PASS THE ALLEGRA: Georgia braces for ‘pollen explosion.’

TRUMP TO MERKEL: We have something in common — we were both wiretapped by Obama.

FOX BUTTERFIELD GOES BICOASTAL:

Shot: Why homelessness gets worse as de Blasio doubles spending.

The New York Post, February 16th.

Chaser:  “Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, [San Francisco’s] homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s.”

—SF Weekly, December 16, 2009.

(Classical allusion in headline.)

I MUST HAVE GROWN UP WITH AN ABUNDANCE OF CLIMATE: Climate, not just genetics, shaped your nose, study says.

FLORIDA LAWYER: Miami lawyer’s pants erupt in flames during arson trial in court.

CLAIM: Men and Women Can Never Be Friends and It’s Got Nothing To Do With Sex.

HMM: Injuries From Products Designed to Keep Children Safe on the Rise.

SKYNET SMILES: Bots Are Learning to Chat in Their Own Language.

As detailed in a research paper published by OpenAI this week, Mordatch and his collaborators created a world where bots are charged with completing certain tasks, like moving themselves to a particular landmark. The world is simple, just a big white square—all of two dimensions—and the bots are colored shapes: a green, red, or blue circle. But the point of this universe is more complex. The world allows the bots to create their own language as a way collaborating, helping each other complete those tasks.

All this happens through what’s called reinforcement learning, the same fundamental technique that underpinned AlphaGo, the machine from Google’s DeepMind AI lab that cracked the ancient game of Go. Basically, the bots navigate their world through extreme trial and error, carefully keeping track of what works and what doesn’t as they reach for a reward, like arriving at a landmark. If a particular action helps them achieve that reward, they know to keep doing it. In this same way, they learn to build their own language. Telling each other where to go helps them all get places more quickly.

As Mordatch says: “We can reduce the success of dialogue to: Did you end up getting to the green can or not?”

Surely the Germans must have a word which means both “fascinating” and “creepy.”

BUD LIGHT? Former judge pleads guilty to offering FBI agent Bud Light in exchange for wife’s texts.

THE MOTIVE REMAINS A MYSTERY: Man held after his father and brother found with throats slit in Paris. “The sources, who asked not to be named because they were not authorised to speak publicly, said the reason for the attack was being investigated. . . . Newspaper Le Figaro cited a police source who said the knifeman shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ (‘God is greatest’, in Arabic).”

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: How does a water bear survive drying out?

I SLEEP LIKE A BABY: Study finds quality sleep feels same as winning the lottery. But I’d like to win the lottery to allow for a fair comparison.

BASQUE TERRORISTS SAY THEY WILL DISARM: ETA says it will “handover” its weapons on April 8. At one time ETA demanded secession from Spain and the formation of an independent Basque state. The Spanish government says ETA must dissolve as well as disarm.

WHEN KODAK ACCIDENTALLY DISCOVERED A-BOMB TESTING: Two thousand miles away from the U.S. A-bomb tests in 1945, something weird was happening to Kodak’s film.

(Via SDA.)

READER BOOK PLUG: From reader Brad Miner, Sons of Saint Patrick: A History of the Archbishops of New York from Dagger John to Timmytown.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Breaking Up Feels Different for Men and Women. What if you identify as neither?

CHRISTIAN TOTO: The Mysterious ‘Disappearance’ of Richard Simmons.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: How Donald Trump Shot The Gun Industry In The Gut.

Unfortunately, Trump’s win has had the unintended consequence of throwing the firearms industry into a deep slump, forcing major companies to lay off workers, driving prices deep into the red, and forcing some gun dealers out of business. While the Obama years might have been a dark time for gun rights, the Democrat president was a boon for gun retailers and manufacturers (a fact Obama has admitted himself). Each time the needle ticked further in the direction of gun restriction, Americans flocked to their local gun store and plunked down cash for more irons.

The industry swelled because of the “panic buying,” with new manufacturers popping up, old names in the industry swelling their ranks, and more new gun owners pushing into demographics with previously tepid interest.

After buying an AR-15 last summer for the express purpose of annoying Senator Joe “Due Process Is Killing Us” Manchin, I held off on any further purchases. But I did get a very nice deal last week on a tiny Ruger LCP II.

It’s a buyer’s market, but the good times won’t last forever.

JAZZ SHAW: Just days after Preet Bharara is fired, investigation of NYC Mayor is conveniently dropped.

WHAT STORY? ‘We Broke the Story Correctly’: Rachel Maddow Returns Fire on Her Trump Tax Scoop.

BRANDON MORSE: It’s Rand Paul vs Paul Ryan in the battle over Obamacare — and the future of the GOP.

ANOTHER NARRATIVE CRUMBLES? Russian Bank Claims Trump Server Story May Have Been a Hoax.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Lockheed Martin completes new battle laser for U.S. military.

“We have shown that a powerful directed energy laser is now sufficiently light-weight, low volume and reliable enough to be deployed on tactical vehicles for defensive applications on land, at sea and in the air,” said Robert Afzal, senior fellow for Laser and Sensor Systems at Lockheed.

According to Afzal, the Lockheed Martin team created a laser beam that was near “diffraction limited,” meaning it was close to the maximum limit for focusing energy toward a single, small spot.

Lockheed believe the laser will act as a complementary weapon on the battlefield and will prove particularly effective in disabling drones or incoming rockets.

In 2015, the company used a 30kW laser weapon, known as ATHENA, to disable a truck sited a mile away.

Solid state laser technology is seen as a cheap option to defend against incoming attacks.

A Patriot missile, usually priced at about $3 million was recently used to shoot down a $200 quadcopter drone, according to a US general.

Conversely, in 2015 the Navy estimated that a solid-state laser can be fired for less than one dollar per shot.

If as a child I had known that “senior fellow for Laser and Sensor Systems” would become a real job, my education might have followed a much different path.

NANOTECHNOLOGY: The Nobelists and Their Molecular Machines. “While these incremental steps remain pretty far from the self-repairing machines envisioned by Eric Drexler in his book ‘Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology,’ Granja believes these steps are what will eventually lead us there. One of the things that seems to be increasingly clear is that nanomachines are looking to be more biological than machine-like bots.”

MICHAEL WALSH: Are the three branches of government really ‘co-equal?’