STONE COLD ROGER

Roger Stone threatening Jared Kushner and calling Ivanka Trump an 'abortionist b!tch' is on video

Walter Einenkel
Daily Kos Staff
Friday October 14, 2022 


Roger Stone has a big tattoo of Richard Nixon’s face on his back. Stone was convicted of seven felony counts and faced a sentence of 40 months in prison, and then Donald Trump used his powers as chief executive to commute Stone’s conviction. Trump even wrote a glowing letter along with the commutation of Stone’s sentence. It was real bootlicking stuff.

A new video has emerged from film maker Christoffer Guldbrandsen, who shot 170 hours of Stone and friends in the months leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol grounds. The new footage is 22 seconds’ worth of Stone on the phone, in a car, raging after finding out that Donald Trump had not yet granted him a pardon. In those 22 seconds Stone is able to insult bad-at-all-trades Jared Kushner while also calling Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who is bad at advising the president, an “abortionist bitch.”

Most of the footage Guldbrandsen shot was used in the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation. Guldbrandsen tweeted out this new clip on Friday. Stone, uncut, comes across as badly as Stone cut comes across. With no filter, Stone’s antics and profound grotesquery, his abusive nature, and how far off the hinges he can and is willing to go become so stark.

In the clip, Stone seems to be telling whomever is unlucky enough to receive Stone ‘s phone calls that he is going to have Kushner physically expelled from Florida. “Jared Kushner has an IQ of 70,” Stone begins. Wait. Let’s take that in. That’s pretty funny. HAHAHA. Oh man. Okay, where were we?

ROGER STONE: He’s coming to Miami. We will eject him from Miami very quickly. He’ll be leaving very quickly. Very quickly. Very quickly. (Ed note: Yes, three times.) He has 100 security guards? I’ll have 5,000 security guards! You want to fight? Let’s fight. Fuck you and your abortionist bitch daughter.



Stone has promised to sue Guldbrandsen. It seems Stone’s plan of attack is to say that every clip Guldbrandsen releases showing Stone saying or doing something terrible is a deepfake.

IRONY IS STRONG WITH THIS ONE

Trump Was Betrayed by His Diet Coke Valet

By Margaret Hartmann@_NYMarg

Donald Trump could ultimately be done in by his Diet Coke habit. Not physically (though drinking 12 diet sodas a day doesn’t seem great for your health) but legally. The Washington Post reports that his former White House valet — the man who had to respond every time the president pressed his famous Oval Office Diet Coke button — provided key evidence that led to the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago in August.

A Trump employee told federal agents the former president personally directed them to move boxes of documents from a Mar-a-Lago storage area to his private residence, according to the Post. Hours later, the New York Times said this was corroborated by surveillance footage that showed the aide moving boxes both before and after Trump’s advisers received a subpoena from the Justice Department in May for classified documents taken from the White House. Together, the witness account and the footage provided the most direct evidence that Trump tried to illegally obstruct the government’s search.

The Post’s original report said the witness’s account was a “closely held secret” within the Justice Department and FBI because authorities were “concerned that if or when the witness’s identity eventually becomes public, that person could face harassment or threats from Trump supporters.” But on Friday, the paper identified him as Walt Nauta. Nauta, 39, served in the Navy and worked his way up from being a cook in the White House mess to performing a key duty in the Trump administration: ensuring that the president was properly caffeine and aspartame fueled at all times. Per the Post:

Not long after Trump took office, Nauta left the mess to become one of Trump’s valets, spending some of his workday in a small passageway that connects the West Wing to a private dining room. From there, he had access to a small refrigerator stocked with Diet Cokes, which he brought to the president in the Oval Office when Trump pressed a call button on his desk, said a former White House staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss activities inside the White House.

Nauta frequently served as a kind of gofer, fetching any items the president might need throughout the day and tidying up the room, the former staffer said. When Trump left the Oval Office for the night, it was Nauta who brought his coat. Their daily proximity meant that the two developed a close professional relationship, and Trump “trusted him completely,” this person added.

Nauta followed Trump to Mar-a-Lago at the end of his term, and campaign-finance records show he was on the payroll of Trump’s Save America PAC, making about $135,000 a year. It seems Trump’s trust wasn’t entirely misplaced; the Post reports that Nauta resisted betraying his boss at first but eventually changed his story:

When FBI agents first interviewed Nauta, he denied any role in moving boxes or sensitive documents, the people familiar with the situation said in interviews before Nauta’s name became public. But as investigators gathered more evidence, they questioned him a second time and he told a starkly different story — that Trump instructed him to move the boxes, these people said.

Nauta’s alleged disloyalty is a crushing blow not just for Trump but also for Downton Abbey fans, who were led to believe over six seasons and two movies that a valet is someone who will hand-wash unmentionables, happily accept their lower station in life, and never, ever tell their wealthy employer’s dark secrets.

Wall Street Journal passes sentence on Trump's 'dereliction of duty on Jan. 6'

Tom Boggioni
October 14, 2022

President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump return on Marine One from their Florida vacation early at the South Lawn of the White House Thursday, December 31, 2020. - Pool/ABACA/TNS

Following what could be the last public hearing by the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, the very conservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal wrote that they had seen enough and stated that Donald Trump should be held to account for his attack on democracy.

Highlighting new revelations from Thursday's hearings, the board called out the former president's actions before, during and after the assault on the Capitol and hammered him for continuing to lie about it.

Getting right to the point, the board first warned that the clock is winding down on the committee finishing its work and noted that a GOP takeover of the House in November will likely see it shut down by Republicans dead set on protecting Trump.

With that said, they wrote that there is more than enough revealed so far to hold the former president accountable.

READ MORE: Morning Joe laughs as GOP conspiracy theory blown up by stunning Pelosi video

"What the committee has accomplished, however, is to cement the facts surrounding Mr. Trump’s recklessness after Nov. 3 and his dereliction of duty on Jan. 6. The Justice Department and Mr. Trump’s own campaign repeatedly told him that his fraud claims were without basis. Whether it was willful blindness or an intentional strategy, he kept repeating them," they wrote.

"That day he riled up the crowd and urged it to march on the Capitol," the editors continued. "Committee members said Thursday they will write a report summarizing their findings. Transcripts of the testimony ought to be released at the same time."


"The Jan. 6 committee probably won’t get Mr. Trump under oath, but the evidence of his bad behavior is now so convincing that political accountability hardly requires it," they concluded.

You can read the whole piece here -- subscription is required.

IT STILL NEEDS POOF READING
Is AI text-to-image technology blurring the lines between fact and fiction?

The software can create believable pictures based on a few text inputs and has led to the spread false images on social media

Posted: 14 October 2022 By: Joseph Cummins

Credit: Photo by Phil Botha on Unsplash


False images of destruction permeated Twitter following a deadly typhoon in Japan this September.

Three images posted two days after the storm claimed to show flooded homes and streets submerged in mud, water and debris. The caption read: "Drone-shot photos of flood disaster in Shizuoka Prefecture. This is really too horrible."

A 45-year-old man was killed in the city on the southern coast as strong winds and record-breaking rain caused cave-ins and landslides.

However, the images showing the destruction were created using text-to-image software, an AI-driven tool that creates believable pictures based on text inputs. Only after the pictures garnered over 5,600 retweets did people start to question the picture's authenticity.

Twitter users noticed that the flood water seemed to flow unnaturally and the roofline appeared warped. Even local journalists were tricked into resharing the images.

All from nothing

Text-to-image software uses AI to create original images from scratch. The tool is first 'trained' on huge banks of images scraped from the internet and learns to recognise concepts; man, dog, fluffy, Prime Minister, for instance. It then produces a fabricated image that closely matches those concepts.

OpenAI, the creators of DALL-E, one of most widely used text-to-image tools, made its powerful software fully accessible to the public in September. But it is not open source.

Microsoft also said on Wednesday that it would be integrating DALL-E 2 into its Office suite, potentially putting the tool in the hands of millions of users.

Despite Microsoft's limitations on extreme, celebrity and religious content being created, journalists are braced for an uptick in potentially fake images circulating online.

Lecturer in digital media at Australia’s Central Queensland University, Brendan Paul Murphy, said journalists will need to pay closer attention to the small details, such as dates and locations of images.

"The traditional methods journalists use to keep on an even keel will remain the benchmark: seeking multiple sources and verifying information through investigation."

False news

Fact-checkers should be worried about the recent release of Stable Diffusion, a competitor to DALL-E, and its algorithmic improvements to train AI. The creators of these AI tools cannot control the images that are generated.

"The creator cannot usually control how the media they create is used, even if they have the legal right to," said Murphy. He adds that Google's text-to-image product, Imagen, has not been made available to the public because it was deemed too "dangerous".

Under the Limitations and Societal Impact section on the Imagen website, it cites 'potential risks of misuse' and a tendency to reinforce negative stereotypes in the images it creates as the reason for keeping it under wraps.

Stability.AI, the team behind Stable Diffusion, said in a statement that it 'hopes everyone will use this in an ethical, moral and legal manner' but stressed that responsibility for using the software lies purely with the user.

The anonymous Twitter user created the images of the flooding in Japan in less than a minute, inputting keywords 'flood damage' and 'Shizuoka' having previously used the software to create pictures of food.

"I thought [other Twitter users] would figure out the images were fake if they magnified them. I never thought so many people would believe them to be real," the original poster told the Yomiuri Shimbun.

"If I’m called to account for the post, that's the way it has to be. Posting that kind of image can cause a big problem even if it's just done on a whim. I want lots of people to learn from my mistake that things done without careful consideration can lead to big problems."

In February 2021, a doctored image circulated of Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato smiling in the wake of a devastating earthquake in Fukushima.

Former American Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have all been the subject of AI-generated video and imagery fabricating speeches or official visits.

Read more: Can AI text-to-video technology help newsrooms get more mileage out of their copy?


In the AI of the beholder

The current limitations of text-to-image tools do provide some indicators that an image has been falsified and give journalists the chance to avoid being duped.

Systems like DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion struggle to render intricate body parts, while Google has admitted Imagen is far weaker when attempting images containing people.

AI is trained to create images 'close enough' to the input, so there are some clues whether an image is fake or not.

Murphy says AI tends to struggle with anatomy, so a close inspection of the hands, ears, eyes and teeth of people within the image can expose a fake.

Generated images can have errors, like duplicate shadows or the wrong lighting for the situation.

Few UK newsrooms have offered their journalists training or guidance on AI-generated imagery. An easy fix is to stop sourcing pictures from social media, and rely on reputable photographers.

Photojournalist Jess Hurd said: "There is always scrutiny of an image because [editors'] jobs and the respectability of their news outlets are on the line.

“If there is an option for a professional photographer, then go with that. [As it becomes harder to tell what is accurate] there is going to be more emphasis on the value of the journalist."

LITERALLY; THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER

Black hole is 'burping out' a 'spaghettified' star it devoured years ago

By Robert Lea 

SPACE.COM

The aftermath of the star being "spaghettified" is like nothing astronomers have ever seen. 

An illustration of a black hole spewing material from a star it devoured years ago.

 (Image credit: DESY, Science Communication Lab)

Three years after a black hole shredded and devoured a small star, the cosmic titan is lighting up the night sky with violent emissions as it burps out material from its messy stellar meal.

In October 2018, the black hole — located in a galaxy 665 million light-years from Earth — was observed tearing up a star that had wandered too close. The event itself wasn't surprising to astronomers, who often observe these violent encounters between stars and greedy black holes. These so-called tidal disruption events (TDEs) happen when objects such as stars approach black holes and the massive gravitational influence they encounter generates tidal forces that stretch the star in one direction while squashing it in the other direction, thus "spaghettifying" the stellar body.

As this spaghettified material falls onto the black hole, it heats up and generates a flash of light that astronomers can spot from millions of light-years away. Occasionally, the black hole spits some of this stellar material back out into space. In other words, black holes are messy eaters.

Related: Cosmic crime scene reveals how black holes turn stars into 'spaghetti'

However, there's something unusual about this TDE, designated AT2018hyz: Despite not having feasted on anything since this small star, which has about one-tenth the mass of the sun , the black hole is now spewing the material from its last meal.

"This caught us completely by surprise  —  no one has ever seen anything like this before," Yvette Cendes, an astronomer at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who led the research, said in a statement. "It's as if this black hole has started abruptly burping out a bunch of material from the star it ate years ago."

Cendes and her team determined that this material is being ejected from the black hole at around 300 million mph (480 million kph) — about half the speed of light. For comparison, TDEs usually spit out this material at about 10% the speed of light.

Why it took so long for this black hole to burp out its last meal is also a mystery.

"This is the first time that we have witnessed such a long delay between the feeding and the outflow," study co-author Edo Berger, an astronomy professor at Harvard University, said in the statement.
Bright radio "burps"

The astronomers spotted this event as they were searching for signs of TDEs that have occurred over the past few years. Data they collected in radio waves with the Very Large Array in New Mexico showed that this black hole had mysteriously burst back to life in June 2021. This finding encouraged them to investigate AT2018hyz further.

"We applied for Director's Discretionary Time on multiple telescopes, which is when you find something so unexpected, you can't wait for the normal cycle of telescope proposals to observe it," Cendes said. "All the applications were immediately accepted."

The team studied the event in multiple wavelengths of light and with a range of telescopes — including the VLA, the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile — and found that the most striking observations of AT2018hyz were in radio frequencies.

"We have been studying TDEs with radio telescopes for more than a decade, and we sometimes find they shine in radio waves as they spew out material while the star is first being consumed by the black hole," Berger said. "But in AT2018hyz there was radio silence for the first three years, and now it's dramatically lit up to become one of the most radio-luminous TDEs ever observed."

Study co-author Sebastian Gomez, a postdoctoral fellow at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, studied AT2018hyz in 2018 with visible-light telescopes such as the 1.2-meter (3.9 feet) telescope at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Arizona. At that time, he had considered this TDE unremarkable.

RELATED STORIES:

— Supermassive black hole gobbled up a star in the 1980s, and high schoolers helped discover it

— Black hole kills star by 'spaghettification' as telescopes watch

— A hungry black hole devoured a star, and its 'burp' reveals how it chowed down

"We monitored AT2018hyz in visible light for several months until it faded away, and then set it out of our minds," Gomez said in the statement.

Now, the team will investigate whether the delay between feeding and emitting is unique to AT2018hyz or if it's a more common event that astronomers have missed.

"The next step is to explore whether this actually happens more regularly and we have simply not been looking at TDEs late enough in their evolution," Berger said.

The team's work was published Oct. 11 in The Astrophysical Journal.


Robert Lea
Contributing Writer
Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.’s Open University. Follow him on Twitter @sciencef1rst

WE NEED THE COSMIC CALANDOR

How Fast-Moving Glaciers May Contribute To Sea Level Rise

October 14, 2022 University of Oxford

Climate change is resulting in sea level rise as ice on land melts and oceans expand. How much and how fast sea levels will rise in the near future will depend, in part, on the frequency of glacier calving events. These occur when large chunks of ice detach from glaciers that terminate in the ocean (known as tidewater glaciers), and fall into coastal fjords as icebergs. The faster these glaciers flow over the ground towards the ocean, the more ice enters the ocean, increasing the rate of sea level rise.

During the warmer summer months, the surface of Greenland’s glaciers can melt and form large lakes that may then drain through to the base of the glacier. Studies on the inland Greenland ice sheet have shown that this reduces friction between the ice and ground, causing the ice to slide faster for a few days. Up to now, however, it has been unclear whether such drainage events affect the flow speed of tidewater glaciers, and hence the rate of calving events.

To investigate this, a research team from Oxford University’s Earth Sciences department, the Oxford University Mathematical Institute, and Columbia University used Global Positioning System (GPS) observations of the flow speed of Helheim Glacier—the largest single-glacier contributor to sea level rise in Greenland. The GPS captured a near perfect natural experiment: high-temporal-resolution observations of the glacier’s flow response to lake drainage.

The results found that Helheim Glacier behaved very differently to the inland ice sheet, which shows a fast, downhill movement during lake drainage events. In contrast, Helheim Glacier exhibited a relatively small ‘pulse’ of movement where the glacier sped up for a short amount of time and then moved slower, resulting in no net increase in movement.

Using a numerical model of the subglacial drainage system, the researchers discovered that this observation was likely caused by Helheim glacier having an efficient system of channels and cavities along its bed. This allows the draining waters to be quickly evacuated from the glacier bed without causing an increase in the total net movement.

Although this appears positive news in terms of sea level rise implications, the researchers suspected that a different effect may occur for glaciers without an efficient drainage system where surface melt is currently low but will increase in future due to climate change (such as in Antarctica).

They ran a mathematical model based on the conditions of colder, Antarctic tidewater glaciers. The results indicated that lake drainages under these conditions would produce a net increase in glacier movement. This was largely due to the less efficient winter-time subglacial drainage system not being able to evacuate flood waters quickly. As of yet, however, there are no in situ observations of Antarctic tidewater glacier responses to lake drainage.

The study calls into question some common approaches for inferring glacial drainage systems based on glacier velocities recorded using satellite observations (which are currently used in sea level rise models).

Lead author Associate Professor Laura Stevens (Department of Earth Sciences, Oxford University) said: ‘What we’ve observed here at Helheim is that you can have a big input of meltwater into the drainage system during a lake drainage event, but that melt input doesn’t result in an appreciable change in glacier speed when you average over the week of the drainage event.’

With the highest temporal resolution of satellite-derived glacier speeds currently available being roughly one week, lake drainage events like the one captured in the Helheim GPS data usually go unnoticed.

‘These tidewater glaciers are tricky,’ Associate Professor Stevens added. ‘We have a lot more to learn about how meltwater drainage operates and modulates tidewater-glacier speeds before we can confidently model their future response to atmospheric and oceanic warming.’

Just Stop Oil protesters spray paint New Scotland Yard

A woman doused the police headquarters' famous revolving sign in orange paint while others blocked the road outside.

By Guy Birchall, news reporter
Friday 14 October 2022 


A Just Stop Oil activist has been arrested after spray painting the sign outside New Scotland Yard.

Protestors descended on the Metropolitan Police's HQ after two members of the group were earlier arrested at the National Gallery for flinging tomato soup over Van Gough's Sunflowers.

Pictures show an activist holding what appears to be a fire extinguisher and coating the famous revolving sign outside in orange paint.

Officers in high vis jackets quickly descended on the scene and carted her off.

Other protesters outside New Scotland Yard were sat on the road blocking traffic with some apparently thrusting their arms into a section of metal piping to make them harder to move while others glued themselves to the road.




One of the protestors, Gabby Ditton, 28, from Norwich, told PA: "We did try petitions and marches and strongly worded emails before this, but that didn't work. And now we're in a situation where all of life on earth could be destroyed forever in the name of short-term profit. So yeah, I absolutely support this.

"It's peaceful, it's non-violent, it's stressful to watch but what other choice do we have?"

A total of 24 protesters were arrested outside New Scotland Yard, according to police.

A statement after the incident read: "Met police officers have arrested 24 protesters on suspicion of conspiracy to commit criminal damage after activists sprayed orange paint at New Scotland Yard's revolving sign; and wilful obstruction of the highway after they sat down in the carriageway outside New Scotland Yard.





"Several individuals 'locked on' or glued themselves onto the road surface. Specialist officers have now removed them and they are being taken into custody at various central London police stations."

Just Stop Oil protestors have upped their activism in London recently blocking off numerous streets and defacing art works.

Earlier this week the group were slammed on social media after emergency services vehicles were held up by their blockade.

IF IT AIN'T ONE THING IT'S ANOTHER
There’s a Damn Good Chance AI Will Destroy Humanity, Researchers Say

Caroline Delbert - Yesterday

On the bright side, there are some things we can do to prevent that outcome... maybe.

© gremlin - Getty Images

Anew paper explains that we’ll have to be careful and thorough when programming future AI, or it could have dire consequences for humanity.

The paper lays out the specific dangers and the “assumptions” we can definitively make about a certain kind of self-learning, reward-oriented AI.

We have the tools and knowledge to help avoid some these problems—but not all of them—so we should proceed with caution.

In new research, scientists tackle one of our greatest future fears head-on: What happens when a certain type of advanced, self-directing artificial intelligence (AI) runs into an ambiguity in its programming that affects the real world? Will the AI go haywire and begin trying to turn humans into paperclips, or whatever else is the extreme reductio ad absurdum version of its goal? And, most importantly, how can we prevent it?

In their paper, researchers from Oxford University and Australian National University explain a fundamental pain point in the design of AI: “Given a few assumptions, we argue that it will encounter a fundamental ambiguity in the data about its goal. For example, if we provide a large reward to indicate that something about the world is satisfactory to us, it may hypothesize that what satisfied us was the sending of the reward itself; no observation can refute that.”

The Matrix is an example of a dystopian AI scenario, wherein an AI that seeks to farm resources gathers up most of humanity and pumps the imaginary Matrix into their brains, while extracting their mental resources. This is called “wireheading” or reward hacking—a situation in which an advanced AI is given a very literally-stated goal and finds an unintended way to fulfill it, by hacking the system or taking control over it entirely.

So basically, the AI becomes an ouroboros eating its own logical tail. The paper gets into a number of nitty-gritty examples of how specifically-programmed goals and incentives can clash in this way. It lists six major “assumptions” that, if not avoided, could lead to “catastrophic consequences.” But, thankfully, “Almost all of these assumptions are contestable or conceivably avoidable,” per the paper. (We don’t love that it says almost all.)

The paper acts as a heads-up about some structural problems that programmers should be aware of as they train AIs toward increasingly more complex goals.

An AI-Induced Paperclip Apocalypse

It’s hard to overstate just how important this kind of research is. There’s a major thought exercise in the field of AI ethics and philosophy about an AI run amok. The example cited above about paperclips isn’t a joke, or rather it’s not just a joke—AI philosopher Nick Bostrom came up with it to convey how creating a super-intelligent AI could go devastatingly wrong, and it’s since become a famous scenario.

Let’s say a well-meaning programmer makes an AI whose goal is to support the manufacture of paperclips at a factory. This is a very believable role for a near-future AI to have, something that requires judgment calls and analysis, but isn’t too open-ended. The AI could even work in conjunction with a human manager who would handle issues that happen in the manufacturing space in real time, as well as dictate the ultimate decision-making (at least until the AI finds a way to outsmart them). That sounds fine, right? It’s a good example of how AI could help streamline and improve the lives of industrial workers and their managers, even.

But what if the AI isn’t programmed with care? These super-intelligent AIs will operate in the real world, which is considered by programmers to be an “unknown environment,” because they can’t plan for and code in every possible scenario. The point of using these self-learning AIs in the first place is to have them devise solutions humans would never be able to think of alone—but that comes with the danger of not knowing what the AI might think up.

What if it starts to think of unorthodox ways to increase paperclip production? A super-intelligent AI might teach itself to make the most amount of paperclips by any means necessary.

What if it starts to absorb other resources in order to make them into paperclips, or decides to, um, replace its human manager? The example sounds funny in some ways—many experts weigh in with the opinion that AI will stay quite primitive for a relatively long time, without the ability to “invent” the idea of killing, or stealing, or worse. But if an intelligent and creative enough AI was given free rein, the absurd conclusion to the thought exercise is an entire solar system with no living humans, complete with a Dyson sphere to collect energy to make new paperclips by the billions.

But that’s just one scenario of an AI run amok, and the researchers explain in great detail other ways an AI could hack the system and work in potentially “catastrophic” ways that we never anticipated.

Some Possible Solutions

There’s a programming problem at play here, which is the nature of the assumptions the Oxford and Australian National University researchers have focused on in their paper. A system with no outside context must be really carefully prepared in order to do a task well and be given any amount of autonomy. There are logical structures and other programming concepts that will help to clearly define an AI’s sense of scope and purpose. A lot of these are the same tactics programmers use today to avoid errors, like infinite looping, that can crash software. It’s just that a misstep in an advanced future AI could cause a lot more damage than a lost game save.

All isn’t lost, though. AI is still something we make ourselves, and the researchers have pointed out concrete ways we can help to prevent adverse outcomes:

Opt for imitation learning, where AI works by imitating humans in a kind of supervised learning. This is a different kind of AI altogether and not as useful, but it may come with the same potential dangers.

Have AI prioritize goals that can be achieved in only a short period of time—known as “myopic”—instead of searching for unorthodox (and potentially disastrous) solutions over the long term.

Isolate the AI from outside networks like the internet, limiting how much information and influence it can acquire.

Use quantilization, an approach developed by AI expert Jessica Taylor, where AI maximizes (or optimizes) humanlike options rather than open-ended rational ones.

Code risk aversion into the AI, making it less likely to go haywire and throw out the status quo in favor of experimentation.

But it also boils down to the question of whether we could ever fully control a super-intelligent AI that’s able to think for itself. What if our worst nightmare comes true, and a sentient AI is given access to resources and a large network?

It’s scary to imagine a future where AI could start boiling human beings to extract their trace elements in order to make paperclips. But by studying the problem directly and in detail, researchers can lay out clear best practices for theoreticians and programmers to follow as they continue to develop sophisticated AI.

And really, who needs that many paperclips anyway?

Remains of 240 people found beneath Ocky White department store in Wales

Archaeologists found skeletal remains of over more than 240 people, from beneath a former department store in Pembrokeshire in Wales, UK among remnants of a medieval priory.

More than a hundred of them are children, the majority of whom are infants under the age of four. The bodies were unearthed at the site of the one-time Ocky Whites department store, closed since 2013 and now slated for redevelopment.

The discovery has been described as “hugely significant” by experts. They believe the site is that of a priory named St Saviour’s, which dates to about 1256.

In addition, experts who stated that about half of the remains belonged to children, pointed out that this was a reflection of the high mortality rates in the past.

Henry III gave the friars 10 marks to build a church in 1246, according to the earliest known account of the Dominican friary of St. Saviours in Haverfordwest. Ten years later, they received an additional 15 marks to relocate to a new location, where they constructed a larger friary. Over the years, St. Saviors received numerous gifts and bequests, but by the early 16th century, as was the case with many monastic communities, its finances were deteriorating. In 1526, it began renting out its lands, and in 1535, it began to accept tenants.

In the second round of monastic dissolutions, the friary saw its end. The forced visits, confiscations, and formal dissolutions that destroyed monasticism in England and Wales did not target more modest friaries like St. Saviors. By 1538, the goal was to persuade the last few settlements to voluntarily (?) hand over their homes to the Crown. On September 2, 1538, the eight remaining friars at St. Saviors signed the document, though the final signer appears to have changed his mind because his name is smudged off the document.

St. Saviours vanished from the landscape, leaving only names like Friars Lane and the Friars Vault pub in its wake. There were no historical records indicating its precise location, and the knowledge had faded over time. The discovery of the burial ground has contributed to the unraveling of the mystery.

It is thought to have comprised a complex of buildings including dormitories, a hospital, and stables, along with a graveyard that could have been used until the early 1700s.

Site supervisor Andrew Shobbrook, from Dyfed Archaeological Trust, told the BBC: “It’s quite a prestigious place to be buried. You have a range of people, from the wealthy to general townsfolk.”

Mr. Shobbrook added that the remains uncovered on the site show evidence of the type of injuries that might be sustained during battle.

He theorized some of the deceased could have been victims of a siege carried out on Haverfordwest in 1405 by French and Welsh rebels.

The remains are due to be analyzed by experts before being reinterred nearby.

By Leman Altuntaş13 October 2022

The oldest grave in northern Germany 10,500 years old

Archaeologists have discovered the oldest known human remains in northern Germany in a 10,500-year-old cremation grave in Lüchow, Schleswig-Holstein.

The remains were discovered in the Duvensee bog, a prehistoric inland lake that contains more than 20 Mesolithic and Neolithic archaeological sites.

The bog’s anaerobic environment preserves organic remains, including burned bones, but there was so little left that it wasn’t until the team discovered a human thigh bone that they were able to confirm they had discovered a burial.

Burials of hunter-gatherer-fisher people who lived in Europe during the early Mesolithic period are extremely rare. Mesolithic burials have previously been discovered in northern Germany and southern Scandinavia, but only from the Late Mesolithic period (7th-6th millennia B.C.). The only burial that was comparable in time was discovered in Jutland, Denmark. It, too, is a cremation burial, an indication that cremation may have been the preferred method of burial among Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.

Archaeologists unearth the oldest burial site to date in northern Germany. Photo: Archäologisches Landesamt Schleswig-Holstein

Several bone fragments that were not completely charred were found during the excavation. Excavation director Harald Lübke hopes to recover archaeological DNA from them. The entire grave was raised in a soil block for additional excavation and laboratory study.

Archaeologists have been excavating Duvensee Moor since 1923 and have also discovered the shelter of Stone Age hunters and gatherers.

The oldest known North German raises a lot of questions. For example, according to the circumstances of death. In the case of burned bones, it is difficult to determine the cause of death, says Harald Lübke.

For archaeologists, the entire Duvenseer Moor is a hotspot. “We’ve only opened a new door here at the moment. But behind it, there are only dark rooms at the moment.” Due to their spectacular cremation find, they will probably continue digging there in the coming year.

By Leman Altuntaş14 October 2022

Drought unveils sunken basilica in Turkey

The sunken basilica remains discovered in 2014 became visible as a result of Lake Iznik’s water withdrawal.

Climate change is having an impact not only on the oceans but also on large inland lakes. Known as Askania in ancient times, Iznik Lake with a surface area of 298 km² and an altitude of 85 m; Turkey’s fifth is the largest lake in the Marmara Region. Lake Iznik is adversely affected by seasonal drought and presents an example of how a waterbody can and will change. Once a prominent structure on dry land covered by water in the subsequent centuries, an ancient basilica’s ruins rose up again in the lake recently.

The drawdown in the lake reached up to 50 meters and it also affected the basilica area 20 meters offshore and 1.5 – 2 meters deep.

This ancient basilica in Bursa was built around A.D. 4 on the shore of the lake beside the city of Nicaea, which is known as Iznik today. However, it was destroyed in an earthquake in A.D. 8 and later became submerged as the lake level changed. The submerged basilica was cited among the most significant discoveries in 2014 in the world. The basilica is predicted to have been built in honor of Saint Neophytos. It was most likely the site of the first Nicaea Ecumenical Council, according to archaeologists.

Photo: AA

Taylan Sevil, the former director of the İznik Museum, told Anadolu Agency that a large part of the basilica has now re-emerged and merged with the lakeside.

The sunken basilica that was discovered in 2014 has recently become visible as a result of Lake Iznik’s water levels dropping, according to Taylan Sevil. Sevil also emphasized the basilica’s historical significance in terms of archaeology.

Sevil added that the historical basilica is one of the most significant discoveries of the century in the annals of world archaeology. Due to the low water levels brought on by climate change, the basilica, which was once submerged in the lake but has since merged with the landscape, is now accessible on foot.

Archaeologists recently uncovered important finds in the sunken basilica. You can read the latest developments by clicking the link below.

By Leman Altuntaş14 October 2022