COLOR ME SKEPTICAL: China’s GAC Introduces New Car Engine That Runs On Toxic Ammonia.

GAMBLING: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends — and it’s philosopher 1, neuroscientist 0. “A 25-year science wager has come to an end. In 1998, neuroscientist Christof Koch bet philosopher David Chalmers that the mechanism by which the brain’s neurons produce consciousness would be discovered by 2023. Both scientists agreed publicly on 23 June, at the annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) in New York City, that it is still an ongoing quest — and declared Chalmers the winner.”

GOOD LUCK: DeSantis and Trump Both Vow to End Birthright Citizenship. Can They Do That?

BLUE CITY BLUES: A new reality for downtown Denver’s half-empty buildings: ‘The value’s not gonna go back to what it used to be.’ “We are seeing [that] across all the markets in the country. It’s not ever gonna be the same .… If you add what’s happening in our downtown in terms of homelessness and crime and other concerns, the downtown market is going to shift.”

FOREVER? NO. LONGER AND HEALTHIER, YES. People are desperately trying to live forever. Here are the biggest anti-aging trends sweeping the nation.

INTRODUCING…: The Big Money Donors Behind the Attacks on Conservative Supreme Court Justices.

WELL-TIMED: Clinical trial identifies potential new treatment for liver disease.

21ST CENTURY BIGOTRY: “No White Kids”— How Racial Politics Pollutes Pop Culture: Two dissident non-white filmmakers speak out about the entertainment industry in Canada and the U.S.

When I was working on an animated TV kids show that involved some live action footage of kids, I was forwarded some production documents and there was the casting call for one of the episodes and it had a note from the producers that said “no white kids.” . . .

While working on a children’s television show I was told to avoid vintage illustrations of hands that looked too white and male because the producers didn’t want to promote The Patriarchy.

These people need to be purged from their professions and replaced with non-bigots.

UM…: ‘I don’t want to become San Francisco’: Urban woes spur state action on housing. “Officials in Washington state and Vermont looked at the housing crisis in San Francisco this year and took action to prevent the same thing happening in their states: They effectively banned single-family zoning.”

San Francisco is all of 47 square miles of some of the most desirable (well, formerly) real estate in the world. Washington and Vermont are entire states.

GET IN SHAPE: Adjustable Dumbbell 25/55LB 5 In 1 Single Dumbbell. #CommissionEarned

WELL, GOOD: Prolonged inflammation associated with long COVID restored to healthy levels within two years post-infection. “The long-term symptoms observed in some individuals post-COVID-19 are associated with a sustained systemic inflammation, according to researchers from the A*STAR Infectious Diseases Labs (A*STAR ID Labs) in Singapore and the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID). Their study, published in the Journal of Medical Virology, demonstrates that the prolonged inflammation observed in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 is restored to healthy levels within two years after the initial infection.”

“SUICIDE.” Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide result of ‘negligence and misconduct’ by jail guards.

HMM: District Attorney Recuses Her Office From Prosecuting Atlanta Domestic Terrorists.

I WAS TOLD THAT HEALTHCARE SHOULD BE A MATTER BETWEEN A PATIENT AND THEIR DOCTOR? Congressional Democrats introduce bill for federal ban of conversion therapy.

FROM MY COLLEAGUE MAURICE STUCKE: What Can Policymakers Do About Algorithmic Collusion and Discrimination? “The concerns underlying algorithmic collusion and discrimination go beyond economic implications. Policymakers must recognize the broader risks associated with AI and algorithmic decision-making. These risks extend to the potential dehumanization and loss of human autonomy as AI assumes critical functions in society. . . . AI-dominated bureaucracies pose greater challenges when the decision-making becomes more opaque and less accountable. As AI assumes more critical functions, and as the factors considered in reaching that decision increase in complexity, it will be harder to decipher why the algorithm did what it did and obtain relief within the bureaucracy. As the AI-dominated bureaucracy becomes harder to avoid, it becomes more dehumanizing.”

THE PROCESS IS THE PUNISHMENT: Professor suspended for handing out Jeremy’s Chocolate remains on leave.

Richardson, a history professor at Madera Community College in California for nearly 30 years, was suspended after handing out the chocolate during an open house event on campus.

A faculty member confronted Richardson for handing out the chocolate bars, after which he was placed on administrative leave.

Jeremy’s Chocolate bars are labeled with the pronouns “He/Him” and “She/Her,” the former of which have nuts in them and the latter of which do not. Progressives on social media have criticized the brand as “transphobic.”

Richardson, who is gay, has since been interviewed by an outside investigator, but has received no word on whether he will be allowed to return to campus, he said.

“There’s no way for me to prepare for classes unless I have access to the work computer. I’m in a very weird nether world right now where I don’t know what’s happening,” he said.

Once again, the worst mistake the LGBs made was letting the QTs tack themselves on.

MICHAEL WALSH: Tent, Meet Camel.

KRUISER: Hey Leftists: Stop With the Whining About Being ‘Unsafe’ on Twitter.

“WHAT’S A UYGHUR?” GOP Presidential Candidate Francis Suarez Makes Embarrassing Flub During Interview With Hugh Hewitt.

MODERN PROBLEMS: Junk websites filled with AI-generated text are pulling in money from programmatic ads.

Over 140 major brands are paying for ads that end up on unreliable AI-written sites, likely without their knowledge. Ninety percent of the ads from major brands found on these AI-generated news sites were served by Google, though the company’s own policies prohibit sites from placing Google-served ads on pages that include “spammy automatically generated content.” The practice threatens to hasten the arrival of a glitchy, spammy internet that is overrun by AI-generated content, as well as wasting massive amounts of ad money.

Most companies that advertise online automatically bid on spots to run those ads through a practice called “programmatic advertising.” Algorithms place ads on various websites according to complex calculations that optimize the number of eyeballs an ad might attract from the company’s target audience. As a result, big brands end up paying for ad placements on websites that they may have never heard of before, with little to no human oversight.

To take advantage, content farms have sprung up where low-paid humans churn out low-quality content to attract ad revenue. These types of websites already have a name: “made for advertising” sites. They use tactics such as clickbait, autoplay videos, and pop-up ads to squeeze as much money as possible out of advertisers. In a recent survey, the Association of National Advertisers found that 21% of ad impressions in their sample went to made-for-advertising sites. The group estimated that around $13 billion is wasted globally on these sites each year.

Now, generative AI offers a new way to automate the content farm process and spin up more junk sites with less effort, resulting in what NewsGuard calls “unreliable artificial intelligence–generated news websites.” One site flagged by NewsGuard produced more than 1,200 articles a day.

Bots producing content for bots that negotiate ad rates for sites frequented by bot-run click farms is no way to run an internet, but it might be Peak AI.

ARACHNOPHOBIA:  I woke up at a ridiculous hour this morning so I could be ready in case the Supreme Court’s decision in the Harvard/UNC cases was announced.  I have a whole list of things I need to do once the cases are decided, starting with “read the decision carefully.”  I dutifully logged on to SCOTUSblog on my iPad and the Supreme Court website on my Mac.  Then I hit nervously refresh, refresh, refresh until it was clear that there were no more opinions for today.  But when I reached for my coffee, there was a giant spider (well … a medium-sized spider) in it.  It was dead, drowned.  It was an ex-spider, a no-longer-a-threat-to-all-that-is-good-and-holy spider.  But is this a sinister omen?  A benign one?   Or just one more dead arachnid?

BRING IT ON: More Evidence Against Hunter Biden Is Coming.

BOONDOGGLE: Biden announces $42.5 billion plan to expand high-speed internet to communities with no or slow service. “President Joe Biden on Monday said that high-speed internet is no longer a luxury but an “absolute necessity,” as he pledged that every household in the nation would have access by 2030 using cables made in the U.S.”

Cables? We don’t need no stinkin’ cables.

Or tax dollars, either.

SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! UCSF sued for program that pays racial minorities only.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: The Punishment for Treason in Russia Is… NOTHING? Really?

Before leading his armed rebellion against Putin’s defense chief, Prigozhin went even further, calling into question the entire justification for the war. “The Ministry of Defense is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there were insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO block,” he said on Telegram last Friday.

And then Prigozhin sacked the Southern Military District headquarters in Rostov-on-Don before ordering an armored column to head north toward Moscow. Putin himself went on national television to denounce Prigozhin’s mutiny as “treason” and vowed to crush the “armed uprising.”

For reasons still unknown, Prigozhin backed down on Saturday, just 24 hours into Wagner’s effort to forcibly unseat Shoigu and others in the Ministry of Defense. He claimed to want to “avoid bloodshed.”

But then something very strange happened, or maybe what’s strange is what didn’t happen.

Much more at the link.