All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

New AI can work out whether you’re gay or straight from a photograph

Great – not – advertisement for researchers for hire eager to sell AI and souls.

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An algorithm deduced the sexuality of people on a dating site with up to 91% accuracy, raising tricky ethical questions

Artificial intelligence can accurately guess whether people are gay or straight based on photos of their faces, according to new research suggesting that machines can have significantly better “gaydar” than humans.

The study from Stanford University – which found that a computer algorithm could correctly distinguish between gay and straight men 81% of the time, and 74% for women – has raised questions about the biological origins of sexual orientation, the ethics of facial-detection technology and the potential for this kind of software to violate people’s privacy or be abused for anti-LGBT purposes.

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Giving the ‘gay cure’ quack a TV platform is an abuse of free speech | Owen Jones

Pimping to the right wing is all part of trying to build audience or fake being fair.

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Giving a TV platform to a ‘gay cure’ quack highlights a trend. The idea that free speech guarantees the right to incite hatred of minorities must be resisted

So-called “gay cure therapy” isn’t medicine, science, or indeed therapy: it’s abuse. Medical professionals regard the practice, which sees homosexuality as a fixable “condition”, as scientifically discredited, unethical and harmful. When my first boyfriend came out, aged 15, his parents drove him to a pseudo-scientist to be cured of his homosexuality: consider this against a context of being bullied at school for being gay. Today, he is recovering from crystal meth addiction.

This week, Good Morning Britain provided a platform for a “gay cure” quack named Mike Davidson. “On next we’ll meet the man who claims we can ‘cure’ homosexuality in men,” the show casually tweeted. “Any thoughts?” All of a sudden an abusive practice that inflicts horrendous psychological harm, that is rooted in extreme bigotry, in the very idea that being gay is a bad thing and that gay people should cease to exist, became an opinion worthy of national television. However much Piers Morgan harangued him, Davidson’s presence on air conferred on him a legitimacy he doesn’t deserve. There are different views, after all, on how much the rich should be taxed, or how high the minimum wage should be, or who should own the railways. But whether homosexuality should be erased by an abusive practice treated as a valid alternative perspective? Believing LGBTQ people to be inferior and desiring their disappearance from society is not simply a matter of opinion to be debated. It is bigotry – which causes profound damage to human beings.

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Thursday Open Thread | Trumpcare Demons are Back…Time to pick up the phone

From Balloon Juice:

Time to call the Senate again

by David Anderson

at 2:12 pm on September 6, 2017

MCCAIN says he supports Graham Cassidy healthcare bill. Would vote for it

— Peter Sullivan (@PeterSullivan4) September 6, 2017

Graham-Cassidy would shift money from states that have successfully implemented the ACA to non-expansion states and then ratchet down the block grants.

Time to call the Senate again.

We need to run out the clock to 12:01 October 1, 2017 at which point the healthcare reconciliation instructions expire. Encourage Senate Democrats to submit bills to the CBO for scoring so that they are back-logged and can not rapidly score anything that needs to be scored for reconciliation. Call and encourage the Sanders budget team to go to town with the Parliamentarian. 24 days need to be burned.

Here’s what’s in Graham-Cassidy:

There’s one Obamacare repeal bill left standing. Here’s what’s in it.

By Kim Soffen

Sept. 6, 2017

After a dramatic series of failed Senate votes in July, there’s one repeal-and-replace plan for the Affordable Care Act left standing. Trump is pushing for a vote, per Politico, and John McCain has announced his support, but the bill has yet to gain significant traction.

The proposal, crafted by Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.), essentially turns control of the health-care markets over to the states. Rather than funding Medicaid and subsidies directly, that money would be put into a block grant that a state could use to develop any health-care system it wants. It also allows states to opt out of many ACA regulations. “If you like Obamacare, you can keep it,” Graham has said, using a common nickname for the health-care law. “If you want to replace it, you can.”

In reality, that may not be true. The Medicaid expansion and subsidy funding would be cut sharply compared to current spending, going to zero in a decade.

“You can’t actually keep the same program if your federal funding is being cut by a third in 2026,” said Aviva Aron-Dine, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. And even putting aside the cuts, she said, the block grant structure would fundamentally change the health-care landscape. “[Funding] is capped, so it wouldn’t go up and down with the economy,” when fewer or more people become eligible for subsidies.

These demons continue to want to take away healthcare from the most vulnerable. We must pick up the fight against them once again.
Call your Rep and Senators

A Second Look at the Steele Dossier—Knowing What We Know Now | Just Security

One clue as to the credibility of the sources in these reports is that Steele shared them with the FBI.  The fact that the FBI reportedly sought to work with him and to pay him to develop additional information on the sources suggest that at least some of them were worth taking seriously.  At the very least, the FBI will be able to validate the credibility of the sources, and therefore better judge the information.  As one recently retired senior intelligence officer with deep experience in espionage investigations quipped, “I assign more credence to the Steele report knowing that the FBI paid him for his research.  From my experience, there is nobody more miserly than the FBI.  If they were willing to pay Mr. Steele, they must have seen something of real value.”

Source: A Second Look at the Steele Dossier—Knowing What We Know Now | Just Security

Massive Oregon wildfire started by teen with fireworks, police say

Boys being boys can kill and destroy – at 15 and 70+

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A 15-year-old male is under investigation for causing a fire that has burned more than 30,000 acres as is still not under control

A fire burning over 30,000 acres in the Columbia River Gorge just outside Portland was started by a teenager setting off fireworks on a forest trail last Saturday, police say.

Oregon state police spokesman Bill Fugate said that the suspect under investigation by police was a 15-year old-male from Vancouver, Washington.

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AMERICA/UNITED STATES – Bishops on the end of DACA: “A decision that is reprehensible and heartbreaking”

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Washington – The US Episcopal Conference quickly responded to the Trump administration’s decision to put an end to a program implemented under President Barack Obama which aimed at protecting the so-called young “dreamers” from expulsion, defining the move as “reprehensible” and “heartbreaking”.
The program called “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – DACA” had created a temporary shield for nearly 800,000 undocumented youngsters and young adults who had come to the United States as a child and who, thanks to the DACA program, managed to complete higher education and work legally.
Responding to the decision to put an end to the program, the Bishops wrote: “Today, our nation has done the opposite of how Scripture calls us to respond. It is a step back from the progress that we need to make as a country”.
The statement was signed by Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, USCCB president; Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gómez, USCCB vice president; Bishop Joe S. Vásquez of Austin, Texas, chairman of the Committee on Migration; and Bishop Joseph J. Tyson of Yakima, Washington, chairman of the Subcommittee on Pastoral Care of Migrants, Refugees, and Travelers.
The Bishops said that the decision by the Trump administration announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a “heartbreaking moment in our history that shows the absence of mercy and goodwill, and a short-sighted vision for the future”.