Gay and lesbian culture has been long associated with the city, often to the detriment of LGBT people in rural Victoria who felt they could never be accepted.

The mother and three of her children, aged under 10, died at the scene

The mother and three of her children, aged under 10, died at the scene

Close to the heart of gay rights campaigner Rodney Croome are two flags made from the dresses of drag queens who fought police in the Stonewall riots in New York. They'll now be preserved in a collection of memorabilia documenting the battle to change society's views.

These creatures can make some strange sounds and the Australian Museum wants you to record them to help monitor populations.

Saudi Arabia's Elite for Construction & Development Company has purchased what has been described as the world's largest 3D construction printer from Danish firm Cobod International.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics won't ask you about your sexual orientation in the 2021 census. But that won't stop it from trying to figure it out anyway.

After fires tore through parts of Queensland in an earlier-than-expected bushfire season, emergency services are warning of the growing threat to suburban backyards as the weather gets hotter and drier.

(United States Ninth Circuit) - In a bankruptcy action, arising from a dispute between owners of the National Hockey League's Nashville Predators, and involving a general unsecured claim for damages against debtor's estate, the bankruptcy court's grant of summary judgment to the estate is affirmed where the subordination of claims arising from the purchase or sale of the security of a debtor to other senior and equal claims under 11 U.S.C., section 510(b) applies where the debtor is an individual.

(United States DC Circuit) - Vacated and remanded. The district court dismissed claims by a group of chartered schools complaining about school funding practices but the case was vacated and remanded for dismissal because they lacked jurisdiction to hear the claims in the first instance.

(United States Second Circuit) - Questions on appeal concern cross-jurisdictional tolling of a class action. Because the appeal presents state law questions that New York’s courts have yet to address, the court certifies the case to the New York Court of Appeals.

(United States Seventh Circuit) - Affirmed. Claims of breach of contract, emotional distress, negligence, and promissory estoppel arising from disciplinary action taken by a school against a student accused of sexual assault after extensive proceedings were defective and the case was properly dismissed.

(United States Second Circuit) - Questions on appeal concern cross-jurisdictional tolling of a class action. Because the appeal presents state law questions that New York’s courts have yet to address, the court certifies the case to the New York Court of Appeals.

The Bronx, N.Y., native turned tragedy into triumph.

Given all we know about facial recognition tech, it is literally jaw-dropping that anyone could make this claim… especially without being vetted independently.

A group of Harrisburg University professors and a PhD student have developed an automated computer facial recognition software capable of predicting whether someone is likely to be a criminal.

The software is able to predict if someone is a criminal with 80% accuracy and with no racial bias. The prediction is calculated solely based on a picture of their face.

There's a whole lot of "what even the fuck" in CBS 21's reprint of a press release, but let's start with the claim about "no racial bias." That's a lot to swallow when the underlying research hasn't been released yet. Let's see what the National Institute of Standards and Technology has to say on the subject. This is the result of the NIST's examination of 189 facial recognition AI programs -- all far more established than whatever it is Harrisburg researchers have cooked up.

Asian and African American people were up to 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white men, depending on the particular algorithm and type of search. Native Americans had the highest false-positive rate of all ethnicities, according to the study, which found that systems varied widely in their accuracy.

The faces of African American women were falsely identified more often in the kinds of searches used by police investigators where an image is compared to thousands or millions of others in hopes of identifying a suspect.

Why is this acceptable? The report inadvertently supplies the answer:

Middle-aged white men generally benefited from the highest accuracy rates.

Yep. And guess who's making laws or running police departments or marketing AI to cops or telling people on Twitter not to break the law or etc. etc. etc.

To craft a terrible pun, the researchers' claim of "no racial bias" is absurd on its face. Per se stupid af to use legal terminology.

Moving on from that, there's the 80% accuracy, which is apparently good enough since it will only threaten the life and liberty of 20% of the people it's inflicted on. I guess if it's the FBI's gold standard, it's good enough for everyone.

Maybe this is just bad reporting. Maybe something got copy-pasted wrong from the spammed press release. Let's go to the source… one that somehow still doesn't include a link to any underlying research documents.

What does any of this mean? Are we ready to embrace a bit of pre-crime eugenics? Or is this just the most hamfisted phrasing Harrisburg researchers could come up with?

A group of Harrisburg University professors and a Ph.D. student have developed automated computer facial recognition software capable of predicting whether someone is likely going to be a criminal.

The most charitable interpretation of this statement is that the wrong-20%-of-the-time AI is going to be applied to the super-sketchy "predictive policing" field. Predictive policing -- a theory that says it's ok to treat people like criminals if they live and work in an area where criminals live -- is its own biased mess, relying on garbage data generated by biased policing to turn racist policing into an AI-blessed "work smarter not harder" LEO equivalent.

The question about "likely" is answered in the next paragraph, somewhat assuring readers the AI won't be applied to ultrasound images.

With 80 percent accuracy and with no racial bias, the software can predict if someone is a criminal based solely on a picture of their face. The software is intended to help law enforcement prevent crime.

There's a big difference between "going to be" and "is," and researchers using actual science should know better than to use both phrases to describe their AI efforts. One means scanning someone's face to determine whether they might eventually engage in criminal acts. The other means matching faces to images of known criminals. They are far from interchangeable terms.

If you think the above quotes are, at best, disjointed, brace yourself for this jargon-fest which clarifies nothing and suggests the AI itself wrote the pullquote:

“We already know machine learning techniques can outperform humans on a variety of tasks related to facial recognition and emotion detection,” Sadeghian said. “This research indicates just how powerful these tools are by showing they can extract minute features in an image that are highly predictive of criminality.”

"Minute features in an image that are highly predictive of criminality." And what, pray tell, are those "minute features?" Skin tone? "I AM A CRIMINAL IN THE MAKING" forehead tattoos? Bullshit on top of bullshit? Come on. This is word salad, but a salad pretending to be a law enforcement tool with actual utility. Nothing about this suggests Harrisburg has come up with anything better than the shitty "tools" already being inflicted on us by law enforcement's early adopters.

I wish we could dig deeper into this but we'll all have to wait until this excitable group of clueless researchers decide to publish their findings. According to this site, the research is being sealed inside a "research book," which means it will take a lot of money to actually prove this isn't any better than anything that's been offered before. This could be the next Clearview, but we won't know if it is until the research is published. If we're lucky, it will be before Harrisburg patents this awful product and starts selling it to all and sundry. Don't hold your breath.

IBM ha revelado IBM 5 en 5: las 5 innovaciones científicas y tecnológicas que en los próximos 5 años tendrán un gran impacto en la manera que funciona el mundo. Todas ellas suponen una importante evolución en computación como nunca antes se había visto.

IBM y Red Hat, líder mundial de software de nube de código abierto, anunciaron un acuerdo en el que IBM adquirirá todas las acciones comunes emitidas y en circulación de Red Hat por USD$190.00 por acción en efectivo, lo que representa un valor total para la empresa de aproximadamente USD$34 mil millones.

Gerson Monje holds up his cellphone to proudly show off his online sex shop. A red banner reading "sold out!" is plastered across half of the products.

Welcome to a very special episode of PotterCast!

This week, J.K. Rowling angered and saddened many fans when she came out in support of a woman whose company had not renewed her employment contract because she refused to recognize the legally protected rights of trans people. In coming back from a months-long Twitter hiatus, J.K. Rowling mischaracterized the facts of the case in support of a dangerous and unscientific movement that invalidates the trans experience, and in doing so flies in the face of medical consensus worldwide.

Her comments also confused a lot of fans who are not fully familiar with the issues at stake, or cannot understand how someone whose book series is so vehemently about tolerance can express support for a woman whose views invalidate so many people's existences. That's why in this episode, we are going over it all.

Jackson Bird, longtime friend of the podcast and of Leaky, as well as author, trans activist and educator, and expert Waffler, joins us to explain and process what this means for Harry Potter fans. We discuss:

• What actually happened
• What J.K. Rowling said versus what happened to the woman in question, Maya Forstater
• Why many fans saw this coming
• What to do now that the creator of the series we love so dearly has taken this stance
• How to support trans and non-binary communities
• How we as fans are feeling about all of this
• What to do now, especially since we still love this community

We hope you'll listen and share. Here are some helpful resources, including things we mention in the show:

• Jack's book! SORTED: Growing up, coming out, and finding my place
• A list of information from medical communities around the world validating that trans and non-binary people exist
• GLAAD's transgender media program has great resources, FAQs, ways to take action, and ways to learn
• Transstudent.org has more Information regarding sex and gender
• GONADS, the great series by RadioLab

News articles regarding this incident:

• The Cut
• Vox (on British culture and the "gender critical" movement)
• The Mary Sue

News articles regarding past incidents that have also upset the community:

• The Mary Sue on Johnny Depp and the Crimes of Grindelwald
• Past indicators that J.K. Rowling was following trans-exclusionary ideologies
• The Guardian on J.K. Rowling's writings on Native American cultulre
• "The Harry Potter Series Makes a Mess of Its Commentary on Racism" — The Mary Sue
• "Is Fantastic Beasts 2 Racist? Not Quite" — The Washington Post

PotterCast and Leaky stand with our trans and non-binary friends and colleagues. 

This episode is in the process of being transcribed. For more, see pottercast.com.

The following is a guest essay by Evan Villarrubia. “I feel stupid! And contagious!” — Nirvana The panic and lockdown state we are just exiting in Dali (southwestern China) has been by far the most intense historical episode I’ve ever experienced. I’ve gone through several deep emotional phase changes throughout this time. If I’d written more »

The post Guest Post — Lockdown! An American in China Caught in the Corona Virus Emergency — by Evan Villarrubia appeared first on Kunstler.

Because everything is currently terrible, I binge-watched Love is Blind. In case you are planning to do the same, this is a spoiler-free post. You probably know the premise: contestants in this romantic reality romp go on speed dates in little pods. They can’t see their conversation partners, and at the end of the dates […]

By Charlie Ruth Castro

Read this post in English

Vamos a hablar de menstruación, el proceso más natural y necesario para la buena salud reproductiva entre las mujeres, pero aquel que culturalmente nos han enseñado a aborrecer, ocultar o incluso a hacerle burla. Y por otro lado voy a hablar de un negocio sucio perpetrado por ciertos funcionarios del INPEC -la institución nacional a cargo de la política penitenciaria- en muchas de las cárceles de Colombia: el desvío de presupuestos para el suministro de toallas higiénicas ... More

The post Negocio Sucio: Falta de Equidad Menstrual en las Cárceles Colombianas appeared first on Our Bodies Ourselves.

By Charlie Ruth Castro

Lee este post en español

Let’s talk about menstruation – a natural and necessary process among women, but one that we have been culturally taught to hate, hide or even make fun of.  Also, let me talk about a dirty business perpetrated by certain officers from INPEC, the Colombian national institution in charge of penitentiary policy. In many prisons, INPEC has routinely failed to supply adequate menstrual products for the female prison population.

Being deprived of ways to deal with bleeding is outrageous, ... More

The post Dirty Business: Lack of Menstrual Equity in Colombian Prisons appeared first on Our Bodies Ourselves.

Environmental News  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Seattle, WA - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has settled two federal Clean Water Act cases with Coleman Oil Company, LLC, located in Lewiston, Idaho, owner and operator of a former oil bulk terminal in Wenatchee, Washington, adjacent to the Columbia River.

What makes something valuable This question is long debated by the economists and traders throughout the world.Marx would say my mothers rhubarb crumble should be valued at the sum of the ingredients plus the effort of the chef. And given that Mum

Pamplona. Friday 28th Dec 2012We left Cucuta at 7.30 on a bus for Pamplona where we had planed to stay the night. The night before Bernie asked how long would it take to get from Merida to Pamplona. I did my lonely planet calcul

After the excitement of the desert we then headed to Luderitz a small town sandwiched between the Namib Desert and the battered Atlantic Coast. There is little plant life here just dry barren rocks and colourful German heritage buildings.We drove to

Hello AfricaI arrived safely and relatively rested after my 24 hour Emerites journey. It was a thrill to fly with a full service airline after all those AirAsia flights. The free socks eye mask toothbrush and hearty meals including wine were not w

Puerto Lindo the tiniest sailing village was our home for 3 days whilst we waiting for our boat. Here we mingled with the sailors learning lots about boats lighthouses and round the world ship voyages Sunbathed on the beautiful surrounding islands. Ha

This paper documents a new fact, then analyzes its causes and consequences: in most countries, import tariffs and non-tariff barriers are substantially lower on dirty than on clean industries, where an industry’s “dirtiness” is defined as its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per dollar of output. This difference in trade policy creates a global implicit subsidy to CO2 emissions in internationally traded goods and so contributes to climate change. This global implicit subsidy to CO2 emissions totals several hundred billion dollars annually. The greater protection of downstream industries, which are relatively clean, substantially accounts for this pattern. The downstream pattern can be explained by theories where industries lobby for low tariffs on their inputs but final consumers are poorly organized. A quantitative general equilibrium model suggests that if countries applied similar trade policies to clean and dirty goods, global CO2 emissions would decrease and global real income would change little.

We estimate valuations of time using detailed consumer choice data from a large European ride hail platform, where drivers bid on trips and consumers choose between a set of potential rides with different prices and waiting times. We estimate consumer demand as a function of prices and waiting times. While demand is responsive to both, price elasticities are on average four times higher than waiting-time elasticities. We show how these estimates can be mapped into values of time that vary by place, person, and time of day. Regarding variation within a day, the value of time during non-work hours is 16% lower than during work hours. Regarding the spatial dimension, our value of time measures are highly correlated both with real estate prices and urban GPS travel flows. A variance decomposition reveals that most of the substantial heterogeneity in the value of time is explained by individual differences as opposed to place or time of day. In contrast with other studies that focus on long run choices we do not find evidence of spatial sorting. We apply our measures to quantify the opportunity cost of traffic congestion in Prague, which we estimate at $483,000 per day.

New York Attorney General Letitia James is investigating allegations of racially discriminatory tactics by Long Island real estate agents as described in a sweeping Newsday report.

Shelter in place orders (SIPOs) require residents to remain home for all but essential activities such as purchasing food or medicine, caring for others, exercise, or traveling for employment deemed essential. Between March 19 and April 20, 2020, 40 states and the District of Columbia adopted SIPOs. This study explores the impact of SIPOs on health, with particular attention to heterogeneity in their impacts. First, using daily state-level social distancing data from SafeGraph and a difference-in-differences approach, we document that adoption of a SIPO was associated with a 5 to 10 percent increase in the rate at which state residents remained in their homes full-time. Then, using daily state-level coronavirus case data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we find that approximately three weeks following the adoption of a SIPO, cumulative COVID-19 cases fell by 44 percent. Event-study analyses confirm common COVID-19 case trends in the week prior to SIPO adoption and show that SIPO-induced case reductions grew larger over time. However, this average effect masks important heterogeneity across states — early adopters and high population density states appear to reap larger benefits from their SIPOs. Finally, we find that statewide SIPOs were associated with a reduction in coronavirus-related deaths, but estimated mortality effects were imprecisely estimated.

The algorithm was based on the faulty assumption that health care spending is a good proxy for wellbeing. But there seems to be a quick fix.

Once antibody tests for the coronavirus are broadly available, will we allow society to be divided into two groups — the immune and non-immune?

Goldberg, the grandson of Romanian and Russian immigrants, had his bar mitzvah in his native Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The Netflix documentary "A Secret Love" recounts the 72-year relationship between Pat Henschel and Terry Donahue, who had to hide their true selves from the world.