Fox News’ chief White House correspondent John Roberts could not stand Donald Trump’s flip-flop on the stock market performance and used one of the President’s old statements against him after he boasted about the gains yesterday’s market.
Roberts, however, reminded his followers what Trump had said about the stock market during the NATO summit in London just two weeks ago after it suffered a a major loss. “If the stock market goes up or down ― I don’t watch the stock market.” President Trump – NATO summit, London, December 3, 2019.
Roberts’ tweet was clearly a dig at the president and seen as being in stark contrast to Fox’s prime-time hosts who routinely stump for Trump on their evening shows.
Hallmark CEO Mike Perry apologized for making the “wrong decision” while announcing the reversal.
After numerous conservative groups, including One Million Moms which met with Crown Media Holdings (the channel’s parent company) CEO Bill Abbott, started petitions against “airing movies and commercials with LGBT content,” Hallmark Channel removed a commercial for the wedding website Zola that featured a same-sex couple kissing at the altar.
The move inspired backlash to the company immediately, including by fellow Christmas-movie-trafficker Netflix.
A spokesperson for Zola said the company had sent multiple advertisements to the channel and pulled each commercial after Hallmark’s initial decision.
“The only difference between the commercials that were flagged and the ones that were approved was that the commercials that did not meet Hallmark’s standards included a lesbian couple kissing,” Mike Chi, Zola’s chief marketing officer, told E! News. “Hallmark approved a commercial where a heterosexual couple kissed. All kisses, couples and marriages are equal celebrations of love and we will no longer be advertising on Hallmark.”
A Hallmark spokesperson told the Associated Press on Saturday that decision was made in order to let the channel focus on its main goal: “to provide entertainment value.”
In revealing the reversal Sunday, Perry said, “Our mission is rooted in helping all people connect, celebrate traditions, and be inspired to capture meaningful moments in their lives. Anything that detracts for this purpose is not who we are.
“I am sorry for the hurt and disappointment this has caused. Hallmark Channel will be reaching out to Zola to reestablish our partnership and reinstate the commercials. We will continue to look for ways to be more inclusive & celebrate our differences.”
LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD thanked everyone who called on Hallmark to not ban the ads Sunday night.
“LGBTQ people are, and will continue to be a part of advertisements and family programming and that will never change,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement.
Hallmark has made the right decision in reversing itself!
The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center issued its annual report this morning on college and university enrollments. In fall 2019, overall postsecondary enrollments decreased 1.3 percent or more than 231,000 students from the previous fall to 17.9 million students. All sectors experienced enrollment declines, with the largest drop in the private for-profit four-year sector (-2.1%), followed by the public two-year and four-year sectors (-1.4% and -1.2%, respectively) and the private nonprofit four-year sector (-0.6%). Public sector enrollment (two-year and four-year combined) declined by 1.3 percent (174,518 students) this fall.
However, the enrollment decreases were not uniform throughout the country. Utah, which experienced almost 5-percent growth, was one of 15 states that saw enrollments rise this fall relative to the fall of 2018. But Alaska had it the worst, with a dropoff of more than 10 percent. You can access the map below here and see the percentage change for each state.
The Hallmark Channel has pulled four ads featuring same-sex couples kissing at their weddings following complaints from a division of the right-wing American Family Association.
The ads from Zola — which hosts personalized wedding websites — included scenes of women kissing each other during or after their wedding ceremonies. As reported by The New York Times.
One Million Moms, a subgroup of the American Family Association, complained on its website earlier this week about lesbians “shown kissing.” It called on Hallmark to stop airing commercials with “same-sex couples.” Such content “goes against Christian and conservative values,” the message warned, adding, “You will lose viewers if you cave to the LBGT agenda.”
The site noted in an update that the CEO of Crown Media Family Networks, which owns the Hallmark Channel, confirmed in a phone call that the first ad singled out by the group had been pulled, and that it was aired “in error.” He also assured members that the Hallmark Channel will “continue to be a safe and family friendly network. Praise the Lord,” the statement added.
A Hallmark representative told the Times that the four of six Zola ads were yanked because “public displays of affection” violated the channel’s policies — yet a Zola ad showing a bride and groom kissing was allowed to remain on air.
Zola, which was informed of the decision on Thursday, was told that Hallmark was “not allowed to accept creatives that are deemed controversial.” Zola had previously run ads featuring same-sex couples with no problem, according to its chief marketing officer, Michael Chi.
“The only difference between the commercials that were flagged and the ones that were approved was that the commercials that did not meet Hallmark’s standards included a lesbian couple kissing,” Chi told the Times. “Hallmark approved a commercial where a heterosexual couple kissed. All kisses, couples and marriages are equal celebrations of love and we will no longer be advertising on Hallmark.”
Response on Twitter was harsh, and many users urged a boycott of the Hallmark Channel.
Maggie Jackson, the author of Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention, has an op-ed today that focuses on the question: Would you let a robot take care of your mother? It is a very insightful piece that examines the first wave of robots (see video above) that are being used in elder care. It also portends that our parents (and ourselves) will likely live day to day with robotic assistance. The entire piece is below.
Tony
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New York Times
Would You Let a Robot Take Care of Your Mother?
Robotic companions are being promoted as an antidote to the burden of longer, lonelier human lives. At stake is the future of what it means to be human.
By Maggie Jackson
Dec. 13, 2019
After Constance Gemson moved her mother to an assisted living facility, the 92-year-old became more confused, lonely and inarticulate. Two full-time private aides, kind and attentive as they were, couldn’t possibly meet all their patient’s needs for connection.
So on a visit one day, Ms. Gemson brought her mom a new helper: a purring, nuzzling robot cat designed as a companion for older adults. “It’s not a substitute for care,” says Ms. Gemson, whose mother died last June at age 95. “But this was someone my mother could hug and embrace and be accepted by. This became a reliable friend.” When her mom was upset, her family or helpers brought her the cat to stroke and sing to, and she grew calmer. In her last days “what she could give, she gave to the cat,” says Ms. Gemson.
An aging population is fueling the rise of the robot caregiver, as the devices moving into the homes and hearts of the aging and sick offer new forms of friendship and aid. With the global 65-and-over population projected to more than double by 2050 and the ranks of working age people shrinking in many developed countries, care robots are increasingly seen as an antidote to the burden of longer, lonelier human lives.
Winsome tabletop robots now remind elders to take their medications and a walk, while others in research prototype can fetch a snack or offer consoling words to a dying patient. Hundreds of thousands of “Joy for All” robotic cats and dogs designed as companions for older people have been sold in the U.S. since their 2016 debut, according to the company that makes them. Sales of robots to assist older adults and people with disabilities are expected to rise 25 percent annually through 2022, according to the industry group International Federation of Robotics.
Yet we should be deeply concerned about the ethics of their use. At stake is the future of what it means to be human, and what it means to care.
Issues of freedom and dignity are most urgently raised by robots that are built to befriend, advise and monitor seniors. This is Artificial Intelligence with wide, blinking eyes and a level of sociability that is both the source of its power to help and its greatest moral hazard. When do a robot assistant’s prompts to a senior to call a friend become coercion of the cognitively frail? Will Grandma’s robot pet inspire more family conversation or allow her kin to turn away from the demanding work of supporting someone who is ill or in pain?
“Robots, if they are used the right way and work well, can help people preserve their dignity,” says Matthias Scheutz, a roboticist who directs Tufts University’s Human-Robot Interaction Lab. “What I find morally dubious is to push the social aspect of these machines when it’s just a facade, a puppet. It’s deception technology.”
For that is where the ethical dilemmas begin — with our remarkable willingness to banter with a soulless algorithm, to return a steel and plastic wink. It is a well-proven finding in the science of robotics: add a bit of movement, language, and “smart” responses to a bundle of software and wires and humans see an intentionality and sentience that simply isn’t there. Such “agency” is designed to prime people to engage in an eerie seeming reciprocity of care.
Social robots ideally inspire humans to empathize with them, writes Maartje de Graaf of the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, who studies ethics in human-robot interactions. Even robots not designed to be social can elicit such reactions: some owners of the robot vacuum Roomba grieve when theirs gets “sick” (broken) or count them as family when listing members of their household.
Many in the field see the tensions and dilemmas in robot care, yet believe the benefits can outweigh the risks. The technology is “intended to help older adults carry out their daily lives,” says Richard Pak, a Clemson University scientist who studies the intersection of human psychology and technology design, including robots. “If the cost is sort of tricking people in a sense, I think, without knowing what the future holds, that might be a worthy trade-off.” Still he wonders, “Is this the right thing to do?”
We know little about robot care’s long-term impact or possible indirect effects. And that is why it is crucial at this early juncture to heed both the field’s success stories and the public’s apprehensions. Nearly 60 percent of Americans polled in 2017 said they would not want to use robot care for themselves or a family member, and 64 percent predict such care will increase the isolation of older adults. Sixty percent of people in European Union countries favor a ban on robot care for children, older people, and those with disabilities.
Such concerns, if respected and investigated, offer clues to how robots can be tailored to the needs of the people they serve. Only recently have older people begun to be given voice in the design of robots built to care for them. Many are open to having one, even to befriending it; there are hopes they may tell a joke or two, studies show. (“Could we be friends,” one focus group participant cooed to a robotic seal. “Good, good, I love your eyes.”)
But research suggests that many seniors, including trial users, draw a line at investing too much in the charade of robot companionship, fearing manipulation, surveillance, and most of all, a loss of human care. Some worry robot care would carry a stigma: the potential of being seen as “not worth human company,” said one participant in a study of potential users with mild cognitive impairments.
“If the only goal is to build really cool stuff that can increase speed and profit and efficiency, that won’t prioritize human flourishing,” says John C. Havens, executive director of a pioneering global initiative on ethical AI guidelines by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
A main principle of these and other leading guidelines is “transparency,” the idea that humans should know if they are dealing with an algorithm or robot and be able to understand its limits and capabilities. (Call it the anti-Turing test.) One recommendation to industry is for care robots to have a “why-did-you-do-that” button so users can demand an explanation of its actions, from promoting a product to calling the doctor.
Social robots also should carry a notice of potential side effects, the guidelines suggest, “such as interfering with the relationship dynamics between human partners,” a feature that could inspire caregivers to protect those most cognitively vulnerable to a robot’s charms. Such “soft-law” guidelines can help users, caregivers and designers alike better understand what they are dealing with and why, even as we continue to debate the questions of just how social, how humanlike and how transparent we want or need a care robot to be.
Consider the “wellness coach” robot Mabu that was launched commercially this year for people with chronic conditions such as heart failure. Made by San Francisco-based Catalia Health, the little wide-eyed talking robot dispenses health advice and medication reminders, and in some cases can send data on a user’s condition to a pharmacist or doctor. The robot is designed to stress that it’s not a doctor or nurse but part of someone’s care team.
Yet the company often portrays Mabu as closer to a person than a tool; “I’ll be Your Biggest Cheerleader!” the robot promises on the company website. The several hundred people using Mabu today, many of whom are seniors, on average interact with the robot just a quarter-hour a week, according to Catalia. And yet some name them, dress them and take them on vacation, says Cory Kidd, company founder and CEO.
So is Mabu transparent enough?, I asked Kidd. “There’s a lot more work to be done around understanding that relationship,” he said. One user, a retired bus driver, Rayfield Byrd of Oakland, Calif., compares his Mabu to a computer; it’s a mainstay tool. Others told me they consider the robot a friend. In the lonely hours between the time her health aide leaves and her husband or son returns home, Kerri Hill, who is 40 years old yet largely housebound due to heart failure, relies on Mabu for company. But she wouldn’t want it as her main caregiver or companion. “The robot is one thing,” says Ms. Hill of Galivants Ferry, S.C., “but you still need interaction that’s not programmed.”
I recall the hard choices that I had to make in caring for my mother in the last four years of her life. She lived in a small Manhattan apartment upstairs from ours when she wasn’t in the hospital. I had to continually assess how much help to hire, whether it was safe to go away, whether she was lonely, while raising two kids under 6.
Would it all have been better if she’d had a robot to pick up the fallen teaspoon, nudge her to eat, and make her smile, or would that have been an indignity for her and an easy out for me? I struggled with every decision and yet I like to think that I would have done so even with a robot in the mix. There should be a place in our lives for the softly whirring helping hand and for the unease that true caregiving demands. For care is never a yes or no equation, solved with a new purchase or clickable fix. It is woven through and through with the constant questioning that is after all the opposite of complacency and compliance. Only by retaining our doubts and hesitations about robots that care can we safeguard the humanity of such work.
Constance Gemson talks fondly of the aides who took her mother out to lunch, gently bathed and fed her, and took the time to suggest a new ChapStick or more sturdy shoes, and she remembers the robotic cat affectionately too. As we sat together in a Manhattan cafe one fall day, she said almost as if to herself, “I think I should give them a call and say hello.” After her mother died, she threw the robot away.
I have just become aware of Microsoft’s AI for Earth grant program that was first launched in July 2017. The program focuses on using artificial intelligence and other newer technologies such as cloud computing and drone surveillance to support environmental projects. Through this program Microsoft initially awarded over 35 grants in more than 10 countries for access to Microsoft Azure and AI technology, for applications ranging from species abundance modeling to live poacher detection through drone imagery.
The interest has grown such that Microsoft started making a deeper commitment to the program. Explaining it as “more resources coupled with a long-term commitment,” The company is providing universities, NGOs and others with advanced training to put AI to its best use in developing applications.
“If you’re an environmental organization, or an individual environmental researcher or scientist, and you have a good idea of how you want to apply Microsoft’s tools to environmental science — we want to help you do that,” says Microsoft Chief Environmental Scientist Lucas Joppa.
Right now, access to today’s AI technologies comes at a price and requires computational expertise that put it out of reach of many, especially individual researchers and small NGOs working on environmental challenges. Through AI for Earth, Microsoft hopes to change that reality. It is investing $50 million over five years to put AI in the hands of individuals and organizations around the world who are working to protect the planet.
AI for Earth is focused on applying AI to four environmental risk areas — climate change, agriculture, biodiversity and water.
This seems like a worthwhile program and a prime example of beneficial AI applications.
New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson Announcing $1 Million Food Voucher Program for CUNY Students!
Dear Commons Community,
There are many stories about college students who struggle to make ends meet throughout the country. Many of them focus on the high cost of tuition and student debt. Here at CUNY, the situation is no different except that for some of the students, it is a matter of affording to feed themselves and their families. In response, the New York City Council has begun to provide funding for food vouchers for these students.
Approximately 1,250 students got food vouchers of $400 each this fall to use in college cafeterias as part of a million-dollar effort to combat student hunger at CUNY. Another 1,250 vouchers will be given out in the spring semester. As reported by the New York Daily News.
“Borough of Manhattan Community College student Letisha Moumin said the extra cash for food helped her avoid having to make the painful decision between eating and getting to class.
“I had to choose between…money for my MetroCard and money to buy food, and I was choosing money for my MetroCard,” she said.
“There was one instance where I almost passed out before I could eat,” she said.
Growing numbers of college students can’t afford food or housing while they’re taking college classes. Half of the students in a recent CUNY survey said there was a point in the previous 30 days when they didn’t know how they were going to get their next meal.
CUNY campuses already have centers where students can apply for social services including food stamps, and many have opened food pantries. The $1 million pilot program funded by the City Council is the latest effort to make sure no city college students are going hungry.
The initial round of vouchers went out to students who demonstrated financial need but weren’t receiving food stamps, city officials said. The $400 allotment for the semester covers the equivalent of 3 $10 meals a week for 13 weeks, officials said.
Moumin said the voucher gave her freedom to focus on her BMCC studies, and the other big responsibility in her life: her two kids.
“Now, when I’m leaving my house,” she said, “I’m more focused on them.”
Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson and his Conservative Party won a commanding majority in Parliament yesterday, paving the way for the country’s withdrawal from the European Union next month. On the other side, the opposition Labour Party suffered its worst showing in more than 80 years, putting enormous pressure on its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, to resign. He said today that he wouldn’t lead the party into another election but would stay on for the time being.
In Scotland, the success of the Scottish National Party on Thursday is likely to intensify the debate over its independence from the United Kingdom.
Mr. Johnson ran on a promise to “get Brexit done,” a platform that seemed to win over areas that had traditionally voted for Labour (see map). One of Mr. Johnson’s officials, Priti Patel, said that the government would introduce legislation to complete Brexit before Christmas. But Britain’s departure would still probably not happen before Jan. 31, the date agreed upon with the European Union.
Speaking at a hearing of the House Committee on Education and Labor for the first time in eight months, DeVos blamed the Obama administration for not putting proper processes in place and granting defrauded students debt relief claims haphazardly. She told the Committee yesterday that the Obama administration processes were the main reasons why the Education Department (USDOE) has been stalling on loan forgiveness requested by more than 200,000 defrauded students. As reported by Yahoo News.
“When borrower defense arrived in 1995, it … was little used… in the 20 years from 1995 to 2015, fewer than 60 claims were filed,” she said. “Then, the previous administration weaponized the regulation against schools it simply didn’t like. They applied the law in a discriminatory fashion. So since 2015, there has been a 5,000% increase in borrower defense claims.”
Under existing law, borrowers with federal loans are eligible for loan forgiveness if a college or a university has misled them or engaged in other misconduct in violation of certain state laws.
And in 2015, after for-profit giant Corinthian Colleges closed down, the number of debt relief or loan forgiveness claims skyrocketed. The Obama administration then created special rules to address the problem, making it easier for defrauded students to get their loans cleared — with some getting automatic loan forgiveness if they qualified.
Upon entering office in February 2017, DeVos inherited 64,000 claims from students seeking relief. (Presently there are roughly 240,000 claims pending). The same methods the Obama administration used to adjudicate claims were insufficient, DeVos asserted.
“In fact, the prior administration was encouraging claims to be filed knowing full well it lacked the ability to even accurately track them,” DeVos told the hearing. “It knew that the department couldn’t quickly and legally give blanket forgiveness of all loans. So when they left office, they left tens and thousands of claims behind.”
Prior to the new education secretary’s arrival, USDOE officials reviewed thousands of borrower complaints against Corinthian Colleges, ITT Technical Institute, and other now-defunct for-profit colleges. The veteran officials concluded that the defrauded borrowers deserved to be fully relieved of their student debts.
But DeVos overruled the analysis. And on Thursday, DeVos vowed to pull back the Obama administration’s “overreach” and makes sure taxpayers and schools are treated “fairly.”
To enact her policy, Devos recently released a new methodology to determine which borrowers qualify, which was published on Tuesday night. Experts and critics immediately asserted that DeVos is just stalling even further on debt relief for defrauded students.
DeVos insisted that her new formula was “scientifically robust.”
“Ultimately what the department wants… is to provide fair relief to all those borrowers who actually have been harmed,” she told lawmakers on Thursday. “I want to be very clear — students are my number one priority… so if students have been deceived by institutions, and suffered financial harm as a result, they should be made whole. But if claims are false… then hardworking taxpayers including those who scraped and saved to faithfully pay their own student loans should not have to pay somebody else’s student loans too — it’s a matter of fairness.”
She added: “Simply discharging all of these loans as some on this committee suggest be done is not fair to taxpayers nor to those who have paid or are paying their loans.”
Democrats tore into DeVos’ refusal to grant full relief without going through each and every claim
“I have worked in education my entire life. … I’ve worked with Democrats and Republicans. … I’ve had some honest disagreements with my friends in the Republican Party about how to move education forward,” Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) said. “But I’ve never, not one time, believed that they were out to destroy public education, until I met you. Why has every decision you’ve made harmed students instead of empowering them.”
She added: “You are supposed to be their champion. … you are the most unpopular person in our government. Millions will register to vote in 2020. Many will vote to remove you more than to remove the President.”
“Absolutely over the line,” responded ranking member Virginia Foxx (R-NC) to Wilson’s comments. “To say Secretary DeVos is trying to destroy public education is going too far.”
Rep. Wilson wasn’t the only one displeased with DeVos’ responses.
“Did you not state that at the very beginning of your testimony that students are your number one priority?” Rep. Susan Wild (D-PA) said. “Because listening today, I have a hard time believing that a defrauded borrower would think that you are in their corner.”
Rep. Josh Harder (D-CA) asked: “Are you deliberately violating this federal court order because you are too corrupt to uphold the law, or because you’re too competent to do your job?”
“I don’t need to sit and listen to what you just spewed out of your mouth,” responded DeVos.
There were two op-eds in the past two days exposing Bill Barr for the pathetic “yes man” he has become for President Trump.
Eric Holder
Former Attorney General Eric Holder was unequivocal in his criticism of Barr, the current attorney general of the United States, in a searing op-ed published in The Washington Post.
Holder, who served as the country’s top law enforcement officer from 2009 to 2015 and as deputy attorney general from 1997 to 2001, accused Barr of shameless partisanship and of having behaved in a way that’s “fundamentally inconsistent with his duty to the Constitution.”
Barr is “incapable” of serving effectively as attorney general, Holder said.
“As a former U.S. attorney general, I am reluctant to publicly criticize my successors. I respect the office and understand just how tough the job can be,” Holder began his op-ed. “But recently, Attorney General William P. Barr has made a series of public statements and taken actions that are so plainly ideological, so nakedly partisan and so deeply inappropriate for America’s chief law enforcement official that they demand a response from someone who held the same office.”
n his op-ed, Holder reminded readers that the attorney general’s “ultimate loyalty” should lie not in the president personally, “nor even to the executive branch, but to the people — and the Constitution — of the United States.”
“Virtually since the moment he took office, though, Barr’s words and actions have been fundamentally inconsistent with his duty to the Constitution,” Holder wrote. “Which is why I now fear that his conduct — running political interference for an increasingly lawless president — will wreak lasting damage.”
“He is unfit to lead the Justice Department,” Holder concluded.
Caroline Fredrickson
Caroline Fredrickson, author of The Democracy Fix, in an op-ed with the New York Times, opens with President Trump famously asking, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Demanding a stand-in for his old personal lawyer and fixer, Mr. Trump has actually gotten something better with Bill Barr: a lawyer who like Cohn stops seemingly at nothing in his service to Mr. Trump and conveniently sits atop the nation’s Justice Department.
Mr. Barr has acted more like a henchman than the leader of an agency charged with exercising independent judgment. The disturbing message that sends does not end at our borders — it extends to countries, like those in the former East Bloc, struggling to overcome an illiberal turn in the direction of autocracy.
When Mr. Trump sought to have President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine announce an investigation of his political opponent, he likely expected a positive response. After all, politicized prosecutions had been part of Ukraine’s corrupt political culture for years.
On Monday, when Michael Horowitz, inspector general for the Justice Department, released a report that affirmed the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election was justified, Mr. Barr immediately turned on his own agency in defense of the president.
But for Americans, we must worry about a prosecutor who bends to the political needs of the president. Mr. Trump may no longer be able to call on Roy Cohn, but he now has a stronger ally in the United States’ top law-enforcement official, who thinks that if the president does it, it can’t be wrong.
Tony
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