The Intercept: Troubling Study Says Artificial Intelligence Can Predict Who Will Be Criminals Based on Facial Features

Not so in the modern age of Artificial Intelligence, apparently: In a paper titled “Automated Inference on Criminality using Face Images,” two Shanghai Jiao Tong University researchers say they fed “facial images of 1,856 real persons” into computers and found “some discriminating structural features for predicting criminality, such as lip curvature, eye inner corner distance, and the so-called nose-mouth angle.” They conclude that “all four classifiers perform consistently well and produce evidence for the validity of automated face-induced inference on criminality, despite the historical controversy surrounding the topic.” [...]

This misses the fact that no computer or software is created in a vacuum. Software is designed by people, and people who set out to infer criminality from facial features are not free from inherent bias.

Absent, too, is any discussion of the incredible potential for abuse of this software by law enforcement. Kate Crawford, an AI researcher with Microsoft Research New York, MIT, and NYU, told The Intercept, “I‘d call this paper literal phrenology, it’s just using modern tools of supervised machine learning instead of calipers. It’s dangerous pseudoscience.”

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Motherboard: An Astrolinguist Explains How to Talk to Aliens

When a 20th century Dutch mathematician named Hans Freudenthal created LINCOS, the first language expressly designed for communicating with extraterrestrials, he used mathematical principles to discuss everything from the nature of time to what it means to love. In 2013, a Dutch mathematical astronomer named Alexander Ollongren created a second version of LINCOS, which communicates similar ideas couched in the language of symbolic logic and lambda calculus. In both of these instances, the lingua cosmica is self-contained and rooted in supposedly universal principles (mathematics and logic)—but it still might be unintelligible to an alien.

“Even if humans and extraterrestrials both have math and science, they're not necessarily interchangeable,” said Vakoch. “Maybe science starts out at different places depending on the biology or particular needs of the organism. There is a subtle truth that Arrival points toward, and that is the way we construct and talk about the world may reflect something idiosyncratic about our species.”

To illustrate his point, Vakoch cites the emergence of non-Euclidean geometry in the 19th century. For two millennia, Euclid’s view of a flat universe reigned supreme and pivoted on his fifth postulate, which states that two parallel lines will never intersect. But when a handful of European geometers in the 1800s replaced this axiom with its opposite—that two parallel lines actually can intersect—they fundamentally changed our view of reality by making space curved instead of flat.

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The Intercept‎: A New Documentary Explores the Devastating Effects of Drone Warfare on Victims and Whistleblowers

A total of 23 people were killed in the strike against the convoy, all civilians. An investigation by the military later found that drone pilots “ignored or downplayed” evidence that the convoy was a civilian one. A transcript of the drone operator’s conversation was later made public through a Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU.

The Uruzgan drone strike and the events surrounding it form much of the basis of “National Bird,” an extraordinary new documentary about the U.S. drone program. The film, which opened Friday in Los Angeles, profiles the lives of former drone operators, as well as victims of the program, including the survivors of the Uruzgan attack. In doing so, it provides a rare glimpse into the lives of those affected by the U.S. military’s covert global assassination program, as well as the consequences facing those who speak out about it. [...]

In the film, Lisa shows a commendation she received for helping identify over 121,000 “insurgent targets” over a two-year period, as part of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. “That is 121,000 lives affected by technology that we control. How many years have we been at war now?” [...]

“I can say the drone program is wrong because I don’t know how many people I’ve killed,” Heather, a drone operator now suffering from PTSD, says in the film. Having lost several friends in the program to suicide, she says she is tormented by her role in drone strikes that she believes killed and maimed civilians. She is also consumed with fear that she will soon be targeted for speaking out. “If someone comes to my house and puts a bag over my head and hauls me away, what was the point in anything I did?”

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Motherboard: Why You Can’t Legally Call Organic Weed ‘Organic’

Because cannabis is illegal on a federal level these agencies aren’t able to prescribe safe growing standards the way they would for any other agricultural product being grown in the US. This puts the burden on state regulatory agencies to develop their own agricultural standards for cannabis—but until a few months ago these standards didn’t exist anywhere. In most states with legal pot, they still don’t. [...]

This lack of oversight and knowledge about what was going in their bud understandably made consumers nervous and cannabis cultivators took notice. In 2004, one California grower reached out to Chris van Hook, a veteran of the USDA-certified organics industry, to find out what it would take to get their buds registered as a USDA organic agricultural product to assuage consumer fears about tainted bud.

When van Hook reached out to the Department of Agriculture on the issue, he was told that it was impossible to certify cannabis as organic since it was a federally illegal substance. Moreover, if any of the cannabis cultivators so much as labeled their product as ‘organic,’ they would be in violation of federal law which gives a monopoly to the USDA on organic certification.

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Al Jazeera: Dangerously cheap: Kenya's illegal abortions

In 2010, a new constitution was passed, heralded globally as a progressive foundational document for its principles of gender equality in parliament; freedom of media; and formation of an independent Human Rights and Equality Commission to investigate human rights abuses.

The trouble is that much of what was included has met resistance and debate.

That includes the three provisions that permit abortions where, "in the opinion of a trained health professional, there is a need for emergency treatment, or the life or health of the mother is in danger, or if permitted by any other written law." [...]

In 2008, the World Health Organization said Eastern and Middle Africa had the highest global rates of unsafe abortions, at 36 per 1,000 reproductive-aged women. [...]

The Ministry of Health put out guidelines in 2012 to help doctors determine whether they could legally perform an abortion, before withdrawing them in 2013 after a caustic backlash in this staunchly Christian country. [...]

Safe abortions at clinics can cost about 20,000 Kenyan shillings ($200), whereas unsafe abortions are roughly a tenth of that price and payments can be made in instalments. It is not uncommon for household goods, such as televisions, to be included in those payments.

In her slum, Phyllis estimates that there are more than 50 corrugated iron "abortion clinics" for a population of about 100,000.

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Atlas Obscura: Matrimonial Maps Chart the Delights and Perils of Marriage

Matrimonial maps emerged in the 18th century, but were most prominent during the 19th century. They depicted states of emotion, milestones, and stages of intimacy in as geographical features. With these fanciful maps for reference, a single gal could chart a course from the Land of Spinsters to the Region of Rejoicing, bypassing Lonely Isle along the way. Likewise, unmarried gents could envision themselves setting off for a voyage from the Country of Single Men, navigating the choppy waters of the Sea of Introduction, and arriving in Valentine Bay, the gateway to the City of Dames.  [...]

The work of Scottish cartographer John Thomson, the map above throws some classical mythology into the usual matrimonial mix. Temples scattered around the Island of Matrimony are named after Greco-Roman gods, Fates, and Furies. The province of Possession, for instance, contains the Temple of Venus, while the province of Approbation is home to the Temple of Psyche. [...]

Matrimonial maps survived into the 20th century, as evinced by the above creation, designed and published by New York restaurant owner George Edward Moray to promote his two eateries. This map is unusual in that the vast majority of the locations plotted are real place names. Three railroads labeled Ceremony, Elopement, and Common Law run into the State of Matrimony, while the Divorce Rapid Transit railroad runs out.

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Vox: During the downturn, America's poor helped each other more. The rich pitched in less.

And yet amidst all that, something odd happened. Even during the downturn and recovery, the poorest Americans upped their charitable giving. Meanwhile, the highest-income people gave less and less, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported in October.

The rich also give to charity differently than the poor: compared to lower-income Americans, the rich's charitable giving places a far lower emphasis on helping their disadvantaged peers. When the poor and rich are (figuratively and literally) moving farther apart, an empathy gap naturally opens up between the upper and lower classes — after all, if I can't see you, I'm less likely to help you. [...]

None of this, of course, means that the poorest Americans are giving the most to charity; the richest Americans by far give away more money. The top one percent of tax returns (comprising people earning around $500,000 or more) in 2011 accounted for nearly one-quarter of all charitable contributions, according to data from a 2011 Congressional Budget Office report. [...]

One clue lies in how the lower-income Americans give. That 2011 Congressional Budget Office report took a look at how charitable giving breaks down. According to 2005 data, the lowest-income Americans tend to give the majority of their money to churches and other religious organizations (which often use the money to help the community's needy). The next most popular kind of charity are those that help people meet basic needs.

The rich, meanwhile, are more likely to give to arts organizations, as well as schools and health organizations — predominantly hospitals and disease-specific groups (think Susan G. Komen). The source of that data, a 2007 report from Indiana University, shows that people toward the lower end of the income spectrum give a substantially bigger share of their donations to helping the poor than the very richest people.

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Al Jazeera: Catholic bishops apologise for role in Rwanda genocide

The Catholic Church in Rwanda has apologised for its role in the 1994 genocide, saying it regrets the actions of those who participated in the massacres.

A church statement acknowledged on Sunday its members planned, aided, and executed the genocide, in which more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu hardliners.

"We apologise for all the wrongs the church committed. We apologise on behalf of all Christians for all forms of wrongs we committed. We regret that church members violated [their] oath of allegiance to God's commandments," said the statement by the Conference of Catholic Bishops, which was read out in parishes across the country. [...]

Bishop Phillipe Rukamba, spokesman for the Catholic Church in Rwanda, said the statement was timed to coincide with the formal end on Sunday of the Holy Year of Mercy declared by Pope Francis to encourage greater reconciliation and forgiveness in his church and in the world.

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Motherboard: New Antibody Neutralizes Nearly Every HIV Strain

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have isolated an antibody from an HIV-positive patient that is capable of neutralizing 98 percent of HIV strains. It's a success rate that makes it easily the most potent, wide-reaching HIV antibody and one that may have profound implications for the treatment and prevention of the disease. The group's work is published in the current issue of the journal Immunity. [...]

In reality, there are a lot of different HIV strains and a lot of different sites to bind to. The virus is always changing and evolving. Some patients, however, wind up producing broadly-neutralizing antibodies, which are able to hit a large number of strains. As such, they can potentially do real damage against a wholesale HIV infection made up of diverse and mutating viral strains. [...]

To be clear, we're not really talking cures here. The most immediate application would be in vaccine development, but it will likely have implications for treatment as well. In any case, N6 faces years of further testing. For perspective, the aforementioned VRC01 was discovered all the way back in 2010 and it's still in clinical trials.

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