Extra, Extra
The Home Front: The war abroad has distracted us from the war at home. “The case of Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen shot by an officer in Chicago, offers a rare window into the recent spate of D.H.S. shootings—and the smear campaigns that often follow.” The New Yorker: Shot by Border Patrol, Then Called a Domestic Terrorist.
+ Our Time is Up: “The therapist described being stretched so thin that schedulers replaced some one-on-one sessions with online group sessions that included as many as 35 veterans. The therapist said despite that they were still overloaded with individual sessions and had to limit each one to as little as 16 minutes.” Veterans Who Depend on Mental Health Care Keep Losing Their Therapists Under Trump.
+ Synagogue Attack: Suspect dead after apparent vehicle ramming and shooting incident at Michigan synagogue. Thankfully, it looks like no one else was killed.
+ Humans Behind the AI: “Every day, Michael Geoffrey Asia spent eight consecutive hours at his laptop in Kenya staring at porn, annotating what was happening in every frame for an AI data labeling company. When he was done with his shift, he started his second job as the human labor behind AI sex bots, sexting with real lonely people he suspected were in the United States. His boss was an algorithm that told him to flit in and out of different personas.” 404: ‘AI Is African Intelligence’: The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back.
+ Conscripted From Abroad: “Less than a year ago, Malick Diop took a leap of faith, betting an education in Russia would help him lift his family out of poverty back in Africa. Now the 25-year-old sits in a Ukrainian POW camp, his optimism replaced by barbed-wire fencing and snow-covered countryside that is unlike anything he grew up with in Senegal.” This is crazy. WSJ (Gift Article): Russia Lures Recruits From Africa to Feed Its Ukraine War Machine. “Diop, who says he ended up in uniform after being lured by the promise of a civilian job, is one of the lucky ones. A Russian list of 316 deceased African recruits shows that, on average, they died less than six months after being deployed.”
+ Microsoft Hardens: “Is the era of corporate silence during the Trump administration officially over? Microsoft filed a court brief late on Tuesday supporting Anthropic’s lawsuit against the Pentagon, a momentous decision for one of the nation’s biggest companies that’s also one of the largest government contractors around.” (This both indicates the seriousness with which companies view this issue, and possibly the fact that they view the Trump administration as weakened and less dangerous.) Microsoft Takes a Stand Against the Trump Administration.
+ UFC Notes: Today’s reminder that it can always get crazier. Kash Patel Confirms UFC Fighters Will Train FBI Agents This Week, Calling It A Historic Opportunity.
