FOIA

FOIA aka The Freedom of Information Act is a 1966 LBJ signed amendment that's more important than ever in the Age of Trump given where this administration is going regarding the environment, education and all things related to corporate power and the 1st Amendment. To whit

In the United States, the government is supposed to work for the people. It is, after all, in the people's name – and with their dollars – that everything is carried out, from tanks being transferred from military zones to American towns, to prisons being left to profit from mass incarceration, to soldiers being given secret, experimental treatments in an attempt to make them telepathically communicate. Since 1967, citizens have been allowed to request documentation of any government actions, thanks to a collection of laws known generally as the Freedom of Information Act. And since 2010, MuckRock, a Boston-based nonprofit, has been helping people to file FOIA requests.

"FOIA is this very old concept where essentially, anything that the government does, a citizen has a right to be aware of – and to be able to judge it based on their own volition," explains JPat Brown, 30, an executive editor at MuckRock who has worked with them for about three years, and has assisted their expansion from a FOIA-filing service to a daily publishing outlet. Brown's particular focus is on FOIA files related to the FBI, which contain data on everyone from Abbie Hoffman to Ray Bradbury to the Insane Clown Posse. But MuckRock has content covering way more than that, like the Trump Administration, the struggle to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline and even a special project to find out about the secretive undertakings of PayPal’s Peter Thiel, who financially backed the successful effort to bring down Gawker.

The Rolling Stone piece is a great start point to learn more about the rather questionable history of the government by the government itself. Far more valuable then the stream of pundits us rubes have to endure on network nooze 24/7. :)

Scarcity ...

Scarcity brings out either the best of man or the worse, depending on the man in question. Seems scaricity also applies to DeepMind and how multiple copies of same deal with this issue, something that gives one pause as this tech begins to develop personality and greater awareness of how the world operates while it gains intelligence in exponential fashion.

Understanding how logical agents cooperate or fight, especially in the face of resource scarcity, is a fundamental problem for social scientists. This underpins both our foundation as a social species, and our modern day economy and geopolitics. But soon, this problem will also be at the heart of how we understand, control, and cooperate with artificially intelligent agents, and how they work among themselves.

The researchers pitted two AIs against each other in a couple of video games. In one game, called Gathering, the AIs had to gather as many “apples” as possible. They also had the option to shoot each other to temporarily take the opponent out of play. The results were intriguing as the two agents worked harmoniously until resources started to dwindle; at that point the AIs realized that temporarily disabling the opponent could give each of them an advantage and so started zapping the enemy. As scarcity increased so did conflict.

Interestingly enough, the researchers found that introducing a more powerful AI into the mix would result in more conflict even without the scarcity. That’s because the more powerful AI would find it easier to compute the necessary details, such as trajectory and speed, needed to shoot its opponent. So, it acted like a rational economic agent.

However, before you start preparing for Judgement Day, you should note that in the second game trial, called Wolfpack, the two AI systems had to closely collaborate to ensure victory. In this instance, the systems changed their behavior maximizing cooperation. And the more computationally powerful the AI, the more it cooperated.

For yours truly, Conway's Game of Life was an essential start point for AI, as seen in this amazing video seen below.

First CT Storm of 2017

Awesome walk, intense storm

Minimalist setting for sure. :)

Faroff in the distance ... 

The Art of Stupid continues

The Art of Stupid continues ...  save for the GOP.

 House Republicans Just Voted to Eliminate the Only Federal Agency That Makes Sure Voting Machines Can’t Be Hacked

Republicans would make it easier to steal an election by killing the Election Assistance Commission.

 In a little-noticed 6-3 vote today, the House Administration Committee voted along party lines to eliminate the Election Assistance Commission, which helps states run elections and is the only federal agency charged with making sure voting machines can’t be hacked. The EAC was created after the disastrous 2000 election in Florida as part of the Help America Vote Act to rectify problems like butterfly ballots and hanging chads. (Republicans have tried to kill the agency for years.) The Committee also voted to eliminate the public-financing system for presidential elections dating back to the 1970s. 

WTF kind of says it all here, right? Better yet, Voter Fraud, equates to GOP votes, right?

Slow Motion Death

BRT has talked often about the Fukushima disaster, an ongoing ecological and nuclear trainwreck that now dwarfs Chernobyl as the worst nuclear reactor accident in history.  What's worse is the fact radioactive levels at the destroyed facility are now at their highest since 2011.

Highest radiation reading since 3/11 detected at Fukushima No. 1 reactor

The radiation level in the containment vessel of reactor 2 at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant has reached a maximum of 530 sieverts per hour, the highest since the triple core meltdown in March 2011, Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc. said.

Tepco said on Thursday that the blazing radiation reading was taken near the entrance to the space just below the pressure vessel, which contains the reactor core.

The high figure indicates that some of the melted fuel that escaped the pressure vessel is nearby.

At 530 sieverts, a person could die from even brief exposure, highlighting the difficulties ahead as the government and Tepco grope their way toward dismantling all three reactors crippled by the March 2011 disaster.

It gets better.

Highest Radiation Level At Fukushima Now Dwarfs That At Chernobyl

The highest radiation levels ever measured at Chernobyl were 300 sieverts per hour … an incomprehensibly high dose which can kill a man almost instantly.

To put this in perspective, radiation is usually measured in thousandths of a sievert, called millisieverts. For example, most people receive around 2.4 millisieverts per year from background radiation, or only 0.0002739726 per hour.

But a radiation level of 530 sieverts per hour has just been measured at Fukushima’s number 2 reactor.

This new record at Fukushima is 70% higher than that of Chernobyl. (The highest level previously measured at Fukushima was 73 sieverts per hour, in March 2012.)

& better still.

#2 – Besides the fact that researchers are predicting a Marine (E.L.E.) Extinction Level Event for the Pacific Ecosystem … Alaskan fishermen have not caught a single sardine for the last 2 years … just another bad year … because they’re being told that radiation is not an issue … no worse than a banana Ken Buesseler of Woods Hole is telling them. [However researchers like Dana Durnford have spent the last 8 months monitoring the Canadian Coast line from Vancouver Island to Alaska and can find only a couple dozen or so of the 6500 species he is used to seeing in his 20+ years as a diver …. “it’s not dying … it’s been dead for a couple years now … there’s no sign of resurgence this year … and you can put all the organic matter along the coast in the back of a pickup truck, no sign of insects, and just a handful of birds. We’re down to 1% of 1% … I’m finding no pockets of life. The Orcas have stopped singing because none of their babies survived the year. 

Intel writ large

The Intercept has become one of the only pubs that actually does real investigative reporting without the need to pander for money like the rags we see on TV pushing insufferable pundits on us instead of talking about real issues like this piece on the FBI, an agency, like the NSA, that wields power beyond words as seen in the Intercept piece, The FBI's Secret Rules.

President Trump has inherited a vast domestic intelligence agency with extraordinary secret powers. A cache of documents offers a rare window into the FBI’s quiet expansion since 9/11.

After the famous Church Committee hearings in the 1970s exposed the FBI’s wild overreach, reforms were enacted to protect civil liberties. But in recent years, the bureau has substantially revised those rules with very little public scrutiny. That’s why The Intercept is publishing this special package of articles based on three internal FBI manuals that we exclusively obtained.

These stories illuminate how the FBI views its authority to assess terrorism suspects, recruit informants, spy on university organizations, infiltrate online chat rooms, peer through the walls of private homes, and more.

It's a long read, check it out as it's the right thing to do.

Another Poster Child

The Larsen Ice Shelf is situated along the northeastern coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, one of the fastest-warming places on the planet. In the past three decades, two large sections of the ice shelf (Larsen A and B) have collapsed. A third section (Larsen C) seems like it may be on a similar trajectory, with a new iceberg poised to break away soon.

The mosaic above, centered on the northern part of Larsen Ice Shelf, is comprised of four natural-color satellite images captured by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 on Jan. 6 and 8, 2016. It shows the remnant of Larsen B, along with the Larsen A and smaller embayments to the north covered by a much thinner layer of sea ice. The remaining shelf appears white with some deep rifts within it.

Areas with sea ice anchored to the coastline or ice shelf—fast ice—are light blue where covered with melt water and white where covered by wind-blown snow. The ocean is dark, nearly black, where it is not covered by sea ice. The white areas near where glaciers meet the sea have multitudes of small icebergs called bergy bits that broke off from land ice.

Any questions regarding GW Donald?

Lining one's pockets

Try as I can, politics, under the aegis of Trump, keeps interfering with BRT's original role of discussing the impact of science and technology on civilization san politics yet, in a strange and ominous way, that mission still rings true when tech is being misused in order to line the pockets of the players involved no matter what the cost may be. To whit:

On Jan. 25, President Donald Trump's team listed the Atlantic Coast pipeline among the White House's top priorities for infrastructure projects, an attempt to deliver on his campaign promise to invest in U.S infrastructure programs.

Of the 50 on the list, Atlantic Coast is surprisingly the only pipeline project named. Some had suspected Trump's infrastructure promise would serve as a massive pipeline giveaway. So, why prioritize this one?

A possible answer: Several members of Trump's transition team, landing team and current White House operation have connections to companies behind the project or to firms lobbying for it.

The Swamp beckons.

Trump Beneficiaries

DeSmog research has revealed that a few Trump associates could benefit financially if this prioritized pipeline opens for business.

One is Dan DiMicco, who served as a senior economic adviser to Trump's campaign and led the new administration's U.S.Trade Representative transition team. He also sits on the Board of Directors of Duke Energy, one of the pipeline project co-owners.

DiMicco, the former CEO of steel giant Nucor, met with Trump in Trump Tower in mid-December, when he was considering DiMicco for the position of U.S. Trade Representative. Eventually, former Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer got the job.

Another tie can be seen between Trump presidential campaign adviser, U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) and his former chief-of-staff Pepper Natonski. Since at least January 2016, Natonski has been lobbying on behalf of Duke and its stake in "natural gas utilities regarding pipeline safety legislation and any regulatory regime affecting natural gas utilities" and serves as director of Federal Affairs for the company, according to Politico Influence.

What's the betting pool that Trump benefits as well?

Going Backward in Time

It started with removing mentions of climate change on the White House website, and now we are looking at an outright dissolution. Since Donald Trump’s inauguration, the government’s support of scientists and administrative organizations combating climate change (and protecting the environment) has dramatically decreased.

Case in point, on Friday February 3, Republican Florida congressman Matt Gaetz presented the bill H.R.861, which would eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Not wanting to beat around the bush, the bill is actually called the bill “to terminate the Environmental Protection Agency” — a pretty straightforward name that shows how the winds are changing in Washington.

As stated in a BRT blurb titled Physics Doesn't Care, climate change, caused by us rubes, is accelerating along with environmental degradation, two inconvenient truths that threaten the existence of man, realities the Trump administration ignores at our peril in order to pursue short term financial gains. This becomes even more interesting as China begins to move away from coal while Trump moves toward it even though coal is, for all intents and purposes dead, due to rise of natural gas, increased efficiency in energy use and the rise of sustainables.

Question, what's wrong with this picture?

Another set of 3 :)

 The 3 Stooges - Moe, Curly and Larry

It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 

Signifying nothing.” - Macbeth

H. L. Mencken was right.