Friday, May 19, 2023

And another day of work requirements, scrapping plans, growing Southern cities, a TX’s church’s role in an election, aid for homelessness, public schools cherry-pick students, shrinking lakes, unionized strippers, and more on ChatGPT comes to a close:

“In Florida, you can carry a firearm without a permit. But a teacher carrying an ‘unvetted’ book is a felony? What kind of 1930’s Nazi Germany bullshit is this?” -- Lakota Man

“States sure do seem to have a lot of rights these days when it comes to doing horrible things to people.” — Brandon Friedman

“Laws don’t apply to old white men.” -- Tea Pain

Work Requirements for Federal Aid Programs Are a Bad Idea. As the deadline to raise the national debt ceiling and avoid a default approaches, President Biden is reportedly considering a proposal from Republicans to require people who receive certain types of federal assistance to prove that they have jobs. It’s a horrible idea. Biden supported such work requirements when he voted for then-President Clinton’s welfare reform package as a senator in 1996. Those changes were disastrous. As we have reported for years, work requirements have been pushed as helping alleviate poverty in the 1990s, often discounting a boom in the Clinton years fostered by specific economic circumstances—new technology, globalization, low interest rates—that were hailed at the time, but that laid the groundwork for a modern economy with its own raft of problems. After the boom, the reforms’ effects were made clear: they had gashed a hole in the safety net, helping fuel poverty with little effect on unemployment…While McCarthy has characterized work requirements as necessary to ensure that poor people gain independence from government assistance, they often make it more difficult for people to access the benefits they need not only to survive but to be able to work...Our government needs to reach an agreement on the debt ceiling—but it can do so in ways that don’t involve the rich getting richer at the expense of the poor. Work requirements do not do much except inflame a misguided idea: that the problem with poverty in America is that people are lazy.

GOP is pushing work requirements in debt-limit talks — but experts say they don't work. Among Republican lawmakers's list of demands in their debt-ceiling negotiations with the Biden Administration is a push to add more work requirements for the food-stamp, Medicaid and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs. One big problem, experts say, is that there's little evidence that such rules actually help people get back to work…But the existing rules haven't had much of an impact on getting people back to work, and adding more regulations risks bumping struggling families from the program's rolls, experts say. — Which is why Republicans want this. It’ll drive people away from receiving benefits. 

Disney scraps plans for new Florida campus as fight with Gov. Ron DeSantis continues. The Walt Disney Co. announced Thursday that it was scrapping plans to build a new campus in central Florida and relocate 2,000 employees from Southern California to work in digital technology, finance and product development. The decision follows a year of attacks from Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature because the company opposed a state law that bans classroom lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades. Disney filed a First Amendment lawsuit against DeSantis and other officials last month.

Large Southern cities lead nation in population growth. Nine out of the 15 fastest-growing cities in the United States are located in the South, with six nestled in Texas alone.

Texas AG Ken Paxton launches investigation into Texas Children's Hospital over trans care. Menefee noted that unauthorized disclosures of medical records may violate the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, commonly known as HIPAA...Houston attorney Romy Kaplan, who is representing multiple families whose information was breached, said, “The need to maintain the confidentiality of medical records is a basic right as Texans and Americans.” -- Ken Paxton is a syphilis dripping asshole.

Nebraska lawmakers pass 12-week abortion ban, restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors. The Nebraska Legislature on Friday approved a 12-week abortion ban and restrictions on gender-affirming care for children in a move so contentious that lawmakers on both sides have said they may be unable to work together in the future.

Trans girl is told not to wear dress to Mississippi graduation, lawsuit says. A Mississippi school district is refusing to let a transgender girl wear a dress and heeled shoes with her graduation cap and gown for high school graduation this weekend, her family says in a federal lawsuit against the district…King told the teenager’s mother in a phone call that L.B. “needs to wear pants, socks, and shoes like a boy,” and King repeatedly misgendered L.B. as a boy, the ACLU said in a news release. — So. Much. Hatred.

“I'll be honest, I truly believed more Americans would have rejected the abject hatred, racism, and lawlessness of this predatory Republican Party by now. I expected more people's humanity would finally kick in. White supremacy is one helluva drug.” -- John Pavlovitz

Churches’ role in Abilene election prompts calls for investigations. Voters in West Texas have decisively rejected three conservative Christian candidates who campaigned on infusing religious values into local decision making. But the support the candidates received from local churches during the race has prompted calls for state and federal investigations and triggered a local political reckoning.

Auschwitz museum begins emotional work of conserving 8,000 shoes of murdered children. In a modern conservation laboratory on the grounds of the former Auschwitz camp, a man wearing blue rubber gloves uses a scalpel to scrape away rust from the eyelets of small brown shoes worn by children before they were murdered in gas chambers. Colleagues at the other end of a long work table rub away dust and grime, using soft cloths and careful circular motions on the leather of the fragile objects. The shoes are then scanned and photographed in a neighboring room and catalogued in a database.

White House vows more federal aid to reduce homelessness in 5 cities and California. Five major U.S. cities and the state of California will receive federal help to get unsheltered residents into permanent housing under a new plan launched Thursday as part of the Biden administration’s larger goal to reduce homelessness 25% by 2025. The All Inside initiative will partner the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness and its 19 federal member agencies with state officials in California and local governments in Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle and the Phoenix metro area.

Supreme Court avoids ruling on law shielding internet companies from being sued for what users post. The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with Google, Twitter and Facebook in lawsuits seeking to hold them liable for terrorist attacks. But the justices sidestepped the big issue hovering over the cases, the federal law that shields social media companies from being sued over content posted by others. The justices unanimously rejected a lawsuit alleging that the companies allowed their platforms to be used to aid and abet an attack at a Turkish nightclub that killed 39 people in 2017.

How Public Schools Cherry-Pick Their Students. Writing almost 70 years ago this week, Chief Justice Earl Warren issued the court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, pledging that all public schools in the U.S. must be “available to all on equal terms.” But seven decades later, that promise remains unfulfilled. Historically, the most coveted public schools in America use government-drawn maps to discriminate against students who live in “less desirable” parts of town. This type of geographic discrimination echoes the racist redlining policies of the early 20th century and allows many sought-after public schools to operate as quasi-private schools. The practice of “educational redlining” is one of the main reasons that a child’s zip code increasingly determines his or her fate in life…Indeed, the shape of these school zones is often shockingly similar to the redlining maps drawn by the federal government nearly a century ago. And families are told—once again—that they aren’t eligible for valuable government services because they don’t live in the right part of town. Left out are the working-class families (disproportionately people of color and immigrants) who can’t afford the extra premium of $200,000 or more that people pay for a house within the coveted zone lines. This is often the real financial cost of a “free” public education. As a result, it’s commonplace for Americans of all races and income levels to use a false address to get into a school that they aren’t zoned for. School districts then sometimes hire private eyes to spy on kids and even put parents in jail for crossing the lines…Charter schools have faced the most scrutiny for their admissions processes, and there is no doubt that some engage in cherry-picking…But the rest of the public schools are held to a very low legal standard of access and face very little scrutiny of their enrollment practices. Yes, they are prohibited from excluding a child explicitly because of his or her race. But public school waitlists receive little attention, and school staff are often free to pick those families that they prefer. As in Arizona, many Open Enrollment laws have loopholes that allow school staff to turn kids away because they have a minor disability…It’s clear that our public education system is not “available to all on equal terms.”

Incredible shrinking lakes: Humans, climate change, diversion costs trillions of gallons annually. A close examination of nearly 2,000 of the world’s largest lakes found they are losing about 5.7 trillion gallons (21.5 trillion liters) a year. That means from 1992 to 2020, the world lost the equivalent of 17 Lake Meads, America’s largest reservoir, in Nevada. It’s also roughly equal to how much water the United States used in an entire year in 2015. Even lakes in areas getting more rainfall are shriveling. That’s because of both a thirstier atmosphere from warmer air sucking up more water in evaporation, and a thirsty society that is diverting water from lakes to agriculture, power plants and drinking supplies, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science.

Smoke from Canadian fires is pouring into the US and could linger for days. Air quality alerts have been posted as of early Friday across several states, including Nebraska, Washington, Montana and Wisconsin, with a special weather statement about air quality in Wyoming...Canada has had an especially active start to the fire season. Last week, devastating wildfires in Alberta had burned more than 150 times more area in that province than in the last five years combined by the same point in the year.

Rep. Cori Bush says $14 trillion reparations bill will 'eliminate the racial wealth gap'. In 23-page legislation introduced Thursday, Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., called on Congress to adopt several measures aimed at righting historic wrongs, including urging the federal government to issue federal reparations to Black Americans and other reparatory justice efforts. A minimum of $14 trillion would be needed "to eliminate the racial wealth gap that currently exists between Black and White Americans," the resolution argues.

More than 30 million US drivers don’t know if they’re at risk from a rare but dangerous airbag blast. More than 33 million people in the United States are driving vehicles that contain a potentially deadly threat: Airbag inflators that in rare cases can explode in a collision and spew shrapnel. Few of them know it. And because of a dispute between federal safety regulators and an airbag parts manufacturer, they aren’t likely to find out anytime soon.

Dancers at Los Angeles bar to become only unionized strippers in US after 15-month battle. The Actors’ Equity Association labor union says owners of the Star Garden Topless Dive Bar in North Hollywood have withdrawn their opposition and agreed to recognize the strippers’ union. For 15 months, dancers at the club have sought safer workplace conditions, better pay and health insurance, among other benefits. But their unionization drive was stalled by objections and legal challenges from the club’s management. The union announced this week that management had agreed to a settlement. A formal vote count by the National Labor Relations Board has been set for Thursday.

FDA panel recommends the first shot to prevent RSV in infants by vaccinating pregnant mothers. Next, the FDA will decide whether to approve Pfizer’s vaccine. The agency said the safety data was “generally favorable” but noted a slightly elevated rate of preterm birth.

Wendy’s latest test will have robots deliver food orders through tunnels. After announcing plans to use an AI chatbot at its drive-thrus, now Wendy’s is piloting a robot-powered “underground delivery system” for online order pickups. The system, which will be built through a partnership with the autonomous logistics company Pipedream, will have robots travel through tunnels to transport online food orders from Wendy’s kitchens to the “Instant Pickup portals” that sit beside parking spaces.

New York City rescinds ban on ChatGPT use in public schools. Chancellor David Banks wrote in an op-ed, published by Chalkbeat Thursday, that while the school system proceeded with “initial caution” concerning artificial intelligence (AI) programs earlier this year, they will now work to integrate the programs into the curriculum. He wrote that they consulted with technology and education experts to come to the decision and are ready to teach students about the advantages and disadvantages of AI.

Apple reportedly limits internal use of AI-powered tools like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot. As big tech companies are in a fierce race with each other to build generative AI tools, they are being cautious about giving their secrets away. In a move to prevent any of its data from ending up with competitors, Apple has restricted internal use of tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft-owned GitHub’s Copilot, a new report says.

OpenAI launches an official ChatGPT app for iOS. Today, OpenAI announced the launch of an official iOS app that allows users to access its popular AI chatbot on the go, months after the App Store was filled with dubious, unofficial services. The new ChatGPT app will be free to use, free from ads, and will allow for voice input, the company says, but will initially be limited to U.S. users at launch.

Jim Brown, all-time NFL great and social activist, dead at 87. Pro Football Hall of Famer Jim Brown, an unstoppable running back who retired at the peak of his brilliant career to become an actor as well as a prominent civil rights advocate during the 1960s, has died.

Andy Rourke, The Smiths bass player, dies at 59. Andy Rourke, bass guitarist of The Smiths, one of the most influential British bands of the 1980s, has died after a lengthy illness with pancreatic cancer, his former bandmate Johnny Marr said Friday.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.