exclusion.”

Castro said that the lack of representation on the registry is harmful not only to the Latino community, but also to other marginalized groups. He said he carefully selected films that break common stereotypes placed on the Latino community.

“Given the film industry’s continued exclusion of Latinos, we must make a special effort to ensure that Latino Americans’ contributions to American filmmaking are appropriately celebrated and included in the National Film Registry,” Castro said in his letter.

Every year the registry adds 25 films from the list of nominees and in recent years has increased emphasis on films by people of color and women. Even with this increase, out of the 850 titles on the registry, only 24 of them are Latino films.

Ana-Christina Ramón, the inaugural director of the Entertainment and Media Research Initiative at UCLA, has dedicated much of her work to researching access and equity in the entertainment industry. She said that including Latino films on the list of nominees and in the registry is crucial.

“Latinx people have been living here since before it was the United States and they are part of the American experience, and so for them not to be included, I think it would be a travesty,” Ramón said.

Ramón also said it is not only about the types of diverse stories that are being told, but also who is getting the jobs to play those roles.

“These films not only tell the story about Latin culture, but they influence American culture as well,” Ramón said.

Castro said the film industry seems to be more exclusive with the diversity of its lists than the music industry because it’s “layered with more gatekeepers.”

“That’s what this work is about. It’’s a celebration of the culture, but also a reminder to Hollywood that we’re here, that our contributions matter, and that they are worthy of recognition,” Castro said.

One of the films on the Library of Congress’ nomination list is “Sleep Dealer” by director Alex Rivera, which was released in 2008. The Sundance award-winning film is a sci-fi thriller about a young man, Memo Cruz, played by Luis Fernando Peña, in near-future Mexico who tries to survive a “misguided drone attack.”

Cruz tries to find safety near the U.S.-Mexico border but finds out migrant workers are unable to cross the border. He then tries to connect his body to a robot in the U.S. to help find a better future.

For over two decades, Rivera, who is a MacArthur “Genius Grant” winner and professor at Arizona State University, has dedicated his career to telling adventurous Latino stories. He said that Latino stories are not given adequate support to be successful. He said there is no shortage of Latino stories, but the problem is that there is not enough interest in Latino stories from decision makers.

“It’s so important that someone like Rep. Castro is using his platform and his power to highlight the simple reality of our community as part of this country,” Rivera said.

The official list of films added to the registry will be announced in December.

Here are the films nominated by Castro:

“... and the Earth Did Not Swallow Him” (1994) “Blood In Blood Out” (1993) “Raising Victor Vargas” (2002) “Frida” (2002) “I Like It Like That” (1994) “Walkout” (2006) “Mosquita y Mari” (2012) “The Milagro Beanfield War” (1988) “Under the Same Moon” (2007) “American Me” (1992) “Tortilla Soup” (2001) “Mi Vida Loca” (1993) “Instructions Not Included” (2013) “Maria Full of Grace” (2004) “Girlfight” (2000) “La Mission” (2010) “Sleep Dealer” (2008) “Alambrista!” (1977) “Our Latin Thing” (1972) “Cheech & Chong’s Up in Smoke” (1978) “A Better Life” (2011) “Gun Hill Road” (2011) “In the Time of the Butterflies” (2001) “Roberto Clemente” (2008) “The Longoria Affair” (2010)

https://irle.ucla.edu/emri/

latimes.com/genius-fellows-latinx-files

asu.edu/20221027-genius-grant-fellows-launch-latino-filmmaking-lab-asus-poitier-film-school

A new powerful antibiotic, isolated from bacteria that could not be studied before, seems capable to combat harmful bacteria and even multi-resistant 'superbugs'. Named Clovibactin, the antibiotic appears to kill bacteria in an unusual way, making it more difficult for bacteria to develop any resistance against it. Researchers from Utrecht University, Bonn University (Germany), the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), Northeastern University of Boston (USA), and the company NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals (Cambridge, USA) now share the discovery of Clovibactin and its killing mechanism in the scientific journal Cell.

Urgent need for new antibiotics

Antimicrobial resistance is a major problem for human health and researchers worldwide are looking for new solutions. "We urgently need new antibiotics to combat bacteria that become increasingly resistant to most clinically used antibiotics," says Dr. Markus Weingarth, a researcher from the Chemistry Department of Utrecht University.

However, the discovery of new antibiotics is a challenge: few new antibiotics have been introduced into the clinics over the last decades, and then they often resemble older, already known antibiotics.

"Clovibactin is different," says Weingarth. "Since Clovibactin was isolated from bacteria that could not be grown before, pathogenic bacteria have not seen such an antibiotic before and had no time to develop resistance."

Antibiotic from bacterial dark matter

Clovibactin was discovered by NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals, a small US-based early-stage company, and microbiologist Prof. Kim Lewis from Northeastern University, Boston. Earlier, they developed a device that allows to grow 'bacterial dark matter', which are so-called unculturable bacteria. Intriguingly, 99% of all bacteria are 'unculturable' and could not be grown in laboratories previously, hence they could not be mined for novel antibiotics. Using the device, called iCHip, the US researchers discovered Clovibactin in a bacterium isolated from a sandy soil from North Carolina: E. terrae ssp. Carolina.

In the joint Cell publication, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals shows that Clovibactin successfully attacks a broad spectrum of bacterial pathogens. It was also successfully used to treated mice infected with the superbug Staphylococcus aureus.

A broad target spectrum

Clovibactin appears to have an unusual killing mechanism. It targets not just one, but three different precursor molecules that are all essential for the construction of the cell wall, an envelope-like structure that surrounds bacteria. This was discovered by the group of Prof. Tanja Schneider from the University of Bonn in Germany, one of the Cell paper's co-authors.

Schneider: "The multi-target attack mechanism of Clovibactin blocks bacterial cell wall synthesis simultaneously at different positions. This improves the drug's activity and substantially increases its robustness to resistance development."

A cage-like structure

How exactly Clovibactin blocks the synthesis of the bacterial cell wall was unraveled by the team of Dr. Markus Weingarth from Utrecht University. They used a special technique called solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) that allows to study Clovibactin's mechanism under similar conditions as in bacteria.

"Clovibactin wraps around the pyrophosphate like a tightly sitting glove. Like a cage that encloses its target" says Weingarth. This is was gives Clovibactin its name, which is derived from Greek word "Klouvi," which means cage. The remarkable aspect of Clovibactin's mechanism is that it only binds to the immutable pyrophosphate that is common to cell wall precursors, but it ignores that variable sugar-peptide part of the targets. "As Clovibactin only binds to the immutable, conserved part of its targets, bacteria will have a much harder time developing any resistance against it. In fact, we did not observe any resistance to Clovibactin in our studies."

Fibrils capture the targets

Clovibactin can do even more. Upon binding the target molecules, it self-assembles into large fibrils on the surface of bacterial membranes. These fibrils are stable for a long time and thereby ensure that the target molecules remain sequestered for as long as necessary to kill bacteria.

"Since these fibrils only form on bacterial membranes and not on human membranes, they are presumably also the reason why Clovibactin selectively damages bacterial cells but is not toxic to human cells," says Weingarth. "Clovibactin hence has potential for the design of improved therapeutics that kill bacterial pathogens without resistance development.."

Take your shot!

Sciencedaily.com

A paper recently published in Nature Energy based on pioneering research done at Illinois Institute of Technology reveals a promising breakthrough in green energy: an electrolyzer device capable of converting carbon dioxide into propane in a manner that is both scalable and economically viable.

As the United States races toward its target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, innovative methods to reduce the significant carbon dioxide emissions from electric power and industrial sectors are critical. Mohammad Asadi, assistant professor of chemical engineering at Illinois Tech, spearheaded this groundbreaking research.

"Making renewable chemical manufacturing is really important," says Asadi. "It's the best way to close the carbon cycle without losing the chemicals we currently use daily."

What sets Asadi's electrolyzer apart is its unique catalytic system. It uses inexpensive, readily available materials to produce tri-carbon molecules -- fundamental building blocks for fuels like propane, which is used for purposes ranging from home heating to aviation.

To ensure a deep understanding of the catalyst's operations, the team employed a combination of experimental and computational methods. This rigorous approach illuminated the crucial elements influencing the catalyst's reaction activity, selectivity, and stability.

A distinctive feature of this technology, lending to its commercial viability, is the implementation of a flow electrolyzer. This design permits continuous propane production, sidestepping the pitfalls of the more conventional batch processing methods.

"Designing and engineering this laboratory-scale flow electrolyzer prototype has demonstrated Illinois Tech's commitment to creating innovative technologies. Optimizing and scaling up this prototype will be an important step toward producing a sustainable, economically viable, and energy-efficient carbon capture and utilization process," says Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy Program Director Jack Lewnard.

This innovation is not Asadi's first venture into sustainable energy. He previously adapted a version of this catalyst to produce ethanol by harnessing carbon dioxide from industrial waste gas. Recognizing the potential of the green propane technology, Asadi has collaborated with global propane distributor SHV Energy to further scale and disseminate the system.

"This is an exciting development which opens up a new e-fuel pathway to on-purpose propane production for the benefit of global users of this essential fuel," says Keith Simons, head of research and development for sustainable fuels at SHV Energy.

Illinois Tech Duchossois Leadership Professor and Professor of Physics Carlo Segre, University of Pennsylvania Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Andrew Rappe, and University of Illinois Chicago Professor Reza Shahbazian-Yassar contributed to this work. Mohammadreza Esmaeilirad (Ph.D. CHE '22) was a lead author on the paper.

www.vox.com

Guatemala is on the verge of electing Bernardo Arévalo, a former academic and diplomat whose campaign has focused on fighting corruption, giving many graft-weary Guatemalans hope that building strong democratic institutions could be possible in the Central American nation.

Arévalo’s Movimiento Semilla (Seed Movement in English) pulled out a surprise win in first-round elections in June and will face off against conservative establishment leader and former First Lady Sandra Torres on Sunday. But Arévalo’s path to the presidency has been fraught, as establishment politicians used the court system to disqualify or challenge anti-establishment candidates.

Indigenous leader Thelma Cabrera, businessman Carlos Pineda, and Roberto Arzú were all barred from running in June’s contest by the Constitutional Court, Guatemala’s high court. Prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche began investigating Movimiento Semilla in July, just before the June elections were certified, claiming that some 5,000 of the signatures on a petition to form the party were fake.

Guatemala’s Supreme Judicial Court granted an indefinite injunction against the effort to bar Arévalo from running, but the decision could still be appealed to the Constitutional Court. And the injunction hasn’t stopped Torres from launching specious attacks against Arévalo, including that Movimiento Semilla is trying to steal the elections and that Arévalo will make Guatemala a Communist country.

Arévalo’s support has remained significant, and the court’s decision to allow Movimiento Semilla a place in Sunday’s elections have brought cautious optimism to Guatemalans and observers alike. Arévalo, the son of the nation’s first democratic president Juan José Arévalo, was raised abroad after a military coup overthrew his father’s successor. He was polling at 61 percent as of Wednesday, compared to Torres’s 31 percent, according to Fundación Libertad y Desarrollo, an independent think tank focused on Latin America.

Torres is the head of the Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE) party, which has long been entrenched in Guatemalan politics, including, reportedly, the less savory side, like trading votes in congress for favors and jobs. This is Torres’s third bid for the presidency, after failed efforts in 2015 and 2019, and over the years she has more closely aligned with outgoing President Alejandro Giammattei, according to InSight Crime, an investigative outlet reporting on issues in Latin America.

Arévalo’s message is powerful in a deeply corrupt nation

Torres’s coziness with the political establishment, both as a legislator and as a confidant of the unpopular Giammattei, signaled that a Torres presidency would be much the same as Giammattei’s. In a country with unstable democratic institutions — a situation aided by US meddling in Guatemalan politics under progressive leftist President Jacobo Arbenz — as well as serious inequality and violence, Arévalo’s success seems like a revelation.

In the first round of elections, Semilla was the underdog; Torres was widely expected to be a frontrunner, as was Zury Ríos, a populist legislator and the daughter of General Efraín Ríos Montt, a right-wing military dictator who took over Guatemala in a 1982 coup. Many Guatemalans were also expected to avoid voting to protest the corruption in the process.

But Semilla and Arévalo — upstarts offering Guatemala the chance to “vote different” — resonated with voters for reasons beyond Arévalo’s political pedigree, primarily because of his message that corruption would not be tolerated under his watch.

Guatemala suffers from the serious, interconnected problems of violence, inequality, and government corruption. Powerful interests, and especially business interests, can easily persuade the government to cater to their demands — increasing inequality and setting up the government as a mechanism for enrichment.

There was, starting in 2007, an attempt to address Guatemala’s corrupt politics under the Comisión Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala, or CICIG, which confronted and prosecuted criminal organizations as well as corruption in the government, as Vox previously reported:

Under CICIG, Guatemalan prosecutors were tasked with investigating crime at the highest levels, even bringing corruption charges against a former president and vice president, among others. It was enormously successful, providing a model for other Latin American countries where similar problems — state capture, organized crime, and graft — have been allowed to flourish with impunity.

Former President Jimmy Morales, himself dogged by accusations of corruption, refused to renew CICIG’s mandate in 2019. CICIG’s efforts were already under attack by corrupt and powerful forces within the country; under Morales and Giammattei, anti-corruption judges and officials have fled Guatemala following arrests and threats of prosecution.

Arévalo has made tackling corruption the centerpiece of his campaign, particularly speaking out against CACIF, the Coordinating Committee of Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Associations, which in June he accused of “underpinning the economy of privilege” — defined in Arévalo’s words as “the economy in which the success of a group or company depends on the level of contact or political clout it has with a powerful politician, with a minister.”

But his anti-graft message, as well as his clear-eyed view of what’s possible given powerful and antagonistic interests, has resonated in urban areas and, increasingly, smaller towns as well.

Arévalo faces obstacles, even if he wins

Guatemala’s democracy is young; it has a strong, entrenched history of dictatorship, civil war, and corrupt and weak institutions which are extremely difficult to overcome, especially in just one presidential term — the limit under Guatemala’s constitution.

Inequality and poor social services, a struggling economy, and a legacy of violence following a 36-year civil war and violent dictatorships have allowed multiple armed groups to terrorize Guatemalan society. Those groups, according to InSight Crime, comprise street gangs like MS-13 and Barrio 18, but also involve former and current police officers, as well as members of the military and intelligence officers. The groups mostly engage in illegal drug smuggling, but also “human trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, money laundering, arms smuggling, adoption rings,” and other illegal businesses.

They are also entrenched in the government, with connections to powerful people “ranging from local politicians to high-level security and government officials,” Insight Crime reports.

Even if he wins, Arévalo could face renewed calls for prosecution or attempts to overturn the election, even after the results are posted. But in a Friday interview with El País, he remained positive that his ideals would win out.

“We believe that democratic institutions must be reestablished,” Arévalo said. “We have to re-found the process that this corrupt political class has hijacked from us.”

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Online: Kaytee Gillis

Jessilyn slumped on the couch, eyes cast downward. "I heard from my mother last week," she said, her first time making eye contact since she had sat down 10 minutes before. I tried to hide my excitement at her willingness to go deep, instead trying to reflect a sense of neutrality and openness.

"We haven't talked in fifteen years. Maybe twenty," she began. "She left when I was about sixteen. My dad was violent, abusive really. He drank a lot. She couldn't handle it I guess, so she left. Last I knew she had remarried and had a couple other kids a few years back."

During this session with Jessilyn, she relayed a painful conversation with the mother who abandoned her when she needed her most:

I don't know why I opened this door. I knew it would upset me. But I asked her why she left so many years ago. I just came out and asked her. And do you know what she said to me? She said "you don't know how hard it was for me, Jessilyn. Living with that man. I just couldn't do it anymore.

Hard for her?! I thought. Like, she was an adult. She left a teenage girl who was barely able to drive, with this man who was so dangerous that she had to leave. What about me?!

But of course I didn't say this to her at first. I think I was in shock, honestly. She literally kept talking about how hard it was for her and how much better her life was once she got away, how much happier she is now... I couldn't even respond.

Most people would be able to see that Jessilyn's experience was traumatic. Being left with a parent who was abusive and violent, and being unable to escape, is unthinkable. Even though she was a teenager, and not a small child, this experience nonetheless changed - and completely traumatized- her. But still she spent years unable to see this experience for what it was. Instead internalizing the shame and self-blame in ways that she struggled to articulate. Her mother's refusal- or inability- to see her daughter's experiences as traumatic compounded her feelings of shame and reinforced the trauma she had experienced.

Eventually Jessilyn was able to ask her mom those terrifying three words: "what about me?" Her mom's response was that of shock and immediate denial. In her mother's eyes, she herself was the true (i.e. "only") victim of the violence and trauma within the home. During the very limited conversations that the mother and daughter had, Jessilyn's mother would say things such as "Your experience couldn't have been that bad, you turned out alright." or "You have no idea what I went through, you should be happy that I got out."

“She just won’t believe me! She can’t see what happened in my childhood and how that affects me today,” Jessilyn cried out from her spot across from me on the couch. “How do I move on if she can’t even understand the pain of my experiences, and how her leaving made it even worse for me?”

Many people come to me desperate to heal and move forward from their trauma history, yet struggling when it comes to convincing their caregivers what happened.

Sometimes, caregivers who also experienced trauma, such as in the case of Jessilyn's mother, are so stuck in their own experiences that they are unable to see the bigger picture.

In reality, Jessilyn's mother would not have to deny her own history in order to validate her daughter's. She could acknowledge her own experiences of abuse while recognizing that her daughter also experienced them- yet was powerless to leave due to being a child. However, mother was unable to focus on any reality other than her own.

Many of my clients get stuck trying to convince their caregivers of their pain because they believe they need that acknowledgement to heal. In truth, few will receive the validation they seek from their experiences this way.

This lack of validation can come from many sources, but it is often our caregivers’ own defense mechanisms keeping them in the denial stage—denial of their own actions (or inactions) but also denial of their own history of trauma that they unfortunately repeated. Shame comes in when confronted with the truth, and self-defenses take over in absence of self-esteem. They replace that shame with self-doubt, outward blame, and even rage.

This is where our own internal tools will need to take over and make up for that lack of external support and understanding from our caregivers so we can heal.

Remember, you do not need to convince others of your truth in order to move forward. No one has to acknowledge our mourning or grief for it to be authentic. Of course, this is easier said than done. Not being understood or believed comes with a feeling of invisibility, which compounds many survivors' trauma.

Instead, move towards self-validation. When working with clients with this experience, we focus on self-validation as a form of healing. Focus on acknowledging and validating your history. Whenever you feel the beginnings of denial or self-gaslighting creeping in, stop and say "no, I will not deny my history. What happened to me was traumatic, and I am allowed to feel this way." Validating your own history is a crucial part of the healing process.

Adapted, in part, from the book: Breaking the Cycle, the 6 Stages of Healing from Childhood Family Trauma.

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Online: Harper Collins Author Profile

The foundation for verbal abuse in an adult-on-adult relationship is an imbalance of power; one person has it and is highly motivated to keep it and continue to control the relationship.

It’s important to remember that verbal abuse—whether it’s of the overt or covert variety—is highly motivated and goal-oriented as well as consistent, despite the fact there will likely be so-called “honeymoon” periods where the amount of abuse decreases or stops entirely.

While the person who is the target of the verbal abuse will likely believe that the respite reflects a change of heart on the abuser’s part, the sad truth is that it’s usually a tactic to keep the target emotionally confused and hopeful and, most important, fully committed to staying in the relationship.

Understanding the Imbalance of Power in an Abusive Relationship

While a healthy and satisfying adult relationship would be based on a partnership model, in verbally abusive relationships, one person seeks to maintain control. That’s made possible by certain factors such as these:

• One person has a greater emotional investment in the relationship than the other.
• The abuser exploits what he or she knows about the target’s insecurities and self-doubts to control the him or her.
• One person has greater financial resources than the other or the target is financially dependent on the abuser; each affects both the decision to stay or to leave.
• The abuser and the target have children and the target is concerned that any action of her/his part will involve the abuser’s retaliation and that the children will be hurt emotionally or psychologically.

Verbal Abuse can be Subtle or Covert to Maintain Control

The culture tends to picture verbal abuse as loud, involving yelling, put-downs, name-calling, and shaming; while verbal abuse certainly can and does take these forms, it’s the more subtle forms of verbal abuse that are more likely to entrap you and render you feeling powerless. That was certainly true for Casey, now 42:

“My ex-husband never raised his voice or called me a name; instead, he undermined me at every turn in subtle ways. Plans I’d made or initiated were always changed because he had a ‘better’ idea or solution that included everything from dinner reservations to renovating our kitchen and family vacations. He dismissed any complaints I had by telling me that I was ‘sensitive to rejection’ and that I was ‘emotionally over-reactive;’ it took me years to recognize that he was effectively shutting me up and shutting me down without ever saying so. There wasn’t a single domain in our lives where he didn’t insist on having the final say and, for a long time, I honestly believed that I had little or nothing of value to contribute to him or anyone. I went into therapy and when my counselor suggested I was being abused, I pushed back and denied it but it was the truth. When I tried to talk to him about it, he laughed at me and then refused to discuss it further. I was lucky, though. I ‘only’ wasted six years of my life with him.”

Among the more difficult-to-recognize forms of verbal abuse are:

• Blame-shifting: The abuser exploits your own self-doubts or insecurities by making whatever has happened your fault; that leaves the abuser with zero responsibility and more control and often makes you feel that you should apologize. A true sleight-of-hand.
• Brinksmanship: Threatening you with leaving or asking why you just don’t leave if you’re so unhappy. This is enabled by the abuser’s knowledge that you aren’t ready to give up on relationship and that you’re still hopeful a corner can be turned.
• Stonewalling or ignoring that you’ve said anything. This will put you into a defensive crouch and perhaps feeling panicked; this often ends up with your being a peacemaker and apologizing for something you didn’t do.
• Gaslighting: Telling you that your perceptions are dead wrong or that you’re projecting or making things up. Again, this preys on your insecurities as well as your hopefulness that things will get better somehow.

Will Your Abuser Ever Change?

Again, this comes down to motivation. We’ve seen how control is established through verbal abuse so the question becomes this: What’s in it for the abuser to stop?

If you find yourself in this situation, do speak to a counselor about strategies and what he or she thinks can happen given the nature of the relationship. Be cognizant of the possibility that confronting your verbal abuser may lead to escalation and remember that verbal abuse is always the foundation for physical abuse even if your relationship has never included it.

Do examine your expectations and ask yourself the following questions, answering as honestly as you can:

• Is he/she willing to acknowledge the verbal abuse without resorting to defensiveness or blame-shifting?
• Is he/she willing to hear you out thoughtfully without pushing back, dismissing your remarks, objecting, or starting a fight?
• Will he/she accept your pointing out verbal abuse and instituting respectful boundaries?
• Is he/she willing to go into counseling and commit to working on change?
• Is he/she willing to work on new ways of communicating and resolving conflict?
• Is he/she willing to commit to a partnership model of relationship?
• Is he/she willing to commit to a series of steps you mutually decide on if he/she backslides into old behaviors?
• If there are children involved and they have been targets, is he/she willing to apologize for past behaviors and willing to work on acquiring new parenting skills?

The truth is that if the answers to any of these questions is “no,” it will not be possible to repair or recover the relationship.

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Psychologytoday.com/forgiveness

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Intuition is the ability to understand something instinctively, without any need for conscious reasoning or an explanation. The use of intuition is sometimes referred to as responding to a "gut feeling" or "trusting your gut."

It's a phenomenon that many people experience, but its biological basis is still an area of ongoing research and exploration. Here, I will review some of the most relevant biological findings and address the question, "Can we really rely on intuition, or is it a counsel to failure?"

What the Research Says

Recent evidence from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, suggests that by 12 months, infants have an intuitive notion of probability that applies to never-experienced events and that they use it to predict subsequent events. The researchers suggest that extremely simple concepts of probability and causation, along with the concepts needed to form very basic epistemic (relating to knowledge or to the degree of its validation), statistical, and logical generalizations are present in very young children from an early age. It is this inborn ability to make inferences about things that are relevant to form accurate beliefs and retain new knowledge.

Rollin McCraty and his colleagues at the HeartMath Institute have performed experiments demonstrating how people respond to an emotionally arousing stimulus. The results were fascinating, showing that both the participants’ hearts and brains appeared to indicate receiving and responding to information about the emotional quality of pictures presented to them before a computer randomly selected them, as if they were responding to a future event.

Even more startling, perhaps, was data showing the heart received information before the brain. "It is first registered from the heart," Rollin McCraty explained, "then up to the brain (emotional and pre-frontal cortex), where we can logically relate what we are intuiting, then finally down to the gut (or where something stirs)."

The gut and the heart contain a significant amount of neural tissue and are connected to the brain by way of the vagus nerve, the so-called gut-brain and heart-brain axes. In addition, we know that neurotransmitters and hormones, such as dopamine and serotonin, can influence cognitive processes and emotions. These biochemical signals might also contribute to our intuitive responses.

Intuition relies on evolutionarily older, automatic, unconscious, and fast mental processing, primarily to save our brains time or energy. It also is prone to make mistakes, such as cognitive biases.

Intuition later in life arises from the accumulation of knowledge and experiences that are processed and stored in our brain's neural networks, as well as other cells and tissues in our bodies, allowing us to access this information quickly, often unconsciously.

Intuition is at the core of an epiphany; it is our own recognition and awareness of an idea or thought or vision for something that has yet to be discovered in the world. We all have access to that place, if we only learn to trust that internal voice.

Daniel Kahneman, who won a Nobel prize in economics for his work on human judgment and decision-making, theorizes that human beings are intuitive thinkers and that human intuition is imperfect, with the result that judgments and choices often deviate substantially from the predictions of normative statistical and economic models. Kahneman believes that intuitive thinking has both advantages and disadvantages: it is faster than a rational approach but more prone to error.

Kamila Malewska of the Poznán University of Economics and Business in Poland has studied intuition in real-world settings and concluded that people often apply a combination of strategies. When managers at a food company were asked how they use intuition in their everyday work, the majority of them said that, in addition to rational analyses, they relied on their gut feelings when making decisions. Interestingly, upper-level managers tended more toward intuition.

Malewska thinks that intuition is neither irrational nor the opposite of logic. Rather, it is a quicker and more automatic process that taps into the many deep resources of experience and knowledge that people have gathered over the course of their lives. Intuition, she believes, is an ability that can be trained and can play a constructive role in decision-making.

Intuition Essential Reads

Whether we rely on our intuition or turn to sensible analysis to make a decision will largely depend on our past experiences. Most cognitive scientists maintain that intuitive and analytic thinking should not be viewed as opposites. Studies indicate that our decision-making often works best when we blend both strategies.

Conclusion

Clearly, the biological basis of intuition is complex and likely involves a combination of factors. There is growing evidence suggesting that all humans are born with a basic ability for intuitive thinking and that, as we mature, as our links between the embodied mind, emotional processing, and intuitive thinking strengthen with experience, we may get better at it. Of course, if we fail to listen to this channel, like a muscle not exercised, our intuitive abilities will decline.

References

Cesana-Arlotti, N., Téglás, E., & Bonatti, L. L. (2012). The probable and the possible at 12 months: Intuitive reasoning about the uncertain future. Advances in child development and behavior, 43, 1-25.

Epstein, S. (2010). Demystifying intuition: What it is, what it does, and how it does it. Psychological Inquiry, 21(4), 295-312.

Fedyk, M., Kushnir, T., & Xu, F. (2019). Intuitive epistemology: Children’s theory of evidence. Advances in experimental philosophy of science, 122-43

Kahneman, Daniel (2017). Thinking, fast and slow.

Malewska, K. (2018). The profile of an intuitive decision maker and the use of intuition in decision-making practice. Management, 22(1).

McCraty, R., Atkinson, M., & Bradley, R. T. (2004). Electrophysiological evidence of intuition: Part 1. The surprising role of the heart. The Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine, 10(1), 133-143.

McCraty, R., Atkinson, M., & Bradley, R. T. (2004). Electrophysiological evidence of intuition: Part 2. A system-wide process?. The Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine, 10(2), 325-336.

I was gonna submit a pull request, but I see they say no new feature request rn with big changes coming.

Just wanting to throw out there my wish for a new feature.

I like the current ability to switch from video to audio, so would like that to stay the same

But I'd love to be able to set it to a default codec option for each.

It's a pain to have to always have to switch it to those free as in freedom codecs everytime

stereogum

By gawd! OSEES, the frantic psychedelic punk band led by the endlessly prolific one-man underground rock institution John Dwyer, will drop their new LP Intercepted Message next month, and we’ve already posted the album’s title track. Today, the band once known as Thee Oh Sees has followed that track with a trebly and insistent synth/guitars/drum attack called “Stunner.”

“Stunner,” the opening track from Intercepted Message is a chaotic jumble that constantly threatens to fall apart but holds together through sheer velocity. The band’s energy and stop-start dynamics simply don’t exist anywhere else, and it’s always a blast to hear them in rocker mode. “Stunner” is the sort of song that might make you want to kick someone in the stomach, spin around, grab them in a headlock, and then violently sit down. In the video, director Matt Yoka captures the band, all wearing cameras, doing their double-drummer attack in a crowded practice space. Here’s what John Dwyer says about it.

they’re not so bad for you all of those drugs you do and in the future you, find something else to do

they’re looking up to you you looks so beautiful sick, fix up in the queue so, now let’s all review’

Life is a short hot mess take a breath in the moments when you’re not taking it right in the face frenetic tunes for scattered times

Matt Yoka came up with the idea of filming us playing the song in our rehearsal space with as many people as we could fit and as many formats as he could stomach. Hi vis on all the kids Constricted & claustrophobic just as contemporary routines can be Noise, obstacle and pointless spectacle There is no escape! good luck

Check out the “Stunner” video here.

Intercepted Message is out 8/18 on In The Red. stereogum.osees-intercepted-message

gizmodo.com

If you’re not Google (or, to a much lesser extent, Apple), map apps are damned hard to make. Last year, several major heavy hitters in tech, including the likes of Meta, Microsoft, TomTom, and Amazon, decided to lay down their arms and meet under a flag of parlay held aloft by the Linux Foundation to make mapping just a little easier, cheaper, and less dominated by two companies. Alone, none could establish a big enough data pool to rival the likes of Google Maps, but with their individual hoards of business location data, satellite mapping tech, and more support from smaller tech firms, they could perhaps gather enough data together to help create a whole new series of up-to-date map apps.

On Wednesday, this pooled initiative, called the Overture Maps Foundation, shared its first alpha release for its mapping data. It contains millions of examples for buildings, roads, and geographic boundaries. It’s only the first large release for the planned massive dataset, but the hope is there will be much more to come as companies sign on.

Marc Prioleau, the executive director of the Overture Maps Foundation, was named as head of the project back in May. He’s been around mapping projects for many years, having worked in the start of the GPS market back in 1995, and later moved on to the likes of Meta and Uber for their location-based services. He said if there’s one thing that strikes at the difficulty of building a high-quality app with exacting road and place information, it’s the ephemeral nature of public infrastructure.

“The hardest thing in mapping is knowing what’s changed in the world,” Prioleau told Gizmodo in a video chat. Essentially, map apps are some of the hardest to design simply because of the massive amount of data required to build the systems. Not only do they need to be accurate, but they need to be constantly updated when businesses close and new ones open.

The first Overture release contains about 59 million points of interest that the group claims has not yet been released as open data before. A POI could be anything—a public landmark, a specific building, or a local business. Otherwise, the data contains about 750 million building footprints alongside road data that’s mostly collated from the crowdsourced OpenStreetMap project.

So how much of the world does this alpha release truly cover? Prioleau said the POI data makes up around 60 to 70% of a worldwide dataset. In his mind, a good number to shoot for is somewhere between 80 and 100 million places. It’s something of a Goldilocks problem. With around 200 million POIs, Prioleau said you’d likely be hoarding a lot of “junk,” but too little means you’re obviously missing out on locations, especially from less represented countries.

As far as the building data, he said that “feels pretty complete” as far as laying out worldwide structures, considering that the U.S. itself contains something around 100 million buildings. A good chunk of that data came from Meta through businesses listing their addresses on Facebook or Instagram. Microsoft also handed over some of its data through its work on Bing Maps, but the two sets combined included duplicates, which cut down on total numbers. The Overture director said the foundation has plans to add more datasets in the future from other sources centered on different continents.

The road data is a different beast entirely. The vast majority of it is based on the OpenStreetMap project, an open source, wiki-style resource compiled by internet users going on nearly 18 years. Prioleau said Overture has modified the project’s info to make it easier to attach new datapoints. The project has also worked to standardize and fact check the data contained on the project’s site. There’s also several benefits to using this Wikipedia-style map compared to how Google might spend billions maintaining its map data every year (or otherwise buying up the competition like it did with Waze). Users on the ground can archive and modify the map to note damage during a natural disaster.

“One of the things [OpenStreetMap] does incredibly well is build richness into the map, because what you map is no longer determined by what your commercial interest is, it’s what the community wants to map.”

Prioleau described himself as “the only full time employee” of the Linux Foundation-based group. Otherwise, the Foundation has depended on around 130 engineers from Meta, Microsoft, and more of the steering companies. As far as maintaining the data, the Overture head said that there’s no contractual agreement for companies to use the open source resources, but they’re still heavily encouraging all those who build upon their foundation to somehow give back to the data source with any new information they collect.

“The incentive is: if you want to fork [AKA build off] Overture, start building your own dataset and not give stuff back, then you’re on your own to maintain that dataset going forward.” Prioleau said. “So the incentive to giving back is that your data remains part of this consortium.”

What’s next is to create a “global entity reference system” for attaching data points to a map, which will then facilitate even more layers of information for new apps. Today’s map users aren’t just looking for ways to get from place to place, but from door to door. Delivery drivers need to know where they can pick up and drop off items. People with disabilities want to know where they can find ramp or elevator access.

“Maps are really digitization of things that are observable,” the Overture lead said. “We’re not mapping secret stuff. We’re mapping roads and addresses and places—things that are observable. And as the ways of capturing observable stuff gets better, the ability to build maps gets better.”

openstreetmap.org

Links: gizmodo.com/your-phones-navigation-app-is-probably-smarter-than-you

https://gizmodo.com/iphone-find-my-apple-maps-mistake-houston-house

gizmodo.com/linux-google-maps-meta-aws-microsoft-tomtom

prnewswire.com/news-releases/overture-maps-foundation-names-marc-prioleau-as-executive-director

gizmodo.com/why-google-buying-waze-will-keep-you-out-of-gridlock

latimes

I have not thought much about the Menendez brothers, Lyle and Erik, since they were convicted in 1996 of murdering their parents, Jose and Kitty, in their Beverly Hills mansion.

At the time of the killings, Lyle was 21 and Erik was 18.

The prosecution contended they were greedy, spoiled brats trying to get their hands on their parents’ fortune. The defense argued that they were severely abused by their father, who was enabled by their mother, and they were in fear for their lives.

The family’s awful story was one chapter of a particularly traumatic era in Los Angeles, where the criminal justice system seemed strained to its limits, where controversies about systemic racism, privilege, domestic violence and fairness raged over the airwaves, at dinner tables and around water coolers.

A year later, George Holliday videotaped the savage beating of motorist Rodney King by LAPD officers, and the officers’ acquittals sparked days of fires, looting and convulsive violence.

In 1994 — the same year two Menendez juries, one for each young man, deadlocked between manslaughter and murder convictions — Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were slashed to death in Brentwood. After a volatile trial, Simpson’s ex-husband, O.J. Simpson was acquitted of the slayings in 1995.

The second Menendez trial, this time with one jury, also began in 1995. The same judge who had earlier allowed the defense to call 50 witnesses and present evidence of abuse, restricted testimony that would have supported an “abuse excuse” in the second trial. That sealed the brothers’ fate. They were convicted of first-degree murder in March 1996 and have been in prison for 33 years.

I would maintain that this convulsive era came to an end the following year, when a civil jury in Santa Monica found Simpson liable for the deaths of his ex-wife and her friend.

I am telling you, it was an emotional and exhausting time in this city. Nothing any of us would want to relive.

But attitudes toward domestic violence and sex abuse have changed. New evidence about the Menendez family has come to light, and now, after resigning themselves to dying in prison, the brothers are hoping the case will be reopened.

A petition filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court in May describes two new pieces of relevant evidence that corroborate Lyle and Erik’s claims that their father was an abusive monster and their mother did nothing to stop him.

One is a letter written by 13-year-old Erik to his cousin discussing his father’s abuse. “I never know when it’s going to happen and it’s driving me crazy,” Erik wrote to his cousin, Andy Cano. “Every night I stay up thinking he might come in.”

The second is a claim by Roy Rosselló, a former member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, that Jose Menendez, who was chief executive of RCA Records at the time, raped him when he was 13.

A judge has yet to rule on the brothers’ petition, which asks for either an evidentiary hearing or that the convictions and sentences be vacated.

(Rosselló has also alleged that Menudo’s founder, Edgardo Díaz, repeatedly raped him between 1983 and 1986, when he was a member of the group. The LAPD confirmed to my colleague Salvador Hernandez that Díaz is under investigation for an incident that Rosselló says took place at the Biltmore Hotel, where he says Díaz attacked him. Rosselló’s sordid story and Menudo’s connection to Jose Menendez is explored in a powerful new three-part docuseries “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed” by veteran journalists Robert Rand, author of “The Menendez Murders,” and Nery Ynclan. )

Rand has been writing about the Menendez case since the day after the murders, and has developed close ties with the brothers’ extended family, most of whom believe that Lyle and Erik have served long enough. It was Rand who discovered the letter, written by Erik, that may play a role in reopening the case.

“They would have been out a long time ago if they’d had a fair trial,” said Kitty Menendez’s older sister, Joan VanderMolen, 91, who lives in Ventura. In “Menendez + Menudo,” she and her daughter Diane discuss why Erik seemed bereft as a child when there were no lemons in the house. “It was to get the taste of semen out of his mouth,” Joan says, in one of the docuseries’ more shocking moments.

“I loved my sister dearly,” VanderMolen told me last week, “and it’s difficult to talk about her, but somehow she managed to let this husband of hers rule the roost and beat the kids. She had to know.”

She speaks to her nephews regularly by phone at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego, where they were allowed to be together after 22 years apart. “They had a terrible childhood,” she said. “Money had nothing to do with it.”

Who wants to dip back into the malaise of L.A. in the 1990s? Not me. But all these years later, with insights from the #MeToo movement too fresh to ignore and new evidence at hand, reopening the case against Erik and Lyle Menendez seems like the right thing to do.

Links: latimes.com/menendez-19930721

latimes.com/archives/1995-04-18

latimes.com/local/la-me-menendez-19960321

www.latimes.com

Despite decades of colonial violence, extractive greed and invasive Mt. Rushmore tourism, South Dakota’s wondrous Black Hills are fixed in the hearts and minds of those they were taken from, the Očéti Šakówiŋ, a First Peoples alliance of the Lakota, Nakota and Dakota tribes.

Everyone agrees on the place’s stunning beauty and bounty. But the fight for who belongs on these millions of acres — the descendants of its original stewards, for whom the Black Hills are sacred, or the government-backed settlers who’ve exploited the land — is a drawn-out story rarely contextualized effectively. That corrective history is now front and center in Jesse Short Bull’s and Laura Tomaselli’s documentary “Lakota Nation vs. United States,” a lyrical, edifying and blistering plea for Indigenous justice.

Toggling between interviews, archival footage and graceful imagery of the region (underscored by evocative narration from award-winning poet Layli Long Soldier), the film charts a generational conflict that has shown the United States to be an untrustable partner, beginning with the Fort Laramie treaty of 1851. Protesters gather behind a banner

A scene from the documentary “Lakota Nation vs. United States.”

(IFC Films)

America’s routine encroachments in the years that followed — to mine gold, to expand property ownership or just to wipe out a perceived threat to Manifest Destiny — were only the physical violations. Just as pernicious were the spiritual and cultural erasures: the sadistic boarding schools designed to force Christian assimilation, and the racist Hollywood stereotyping in cartoons, movies and television (snippets of which the filmmakers thread in for appropriately queasy emphasis).

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George Armstrong Custer’s homicidal craziness, meanwhile, gets white-washed into a tragedy, while the carving of Mt. Rushmore, which required the spoiling of a treasured mountain known as Six Grandfathers, is rightly viewed as a shrine to white supremacy. The goal, journalist Nick Estes notes in the film, was to make the Indigenous a “phase” in American history.

The battle hasn’t always felt insurmountable, thanks to persistent legal challenges and the birth of the Red Power movement during the civil rights era. Even a 1980 Supreme Court decision in favor of the Great Sioux Nation laid bare the unconstitutional misdealings, and recognized the theft of the Black Hills from the Očéti Šakówiŋ. Three Indigenous persons in face makeup pose for the camera.

! A scene from the documentary “Lakota Nation vs. United States.”

(IFC Films)

But the tribes have never accepted the awarded money, now totaling $2 billion. To them, the land can’t be bought, only returned. The modern campaign to restore Black Hills sovereignty for the tribes, as seen on the cap of interviewee Nick Tilsen, an activist, is called “Land Back.” Not to own, but to keep and respect.

Milo Yellow Hair, one of the film’s more eloquent elders, calls the Black Hills their “cradle of civilization.” That concept is bolstered by the interstitial photography of the landscape, woven in like a visual commentary throughout. Somehow avoiding the nature-film trap of being blandly picturesque, these images convey a sublime transcendence that binds us more deeply to a story of identity.

The timeline has always been grim. But this tableau of past wrongs and wretched consequences nonetheless feeds into what’s celebratory about our current progressive moment: a re-energized debate about stolen land and inequity, spurred by young people invigorated by the history they were never taught, and gaining traction with non-Natives to boot. Their inspiring actions against pipelines (another 1868 treaty violation) and further environmental harm give “Lakota Nation vs. United States” a well-earned third-act uplift. There’s no way to know what will happen with the Black Hills, but we get the idea that not only is the fight far from over, the legacy of resistance is in good hands.

'Lakota Nation vs. United States'

Rating: PG-13, for some strong language, violent images and thematic elements

Running time: 1 hour, 58 minutes

Playing: Starts July 21 at Laemmle Royal, West Los Angeles

Links: https://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-rushmoreside12aug12-story.html

https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-layli-long-soldier-20170426-story.html

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-apr-12-et-book12-story.html

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-21/landback-los-angeles-indigenous-school

I see https://lemmy.world/u/useless_modern_god@aussie.zone Tomahawk jam https://aussie.zone/post/524203 and raise it one God Hates a Coward, cause it's a Patton must!

www.stereogum.com

In 2021, Illuminati Hotties released their sophomore album, Let Me Do One More, which was our Album Of The Week when it came out. Since then, Sarah Tudzin has been working mostly behind the scenes, co-producing Boygenius’ The Record and producing Eliza McLamb’s Salt Circle EP. Tudzin has also been involved with producing the Armed’s upcoming Perfect Saviors LP and a single (“Ride The Vibe”) by Dim Wizard featuring Jeff Rosenstock. Tudzin has only released one new song — last year’s “Sandwich Sharer” — since Let Me Do One More, but that’s all about to change.

Tudzin is currently “putting the finishing touches” on a follow-up to Let Me Do One More. Ahead of a formal album announce, Tudzin is sharing a new song, “Truck.” Opening up about the new song, Tudzin says, “If mortality is a jolting, jagged highway exit, then heaven is a truck as it rumbles through the unknown. ‘Truck’ is a gentle affirmation that the dream can change at no deficit of dignity. For Tim.”

Listen to “Truck” below.

https://youtu.be/aG5p6R2MRBY

TOUR DATES:

• 07/23 – Chicago, IL @ Pitchfork Music Festival
• 07/29 – Quincy, WA @ Gorge Amphitheatre*
• 07/30 – Bend, OR @ Hayden Homes Amphitheater*
• 08/01 – Bonner, MT @ KettleHouse Amphitheater*
• 08/02 – Boise, ID @ Outlaw Field at the Idaho Botanical Garden*
• 08/03 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Library Square*
• 08/05 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre*
• 08/11 – Adelaide, AUS @ Lion Arts Factory Yeah #
• 08/12 – Perth, AUS @ Rosemount Hotel #
• 08/18 – Sydney, AUS @ Crow Bar #
• 08/19 – Melbourne, AUS @ Night Cat #
• 08/20 – Belgrave, AUS @ Sooki Lounge #

• w/ boygenius

w/ Alex Lahey

lifehacker.com

For a seemingly humble cleaning supply, there has been a lot of discussion about sponges over the years; more specifically, how to clean or sanitize them. Various studies, like the one published in Nature’s Scientific Reports in 2017, found that kitchen sponges were teeming with bacteria—362 different types, to be exact—making them “the biggest reservoirs of active bacteria in the whole house,” including toilets.

But beyond the bacteria, sponges also tend to disintegrate and develop a foul odor with use. Fortunately, there’s a way to revive a worn-out sponge using a few pantry staples. Here’s what to know. How to revive old sponges with salt

So, why salt? Table salt is hygroscopic, which means it attracts moisture from the atmosphere, and is also the reason it can become damp and clog salt shakers in humid weather.

According to an article in House Digest, salt can also draw moisture from a sponge, reducing the dampness that bacteria need to thrive, and, in turn, preventing the growth of mildew and mold, as well as that foul odor kitchen sponges develop over time. And that’s not all: Salt can make the sponge more efficient, absorbing oils and making it easier to tackle stains.

There are two simple ways to put salt to work on your sponges:

1. Saltwater soak

Rinse your sponge with warm water, then squeeze it out to get rid of any lingering crumbs or bits that may be sticking to it. Fill a container with warm water, and add 1/4 cup of salt (e.g. table salt, kosher salt, sea salt, etc). Stir the mixture until the salt is completely dissolved.

Next, place your sponge in the mixture, and make sure it’s fully submerged. Leave it there overnight, or at least for a few hours, then remove it, squeeze it out, and rinse it thoroughly with clean water.

2. Add some vinegar

This process is the same as the one described above, except the mixture consists of 1 cup hot water, ½ cup white vinegar, and 3 tablespoons salt.

To clarify, the aim of these methods is to get rid of (or at least lessen) odors, and help get the sponge back to looking more like it did when it was new. We didn’t come across any research indicating that this would sterilize your sponge, so when you’re done, you may want to pop it in the microwave.

theverge.com

Around the time J. Robert Oppenheimer learned that Hiroshima had been struck (alongside everyone else in the world) he began to have profound regrets about his role in the creation of that bomb. At one point when meeting President Truman Oppenheimer wept and expressed that regret. Truman called him a crybaby and said he never wanted to see him again. And Christopher Nolan is hoping that when Silicon Valley audiences of his film Oppenheimer (out June 21) see his interpretation of all those events they’ll see something of themselves there too.

After a screening of Oppenheimer at the Whitby Hotel yesterday Christopher Nolan joined a panel of scientists and Kai Bird, one of the authors of the book Oppenheimer is based on to talk about the film, American Prometheus. The audience was filled mostly with scientists, who chuckled at jokes about the egos of physicists in the film, but there were a few reporters, including myself, there too.

We listened to all too brief debates on the success of nuclear deterrence and Dr. Thom Mason, the current director of Los Alamos, talked about how many current lab employees had cameos in the film because so much of it was shot nearby. But towards the end of the conversation the moderator, Chuck Todd of Meet the Press, asked Nolan what he hoped Silicon Valley might learn from the film. “I think what I would want them to take away is the concept of accountability,” he told Todd.

“Applied to AI? That’s a terrifying possibility. Terrifying.”

He then clarified, “When you innovate through technology, you have to make sure there is accountability.” He was referring to a wide variety of technological innovations that have been embraced by Silicon Valley, while those same companies have refused to acknowledge the harm they’ve repeatedly engendered. “The rise of companies over the last 15 years bandying about words like ‘algorithm,’ not knowing what they mean in any kind of meaningful, mathematical sense. They just don’t want to take responsibility for what that algorithm does.”

He continued, “And applied to AI? That’s a terrifying possibility. Terrifying. Not least because as AI systems go into the defense infrastructure, ultimately they’ll be charged with nuclear weapons and if we allow people to say that that’s a separate entity from the person’s whose wielding, programming, putting AI into use, then we’re doomed. It has to be about accountability. We have to hold people accountable for what they do with the tools that they have.”

While Nolan didn’t refer to any specific company it isn’t hard to know what he’s talking about. Companies like Google, Meta and even Netflix are heavily dependent on algorithms to acquire and maintain audiences and often there are unforeseen and frequently heinous outcomes to that reliance. Probably the most notable and truly awful being Meta’s contribution to genocide in Myanmar.

“At least is serves as a cautionary tale.”

While an apology tour is virtually guaranteed now days after a company’s algorithm does something terrible the algorithms remain. Threads even just launched with an exclusively algorithmic feed. Occasionally companies might give you a tool, as Facebook did, to turn it off, but these black box algorithms remain, with very little discussion of all the potential bad outcomes and plenty of discussion of the good ones.

“When I talk to the leading researchers in the field of AI they literally refer to this right now as their Oppenheimer moment,” Nolan said. “They’re looking to his story to say what are the responsibilities for scientists developing new technologies that may have unintended consequences.”

“Do you think Silicon Valley is thinking that right now?” Todd asked him.

“They say that they do,” Nolan replied. “And that’s,” he chuckled, “that’s helpful. That at least it’s in the conversation. And I hope that thought process will continue. I’m not saying Oppenheimer’s story offers any easy answers to these questions. But at least it serves a cautionary tale.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1199732

> California’s governor announced Friday that he won’t ask the state Supreme Court to block parole for Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten, paving the way for her release after serving 53 years in prison for two infamous murders. > > nbclosangeles > > In a brief statement, the governor’s office said an appeal was unlikely to succeed. > > Newsom is disappointed, the statement said. > > “More than 50 years after the Manson cult committed these brutal killings, the victims’ families still feel the impact,” the statement said. > > Van Houten, now in her 70s, is serving a life sentence for helping Manson and other followers in the 1969 killings of Leno LaBianca, a grocer in Los Angeles, and his wife, Rosemary. > > Van Houten could be freed in about two weeks after the parole board reviews her record and processes paperwork for her release from the California Institution for Women in Corona, her attorney Nancy Tetreault said. > > She was recommended for parole five times since 2016 but Newsom and former Gov. Jerry Brown rejected all those recommendations. > > However, a state appeals court ruled in May that Van Houten should be released, noting what it called her “extraordinary rehabilitative efforts, insight, remorse, realistic parole plans, support from family and friends” and favorable behavior reports while in prison. > > “She’s thrilled and she’s overwhelmed,” Tetreault said. > > “She’s just grateful that people are recognizing that she’s not the same person that she was when she committed the murders,” she said. > > After she's released, Van Houten will spend about a year in a halfway house, learning basic life skills such as how to go to the grocery and get a debit card, Tetreault said. > > “She’s been in prison for 53 years. ... She just needs to learn how to use an ATM machine, let alone a cell phone, let alone a computer,” her attorney said. > The Manson Family > > Van Houten and other Manson followers killed the LaBiancas in their home in August 1969, smearing their blood on the walls after. Van Houten later described holding Rosemary LaBianca down with a pillowcase over her head as others stabbed her, before herself stabbing the woman more than a dozen times. > > “My family and I are heartbroken because we’re once again reminded of all the years that we have not had my father and my stepmother with us,” Cory LaBianca, Leno LaBianca's daughter, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Friday. > > “My children and my grandchildren never got an opportunity to get to know either of them, which has been a huge void for my family,” said Cory La Bianca, who is 75. > > The LaBianca murders happened the day after Manson followers killed actress Sharon Tate and four others. Van Houten did not participate in the Tate killings.