Extra, Extra
Slave Striver: “Going forward, middle-schoolers will explore ‘how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit’ as one part of the syllabus.” The war on reality in education in Florida is crazier than you think. The Cut: Florida Wants to Teach Kids That Slavery Was Good. And Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic on the religious fanaticism taking over the volunteer state: Is Tennessee a Democracy?
+ Pinky Promises: “In its continuing efforts to try to do something about the barely regulated, potentially world-changing generative AI wave, the Biden administration announced today that seven AI companies have committed to developing products that are safe, secure, and trustworthy.” Here are the details from Vox: Biden sure seems serious about not letting AI get out of control.
+ Judge Cannon Fodder: “The May 20, 2024, trial date, set Friday by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, is a compromise between a request from prosecutors to set the trial for this December and a bid by defense lawyers to put it off indefinitely until sometime after the 2024 presidential election.” Judge sets a trial date for next May in Trump’s classified documents case in Florida.
+ Polygon Wrong? “They called it the polygon. Using phone records and a sophisticated system that maps the reach of cell towers, a team of investigators had drawn the irregular shape across a map of tree-lined streets in the Long Island suburb of Massapequa Park. By 2021, the investigators had been able to shrink the polygon so that it covered only several hundred homes. In one of those homes, the investigators believed, lived a serial killer.” NYT (Gift Article): The Polygon and the Avalanche: How the Gilgo Beach Suspect Was Found. “As investigators spent years looking for a suspect, a key clue was buried in their files. Could they have solved the case years earlier?”
+ Battery Pact: “But now, in a great twist of modern Afghan history, it is the Taliban — which overthrew the U.S.-backed government two years ago — that is finally looking to exploit those vast lithium reserves, at a time when the soaring global popularity of electric vehicles is spurring an urgent need for the mineral, a vital ingredient in their batteries.” WaPo: The Pentagon dubbed Afghanistan ‘the Saudi Arabia of lithium.’ Now, it is American rivals that are angling to exploit those coveted reserves.
+ Damn Daniel: The Washington Commanders’ Dan Snyder has been fined $60M for being a jerk. But he can definitely afford it as he just made more than 7x on his investment by selling to team for $6 billion. (Buy something. Ruin it in every way. Make a profit. They don’t teach this course in business school.)
+ He Left His Heart Everywhere: “Tony Bennett, the treasured American storyteller, singer and showman whose joyful impact on the pop and jazz landscape spanned 70 years and stretched from Queens to San Francisco and all around the world, died Friday. He was 96.”
+ Palm Springs Eternal: “Oppenheimer’s film reportedly weighs 600 pounds, and the reel is an outrageous 11 miles long.” But that’s not the weird part. Here’s why the best IMAX movies still need a Palm Pilot to work.
