Independent: Elon Musk: The chance we are not living in a computer simulation is 'one in billions'

Elon Musk has said that there is only a “one in billions” chance that we’re not living in a computer simulation.

Our lives are almost certainly being conducted within an artificial world powered by AI and highly-powered computers, like in The Matrix, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO suggested at a tech conference in California.

Mr Musk, who has donated huge amounts of money to research into the dangers of artificial intelligence, said that he hopes his prediction is true because otherwise it means the world will end. [...]

He said that arguably we should hope that it’s true that we live in a simulation. “Otherwise, if civilisation stops advancing, then that may be due to some calamitous event that stops civilization.”

He said that either we will make simulations that we can’t tell apart from the real world, “or civilisation will cease to exist”.

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Politico: The Forgotten Government Plan to Round Up Muslims

In the early morning hours of January 26, 1987, federal agents across Los Angeles charged into the homes of seven men and one woman and led them away in handcuffs. More than 100 law enforcement officers—city, state and federal—were involved. “War on Terrorism Hits LA,” read the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.

The defendants were all pro-Palestinian activists, but it wasn’t clear what they’d been arrested for. Soon the government conceded it would not introduce criminal charges, instead seeking to deport the group by alleging material support to a communist organization—an ancient Red Scare statute that would soon be declared unconstitutional. The case quickly became a mess, and in the end, 20 years of legal wrangling would pass before a judge would call the case “an embarrassment to the rule of law.” But in the first days of the defense, the lawyers for the men who would become known as the LA Eight were turning over a greater puzzle: why their clients had been targeted in the first place. [...]

The 40-page memo described a government contingency plan for rounding up thousands of legal alien residents of eight specified nationalities: Libya, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan and Morocco. Emergency legal measures would be deployed—rescinding the right to bond, claiming the privilege of confidential evidence, excluding the public from deportation hearings, among others. In its final pages, buried in a glaze of bureaucratese, the memo struck its darkest note: A procedure to detain and intern thousands of aliens while they awaited what would presumably become a mass deportation. Van Der Hout read the final pages carefully. The details conjured a vivid image of a massive detainment facility: 100 outdoor acres in the backwoods of Louisiana, replete with specifications for tents and fencing materials, cot measurements and plumbing requirements. [...]

In 1987, after the memo’s existence was briefly exposed, the ABC Committee was promptly terminated, the subgroup and the plan abandoned. But the ideas borne of the anxieties of the ’80s have gained new currency in the years since. In the wake of 9/11, America began detaining foreign nationals deemed threats to American safety—problematic though the legal grounds might be—in Guantanamo Bay. And with every fresh attack, at home or abroad, our demand for aggressive prosecution mounts. It is this fear that has underpinned the platform of Donald Trump—his promises of banning Muslims, blocking travel from countries compromised by terrorism and removing millions in a Herculean deportation scheme. Trump, however unwittingly, has drawn from much the same playbook as the plan once advanced by the ABC committee.

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Jacobin Magazine: A Better Olympics Is Possible

The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part; the important thing in life is not triumph, but the struggle; the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well. To spread these principles is to build up a strong and more valiant and, above all, more scrupulous and more generous humanity.

These liberal ideals, of course, were never really manifested, not even in the first modern games in 1896 Athens.

But the disparity between Olympic ideology and reality has only deepened since commercial imperatives took over the competition. The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics established a new tradition: the enormous public subsidy of private goods in the name of sports. Since then, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has sought some kind of moral justification for its capitalist excess. [...]

But following Jules Boykoff’s theorization of the Olympics as “celebration capitalism,” let’s instead imagine celebration socialism: an internationalist event that boosts popular participation in sports, equalizes competition between nations, and actually benefits the host community.

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Al Jazeera: South Korea: Bee-keeping trend grows in Seoul

"Seoul is surrounded by mountains. But daily life, green space within the reach of your hands is more important than greenery you can look at," he said."

Constantly providing more green space within living areas is one of Seoul’s core policies.

"It is hoped that greenery will attract more bees. That would help to pollinate more plants as environmentalists foresee a dramatic decline in the global bee population.

While beekeeping cannot reverse the trend, it can raise awareness.

In the largest metropolis of South Korea, people have signed up to study the art of keeping bees in the city, which could cast a greener light over a grey cityscape.

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Al Jazeera: Can Hillary Clinton change gender roles in politics?

The United States stands on the brink of history with the nomination of its first female presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. Paradoxically, electing a woman president for the US will not advance women's rights around the globe.

This is because Clinton will immediately feel the need to demonstrate her power in a world that operates by traditionally male-dominated statecraft.

That world will not allow her to redefine the US' national interests, and consequently its foreign policy, in a way that will truly empower the world's women, particularly in Muslim countries where safety and security is needed the most. [...]

In reality, the world's power structures continue to operate under RW Connell's concept of "hegemonic masculinity", so women find it hard to ascend the male hierarchy in international relations unless they are willing to espouse the militarism that it favors.

A woman leader favouring peacemaking and diplomacy over war and conflict could be labelled as weak because of her gender, rather than a legitimate part of her leadership capabilities, policies and choices.

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