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What the Climate 13M Years Ago Could Tell Us About Our Future (Maria)
The author writes, “Projections of our future under climate change paint a picture of extreme weather and acidified oceans, a world many of today’s animals — including humans — may struggle, or fail, to survive. Yet despite overwhelming scientific evidence screaming at us to reverse course, humanity just keeps burning more fossil fuels, skidding past climate goals, and ramping up consumption. … What might the world be like in 50 or 100 years? Maybe looking to the past can give us clues.”
RFK Jr. Is Already Taking Aim at Antidepressants (Sean)
From Mother Jones: “In a podcast appearance last July, Kennedy said he planned to dedicate money generated from a sales tax on cannabis products to ‘creating wellness farms — drug rehabilitation farms, in rural areas all over this country.’ He added, ‘I’m going to create these wellness farms where they can go to get off of illegal drugs, off of opiates, but also illegal drugs, other psychiatric drugs, if they want to, to get off of SSRIs, to get off of benzos, to get off of Adderall, and to spend time as much time as they need — three or four years if they need it — to learn to get reparented, to reconnect with communities.’ The farm residents would grow their own organic food because, he suggested, many of their underlying problems could be ‘food-related.’”
Books Mentioning Slavery, Civil Rights Removed From Shelves at Fort Campbell Schools (Dana)
The author writes, “At Fort Campbell, administrators and librarians are interpreting the guidance to apply to anything that deals with diversity, inclusion or equity, and anything that could be perceived to promote one group over another or make one group look bad, the source said. That would include any books that mention slavery, the civil rights movement or the treatment of Native Americans. The libraries at Fort Campbell schools are closed to students while staff removes books that could fall under the directive. At one elementary school, that has amounted to hundreds of books in several stacks, filling rolling carts.”
The Life Cycle of an Immigration Case, From ICE Arrest to Deportation (Reader Steve)
From The Nevada Independent: “The Trump administration has set a goal of 75 arrests per day in each field office — more than seven times the standard set over the prior four years. Such a quota means non-criminals are more likely to be arrested than they were before. Longstanding policy directs ICE to prioritize the detention of violent criminals, but the expanding definition of ‘criminal’ — White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump considers anyone who entered the country illegally a criminal, despite it being a civil offense — means that that distinction is not necessarily being honored. On Jan. 27, for example, ICE arrested 1,179 people, but only half were criminal arrests.”
Elon Musk Ridiculed a Blind Person on X. Then a Mob Went to Work. (Reader Jim)
The author writes, “Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette works at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group focused on reducing bureaucratic waste. He also happens to be blind. So when he criticized Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service in testimony on Capitol Hill last week, Musk unleashed an online attack Hedtler-Gaudette described as ‘surreal’ in its juvenile bigotry. First, Musk retweeted a post on X noting that the ‘blind director of watchdog group funded by George Soros testifies that he does not see widespread evidence of government waste’ and added two laughing/crying emojis. The tweet garnered more than 21 million views, and sparked dozens of hateful messages to Hedtler-Gaudette’s account.”
Anyone Can Push Updates to the DOGE.gov Website (Sean)
From 404 Media: “The doge.gov website that was spun up to track Elon Musk’s cuts to the federal government is insecure and pulls from a database that can be edited by anyone, according to two separate people who found the vulnerability and shared it with 404 Media. One coder added at least two database entries that are visible on the live site and say ‘this is a joke of a .gov site’ and ‘THESE “EXPERTS” LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN -roro.’”
AI Is Impersonating Human Therapists. Can It Be Stopped? (Laryn)
The author writes, “Many people already turn to AI chatbots for mental health support; one of the older offerings, called Woebot, has been downloaded by around 1.5 million users. Currently, people who turn to chatbots can be fooled into thinking that they’re talking to a real human. Those with low digital literacy, including kids, may not realize that a ‘nurse advice’ phone line or chat box has an AI on the other end. In 2023, the mental health platform Koko even announced that it had performed an experiment on unwitting test subjects to see what kind of messages they would prefer. It gave AI-generated responses to thousands of Koko users who believed they were speaking to a real person.”
