A security guarantee would require a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate.

Across the nation, land set aside for the purpose of possibly destroying the world is now welcoming infrastructure meant to save it. Sites managed by the Dept. of Energy’s nuclear weapons division are now playing host to solar farms that should be able to power thousands of homes. As part of a government program called […] The post US Puts Solar Panels on Old Nuclear Weapons Sites for Powering 70,000 Homes appeared first on Good News Network.

Purple Hearts In middle of the Vietnam War, a Navy surgeon and a nurse fall in love. Their affection for one another provides a striking contrast to the violence of warfare Cast: 1984 viewing When CONTINUE READING... The post 84 From ’84: Purple Hearts appeared first on The Retro Network.

Police in Florida finds and rescues a dog trapped inside a hot U-Haul truck after its owners left it to go to the beach on Sunday, June 02.

Is This Really Necessary, Texas Democrats?

In the opening scenes of 1964’s Goldfinger, James Bond is asked why he always carries a gun. His wry and surprisingly self-deprecating answer? “I have a slight inferiority complex.” It’s a familiar stereotype. Guns, the popular idea says, are a stand-in for penises – and men who own them are probably just overcompensating for something. It’s not only a trope in movies, either: it turns up in Freud, in the headlines – even in supposedly rigorous “scientific studies”. There’s just one problem: according to a new analysis out of the University of Texas at San Antonio Hill, it’s entirely backwards.“Guns are clearly phallic symbols. Guns are clearly associated with masculinity,” the authors write. “However […] the psychosexual theory of gun ownership consistently fails in its assertion that men who have trouble with their penises or are dissatisfied with their penises are especially likely to acquire guns as a means of compensation.”The results come from analysis of data collected from more than 1,800 men in the 2023 Masculinity, Sexual Health, and Politics (MSHAP) survey, a national probability sample from across all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. “The primary purpose of the MSHAP survey is to empirically document the intersection of masculinity, sexual health, and politics in the United States,” the study explains – it covers all kinds of lifestyle questions, from your feelings about your penis size, to your employment status, to mental health, to even how cool and nice you are.It also asks about gun ownership. And to be honest, the results were pretty much what you’d expect: older men, US-born men, straight men, and men who live in rural or Southern areas were more likely to own guns; men with college degrees, who scored higher on “social desirability,” tended to own fewer guns.But there was one surprise – at least for anybody who bases their worldview on movies like Deadpool or Dirty Harry. “The odds of owning a gun […] are lower for men who are more dissatisfied with the size of their penises,” the study reports. “In fact, each one-unit increase in penis size dissatisfaction reduces the odds of owning any gun by 11 percent […] and the odds of owning a military-style rifle by 20 percent.”Now, we know what you’re thinking. We’re just taking these guys’ word for it about how big their dicks are? In a study about penis size dissatisfaction?? Have we learned nothing?Well, you’re not wrong. “Although we control for social desirability bias, our measurements of penis size are based on self-reports, not direct measurements,” Terrence Hill, a professor of sociology and demography and first author of the study, told PsyPost. There are also limitations intrinsic to the study design: as a cross-sectional study, it can’t draw any conclusions about causality, or how gun ownership patterns may change over time.Indeed, finding some explanation for the results may prove difficult – or even impossible. “Because there is no theory for why men with bigger penises would be more likely to own guns, we do not believe that this association is real,” Hill said. “In other words, we believe that this association is likely spurious or due to factors that we failed to account for in our study.”But that doesn’t mean Hill and his colleagues can’t speculate. “For example, the association […] could be due to the fact that men with higher levels of testosterone tend to have bigger penises and are more likely to engage in risk-taking behavior,” he suggested. “In the future, we would like to acquire funding to formally assess our testosterone hypothesis. We also have other projects in mind that test other taken-for-granted assumptions about guns.”The study is published in the American Journal of Men’s Health.

If you search “shrimp Jesus” on Facebook, you might encounter dozens of images of artificial intelligence (AI) generated crustaceans meshed in various forms with a stereotypical image of Jesus Christ. Some of these hyper-realistic images have garnered more than 20,000 likes and comments. So what exactly is going on here? The “dead internet theory” has an explanation: AI and bot-generated content has surpassed the human-generated internet. But where did this idea come from, and does it have any basis in reality? An example of a shrimp Jesus image on Facebook with no caption or context information included in the post. Facebook What is the dead internet theory? The dead internet theory essentially claims that activity and content on the internet, including social media accounts, are predominantly being created and automated by artificial intelligence agents. These agents can rapidly create posts alongside AI-generated images designed to farm engagement (clicks, likes, comments) on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. As for shrimp Jesus, it appears AI has learned it’s the current, latest mix of absurdity and religious iconography to go viral. But the dead internet theory goes even further. Many of the accounts that engage with such content also appear to be managed by artificial intelligence agents. This creates a vicious cycle of artificial engagement, one that has no clear agenda and no longer involves humans at all. Harmless engagement-farming or sophisticated propaganda? At first glance, the motivation for these accounts to generate interest may appear obvious – social media engagement leads to advertising revenue. If a person sets up an account that receives inflated engagement, they may earn a share of advertising revenue from social media organisations such as Meta. So, does the dead internet theory stop at harmless engagement farming? Or perhaps beneath the surface lies a sophisticated, well-funded attempt to support autocratic regimes, attack opponents and spread propaganda? While the shrimp Jesus phenomenon may seem harmless (albeit bizarre), there is potentially a longer-term ploy at hand. As these AI-driven accounts grow in followers (many fake, some real), the high follower count legitimises the account to real users. This means that out there, an army of accounts is being created. Accounts with high follower counts which could be deployed by those with the highest bid. This is critically important, as social media is now the primary news source for many users around the world. In Australia, 46% of 18 to 24-year-olds nominated social media as their main source of news last year. This is up from 28% in 2022, taking over from traditional outlets such as radio and TV. Bot-fuelled disinformation Already, there is strong evidence social media is being manipulated by these inflated bots to sway public opinion with disinformation – and it’s been happening for years. In 2018, a study analysed 14 million tweets over a ten-month period in 2016 and 2017. It found bots on social media were significantly involved in disseminating articles from unreliable sources. Accounts with high numbers of followers were legitimising misinformation and disinformation, leading real users to believe, engage and reshare bot-posted content. This approach to social media manipulation has been found to occur after mass shooting events in the United States. In 2019, a study found bot-generated posts on X (formerly Twitter) heavily contribute to the public discussion, serving to amplify or distort potential narratives associated with extreme events. More recently, several large-scale, pro-Russian disinformation campaigns have aimed to undermine support for Ukraine and promote pro-Russian sentiment. Uncovered by activists and journalists, the coordinated efforts used bots and AI to create and spread fake information, reaching millions of social media users. On X alone, the campaign used more than 10,000 bot accounts to rapidly post tens of thousands of messages of pro-Kremlin content attributed to US and European celebrities seemingly supporting the ongoing war against Ukraine. This scale of influence is significant. Some reports have even found that nearly half of all internet traffic in 2022 was made by bots. With recent advancements in generative AI – such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT models and Google’s Gemini – the quality of fake content will only be improving. Social media organisations are seeking to address the misuse of their platforms. Notably, Elon Musk has explored requiring X users to pay for membership to stop bot farms. Unfortunately, a small fee for new user write access is the only way to curb the relentless onslaught of bots. Current AI (and troll farms) can pass “are you a bot” with ease. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2024 Social media giants are capable of removing large amounts of detected bot activity, if they so chose. (Bad news for our friendly shrimp Jesus.) Keep the dead internet in mind The dead internet theory is not really claiming that most of your personal interactions on the internet are fake. It is, however, an interesting lens through which to view the internet. That it is no longer for humans, by humans – this is the sense in which the internet we knew and loved is “dead”. The freedom to create and share our thoughts on the internet and social media is what made it so powerful. Naturally, it is this power that bad actors are seeking to control. The dead internet theory is a reminder to be sceptical and navigate social media and other website with a critical mind. Any interaction, trend, and especially “overall sentiment” could very well be synthetic. Designed to slightly change the way in which you perceive the world. Jake Renzella, Lecturer, Director of Studies (Computer Science), UNSW Sydney and Vlada Rozova, Research Fellow in Applied Machine Learning, The University of Melbourne This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The post The ‘dead internet theory’ makes eerie claims about an AI-run web appeared first on Anomalien.com.

Researchers say that much of the human genome was previously thought to be “junk DNA,” but it turns out it’s not that simple. Back in the spring of 2003, scientists who worked on the Human Genome Project completed sequencing the human genome, reports Science Focus. However, this human “Book of Life” remains difficult to read even for the world’s leading geneticists. Researchers are still sorting through the data. One of the biggest questions that has been raised is: why is the human genome so huge? The striking thing about the completed human genome was how little of it seemed to do anything at all. The human genome contains about three billion nucleotide pairs. Of this amount, less than 2% (about 20,000) are genes encoding proteins that direct the cells of our body. But what does the rest of the human genome do? Some called this part junk DNA, considering it genetic gibberish—a remnant of millions of years of evolution. While some of this genetic “gibberish” really doesn’t work, not all of it is useless. Gradually, scientists are beginning to shed light on this dark side of the human genome. Some of this “garbage heap” performs crucial regulatory or modification functions for genomes that encode proteins. Some compare these DNA sequences to volume buttons that determine the expression of our genes. Large sections of the dark genome are also made up of long, repeating DNA sequences known as transposons. They play an important role in the expression of genes associated with crucial stages of human evolution. Scientists suggest that they are related to our ability to adapt to the environment. Transposons, also known as “jumping genes,” can move from one region of the genome to another. This ability can cause significant genetic mutations and changes. For example, transposons may be associated with the development of opposable thumbs in humans, as well as the loss of the tail in us and other great apes. In some cases, “jumping genes” are associated with the development of tumors, as well as some hereditary diseases. For example, hemophilia and Duchenne muscular dystrophy arise from repetitive DNA sequences associated with transposons. In the coming decades, scientists hope to decipher this dark human genome, leading to a new generation of treatments for genetic diseases. The post Genes make up just 2% of our DNA, scientists still puzzled by 98% appeared first on Anomalien.com.

In the heartwarming video, viewers are introduced to Holly, affectionately known as Beaver Mom, and her beloved beaver, Tulip. Tulip’s journey from a vulnerable baby beaver found by construction workers in Mississippi to a playful, healthy animal showcases the dedication and love Holly and her family have invested in her care. Beavers are often considered... The post Rescued baby beaver’s instincts kick in and uses stuffed toys to build ‘dam’ appeared first on Animal Channel.