Extra, Extra
Helene: The eye of Hurricane Helene is expected to make landfall Thursday night. The storm is both strong an extremely large. Here’s the latest from CNN.
+ Open Wallet: “In the span of just a few hours yesterday, the public learned that Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer and the most important leader at the company besides Altman, is departing along with two other crucial executives: Bob McGrew, the chief research officer, and Barret Zoph, a vice president of research who was instrumental in launching ChatGPT and GPT-4o, the ‘omni’ model that, during its reveal, sounded uncannily like Scarlett Johansson. To top it off, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg reported that OpenAI is planning to turn away from its nonprofit roots and become a for-profit enterprise that could be valued at $150 billion.” The Atlantic: OpenAI Takes Its Mask Off. (You didn’t need the assistance of a warehouse of supercomputers to see this coming.)
+ Punching Down: “States that passed anti-transgender laws aimed at minors saw suicide attempts by transgender and gender nonconforming teenagers increase by as much as 72% in the following years.” Political hate speech and policies are not victimless acts.
+ Arrested Development: “Twice in the same week in May 2023, Oakland County Sheriff’s deputies restrained and put 10-year-old Caleb Killingsworth in the back of a patrol car. The second time, Caleb, an autistic child who weighed less than 90 pounds and stood less than 5 feet tall, according to his mother, was restrained on the ground and then handcuffed. The fifth grader came away with scrapes on his face.” An investigation from Detroit Free Press: Calls to cops show specialized schools in Michigan are failing students, critics say.
+ Sportsless: “It’s been a slow death, like going to the doctor and being told you have two years to live. There have been so many losses in Oakland, and I think this is the bottom.” The two years (it’s been more like a decade) is up as of this afternoon. Oakland says goodbye to major professional sports with A’s final game.
+ Framed: “The world’s longest-serving death row prisoner was acquitted on Thursday, more than half a century after his murder conviction, when a Japanese court ruled that evidence had been fabricated.” At this point, he has been in jail so long that age and ailing health prevented him from being in court to learn the outcome of his retrial.
