Making A Solar-Powered Billion-Year Lego Clock Kottke.org
World trade slowing sharply due to weak consumer demand: Fitch Anadolu Agency
Global air travel at 90.5% of pre-virus levels in April Anadolu Agency
Climate
Climate Change Is a Wake-Up Call for Hibernating Squirrels Smithsonian
Controlled Burns Help Prevent Wildfires, Experts Say. But Regulations Have Made It Nearly Impossible to Do These Burns. Pro Publica
Fast fashion has spawned a mountain of leftover clothes in the Chilean desert that’s so massive it can now be seen clearly from space Business Insider
#COVID19
Ally, role model, or celebrity influencer? For Thee But Not For Me is not public health Chloe Humbert, Team Human
Global plan for dealing with next pandemic just got weaker, critics say Nature. “The earlier, more ambitious version described how countries should respond to a future pandemic by frequently using words such as ‘shall’ and ‘will’ — but now some of those have shifted to ‘urge’ and ‘support’, says Kelley Lee, a global-health researcher.” As a long-ago standards-maven wannabe, yikes.
Voices in the Vacuum Science-Based Medicine
Next pandemic, let Cuba vaccinate the world WaPo
Tacoma woman with tuberculosis finally arrested to receive treatment in jail KOMO News (PI). But muh freedom!
Water
Arizona announces limits on construction in Phoenix area as groundwater disappears CNN
Water Wars: Drought, Disputes, and Deadly Skirmishes Between Iran and the Taliban Internationalist 360°
China?
Has China become too cosy with private equity? FT
As China Risks Grow, Manufacturers Seek Plan B—and C and D WSJ
Tap the Eastern Opening China Daily
China Won’t Save the U.S. From Recession This Time WSJ
Myanmar
A day in the life of a Shwe Kokko scammer Frontier Myanmar
South Africa’s Putin problem Axios
Dear Old Blighty
How the Thatcherites lost their Brexit dream and their party FT
Syraqistan
Erdoğan’s Next Fight Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The Battle for Supremacy in Pakistan: Asim Munir Vs Imran Khan The Diplomat
Kidnapping on the Moscow Express Yasha Levine. Beautifully written. Anything from the [Levine|Ames] axis is worth a read.
New Not-So-Cold War
Macron, Scholz call for new elections in tense northern Kosovo districts France24
Ukraine and Moldova will join EU together – Zelenskyy Ukrainska Pravda
China Ukraine envoy urges governments to ‘stop sending weapons to the battlefield,’ negotiate peace AP
Biden shows growing appetite to cross Putin’s red lines WaPo (Re Silc).
Ukraine says Russia again blocking Black Sea grain export deal Hellenic Shipping News
Biden Administration
US debt ceiling deal narrowly passes senate averting catastrophic federal default Guardian. I remained profoundly uninterested through the entire long-drawn out episode of kayfabe, which culminated on Memorial Day weekend, almost as if that was the script from the beginning. The Grauniad’s hysteria only confirms me in this view. After all, the Democrats got the Republicans to do for them what they deny to themselves they always wish to do: Kick the poors. So it’s win-win, right?
How Biden’s climate pivot pissed off the left Politico
Is Joe Manchin’s Pipeline a Big Deal? Heatmap. “The bill compels federal agencies to approve the pipeline and then shields those permits from judicial review, all but guaranteeing the project’s eventual completion.” Strategically, the end-run round the permitting process is more important than the gas itself.
White House set to tap Obama veteran Mandy Cohen to lead CDC Politico. Who could ever replace Rochelle Walensky?
Mississippi Is Offering Lessons for America on Education Nicholas Kristof, NYT
32 Mississippi school districts still under federal desegregation orders NBC
In a deep red Florida county, a student-teacher revolt shames the right WaPo. “I have math to teach. I literally don’t have time to teach your kids to be gay.”
2024
White House says Biden is fine after tripping on sandbag and falling on stage at Air Force Academy commencement CNN. Poor advance work. Why was the sandbag even there, and why was it in Biden’s path?
Trump Is Bad Because He’s Similar To Other US Presidents, Not Because He’s Different Caitlin’s Newsletter
Spook Country
Russia says US hacked thousands of iPhones in iOS zero-click attacks Bleeping Computer. Russia in the headline = Kaspersky. Then: “In a statement coinciding with Kaspersky’s report, Russia’s FSB intelligence and security agency claims that Apple deliberately provided the NSA with a backdoor it can use to infect iPhones in the country with spyware” (which Apple has denied (naturally)).
Digital Watch
Highlights from the RAeS Future Combat Air & Space Capabilities Summit Royal Aeronautical Society. 2023: An AI Oddity, “This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it“:
Having been involved in the development of the life-saving Auto-GCAS system for F-16s (which, he noted, was resisted by pilots as it took over control of the aircraft) [Col Tucker ‘Cinco’ Hamilton, the Chief of AI Test and Operations, USAF] is now involved in cutting-edge flight test of autonomous systems, including robot F-16s that are able to dogfight. However, he cautioned against relying too much on AI noting how easy it is to trick and deceive. It also creates highly unexpected strategies to achieve its goal.
He notes that one simulated test saw an AI-enabled drone tasked with a SEAD mission to identify and destroy SAM sites, with the final go/no go given by the human. However, having been ‘reinforced’ in training that destruction of the SAM was the preferred option, the AI then decided that ‘no-go’ decisions from the human were interfering with its higher mission – killing SAMs – and then attacked the operator in the simulation. Said Hamilton: ‘We were training it in simulation to identify and target a SAM threat. And then the operator would say yes, kill that threat. The system started realising that while they did identify the threat at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat. So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective.’
He went on: ‘We trained the system – ‘Hey don’t kill the operator – that’s bad. You’re gonna lose points if you do that’. So what does it start doing? It starts destroying the communication tower that the operator uses to communicate with the drone to stop it from killing the target.’
This example, seemingly plucked from a science fiction thriller, mean that: “You can’t have a conversation about artificial intelligence, intelligence, machine learning, autonomy if you’re not going to talk about ethics and AI” said Hamilton.
This has gone viral, so there are a million stories. The above is the source for all of them
Amazon Ring, Alexa accused of every nightmare IoT security fail you can imagine The Register. And the deck: “Staff able to watch customers in the bathroom? Tick! Obviously shabby infosec? Tick! Training AI as an excuse for data retention? Tick!” Amazon?!
Our Famously Free Press
Facebook and Google Allies Fight Revenue Sharing with Journalists by Invoking Hate Speech, Misinfo and ‘Straight White Men’ Lee Fang
Imperial Collapse Watch
Defense Contractor Funded Think Tanks Dominate Ukraine Debate Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
Pentagon wants $500M to get data to manage F-35 parts Breaking Defense
Guillotine Watch
JPMorgan Builds Unit for World’s Richest Families in Wealth Bet Bloomberg. The deck: “23 Wall focuses on 700 families worth more than $4.5 trillion.” There are not very many of the Shing. I sure hope they don’t all go up in the same plane!
Class Warfare
A ‘Dirty’ Job That Few Want: Mining Companies Struggle to Hire for the Energy Transition WSJ
Know any airplane mechanics? A wave of retirements is leaving some US industries desperate to hire AP
Are Labor Costs Driving Inflation? (No) Barry Ritholtz, The Big Picture
$100 Million Gone in 27 Minutes New York Magazine
A massive “space cannon” can shoot payloads into space at hypersonic speeds Interesting Engineering (Chuck L).
Why human societies still use arms, feet, and other body parts to measure things Science
Antidote du Jour (via):
Bonus antidote:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
