PETER SINGER, Professor Emeritus of Bioethics at Princeton University - Time
Stephan:
Yet another way in which the United States is second-rate. Why is this? Because the corruption of our political system, stops regulatory agencies from imposing decency on commercial agriculture and animal exploitation businesses. We are becoming increasingly pathetic as a country, and we need massive changes in everything from healthcare, maternal care, childcare, and pig and chicken care.
Chicken in anti-wellbeing cages. Credit: Getty
Imagine that you are going to be reincarnated as a domesticated animal, and you can choose whether to be reincarnated in the U.S., or in Spain. Which country would you pick?
My guess is that many of you will think that if you choose to be reincarnated in Spain, there’s a chance you might be a bull raised to die in a bullfight, and so it is better to pick the U.S and avoid such a fate.
Take, for instance, the matter of egg-laying hens. Around 230 million of them in the U.S.—almost 60% of the hen population there—are crammed into bare wire cages that do not allow them enough space to fully stretch their wings. Whereas in Spain keeping hens in such conditions is illegal, and Spain’s 46 million hens have almost twice the space given. They also have access to […]
KATHERINE SCHAEFFER and SHRADHA DINESH, - Pew Research Center
Stephan:
Have you noticed what I have become increasingly aware of: How many people, particularly women, now have not one but multiple tattooes. It is a new major cultural trend, and I got interested in seeing if there was any hard data on this trend. There is, and here it is.
A tattoo artist inks a client’s calf in Denver. Credit: Hyoung Chang / The Denver Post
Tattoos have become a more common sight in workplaces around the United States, even making appearances among members of the U.S. House and Senate. Amid this shift, a large majority of U.S. adults say society has become more accepting of people with tattoos in recent decades, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. And 32% of adults have a tattoo themselves, including 22% who have more than one.
How we did this
Here’s a closer look at Americans and tattoos, based on the new survey:
Which Americans are most likely to have a tattoo?
The likelihood of having a tattoo varies by several demographic factors.
Gender: 38% of women have at least one tattoo, compared with 27% of men. This includes 56% of women ages 18 to 29 and 53% of women ages 30 to 49.
Race and ethnicity: 39% of Black Americans have a […]
This is how weird the christofascist (formerly Republican Party) has become. Demons are attacking them. What’s next? Vampires? I do not understand how anyone with an IQ higher than their waist size can vote for fascist Trump or any of the weirdos around him.
Tucker Carlson speaks ahead of a live interview with Donald Trump in Glendale, Arizona Credit: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty
Tucker Carlson, the former CNN and Fox News political chat host, has said he was “physically mauled” by a demon a year and a half ago, in an assault that he says left him bleeding and with scars from “claw marks”.
Carlson made the claim while speaking in an upcoming documentary, Christianities? In a preview clip on YouTube, Carlson is asked by John Heers of the non-profit First Things Foundation if he believed that “the presence of evil is kickstarting people to wonder about the good”.
“That’s what happened to me. I had a direct experience with it,” said Carlson.
Asked if he was referring to journalism, Carlson responded: “No, in my bed at night. I got attacked while I was asleep with my wife and four dogs and mauled, physically mauled.”
Carlson, who said he still bears the scars, said his assailant was a “demon”. He added: “Or by something unseen that left claw marks on my sides.”
HEIDI SCHLUMPF and RUSS CHOMA, Senior Correspondent and former Executive Editor of the National Catholic Reporter | Reporter in the Washington Bureau of Mother Jones - Mother Jones | The National Catholic Reporter
Stephan:
The Roman Catholic Church is, and always has been, a very sick sexually perverted institution. The Los Angeles Diocese just paid a total of $1.5 billion because the priests in that diocese just could not keep their hands out of the pants of little boys and the panties of little girls. Dioceses all over the U.S. are declaring bankruptcy because they can’t pay all the judgments against their priests for the same reasons. And female subordination is a fundamental of the faith. What the Catholic church does have enough money for is getting involved with politics to see that politicians have the right to control a woman’s body. Here’s the latest report on that.
Credit: Megan Varner / Getty
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, every state-level campaign to limit abortion has failed. But that hasn’t stopped Catholic organizations from stepping into the fight again this election year.
Catholic organizations are bankrolling campaigns against abortion-rights measures, spending more than $1.9 million so far in five of the 10 states where such measures are on the ballot, according to a joint investigation by National Catholic Reporter and Mother Jones.
In Florida alone, dioceses and bishops have spent more than $1.1 million, and church entities in South Dakota have recently ramped up spending as the election nears. In other states, the church’s hierarchy may be sitting out financially, but wealthy individuals with well-established associations with the Catholic Church, or church-affiliated groups—like local parishes and Knights of Columbus chapters—have stepped into the fray.
The fight in Florida over Amendment 4—a ballot initiative to add the right to an abortion in the state constitution—has become a political lightning rod, so it may not be surprising that the high-profile battle has attracted heavyweight donors […]
This is why I think AI is so dangerous and threatening to democracy. Yet so tempting to those who seek power and control over societies. If the Pentagon is trying to develop this technology do you think the Russians, the Chinese, and who knows what other countries are;t trying to do it as well? I can see good things coming from AI, but I also see great dangers because I see not attempt to regulate Ai.
The Pentagon seen from Air Force One as it flies over Washington, D.C., Credit: Patrick Semansky / AP )
The United States’ secretive Special Operations Command is looking for companies to help create deepfake internet users so convincing that neither humans nor computers will be able to detect they are fake, according to a procurement document reviewed by The Intercept.
The plan, mentioned in a new 76-page wish list by the Department of Defense’s Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, outlines advanced technologies desired for country’s most elite, clandestine military efforts. “Special Operations Forces (SOF) are interested in technologies that can generate convincing online personas for use on social media platforms, social networking sites, and other online content,” the entry reads.
The document specifies that JSOC wants the ability to create online user profiles that “appear to be a unique individual that is recognizable as human but does not exist in the real world,” with each featuring […]
Here is a very interesting interview on the AI trend, and its very scary implications. This is all going on with virtually no discussion by politicians. Mostly I think because they don’t really understand what is involved or what it is doing to our culture.
Israeli historian and writer Yuval Noah Harari speaks at the Global Artificial Intelligence Summit Forum on July 9, 2017, in Hangzhou in China’s Zhejiang Province. Credit: Visual China Group / Getty
If the internet age has anything like an ideology, it’s that more information and more data and more openness will create a better and more truthful world.
That sounds right, doesn’t it? It has never been easier to know more about the world than it is right now, and it has never been easier to share that knowledge than it is right now. But I don’t think you can look at the state of things and conclude that this has been a victory for truth and wisdom.
What are we to make of that? Why hasn’t more information made us less ignorant and more wise?
