The Death of the Mind

by Sharon Lerner and Lisa Song ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. Although it was too late for him to benefit, Daniel Kinel felt relieved in December when the Environmental Protection Agency finally banned TCE. The compound, which has been used for dry cleaning, manufacturing and degreasing machines, can cause cancer, organ damage and a potentially fatal heart defect in babies, according to independent studies and the EPA. It has also been shown to greatly increase people’s chances of developing Parkinson’s disease. Kinel and three of his colleagues were diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. They all worked in a…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.propublica.org/article/tce-ban-cancer-parkinsons-trump-republicans

At the exact moment when Donald Trump and his MAGA allies are actively dismantling democratic institutions and working to silence critics, a group of Democratic Senators have decided to collaborate with Trump’s supporters to make it easier to censor speech online.
As reported in The Information (paywalled), several Democratic Senators are teaming up with some of Trump’s strongest Senate allies to repeal Section 230 — the law that both enables content moderation and protects websites from being sued into oblivion for hosting user speech.
They appear to be doing this out of a deep misunderstanding of how the law works combined with an astounding naiveté about how this process will be used by the MAGA faithful.

As early as…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2025/03/21/democratic-senators-team-up-with-maga-to-hand-trump-a-censorship-machine/

Clearview AI is in the midst of a court battle to recover money it paid to a data broker for a collection of arrest records from all 50 U.S. states. Documents shared by 404 Media show that the company has filed a petition for a court order in a bit to recover the $918,000 it paid to Investigative Consultant, Inc. (ICI) President Donald Berlin in July, 2019. In return, Clearview was expecting 690 million arrest records. The records Clearview attempted to purchase included social security numbers, phone numbers, dates of birth, email addresses, home addresses and 390 million photos to add to its facial recognition database, documents filed in court state. Clearview’s database is now…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202503/clearview-seeks-refund-for-failed-bulk-purchase-of-ssns-facial-photos

An Update Regarding the 2025 Open Source Initiative Elections I’ve explained in other posts that I ran for the 2025 Open Source Initative Board of Directors in the “Affiliate” district. Voting closed on MON 2025-03-17 at 10:00 US/Pacific. One hour later, candidates were surprised to receive an email from OSI demanding that all candidates sign a Board agreement before results were posted. This was surprising because during mandatory orientation, candidates were told the opposite: that a Board agreement need not be signed until the Board formally appointed you as a Director (as the elections are only advisory —: OSI’s Board need not follow election results in any event. It was also surprising because the deadline was…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2025/03/19/a-sign-board-agreement.html

On December 16, 2024, the Georgia Libertarian and Green Parties filed a new lawsuit against the Georgia campaign finance law that lets individuals give more contributions to Republican and Democratic candidates for Governor and Lieutenant Governor, than those individuals may give to other candidates for those two offices. Libertarian Party of Georgia v Carr, n.d., 1:24cv-05763. Here is the Complaint.

An earlier case filed by the Libertarian Party was dismissed on standing grounds. The new case shores up defenses against that happening again. The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Mark H. Cohen, who also handled the last case.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2025/03/04/georgia-libertarian-and-green-parties-file-new-lawsuit-against-discriminatory-campaign-finance-law/

Many programming fonts allow customization through OpenType features. For people who are picky about certain properties, like easily distinguishable l and I (lowercase L and uppercase i), a single toggle can make a difference between rejecting a font and starting to use it. Unfortunately, choosing the perfect font with the perfect setup is way harder than it should be. This post describes the tools that may help, including the one that I wrote recently.
Whenever I stumble upon a new font, I want to know:

how does the font generally look?
does the font allow customization of specific glyphs that bother me?
when set up properly, how does the font fare against my current setup?

But first, how do you even learn about a new font?…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://mirekdlugosz.com/blog/2025/customizing-fonts-look-with-opentype-features/

Earlier today Framework Computer held a virtual and in-person event to announce their 2nd gen offerings in the form of a mini-ITX desktop powered by the new Ryzen AI Max SoCs, a 2-in-1 convertible laptop with the Framework Laptop 12, and Ryzen AI 300 series SoC/motherboard options for the Framework Laptop 13…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Framework-2nd-Gen-Announcements

The tiny beads added to some cleansers and cosmetics are one source of the long-­lasting microplastics that threaten the environment. But MIT researchers have found a way to address the problem at its source: replacing them with polymers that break down into harmless sugars and amino acids. Particles of this polymer could also be used to encapsulate nutrients such as vitamin A to fortify foods, which could help some of the 2 billion people around the world who suffer from nutrient deficiencies. To develop the material, graduate student Linzixuan (Rhoda) Zhang and her colleagues turned to poly-beta-amino esters, a class of polymers previously developed in the lab of Institute Professor Robert Langer, ScD ’74, which have…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/25/1111053/an-environmentally-friendly-alternative-to-plastic-microbeads/