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Florida’s Iconic Key Deer Face Uncertain Future as Seas Rise (Maria)
The author writes, “The world’s only Key deer, the smallest subspecies of the white-tailed deer, are found in piney and marshy wetlands bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico on the Florida Keys. For years, their biggest threat was being struck by vehicles speeding along U.S. Highway 1 or local roads. But those waters surrounding the islands now pose the biggest long-term risk for this herd of about 800 deer as sea rise jeopardizes their sole habitat. These charismatic diminutive deer have been listed as endangered for almost 60 years after their numbers dipped to about 50 from hunting and poaching long ago. Yet they’ve made a tremendous comeback, with a peak population of about 1,000 in the mid-2010s before a deadly parasite and Hurricane Irma took a heavy toll.”
Trump Promised To Get Revenge. Here Are His Targets. (Sean)
From Politico: “Donald Trump ran a campaign based on retribution. Now he is perfectly positioned to carry it out. For years, Trump has peppered his speeches and social media posts with vengeful calls for his political opponents, his critics and members of the media to be prosecuted, locked up, deported and even executed. In the waning weeks of the 2024 campaign, he escalated those promises of retaliation to a fever pitch. … Based on Trump’s own words, here are the people who have the most to fear.”
Far-Right Donald Trump Supporters Celebrate His Victory With Violent Memes and Calls for Executions (Dana)
From Wired: “Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States, and the same far-right extremists emboldened by his first administration are celebrating his win with violent memes and threats. Many of the social media posts reviewed by Wired reveled in fantasies of Trump locking up and even executing his political opponents in revenge. ‘Build the gallows!!’ urged a post on Gab, a social media platform that caters to the far right.”
Some US States Have Firearm Death Rates Comparable to Countries in Conflict, Report Says (Reader Jim)
The author writes, “A new report by the Commonwealth Fund finds some US states have firearm death rates comparable to countries in conflict, and even states with the fewest firearms deaths are far higher than peer developed democracies. For instance, Mississippi’s rate of firearm-related violence (28.5 per 100,000 people) was nearly double that of Haiti (15.1 per 100,000) in 2021, when mercenaries assassinated the country’s president, unleashing a fresh round of gang warfare which pushed the country into a state of civil war.”
How Many US Persons Does Section 702 Spy On? The ODNI Needs to Come Clean. (DonkeyHotey)
From the Electronic Frontier Foundation: “EFF has joined with 23 other organizations including the ACLU, Restore the Fourth, the Brennan Center for Justice, Access Now, and the Freedom of the Press Foundation to demand that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) furnish the public with an estimate of exactly how many U.S. persons’ communications have been hoovered up, and are now sitting on a government server for law enforcement to unconstitutionally sift through at their leisure.”
Growing Food Instead of Lawns in California Front Yards (Russ)
The author writes, “Front yards transformed to tiny crop farms in Los Angeles provide vegetables to dozens of families and use a fraction of the water needed by grass.”
Is It AI? Peer Reviewers Struggle to Distinguish LLMs From Human Writing (Gerry)
From the Yale School of Medicine: “Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have grown so advanced that they can even pass the US Medical Licensing Exam. But how good are peer reviewers at AI detection, and how does the use of AI affect their perceptions of the work? A team led by Lee Schwamm, MD, associate dean for digital strategy and transformation at Yale School of Medicine, attempted to answer these questions by hosting an essay contest for the journal Stroke that included both AI and human submissions.”
