“I can’t answer that,” Kennedy replied, pausing and then dramatically adding, “I can, but I won’t.”

This is a weird thing to say, but my standards for what counts as “unbelievably irresponsible” are apparently a lot higher than some people’s because this ain’t it.

Do you think he can actually experience insecurity? My impression has been the opposite - I think he’s literally shameless. He has absolute confidence and so he never feels the self-doubt necessary to believe that someone worth having as a friend wouldn’t want to be his friend. Only bad people (who are probably plotting against him) wouldn’t want to be his friends.

I admit that if that’s what he’s like, then I’m a little jealous. I mean, I don’t want to be him but I do want to be able to meet a person, be rejected, and then go on with my life without having my deep insecurity triggered. Hell, I just want to be able to meet a person instead of being crippled by even the possibility of rejection.

This is a lot more reckless than I was expecting, and I didn’t have high hopes. Denmark is a NATO ally. If the USA is challenging its territorial integrity like this, the ability of that alliance to act as a deterrent is going to be seriously compromised. That’s bad for reasons bigger than Greenland.

Trump is doing more damage to the security of the USA and its allies than he would have if he merely sank a couple of aircraft carriers, and most voters aren’t even going to be aware of that.

In its report, the Ethics Committee explained that “Representative Gaetz did not appear to have negotiated specific payment amounts prior to engaging in sexual activity with the women he paid. Instead, the women had a general expectation that they would typically receive some amount of money after each sexual encounter.”

Where’s the boundary between prostitution and a sugar daddy/sugar baby relationship which is not in itself illegal? This seems like the latter rather than the former to me. It’s still crazy that the attorney general nominee is claiming to be a sugar daddy in order to defend his character.

Some of the doctor killers surrendered immediately, but there were manhunts for ones who fled. The killers were usually caught quickly so most manhunts didn’t need to be nationwide, but law enforcement considered the attacks a big deal. This guy managed to flee the country and the international hunt for him lasted over two years until he was caught in France and extradited.

Yes, which is why I brought up the murders of abortion doctors. Those got a lot of nationwide attention when they happened. For example, look up George Tiller. The common theme is the connection between the murder and the controversial nature of the victim’s career. Meanwhile, the violent deaths of wealthy people not associated with anything controversial might make it into the local news briefly but they won’t get nearly as much attention.

I don’t agree with their conclusion. It’s true that the murder of a CEO would get more police attention than the murder of an ordinary person even in less unusual circumstances, but this particular case is extraordinary not because the victim was a CEO but because so many people support the murder.

Murders of abortion doctors were similar ideologically-motivated attacks against someone hated by a large part of the public, except that abortion doctors aren’t members of the elite. These murders were still quite a big deal and received a lot of attention on the national level.

Musk is doing the setup for a joke, because back in the day we had “Boehner loses control of his caucus.” Now it’s Johnson’s turn.

I suppose they’re AI in a very general sense according to which even simple, deterministic programs such as one that plays tic-tac-toe are AI, but they’re not generative models like the software people people usually have in mind when they say “AI” is.

Ah, I was thinking of autocorrect on PCs, which generally won’t change what you wrote without your input. I swipe to type on my phone and the phone does often interpret my gestures as a word other than the one that I intended, but my gestures are so imprecise that I think the phone does a remarkably good job even if I do have to proofread afterwards.

I expect that the phones will do better once they have AI capable of noticing things the user clearly didn’t intend to write.

What’s wrong with spellcheckers? The only problem I have had with them is that they’re triggered by technical terms, but that’s just a minor inconvenience.

(Thinking I have the spellchecker on when I don’t and therefore leaving mistakes in can also be a problem, but it’s not strictly the spellchecker’s fault.)

Also, before anyone asks, I do find ChatGPT and similar software quite useful.

I have my doubts about this, but it’s an interesting experiment and charter schools are great for that.

Also, the kids aren’t just ignored for the rest of the school day. They spend most of their time being taught by humans.

Spending less time on traditional curriculum frees up the rest of students’ days for life-skill workshops that cover “financial literacy, public speaking, goal setting, entrepreneurship, critical thinking, and creative problem-solving,” according to the Arizona application.

Teachers are replaced by “guides” who lead those workshops.

Edit: One interesting possibility is that simply teaching young kids to interact with computers will in itself be beneficial for them. I introduced my friend’s second grader to Minecraft and he learned a lot of very useful skills because of that. At the beginning he had to be taught to use a mouse, but he got the hang of it quickly and soon he wasn’t just playing the game. He was reading the wiki, watching tutorials on YouTube, etc. That’s learning how to learn, which is arguably more important than learning anything specific.

(Now he’s a 5th grader who wants a 3D printer for Christmas and I suspect that that may somehow be related to Minecraft too. He’s probably a little too young for the printer but I suppose it’s better to start early than to start late. One of my adult friends started being taught how to program when he was nine and he has gone very far, although I’m sure that simply being the sort of person who is capable of learning to program at nine played a huge role in that.)

This charter school’s software is probably not as interesting as Minecraft yet, but that might be the direction where things are headed. A personal tutor that’s infinitely patient opens up interesting possibilities.

They’re seriously using the word “schemes”? This is like one of those “I am Firm; You are Obstinate; He is a Pig-headed Fool" jokes.

Human-interest pieces like this make me think of the human-interest pieces not being written about the kids in other countries who grew up in poverty because their parents didn’t take them into the US illegally. I sympathize with the man this article is about and I think people in his situation should receive clemency. At the very least, the ones married to American citizens should have a straightforward path to legal residence for the sake of their American spouses. With that said, I don’t think the man this article is about deserves more sympathy than all the poor foreigners who wanted to come to the USA but didn’t because the didn’t receive legal permission.

The Democrats do have to think about the 2026 election. Even a lame duck has limits.

I’m going to go ahead and respect democracy. Trump won fair and square. He should be able to implement his policies because that’s what the majority wants.

No leopards here. The title of the article is deceptive because it implies that the attorney general is acting contrary to the new amendment. Actually that amendment explicitly allows for abortion after viability to be illegal.

Do you want to amend the Missouri Constitution to:

establish a right to make decisions about reproductive health care, including abortion and contraceptives, with any governmental interference of that right presumed invalid;

remove Missouri’s ban on abortion;

allow regulation of reproductive health care to improve or maintain the health of the patient;

require the government not to discriminate, in government programs, funding, and other activities, against persons providing or obtaining reproductive health care;

and allow abortion to be restricted or banned after Fetal Viability except to protect the life or health of the woman?

(That’s the text of the ballot measure. The longer text of the actual amendment is substantially similar. It is available in this pdf.)

The voters approved a ban on abortion after viability. They’re not being surprised by this.

They should be. Vaping has been a public health miracle which reduced the far more dangerous habit of smoking dramatically among young people. The FDA is a bunch of stuck-up Puritans who love making the perfect the enemy of the good.

Just driving your Tesla without trying to apologize for it would be a lot more dignified.