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If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. When the Obama White House in 2013 used the “Success Kid” meme to promote, in posts on social media, the adoption of the Immigration Reform Bill – nobody clenched a fist, much less batted an eyelash to brand this PR strategy as a copyright violation. However, the same can’t be said for the case of former Republican Congressman Steve King’s use of the meme (variations of which have been all over the internet for the past 15 or so years). But, when it made its way to one of King’s Facebook posts in 2020, the family of the child whose picture is used as a template sued on copyright grounds. And now a court has once again sided with their arguments. The “new rule” is that the image turned into a meme, when used in a political ad, does not fall under the fair use copyright exemption. The mother of the child, Laney Griner, has no problem with the picture being used in other types of ads – the United States Court of Appeals For the Eighth Circuit ruling notes that she took the photo in 2007, and after “Success Kid” became extremely popular, copyrighted it in 2012 to then license it to the likes of Virgin Mobile, Vitamin Water, Microsoft, and Coca-Cola, who used it in ads. The original 2022 verdict in the case brought by Griner against King was that unlicensed use took place and that his campaign, but not the congressman himself, was guilty, and ordered them to pay $750. In appealing the ruling, the campaign argued copyright law’s fair use rule to defend the inclusion of the meme in a fundraising effort. Another argument was implied license. Now the court of appeals has found that the latter claim was abandoned during the original trial and, as for fair use – this was rejected based on the criteria the judges set for themselves to consider: whether the use was commercial, and “how much of the photo” was used. Regarding other political campaigns (notably, the Obama administration pushing the immigration legislation), this latest decision saw the circuit judge agree with the trail judge that the evidence about the meme’s association with political ideas should not be considered. We obtained a copy of the ruling for you here. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Court Rules “Success Kid” Meme Use in Political Ad Does Not Qualify as Fair Use appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Congressional Baseball Game Broken Up Again

Lots of Layoffs at the SPLC

Grizzly bears in the Arctic are becoming an increasingly common occurrence as the planet warms, which means that they are beginning to encroach on polar bear territory more regularly. As a result, scientists have found evidence of polar-grizzly hybrids, but new research has confirmed that these “grolar bears” remain extremely rare.Polar bear and grizzly bear hybrids come in two forms: grolar bears and pizzlies, and the difference comes down to the offspring’s parentage. A grolar bear is the offspring of a grizzly bear male and polar bear female, while a pizzly bear is the offspring of a polar bear male and grizzly female. Male grizzly bears are more aggressive than polar bears, and may win out in situations where males of both species are competing.Dr Ruth RivkinAll wild hybrids between polar bears and grizzlies – that is, all the hybrids we know of that exist outside of zoo care – are grolar bears, defined by having a grizzly father and a mother who is either a polar bear or a hybrid. As for why that is, it largely comes down to logistics.“Although polar bear and grizzly bear ranges do overlap, the overlap typically happens in the summer when polar bears are on the mainland coast waiting for the sea ice to form up again,” said postdoctoral research fellow with Polar Bears International, University of Manitoba, and the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, Dr Ruth Rivkin to IFLScience. “Mating season for polar bears occurs in the winter while the bears are out on the sea ice hunting seals.”Hybridization is not an adaptive capability for polar bears, as the hybrids are still ill-suited to the changing conditions in the Arctic.Image credit: Corradox via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)“It’s becoming more common to see grizzly males also going out on the sea ice to hunt on the smaller islands in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. If they run into a polar bear female while they’re on the sea ice, they will (rarely) mate with her," Rivkin continued. "What we don’t see is grizzly females going out that far, which means that male polar bears don’t have the opportunity to mate with female grizzlies. Also, male grizzly bears are more aggressive than polar bears, and may win out in situations where males of both species are competing for a female grizzly or polar bear.”As more grizzlies encounter polar bears, it was anticipated that hybrids would become more common. As such, an international collaboration – supported by Environment and Climate Change Canada – decided to investigate the matter by developing a new monitoring tool to look for "hidden" hybrids between grizzly and polar bears.It was the first-ever large-scale analysis of these hybrids in the wild, made possibly by an innovative SNP genetic sequencing chip that could analyze grizzly and polar bear samples. It analyzed 371 historic polar bear and 440 historic grizzly bear samples from across Canada, Alaska, and Greenland, finding only eight grolar bear hybrids.“We did not discover new hybrids, which suggests that while hybridization does happen, it is so far restricted to a small portion of the western Arctic,” explained study co-author Rivkin. “Nonetheless, our work is a valuable addition to the conservation world because it allows for easy, and relatively inexpensive monitoring for hybrids on an ongoing basis.”The study is published in Conservation Genetics Resources.

Underwater robots have captured a rare glimpse of a female deep-sea squid. Not only was it holding on to a clutch of unexpectedly giant eggs, but it might also be a brand new species.Though thought to be abundant in the depths of the ocean, deep-sea squid are something of a mystery, not helped by the fact that they’re rarely seen alive. Spotting a female squid brooding is rarer still, but that’s exactly what happened back in 2015 when an underwater robot operated by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) nabbed some footage of a gonatid squid with eggs.Remote-operated vehicles from MBARI had observed deep-sea squid egg brooding on 17 previous occasions, but this one was different – the eggs were 11.6 millimeters (0.5 inches) wide, nearly double the egg size of other known gonatid species.A close-up of the female squid holding on to the eggs.Image credit: © 2015 MBARI“Our unexpected encounter with a squid brooding giant eggs caught the attention of everyone in the ship’s control room,” said MBARI Senior Scientist Steven Haddock, who was chief scientist during the expedition that encountered this brooding squid in the Gulf of California, in a statement.Not only were the squid’s eggs unusually large, but there were also far fewer of them than might be expected. Many egg-producing species in the ocean make lots of small eggs in order to maximize the chances of survival in a pretty unforgiving environment (see: the beginning of Finding Nemo).But things are different down in the depths. “[T]he stable and predictable environmental conditions of the deep water column (1,000–4,000 m [3,280–13,123 feet]) allow high relative investment in fewer offspring and may select for fewer, larger eggs and advanced hatchlings,” the authors of a study documenting the findings explain.From examining specimens of other squid previously seen in the Gulf of California, the team of researchers involved also think that the egg-brooding female belongs to an unknown species within the family Gonatidae. Whether that’s confirmed or not, this mother squid was investing more than many would be willing to give for her babies. “Brooding takes a lot out of a mother squid. She won’t eat while carrying her eggs and ultimately dies after her eggs hatch,” explained Henk-Jan Hoving, the study’s lead author. Those eggs might even take up to four years to hatch, according to the researchers – that’s a long time to go without a meal.“But her sacrifice improves the chances that her offspring will survive,” said Hoving. “It’s just one of the many remarkable adaptations that may help cephalopods to survive in the deep sea.”The study is published in Ecology.

A new antivenom for European black widow bites has been developed using engineered human antibodies.The European black widow (Latrodectus tredecimguttatus), a relative of the North American black widow, is typically found in the balmy Mediterranean region. However, rising temperatures are helping the species expand its range across other parts of Europe. Their growing frontier has sparked renewed interest in developing a better antivenom to treat their painful bites. Although rarely deadly, it's a deeply unpleasant experience to receive a nibble from this eight-legged nuisance. The venom of a black widow contains a neurotoxin known as alpha-latrotoxin, which attacks the nervous system and causes symptoms like severe pain, hypertension, headache, and nausea. There already is an antivenom to treat black widow bites, but it uses antibodies derived from horses, which are tricky to source and some patients can have a nasty reaction to them. To overcome this problem, scientists in Germany have crafted a new form of antivenom that uses human antibodies – and it’s looking very promising.“For the first time, we present human antibodies which show neutralization of black widow spider venom in a cell-based assay,” Professor Michael Hust, a biologist at the Technical University of Braunschweig and senior author of the study, said in a statement. “This is the first step to replace the horse sera that are still used to treat the severe symptoms after a black widow spider bite,” explained Professor Hust. The antivenom was developed using antibody phage display, a lab technique to identity antibodies using bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria. In this method, antibody genes are inserted into the DNA of phages, causing them to display the relevant protein on their surfaces. These phages are then exposed to a target antigen (in this case, the alpha-latrotoxin molecules in the venom). Those found to have a high affinity for the antigen can then be isolated and amplified.The researchers' experiments found that 45 of 75 generated antibodies were able to neutralize alpha-latrotoxin in a petri dish. One antibody, called MRU44-4-A1, was even found to have “outstandingly high neutralization”.Riding on the success of the study, the team are hoping use similar techniques to develop antibodies to treat other ailments, including diphtheria, a serious bacterial infection that affects the mucous membranes of the nose and throat.“In another project, we have shown that we can develop human antibodies to treat diphtheria which are effective in in vivo studies. We intend to take the same steps for the black widow antivenom antibodies. This is especially important because with the invasion of the spiders into new habitats, the incidence of latrodectism and the need for therapeutic alternatives might increase over the next years,” said Professor Hust. The new study is published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology.

In 1912, philosophers Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead did something they believed nobody had ever done before: they proved that 1 + 1 = 2.It took them an entire book’s worth of setup, plus more than 80 pages of a second volume, to do it. It was, a reasonable person might conclude, slight overkill. And yet, in all that work, there’s one thing the pair were surprisingly sloppy about: they never defined what “=” means. But of course, why would they? Everyone knows what “equals” means; it’s like, the first thing you learn in preschool math! Except that, just like 1 + 1, the concept of mathematical equality is one that is far from simple or universal – and that’s becoming a big problem.What does “equals” mean?Now, don’t get us wrong: your average mathematician understands “=” pretty much the same way you do – albeit with a bit more jargon thrown in.“The meaning of x = y [is] that x and y are two names of the same identical object,” wrote logician and number theorist John Barkley Rosser in his 1953 textbook Logic for Mathematicians. “We place no restrictions on the nature of the object, so that we shall have equality not only between numbers […] as is common in mathematics, but between sets, or between functions, or indeed between the names of any logical object.”It’s vague, but workable. The problem comes when we try to explain this to computer scientists – or, even worse, the computers themselves.“Computer scientists [...], many years ago, isolated several different concepts of equality, and [have] a profound understanding of the subject,” wrote Kevin Buzzard, an algebraic number theorist and professor of pure math at Imperial College London, in a recent discussion paper on the concept posted to preprint server arXiv. “The three-character string “2 + 2”, typed into a computer algebra system, is not equal to the one-character string “4” output by the system, for example; some sort of “processing” has taken place. A computer scientist might say that whilst the numbers 2 + 2 and 4 are equal, the terms are not.”“Mathematicians on the other hand are extremely good at internalizing the processing and, after a while, ignoring it,” Buzzard continued. “In practice we use the concept of equality rather loosely, relying on some kind of profound intuition rather than the logical framework which some of us believe that we are actually working within.”Equality as an isomorphismThe basic concept of equality goes back… well, probably as far as math itself – but if you ask a modern mathematician to delve a little deeper into what they mean by the word, there’s a decent chance they’ll try to explain it using something called “isomorphisms.”Coming from the ancient Greek for “equal form”, an isomorphism is, basically, just a way to get from one mathematical structure to another of the same type. There are some stipulations to it – it has to be reversible and bijective, for example – but other than that, they can be surprisingly vibes-based. Not for nothing is this the concept behind the old joke that mathematicians can’t tell the difference between a donut and a coffee cup: the two shapes are topologically isomorphic, and therefore, in a way, the same thing.“Isomorphism is equality,” Thorsten Altenkirch, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham, told New Scientist earlier this month. “I mean, what else? If you cannot distinguish two isomorphic objects, what else would it be? What else would you call this relationship?”Other uses of “equals” in math are equally fuzzy. Buzzard’s paper, based on a talk he gave at a Mathematical Logic and Philosophy conference in 2022, covers some of the most egregious offenders: for example, in “[Alexander] Grothendieck’s seminal work […] where he and Dieudonne develop the foundations of modern algebraic geometry,” he points out, “the word “canonique” appears hundreds of times […] with no definition ever supplied.”“Of course we certainly know what Grothendieck means,” he added. But “[interactive theorem prover] Lean would tell Grothendieck that this equality simply isn’t true and would stubbornly point out any place where it was used.”It’s a dichotomy that exemplifies the state of modern math. As ever purer fields are finding applications in the real world, mathematicians and computer scientists are leaning more than ever on AI and computers to inform their work. But these machines can’t rely on the appeal to intuition that human mathematicians have grown to accept: “As a mathematician, you somehow know well enough what you’re doing that you don’t worry too much about it,” Chris Birkbeck, a Lecturer in Number Theory at the University of East Anglia, told New Scientist. “Once you have a computer checking everything you say, you can’t really be vague at all, you really have to be very precise.”The problem of equalitySo, what are mathematicians to do? After all, it’s hard to think of a more fundamental problem than not having a definition of “=” in mathematical statements.Well, there are two potential options. One solution may be to overhaul math itself, perhaps by redefining equality to be the same thing – one might say “equal to” – canonical isomorphisms. But that may be just shunting the problem down the line, Buzzard cautioned: “[mathematician] Gordon James told me that he once asked John Conway what the word [canonical] meant, and Conway’s reply was that if you and the person in the office next to yours both write down a map from A to B, and it’s the same map, then this map is canonical,” he wrote. “This might be a good joke, but it is not a good definition.”Alternatively, a new class of mathematician may need to be brought up, Buzzard suggests – ones who can “fill in [the] holes” that currently plague the discipline. The advantages of this approach are practical, at least, he argues: “It’s very difficult to change mathematicians,” he told New Scientist. “You have to make the computer systems better.”Either way, it seems math is due for a rethink – and for those interested in the frontiers of computer-aided proofs, the sooner the better. Pinning down a definition of “equals” may seem like a basic problem, but it may end up having profound consequences for our future world – after all, as Russell and Whitehead pointed out after that seminal proof more than 100 years ago, the “proposition [that 1 + 1 = 2] is occasionally useful.”

On Wednesday, MRCTV’s Tierin-Rose Mandelburg joined One America News Network’s In Focus with Alison Steinberg, where the two discussed how lazy Generation Z is - especially when it comes to their careers.  A new survey of employers conducted by Resume Templates found that 26 percent of Generation Z brought their parents along with them to job interviews - and not just so their parents could sit in the car or lobby, but literally into the interview room. Some parents even introduced themselves to the interviewer and answered questions on behalf of their children. Keep in mind, these aren’t 11-year-olds applying to work at a lemonade stand. They’re full-grown adults who want corporate jobs but are too weak to get them without literally holding their mommy’s hand. Related: Viral TikToker Fired for Using Slang Version of 'N-Word' Trolls Outrage Mob: 'Couldn't Find a Care' Similarly, a girl on TikTok ranted about how a job she applied for wouldn’t respect what she called “time blindness.” Essentially, the girl struggled to be on time for things and wanted free passes from her job. When the protective employer told her how absolutely absurd that was, the woman posted a video weeping about the situation. Steinberg and Mandelburg noted that parents are raising a generation of weak kids, and our hyper-sensitive society is fueling it. Check out the segment!   Follow us on Twitter/X: Things That Need To Be Said: It's Time to End the Pro-Hamasholes Leftists hate America, and it's time to stop letting them promote their hate without repercussions. pic.twitter.com/wKXTL9628v — MRCTV (@mrctv) June 10, 2024