Tuesday, January 23, 2024

News roundup, 23 Jan 2024

- A Republican member of the House of Representatives, Andy Biggs, admitted in a TV interview that despite their majority, House Republicans have no actual achievements to point to. And their counterparts in the Senate are worried that enthusiasm for Donald Trump seems to be on the wane, as evidenced by a fairly low turnout for the Iowa caucuses. There has, however, been no loss of enthusiasm on the part of Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, Jimmy Patronis, who has proposed that state funds should be used to pay Trump's legal bills.

- An Israeli biotechnology company has, in cooperation with a Japanese chef, developed lab grown eel meat for the table. This is important, since populations of freshwater eels have been in serious decline due to overfishing and other factors.

- Protesters in Jerusalem blockaded Israel's parliament, the Knesset, calling for Benjamin Netanyahu's resignation and new elections. The protest had initially been allowed by police but was cracked down upon when it turned into a blockade.

- Climate scientist Michael Mann has filed defamation suits against Rand Simberg of the rightwing thinktank Competitive Enterprise Institute and Mark Steyn of the National Review for, among other things, comparing him to a serial child molester.

- A bill currently being debated in the Kentucky legislature would, among other things, allow property owners to use lethal force against residentially challenged folks who they find camping on their property.

- Cameroon has commenced the world's first mass vaccination campaign to combat malaria.

- Researchers at a Google-backed firm, Anthropic, decided to try to train an AI to be evil. They say they succeeded, but were not so successful in then training the AI to change its ways. There has been research done in this field before; a couple of years ago one researcher thought it would be a good idea to use 4chan to train an AI, with disturbingly predictable results. I have to say that this stuff is a far cry from the Three Laws of Robotics.

- Golriz Ghahraman, a Green Party MP in the New Zealand parliament, has resigned after being charged with shoplifting.

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