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Inside Silicon Valley’s Growing Obsession With Having Smarter Babies

BERKELEY, Calif.—Tsvi Benson-Tilsen, a mathematician, spent seven years researching how to keep an advanced form of artificial intelligence from destroying humanity before he concluded that stopping it wasn’t possible—at least anytime soon.

Now, he’s turned his considerable brainpower to promoting cutting-edge technology to create smarter humans who will be up to the task of saving us all.

“My intuition is it’s one of our best hopes,” said Benson-Tilsen, co-founder of the Berkeley Genomics Project, a nonprofit supporting the new field.

This isn’t science fiction. It is Silicon Valley, where interest in breeding smarter babies is peaking.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEugenics, WTF?

Mocked for using the wrong spoon: working-class life at top universities

Well at least one of them has Tats.

Dan was days into university when, at a freshers week event, his fellow students gathered in a circle to take turns stating how much their school cost per term.

The biological sciences student, 26, whose name has been changed, says that as a state school student at Durham University he quickly felt “alienated”.

Dan, who is from Cheshire, also claims another student imitated his friend’s Scouse accent.

Dan should be kicked out of the working class for being a weenie.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWTF?

Toronto film fest nixes Oct 7 doc screening, cites Hamas ownership of massacre clips

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) announced this week that it had canceled its invitation to screen a documentary about the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, due to ostensible copyright concerns stemming from the fact that the filmmakers did not receive permission from the Hamas terrorists whose clips are featured in the film.

h/t Patti Jo

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Islamophobia", "Oct 7 2023", Canada, WTF?

Tory police chief faces backlash over telling public to stop shoplifters

A policing chief is facing criticism over his “dangerous” comments telling the public to stop shoplifters and not just rely on police officers to curb thefts.

Matthew Barber, the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley, branded people who do not do anything in the face of shoplifting as “part of the problem”.

This would be that same Jolly Old England: Tube passenger quizzed by police over ‘assault’ of naked man who exposed himself in front of kids

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWTF?

Carney’s $26B bet on prefab housing could be a gamechanger — but will everyone play along?

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s vow to double Canadian housing construction to 500,000 units a year would seem to be an ambitious enough goal.

But Carney’s housing plan is also an industrial strategy meant to kick-start a nascent factory-built housing industry and rejuvenate Canada’s ailing forest products sector.

With his $26 billion Build Canada Homes (BCH) agency, which goes into operation this fall, Ottawa hopes to increase production of innovative housing types including prefabricated, modular, panelized and mass timber housing.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis", Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government, WTF?

Undercover officers pose as joggers to stop catcalling

Coming this fall … Undercover Catcall Cops

Undercover police officers have posed as joggers in a bid to catch cat-callers.

Surrey Police sent two undercover officers out jogging at rush hour, to show the level of catcalling female joggers received.

“These behaviours may not be criminal offences in themselves, but they need to be addressed,” a Surrey Police spokesman said about the patrols.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWTF?

The critics of Nova Scotia’s ban on accessing the woods don’t understand our culture

I realized how dry the woods are in Nova Scotia when I stopped my car by the side of the road the other day and briefly stood on the gravel shoulder. The woods smelled dry, almost smoky, like they wanted to be on fire.

It’s not how this typically soggy peninsula normally smells. But we have had less than half the normal seasonal amount of rain this summer. The last substantial rain fell on June 7. Wells are drying up. The whole province is in a state of extreme fire risk.

So when Premier Tim Houston announced on Tuesday that he was ordering the woods closed, I was glad.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWTF?

Crime Pays in Modern Britain

In the UK today, it’s sometimes safer to be the criminal than the victim of crime.

Take the perplexing case of Rob Davies. In Wrexham, north Wales, the frustrated shopkeeper was told off by police for complaining about the scourge of thieves in the area. Davies, who runs a vintage clothing store, had resorted to displaying a sign in the shop window that read: “Due to scumbags shoplifting, please ask for assistance to open cabinets.” He explained to the Telegraph that, due to an increasing number of thefts, he was forced to lock away some of his goods. “Over the past year,” he said, “I have caught five people shoplifting. The first one I called the police and they handed the shirt back to me and let him go. Now I don’t bother reporting them and I have had to put locks on my cabinets.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inUK, WTF?

Doug Ford vows to ‘legislate’ end to medical testing on dogs after Ontario hospital caught using beagles

Premier Doug Ford is vowing to “legislate” an end to medical tests on dogs after St. Joseph’s hospital in London was caught using beagles for heart attack research.

“I’ve now directed our team to start hunting down anyone else doing research on dogs or cats since it’s unacceptable,” Ford told reporters Tuesday in Windsor.

“I think we just legislate and ban it — there’s no reason we need to be using poor little dogs or cats or anything like that. It’s just unacceptable, it’s cruel, it’s inhumane,” he said.

My high school’s grade 13 biology class dissected cats.

Their frozen bodies were stored in open garbage cans in the courtyard with no effort to conceal them.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWTF?

Montreal man charged with assault in connection with attack on Jewish father

A 23-year-old man has been charged with assault causing bodily harm after a Jewish father was attacked in front of his children in Montreal’s Parc-Extension neighbourhood last week. Sergio Yanes

Preciado is accused of assaulting a 32-year-old man on Aug. 8 around 2:45 p.m. at Dickie Moore Park, in violation of Section 267(b) of the Criminal Code of Canada (assault causing bodily harm), according to the Quebec Crown prosecutor’s office.

No word on motive.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWTF?

Federal Conservatives call for terror label on India-based Lawrence Bishnoi gang

The federal Conservative party has joined the chorus of voices calling for the India-based Lawrence Bishnoi gang to be added to Canada’s list of terrorist organizations.

The gang is suspected to be behind the surge of extortion threats in B.C., Alberta and Ontario that have terrified the South Asian community.

Ethnic pandering.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Societally Destructive Immigration Policy", Canada, Crime, India, WTF?