US Awards $99M for Geothermal Drilling, Technology Projects

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US Awards $99M for Geothermal Drilling, Technology Projects (Maria)

The author writes, “The US Department of ⁠Energy ⁠said this week ⁠it selected 21 projects for up to $99M ​in funding to advance geothermal energy development, a source of around-the-clock ‌power that has attracted ‌growing interest from investors and energy companies. The projects ⁠will ⁠receive funds to conduct field-scale tests of next-generation ​geothermal technologies and exploration drilling to identify promising resources across the US.”

AI Could Possibly End Humanity. How Are Humans Supposed to Process That? (Laura)

The authors write, “It could launch a bioweapon attack, or a global drone war. It could set off a nuclear bomb. Or it could destroy human society more gradually, by hoarding all the world’s economic resources and depriving us of food, housing or medicine. These are the sorts of dark thoughts that now swirl around artificial intelligence, a technology that has already proved to be a great advance in human achievement — but that, some fear, also has the potential to snuff out humanity entirely. Such anxieties made global headlines this week when an Anthropic researcher quit the industry, citing fears that his lab and others like it were building supersmart machines that humans would be unable to control.”

MAGA Activist Humiliated as He Exposes Self as Foreign Agent Days After Convention Speech (Sean)

From Raw Story: “Conservative activist CJ Pearson proudly touted his appearance last week at the GOP midterm convention in Texas — writing that it was a “pleasure to be in MAGA Country” — but on Sunday, it emerged that he’d quietly registered as a foreign agent that very same day. Pearson was one of countless MAGA influencers who attended last week’s GOP convention, having risen to prominence when he was 12 years old in 2015 after publishing a video critical of former President Barack Obama. Pearson’s celebratory post — which included a photograph of himself at the convention wearing a cowboy hat — drew scorn after investigative journalist Scott Stedman flagged a telling detail on Sunday: that the MAGA activist had registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) within hours of writing it.”

Russia Recruited Ukrainian Children To Carry Out Attacks. They Were Imprisoned (Russ)

The author writes, “Yaroslav Suzanskyi was 16 when he saw an ad on the Telegram messaging app offering “easy money,” about $165, to do an odd job. It turned out to be a want-ad for sabotage: Suzanskyi was paid to set fire to a railway relay cabinet. Now 18, Suzanskyi is incarcerated at a juvenile correctional colony, both a perpetrator and a victim of a hidden part of Russia’s war against Ukraine: recruiting vulnerable young people to attack their own country. He is one of eight inmates at Kremenchuk — in a population of 72 — convicted of national security or public safety offenses linked to Russia.”

Cancer Is Rising in Younger Adults. Faster Biological Aging May Help Explain Why (Mili)

The author writes, “Cancer rates are rising in adults under 55, and new research suggests accelerated biological aging may be one piece of the puzzle. Scientists found that people from more recent generations tended to have bodies that appeared biologically older than those of earlier generations at the same chronological age. Greater biological age acceleration was linked to a higher risk of early onset cancers, with specific patterns seen for lung, gastrointestinal, uterine and colorectal cancers.”

A Highly Trafficked Space News Site Invented a Fake NASA Engineer and Used Her Name to Publish to AI-Generated Slop (Gerry)

From Futurism: “The space publication Space Daily, which has been operating for over three decades, has become an unrecognizable shell of its former self after a company called Brown Brothers Media bought it and turned it into a content mill that pumps out misleading and badly sourced AI slop. As a Futurism investigation found, Space Daily is averaging an estimated ten million page views per month. That would be an incredible success story — if it weren’t for the fact that it’s been platforming non-existent experts as puppets to churn out AI garbage. Case in point, one of the website’s authors, ‘Dr. Katherine Chen,’ was identified as a former ‘systems engineer’ at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who ‘spent fifteen years designing autonomous systems for deep space missions,’ according to her since-deleted profile on the site.”

‘A Map Is Never Neutral’: Meet the Cartographers Who Took on Centuries of Western Bias (Dana)

From The Guardian: “Three cartographers have spoken of their astonishment at the UN’s near-universal adoption of a map they created to more accurately show the sizes of Africa and Europe, even though they have received a few complaints from some disgruntled diplomats. The creators of the Equal Earth projection aimed to provide an alternative to the dominant 16th-century Mercator display, which critics have long faulted for giving the impression that northern hemisphere nations are larger than they are — and therefore subtly reinforcing perceptions of where global strength lies. ‘It has been a very busy week for me,’ said Tom Patterson, a renowned US national parks cartographer who has had to virtually come out of retirement after being inundated with questions from governments on details of the new projection.”