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☆ Fact Check-Image purporting to show Donald Trump mugshot is AI-generated
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

An image purporting to show a mugshot of former U.S. President Donald Trump is AI-generated. The image seemingly shows Trump pictured in front of a mugshot wall wearing a black t-shirt. The size of the shoulders similarly does not match “the familiar size and build of the highly-photographed former president,” he added. External context can be “just as important as the details in the image itself in ascertaining the validity of an image,” Chen told Reuters. The image is AI-generated and does not show an authentic mugshot of Trump.

☆ A camera caught a fish swimming more than 8,300 meters below the surface near Japan, making it the deepest observation of a fish ever recorded
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-02 | by ( Kenneth Niemeyer | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Researchers spotted the fish in the Izu-Ogasawara trench near Japan, the outlet reported. Previously, the deepest recorded fish was seen at 8,178 meters in the Mariana Trench in 2018Top editors give you the stories you want — delivered right to your inbox each weekday. Previously, the deepest recorded fish was spotted 8,178 meters down in the Mariana Trench, according to BBC News. The previous deepest recorded fish in the Mariana Trench was identified as a Mariana snailfish, which had been known to scientists since 2014, Insider reported at the time. "We predicted the deepest fish would be there and we predicted it would be a snailfish," Jamieson said according to the outlet.

☆ The US housing market is in recession - and the pandemic has created a unique economic headache, elite strategist Liz Ann Sonders says
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Theron Mohamed | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Sonders touted stocks that can weather inflation, recession, and higher interest rates. "You've got recessions in areas like certain segments of consumer goods, certainly in housing," Sonders said during a recent episode of "The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway." Recession, inflation, and winning stocksSonders sounded the recession alarm during the interview. She singled out the housing market as particularly vulnerable, given valuations and mortgage rates are closely tied to interest rates. She suggested they look for companies that can thrive during periods of inflation, recession, and elevated interest rates.

☆ College Should Be More Like Prison
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-06 | by ( Brooke Allen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

Enrollment in these subjects is plummeting, and students who take literature and history classes often come in with rudimentary ideas about the disciplines. Interviewed in a recent New Yorker article, Prof. James Shapiro of Columbia said teaching “Middlemarch” to today’s college students is like landing a 747 on a rural airstrip. Never have I been more grateful to teach where I do: at a men’s maximum-security prison. My students there, enrolled in a for-credit college program, provide a sharp contrast with contemporary undergraduates. The classes are often the most interesting part of these men’s prison lives.

☆ Continuing Sanctions Against Russia Mark ‘Tectonic’ Shift
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Richard Vanderford | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +7 min

Hundreds of companies, though, decamped, calculating that the looming threat of sanctions ratcheting up and reputational risk warranted an exit. Prof. Sonnenfeld and Mr. Tannebaum both have been personally sanctioned by Russia, which has accused critics of engaging in a “Russophobic” campaign. “Countries continue to rely on those tools for foreign policy. The Russia sanctions have functioned as a “wake-up call” to the C-suite, Mr. Smith said. The use of coordinated sanctions, both in Russia and as a broader foreign policy tool, doesn’t seem to be going away, experts agreed.

☆ A Year After Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, Tough Sanctions Linger
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Richard Vanderford | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +7 min

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago prompted a volley of tough sanctions from the U.S. and its allies, a historic use of economic measures that will likely have lasting implications for businesses. Hundreds of companies, though, decamped, calculating that the looming threat of sanctions ratcheting up and reputational risk warranted an exit. “Countries continue to rely on those tools for foreign policy. The Russia sanctions have functioned as a “wake-up call” to the C-suite, Mr. Smith said. The use of coordinated sanctions, both in Russia and as a broader foreign policy tool, doesn’t seem to be going away, experts agreed.

☆ What CEOs Are Getting Wrong About the Future of Work—and How to Make It Right
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-17 | by ( Te-Ping Chen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Adam Grant wants you to be less scared. A professor of organizational psychology at the Wharton School of Business and author of the bestselling “Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know,” Prof. Grant has spent his career researching how people work, what motivates them, and the pursuit of personal and professional happiness. Three years after Covid-19 hit, creating a vast global experiment in how work gets done, Prof. Grant says that some leaders are using this moment to figure out how to create happier, more productive workplaces. Others, he argues, are shrinking from change, and risk being left behind.

☆ The 2023 Super Bowl Ads Will Feature Booze, Betting and Jesus
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-10 | by ( Megan Graham | Patrick Coffee | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +10 min

The Super Bowl ads on Sunday are poised to promote an unusual mix of alcohol brands, gambling and Jesus. The Super Bowl still regularly draws an audience of around 100 million people, making it TV’s biggest event of the year and advertising’s biggest night. Planters’ Super Bowl ad features comedians mocking Mr. Peanut. The ads are likely to strike a lighter tone than the occasionally somber messages of Super Bowl ads in recent, highly politicized years or the early pandemic, said Anjali S. Bal, an associate professor of marketing at Babson College. Many Super Bowl advertisers have again released their ads well before Super Bowl Sunday to increase their chances of being seen.

☆ Facebook co-founder Moskovitz funds research into cooling the Earth with sunlight reflection
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-07 | by ( Catherine Clifford | In Catclifford | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

(It's sometimes called solar radiation modification or solar geoengineering.) But it's potentially important, it could be very, very helpful, it could be disastrous," Stone told CNBC. And so it goes for solar geoengineering," Stone said. Everyone perceives it to be controversial," Camilloni told CNBC. "This is no one's Plan A for how you deal with climate risk, and whatever happens, we have to cut our emissions," Stone told CNBC.

☆ The Numbers Show That MIT Has a Free-Speech Problem
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Daryl Morey | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Twenty-one years as an executive in the National Basketball Association has taught me to start with the data when confronted with a problem. Now, I am asking my alma mater to do the same on the important issue of free expression. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has suffered several embarrassing incidents regarding free speech in recent years. These include the cancellation of Prof. Dorian Abbot ’s John Carlson Lecture on climate change in October 2021 and the institution of a March 2022 policy that students may not ask others to wear masks.

New research conducted by a professor at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School found that the AI-driven chatbot GPT-3 was able to pass the final exam for the school's Master of Business Administration (MBA) program. Prof. Christian Terwiesch, who authored the research paper "Would Chat GPT3 Get a Wharton MBA? Terwiesch’s findings come as educators become increasingly concerned that such chat bots could inspire cheating. The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, on Sept. 28, 2022. Experts who work in both artificial intelligence and education have acknowledged that bots like ChatGPT could be a detriment to education in the future.

☆ Archaeologists found 38 skeletons in a 7,000-year-old mass grave. All but one had been decapitated.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( Marianne Guenot | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy PolicyArchaeologists have discovered a 7,000-year-old mass grave in Slovakia containing 38 skeletons, with all but one decapitated. A ditch, where the mass grave was found, ran around the village over the length of approximately a mile. An unexpected discoveryA picture shows the mass grave found in Vráble-Ve`lke Lehemby in Slovakia. Prof. Dr. Martin Furholt, Institute for Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology/Kiel UniversityThese weren't the first headless bodies found in the ditch. That's why the discovery of such a huge mass of headless bodies came as a complete surprise, Fuchs said.

☆ ChatGPT is coming for classrooms, hospitals, marketing departments, and everything else as the next great startup boom emerges
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Emilia David | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Entrepreneurs are encouraged to look at generative AI as a tool to solve a myriad of problems. This year will be the year new ways of using generative AI will thrive. Jasper competitor Copy.ai, which uses ChatGPT for marketing, raised $11 million in Series A in October 2021. Not all generative AI companies have longevity, and not all sectors have problems that generative AI can solve. For now, investors are confident their bets in generative AI will pay off, said Josh Constine, partner at Signal Fire.

☆ UN says ozone layer slowly healing, hole to mend by 2066
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( The Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +4 min

Earth’s protective ozone layer is slowly but noticeably healing at a pace that would fully mend the hole over Antarctica in about 43 years, a new United Nations report says. “In the upper stratosphere and in the ozone hole we see things getting better,” said Paul Newman, co-chair of the scientific assessment. Natural weather patterns in the Antarctic also affect ozone hole levels, which peak in the fall. A third generation of those chemicals, called HFC, was banned a few years ago not because it would eat at the ozone layer but because it is a heat-trapping greenhouse gas. The report also warned that efforts to artificially cool the planet by putting aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect the sunlight would thin the ozone layer by as much as 20% in Antarctica.

☆ Fact Check-No evidence COVID-19 vaccines cause ‘turbo cancer’
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

A video in which a Canadian doctor claims that COVID-19 vaccines cause so-called “turbo cancer” is not based on facts, according to five experts who spoke to Reuters. He claimed that COVID-19 vaccines damage the immune systems of recipients and cause aggressive new cancers, as well as flare-ups in those in remission from the disease. During the same period, the charity estimated that 30,000 fewer people began their cancer treatment compared to 2019 (here). Reuters has previously addressed claims where COVID-19 vaccines have been falsely linked to weakening the immune system (here), and causing cancer (here and here). Five experts told Reuters that there is no evidence to suggest COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer, nor so-called “turbo cancer,” but said a drop in screenings during the pandemic may have led to rise in cancers first detected at their later stages.

☆ Kevin McCarthy could face a floor fight for speaker. That hasn’t happened in a century.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-26 | by ( Https | Media-Cldnry.S-Nbcnews.Com Image Upload Newscms Kyle-Stewart-Circle-Byline-Template.Jpg | Kyle Stewart | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +8 min

Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is struggling to secure the 218 votes he needs to be elected speaker of the House in January. In this game of chicken, if the conservatives don’t blink and McCarthy refuses to back down, it could result in a chaotic floor fight with House members taking multiple votes for speaker — something that has not happened in a century. The House was called to order at noon and the chamber moved to the first order of business: electing the speaker. The House held three more unsuccessful votes for speaker that day before adjourning just after 2 p.m. The date was Feb. 2, 1856, two months after the first speaker vote.

☆ Not All Retailers Are Overstocked for the Holidays. They’re Discounting Anyway.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-25 | by ( Katie Deighton | Kate Ridley | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +7 min

Many big retailers are discounting heavily and earlier this holiday season to clear excess stock from their shelves and warehouses. But others, with no substantive overhang of inventory, are also offering bigger sales than usual to satisfy shoppers who have come to expect them. “This is more of a reaction to what’s happening in this peak holiday-sales period.”Not all companies are being pulled into the discounting vortex. “We think that’s a good consumer experience.”Catbird, a Brooklyn-based jewelry company, is offering customers up to 20% off during the holidays, the biggest discount of its 18-year history. “No business owner who’s being honest is going to tell you they’re happy to have sales,” she said.

☆ Disabled Shoppers Struggle With Inaccessible Self-Checkouts
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-21 | by ( Katie Deighton | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +8 min

Stores’ self-checkout machines can annoy shoppers with error messages about unexpected items in the bagging area and other hiccups. PREVIEWThe problem is spreading as companies continue to install self-service transaction machines around the world, some disabled people and disability-rights activists say. The Baltimore-based organization last year worked with McDonald’s Corp. to upgrade its self-service kiosks so that they could be used independently by blind people. Walmart said its self-checkout system was accessible because staff had been trained to help disabled customers use it. Steps toward potential regulationsThe U.S. is looking into the possibility of creating regulations for the accessibility of self-service checkouts and ordering systems.

Others have ground to a halt, sending companies back to technology that is less sci-fi, but can be deployed more quickly and cost-effectively. Some companies are satisfied their robots are doing the job. The perils of the outdoors are a big problem for delivery robots, in particular. Some people have also raised concerns that delivery robots could block wheelchair access on sidewalks or otherwise get in the way of humans, leading local authorities to limit or prohibit their use. Toronto, for example, last December banned delivery robots.

☆ Video shows lemur picking its nose so deep it touches the back of its throat, then eats it — behavior previously unknown to science
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Marianne Guenot | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A video shows a lemur picking its nose, a behavior never before observed by scientists. The animal shoves one of her long agile fingers all the way up her nose to her throat. The video shows Kali, an aye-aye living in the Duke Lemur Center in North Carolina, shoving her 3-inch long finger all the way up her nose, taking it out again, and licking it. A picture of a juvenile aye-aye shows its long slender fingers, which are used to hunt for bugs — and for nose picking. Renaud BoiselThe scan, above, showed the lemur's finger going all the way up its nose to the back of its throat.

☆ Why Some People Are Drawn to Buying the Latest Gadget
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Lisa Ward | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

‘Tech-gadget lovers seem to have an intrinsic love of learning about technology,’ says Prof. Justin McManus. Why do some people buy the latest tech gadgets? The conventional wisdom often says it is mainly to signal status or power. Instead, the study found, tech lovers often buy the latest gadget because they want to learn about new technologies. For these purchasers, new gadgets can help foster personal growth and even make them feel more competent.

Now, amid the recent controversies surrounding the rapper, this college professor sees value in launching another course on Ye. He taught his first two Ye-inspired courses, titled The Politics of Kanye West: Black Genius and Sonic Aesthetics, at Washington University in St. Louis starting in 2017. But unlike his previous ones, this class will be divided into three parts, “the old Kanye, the new Kanye, and the who Kanye,” and examine Ye’s recent behavior. “The course has never, ever been about Kanye,” McCune said. If the University of Rochester’s college curriculum committee approves the new Ye course, he plans to teach it during the spring or fall semester of 2023.

☆ Fact Check-Guillain-Barré syndrome, Bell’s palsy, acute flaccid myelitis and transverse myelitis are not polio ‘renamed’
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-19 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +9 min

Guillain-Barré syndrome, Bell’s palsy, acute flaccid myelitis and transverse myelitis are not polio “renamed”, despite claims posted online. It was NEVER eradicated, it's been renamed several times, Guillian Barre, Bells Palsy, Acute Flaccid Myelitis, Transverse Myelitis... Any neurological disorder has been renamed polio.”A similar post can be found here. Though primarily seen following an acute infection, GBS can also be a rare side effect of vaccination (here). Four medical syndromes with symptoms that can include muscle weakness and paralysis are not “polio renamed”, as claimed on social media. Poliovirus infection, while extremely rare, can lead to some of these syndromes, but the syndromes themselves also have other, more common causes and distinct symptoms.

☆ Trump sues CNN, Herschel Walker threatens Daily Beast and America loses
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-08 | by ( Ronnell Andersen Jones | Prof. Ronnell Andersen Jones Is The Teitelbaum Chair In Law At The University Of Utah | An Affiliated Fellow At The Yale Law School Information Society Project. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +7 min

Once a relatively rare move for public officials, threatening a libel suit is fast becoming a go-to tool for some who hope to influence public narratives, if not right wrongs. The odds that any elected official or candidate emerges victorious in a defamation suit are exceedingly low. Trump has a longstanding pattern of threatening libel actions that he either does not bring or does not continue. Others, including recent Trump campaign lawsuits against the Times and CNN, have been filed but dismissed by judges in state and federal courts. Trump knows that this is about the court of public opinion more than it is about the court of law.

☆ Fact Check-Video shows 1965 Australian TV interview with man claiming the moon is made of plasma
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-05 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Social media users are sharing a video of an excerpt from an archival interview with a man who claims the moon is made of plasma and that moon landing attempts would fail for that reason. The man’s identity remains unclear, and he offers no evidence to support his theory in the interview – which dates to 1965, four years before the first manned moon landing. This interview is no longer on their website.”The clip shows an interview recorded by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) with a man identified as “Prof. R. Foster.”ABC posted the full-length interview on its Facebook page (here ) in April 2019 and its YouTube channel (here ) in May 2019. The video shows a 1965 Australian television interview with a man who theorizes that the moon is made of plasma and that landing on it would be impossible.

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