Futurology Today

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29765759

Lauren Gambino
Wed 7 May 2025 19.41 EDT

"#ColumbiaUniversity asked the New York police department to help clear pro-Palestinian activists after dozens of protesters occupied parts of the main campus library on Wednesday."

"In a statement posted on X, protesters confirmed that they had refused to show their IDs and that some had sustained injuries in the skirmish with the public safety officers.

“We will not be useless intellectuals,” protesters said in a statement. “#Palestine is our compass, and we stand strong in the face of violent oppression.”"

The UAE is sending advanced Chinese-made weaponry to Sudan in defiance of an arms embargo, according to a new report. Amnesty International said its investigation found that weaponry made in China had been captured in Khartoum.

The organisation said they had identified Chinese GB50A guided bombs and 155mm AH-4 howitzers, the use of which in Sudan Middle East Eye has previously reported on.

Amnesty said the guided bombs were manufactured by the Norinco Group - also known as China North Industries Group Corporation Limited - a Chinese state-owned defence corporation, adding it was the first time their use was documented in an active conflict.

Amnesty said China should, as a signatory to the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), block sales to the UAE to prevent the re-export of their weaponry to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary organisation accused of widespread ethnic cleansing, rights abuses and sexual violence in Sudan.

MEMPHIS, Tennessee — Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is belching smog-forming pollution into an area of South Memphis that already leads the state in emergency department visits for asthma.

None of the 35 methane gas turbines that help power xAI’s massive supercomputer is equipped with pollution controls typically required by federal rules.

The company has no Clean Air Act permits.

Wikipedia article on Camelot Unchained:

Camelot Unchained is an in-development fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game from City State Entertainment which was partially funded through Kickstarter [on May 2, 2013]. [The Kickstarter had an estimated delivery date of December 2015]. Leading its production is Mark Jacobs, the former designer of Dark Age of Camelot. Its crowd funding campaign has raised US$4.5 million with Jacobs contributing an additional $5 million from his own assets, and raising an additional $7.5 million from investors, for a total of $17 million.[1] The game is based on its own proprietary game engine engineered for server-side physics and large-scale battles, and as such will focus primarily on open world PVP rather than "theme park" instanced encounters or battlegrounds.

Camelot Unchained - State of the Game (April 2025) Youtube Video

Camelot Unchained Kickstarter page

archive.is link

Less than a year after marrying a man she had met at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Kat felt tension mounting between them. It was the second marriage for both after marriages of 15-plus years and having kids, and they had pledged to go into it “completely level-headedly,” Kat says, connecting on the need for “facts and rationality” in their domestic balance. But by 2022, her husband “was using AI to compose texts to me and analyze our relationship,” the 41-year-old mom and education nonprofit worker tells Rolling Stone. Previously, he had used AI models for an expensive coding camp that he had suddenly quit without explanation — then it seemed he was on his phone all the time, asking his AI bot “philosophical questions,” trying to train it “to help him get to ‘the truth,’” Kat recalls. His obsession steadily eroded their communication as a couple.

When Kat and her husband separated in August 2023, she entirely blocked him apart from email correspondence. She knew, however, that he was posting strange and troubling content on social media: People kept reaching out about it, asking if he was in the throes of mental crisis. She finally got him to meet her at a courthouse this past February, where he shared “a conspiracy theory about soap on our foods” but wouldn’t say more, as he felt he was being watched. They went to a Chipotle, where he demanded that she turn off her phone, again due to surveillance concerns. Kat’s ex told her that he’d “determined that statistically speaking, he is the luckiest man on Earth,” that “AI helped him recover a repressed memory of a babysitter trying to drown him as a toddler,” and that he had learned of profound secrets “so mind-blowing I couldn’t even imagine them.” He was telling her all this, he explained, because although they were getting divorced, he still cared for her.

“In his mind, he’s an anomaly,” Kat says. “That in turn means he’s got to be here for some reason. He’s special and he can save the world.” After that disturbing lunch, she cut off contact with her ex. “The whole thing feels like Black Mirror,” she says. “He was always into sci-fi, and there are times I wondered if he’s viewing it through that lens.”

Kat was both “horrified” and “relieved” to learn that she is not alone in this predicament, as confirmed by a Reddit thread on r/ChatGPT that made waves across the internet this week. Titled “Chatgpt induced psychosis,” the original post came from a 27-year-old teacher who explained that her partner was convinced that the popular OpenAI model “gives him the answers to the universe.” Having read his chat logs, she only found that the AI was “talking to him as if he is the next messiah.” The replies to her story were full of similar anecdotes about loved ones suddenly falling down rabbit holes of spiritual mania, supernatural delusion, and arcane prophecy — all of it fueled by AI. Some came to believe they had been chosen for a sacred mission of revelation, others that they had conjured true sentience from the software.

What they all seemed to share was a complete disconnection from reality.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250507112835/https://www.wired.com/story/cbp-photo-everyone-in-vehicle-us-border/

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250506120551/https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/05/luigi-mangione-trial-proescutors-public-comments

Just finished reading an article about how raw alfalfa sprouts easily spread e-coli, but the problem could be solved by irradiation. So why don’t we?

After all, the US is the land of GMO, pesticides, washed eggs, chlorinated chicken, and pasteurized dairy. How could irradiated produce be any worse?

Donald Trump plans to announce while on his trip to Saudi Arabia next week that the United States will now refer to the Persian Gulf as the “Arabian Gulf” or the “Gulf of Arabia”, according to two US officials.

The move has prompted a push back from Iranian leaders.

On Wednesday, Iran’s current foreign minister weighed in, saying that names of mideast waterways do “not imply ownership by any particular nation, but rather reflects a shared respect for the collective heritage of humanity”.

What is it with Trump's obsession with renaming gulfs? These aren't your gulf courses.

I’ll start: my ear wax. Several months ago, I observed what I thought to be extra wax coming out of my ears. Since then, I can’t stop trying to keep my ears clean. Wash in the shower with soap every day. Stick my finger in there when nobody’s looking to try to get some out. And so on.

I don’t use q-tips, and I know the advice is to simply let it come out when it wants. But I hate cleaning the gunk off my AirPods! Stupid ear wax, I think I feel some now.

Olga Stefanishyna's Post

The confiscation of the Russian plane "Ruslan" was one of my first goals in the first month of the work of the Ministry of Justice. And so, the result of our team's work: Canada began the process of confiscation of the An-124 "Ruslan" transport aircraft, which belongs to the Russian Volga-Dnieper airline, and was already under Canadian custody.

To understand the scale - an-124 "Ruslan" in length is three quarters of the football field (about 69 meters), with wingspan even more. Its height is about a 7-storey building (21 meters). The confiscation proceedings are under Canadian Special Economic Measures Act and is currently up to the confiscation decision by the Ontario High Court.

This is another important step on the way to justice and restoration of peace in Ukraine. The filing of the case about the confiscation of the plane to court is a joint result of the meticulous work of the employees of the Ministry of Justice, the Foreign Ministry in close cooperation with our partners. And this is a great example of how international law works in practice.

In August 2023 VAKS, having established the grounds for the application of the sanction, complied with the Ministry's lawsuit on the application of a sanction in the form of a collection of assets undersanctioned Volga-Dnepr. The Ministry of Justice was transferred to the decision of VAKS to Canadian partners. And now the Attorney General of Canada has appealed to the Ontario High Court with concerns about the confiscation of the Russian plane.

Convinced, all actions lead to one: "Ruslan" will soon have a new home - in Ukraine, where it will serve for the good of our state.

Grateful to Canada for its unwavering support and decisive actions. Justice is not just words, but concrete steps we see today. And this is just the beginning.

President Trump's dream 2026 budget would gut the US govt's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, aka CISA, by $491 million - about 17 percent – and accuses the organization of abandoning its core mission in favor of policing online speech.

The proposed cuts – which are largely symbolic at this stage as they need to be approved by Congress – are framed as a purge of the so-called "censorship industrial complex," a term the White House uses to describe CISA's work countering misinformation.