The Russian response is purely for their internal consumption.

I noticed during COVID, I had almost no problems with hay fever. I wouldn’t mind going back to wearing one full time.

Let me introduce you to wombat poop. Go ahead and google that.

Good luck getting DeSatan to accept that. He’ll take the money, and move it off to some “other” uses, but accept climate change?

What about treadmill-based walking? It’s too freaking hot out during the summer.

The US is not the only country that has enacted laws governing jurisdiction in cases of genocide that has occurred outside their borders. Many of these countries also have laws that are automatically in force when a determination of genocide has been made by the UN. These laws generally cover sanctions and doing business with “those who perpetrate or support genocide”.

https://thesentinelproject.org/2013/06/14/when-to-act-a-states-obligations-and-responsibilities-regarding-genocide/

Many other States have adopted statutes pursuant to Article VI, which explicitly provide not only for territorial jurisdiction, but also for universal jurisdiction over genocide. Examples of such statutes include: the 2002 German Code of Crimes Against International Law (Völkerstrafgesetzbuch) Section 1 of which recognizes the jurisdiction of German courts over genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed outside the German territory and to which Germany has no specific link. Likewise, Section 2, § 1(a) of the Dutch International Crimes Act of 19 June 2003 makes provision for universal jurisdiction over genocide provided that the alleged perpetrator is physically present in the Netherlands. Moreover, the Canadian’s Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Act, adopted on 24 June 2000 sets the basis for universal jurisdiction for genocide; Section 6, §1 of this Act reads as follows:

Every person who, either before or after the coming into force of this section, commits outside Canada (a) genocide […] is guilty of an indictable offence and may be prosecuted for that offence in accordance with section 8.

Many other countries, including France, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, and Austria, have adopted national legislation, as required under Genocide Convention Article VI, that allow for the prosecution of genocide committed outside their territories.

The political question of the US’ position on genocide rulings can be better understood by reading what it has done with previous atrocities.

This repost was done during Bush Sr’s presidency by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. It goes through the US’ response in the past to quite a few incidents and describes the decisions that were made and the thinking behind them.

https://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/Todd_Buchwald_Report_031819.pdf

Under-shaved, brown-robed and jovial, Benanti is adept at explaining how technology can change the world, “with humans ceding the power of choice to an algorithm that knows us too well. Some people treat AIs like idols, like oracles, like demigods. The risk is that they delegate critical thinking and decisional power to these machines.”

AI is about choices. He points out: “Already a few tens of thousands of years ago, the club could have been a very useful tool or a weapon to destroy others …”

The Italians, not pioneers in the technology, warn that AI prefigures a world in which progress does not optimise human capabilities, but replaces them.

While I certainly do not side with the Catholic Church and their moralistic dogma, it is valuable to pay attention to a group that has made it their mission to think about how humanity is affected by various things. Never mind that they have their own bias in how humanity should be conducting itself. If instead, you treat them as a think tank with a relatively narrow focus, then we can make use of their work in this area.

I’m relieved to see at least one world leader though listening to an expert on technology. The US Congress had a department just for interpreting and researching various high technology concepts, but in their infinite wisdom they decided they knew better and disbanded the department.

One may disagree with the Catholic churches interpretation of their explanations of how AI technology can affect humans, but we would be fools to completely disregard their reports and findings.

The number of abortions among women under 20 rose during the 1990s in Finland, which led the Nordic country to respond at the start of the 2000s by making morning-after pills available without prescription from 15 years of age and sexual education compulsory in all schools.

Finland also passed a law in 2022 liberalising abortion, at a time of deep divisions over abortion rights in Europe and court rulings in the U.S. that restricted access to terminations of unwanted pregnancies for millions of people there.

…

The number of abortions fell 66% to 722 in 2023 from 2,144 in 2000 among all teenagers aged 19 or younger in Finland, while the drop was even steeper at 78% among those under 18 in the same period, THL’s statistics showed.

I’m sure the GQP will read this and think, “We should just outlaw abortion and fix it that way.”

Maybe you should have a word with Alito and Thomas about that?

“Why would my child want to hide such a horrible thing from me?”

Maybe because you’re the reason they’re hiding how they feel?

Writing for the court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh acknowledged what he characterized as the challengers’ “sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections” to elective abortion “by others” and to FDA’s relaxed regulation of mifepristone. But the challengers had not shown that they would be harmed by the FDA’s mifepristone policies, he explained, and under the Constitution, merely objecting to abortion and the FDA’s policies are not enough to bring a case in federal court. The proper place to voice those objections, he suggested, is in the political or regulatory arena.

I’d almost thought the con side of SCOTUS had forgotten what standing even is.

NEW YORK, June 11 (Reuters) - A U.S. congressional committee will accuse the biggest Wall Street firms on Tuesday, in a report seen by Reuters ahead of its publication, of colluding with advocacy groups to force companies to shrink their greenhouse gas emissions.

…

The report says Climate Action 100+ “bullies asset managers to join” and presses them to use their shareholder votes in support of climate proposals, seeking to reduce fossil fuel extraction and raising energy prices for U.S. consumers.

Lobbying companies = bad.

Lobbying politicians and SCOTUS = good.

Now I get it. They’re afraid of losing some of that cash.

Can’t we just declare the entire Trump crime family to be an enemy of the state?

Here’s his justification, so he doesn’t have to make one up out of thin air:

On 22 April 1808, during the Finnish War between Sweden and Russia, a Russian army landed on the southeastern shores of Gotland near Grötlingbo. Under command of Nikolai Andreevich Bodisko 1,800 Russians took the city of Visby without any combat or engagement, and occupied the island. A Swedish naval force rescue expedition was sent from Karlskrona under the command of admiral Rudolf Cederström with 2,000 men; the island was liberated and the Russians capitulated. Russian forces left the island on 18 May 1808.

So, you see, it was Russian territory for almost a month.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotland#Early_modern_period

Its position in the middle of the Baltic Sea and more or less off the coast of Kaliningrad would make it an excellent military outpost from which to control shipping and spy on their neighbors.

I was just rewatching Midsomer Murders and there’s a Russian Blue cat - KillMouski.

How careless do you have to be to just have ammo lying around, unknown to you? Here’s a thought, T&C says they’ll release them if they lose their right to own a gun in the US?

Somehow, I find it interesting he lives in Caesarea. The site of the martyrdom of Palestinian Jews. I wonder how Bibi spells irony.

During the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132–135 ce, the Romans tortured and killed the 10 greatest leaders and sages of Palestinian Jewry, including Rabbi Akiba. Caesarea was almost certainly the place of execution of Rabbi Akiba and the others according to tradition (c. 135 ce). The death of these Ten Martyrs is still commemorated in the liturgy for Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).

That’s just it. You have to understand the output; otherwise you get very authoritative looking garbage.

I wrote some rudimentary Python code to do a job by brute force. On a whim, I asked ChatGPT to optimize the code. It did a pretty good job, but I still had to tweak it for my purpose.

I found ChatGPT to be indispensable in dealing with a nonsense homework assignment. I had to write a paper on a subject I knew about, but had to write it from a specific viewpoint and in far less time than would normally be allowed. I wrote up an outline, checked my sources, etc. Told ChatGPT to flesh it out. Read through the output, made some adjustments, and reprocessed. When I was happy with the result, I had it write a closing paragraph. Once again, read through the output, made adjustments, and reprocessed. Same with the opening paragraph.

Lastly, to remove all traces of AI, ran it all through QuillBot and had the input made more academic in some places, more casual in others.

Lesson: know your subject before attempting this. ChatGPT can be a time saver, but only if you already understand the output. Think of it as you would an advanced spelling and grammar checker. It’s just another tool/ After all, if your boss told you to write something, and you could do it in a quarter of the expected time and still produce acceptable output, would they be upset?