The Globalist Podcast (December 4, 2023) – A look at how the Cop 28 summit is going with Andrew Freedman, senior climate reporter at Axios. Plus: Venezuela’s referendum and a murder conspiracy in Delhi.
Daily Archives: December 4, 2023
Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Dec 11, 2023
What Happened When the U.S. Failed to Prosecute an Insurrectionist Ex-President
After the Civil War, Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, was to be tried for treason. Does the debacle hold lessons for the trials awaiting Donald Trump?
By Jill Lepore
Jefferson Davis, the half-blind ex-President of the Confederate States of America, leaned on a cane as he hobbled into a federal courthouse in Richmond, Virginia. Only days before, a Chicago Tribune reporter, who’d met Davis on the boat ride to Richmond, had written that “his step is light and elastic.” But in court, facing trial for treason, Davis, fifty-eight, gave every appearance of being bent and broken. A reporter from Kentucky described him as “a gaunt and feeble-looking man,” wearing a soft black hat and a sober black suit, as if he were a corpse. He’d spent two years in a military prison. He wanted to be released. A good many Americans wanted him dead. “We’ll hang Jeff Davis from a sour-apple tree,” they sang to the tune of “John Brown’s Body.”
The Inside Story of Microsoft’s Partnership with OpenAI
The companies had honed a protocol for releasing artificial intelligence ambitiously but safely. Then OpenAI’s board exploded all their carefully laid plans.
At around 11:30 a.m. on the Friday before Thanksgiving, Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, was having his weekly meeting with senior leaders when a panicked colleague told him to pick up the phone. An executive from OpenAI, an artificial-intelligence startup into which Microsoft had invested a reported thirteen billion dollars, was calling to explain that within the next twenty minutes the company’s board would announce that it had fired Sam Altman, OpenAI’s C.E.O. and co-founder. It was the start of a five-day crisis that some people at Microsoft began calling the Turkey-Shoot Clusterfuck.
The New York Times — Monday, December 4, 2023
Israel, Expanding Offensive, Tells More Gazans to Evacuate
As its ground forces prepared to move in the south of Gaza, residents there were told to leave their homes, spreading fear and confusion.
What the Scale of Displacement in Gaza Looks Like
Eighty percent of Gazans are displaced from their homes as Israel orders more evacuations. See where thousands have been sheltering amid the war’s destruction.
Ego, Fear and Money: How the A.I. Fuse Was Lit
The people who were most afraid of the risks of artificial intelligence decided they should be the ones to build it. Then distrust fueled a spiraling competition.
‘Medical Freedom’ Activists Take Aim at New Target: Childhood Vaccine Mandates
Mississippi has long had high childhood immunization rates, but a federal judge has ordered the state to allow parents to opt out on religious grounds.
Boomers Daily 