News bits: Legalized discrimination spreads to judges; Can AI invent?; Etc.

The deep moral rot that underpins the the recent radical Christian nationalist Supreme Court decision in 303 Creative legalized discrimination against LGBQT people. That decision elevated religious freedom and rights above all other civil liberties, opening the floodgates for open discrimination against the LGBQT community is society and commerce. The rot is spreading to the legal system itself. Law & Crime writes:

Judge says SCOTUS ruling for Christian web designer means 

she doesn’t have to marry same-sex couples

The fallout from a Christian web-designer’s victory in the Supreme Court continued as a Texas judge attempted to use the ruling to deny marriage to gay couples.

Dianne Hensley, a justice of the peace in Waco, Texas, refused to perform same-sex marriages in 2019 on the grounds that officiating the ceremonies would conflict with her sincerely-held religious belief as a Christian.

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A NYT article discusses an ongoing debate about whether AI (artificial intelligence) can invent new things. US patent law specifies that an inventor cannot get their idea from another natural person.[1] AI is not another natural person. At least, that is how I understood the law and what AI is. Based on that understanding, AI could invent something and the person who sees the invention can file a patent application that claims the invention. 

Apparently, (i) it's more complicated than that, and (ii) I am one of a small but growing number, of people who believe that AI a human can invent something. That belief is based directly on the language of the law. The NYT writes:

Generative artificial intelligence, the technology engine powering the popular ChatGPT chatbot, seems to have a limitless bag of tricks. It can produce on command everything from recipes and vacation plans to computer code and molecules for new drugs.

But can A.I. invent?

Legal scholars, patent authorities and even Congress have been pondering that question. The people who answer “yes,” a small but growing number, are fighting a decidedly uphill battle in challenging the deep-seated belief that only a human can invent.

But patent arbiters generally agree on one thing: An inventor has to be human, at least under current standards. 

The project has experienced mixed results so far with patent authorities around the world. South Africa granted it a patent for a heat-diffusing drink container that was generated by A.I., and most countries, including China, have not yet made a determination. In the United States, Australia and Taiwan, [AI-generated] patent claims have been turned down.

Germaine's reasoning

Since patent law does not specify how an inventor can make an invention, simply reading and understanding the output from AI content can constitute the act of invention. Reading AI output without understanding it falls short of the legal act of invention. The people who wrote the AI program could not know what outputs would result from the various inputs that different people feed into AI. Therefore, the inventors of the AI program, which might be copyrightable[2], could not be the inventors of AI output.

Important people's reasoning

But, Germaine is, as usual, a pesky outlier in his reasoning. Big corporations who can just smell thousands of new patents within their grasp make a different argument. One expert makes a purely economic argument. His argument is completely detached from the literal language of the applicable law. In short, important people argue that rejecting patent claims that an inventor got from AI “deprives an entire class of important and potentially lifesaving patentable inventions of any protections” and that “jeopardizes billions in current and future investments” by undermining the incentive that patent protection would provide. The federal appeals court that oversees all patent disputes rejected AI originated claims and the out of its depth[3] Supreme Court declined to hear the case.  

Footnotes: 

1. The law:

VII. AN INVENTOR OR JOINT INVENTOR MUST BE A NATURAL PERSON

35 U.S.C. 115 requires that a US patent application filed under 35 U.S.C. 111(a) shall include the name of the inventor or inventors. 35 U.S.C. 100(f) defines the term “inventor” as the individual or, if a joint invention, the individuals collectively who invented or discovered the subject matter of the invention. 35 U.S.C. 100(g) defines the terms “joint inventor” and “coinventor” as any one of the individuals who invented or discovered the subject matter of a joint invention. As provided in 37 CFR 1.41(b), an applicant may name the inventorship of a non-provisional application under 35 U.S.C. 111(a) in the Application Data Sheet in accordance with 37 CFR 1.76, or in the inventor’s oath or declaration in accordance with 37 CFR 1.63. See MPEP § 602.01.

2. The situation appears to be similar for copyrights. Three basic requirements for copyright protection are (i) what is protected must be a work of authorship, (ii) it must be original, and (iii) it must be fixed in a tangible medium of expression, e.g., written down on paper, stored in fixed computer memory, recorded, etc. 

3. One reason I retired from practicing patent law was that the US Supreme Court was increasingly out of its depth. It was unable to grasp the basic fundamentals of patent law and the basics of the science involved in patent claims and technical inventions. The current situation where the Supreme Court has upheld rejecting AI-originated patent claims is simply wrong in my opinion. Apparently the court, in its arrogant ignorance, does not understand basic patent law. If the plaintiffs did not argue the inventorship issue, then that was malpractice, again in my opinion. 

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More radical right moral rot: The Hill writes:

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that an Indianapolis Catholic high school was allowed to fire its guidance counselor because she is in a same-sex marriage.

Shelly Fitzgerald was fired from Roncalli High School in Indianapolis in 2018 after working there for 14 years after the school discovered that she is married to a woman. Fitzgerald sued the school over her firing.

What is immensely galling about this is that Catholic high schools are tax exempt. That unjustifiable generosity is forced on all Americans. The schools not only pay little or no taxes, they openly discriminate against people that God hates. God hates a lot of people. God is cruel and uncaring about the suffering he causes to people he hates. Or, is it just a matter of God's servants going rogue and doing bad things against God's will? Or, should this be spun another way?

Getting away with…

… well, murder. 

It’s been almost 30 years since O.J. Simpson was the talk of the town.  Many of us saw the trial, heard the evidence, drew our own conclusions.  So, what do you think?

Did O.J. get away with murder? 

If you’re old enough to remember it, and your answer is no, he didn’t do it, what convinced you of his innocence?  What gave you that necessary “reasonable doubt?”

If yes, he did it, what was the most convincing evidence to you.  Here are some reminders:

Criminal Trial Evidence

1. The 9-1-1 call and the history of Simpson's violence directed at Nicole Brown.

2. Hair evidence: (1) hairs consistent with that of Simpson found on cap at Bundy residence, (2) hairs consistent with that of Simpson found on Ron Goldman's shirt.

3. Fiber evidence: (1) cotton fibers consistent with the carpet in the Bronco found on glove at Rockingham, (2) fibers consistent with the carpet from the Bronco found on cap at Bundy residence.

4. Blood evidence: (1) killer dropped blood near shoe prints at Bundy, (2) blood dropped at Bundy was of same type as Simpson's (about 0.5% of population would match), (3) Simpson had fresh cuts on left hand on day after murder, (4) blood found in Bronco, (5) blood found in foyer and master bedroom of Simpson home, (5) blood found on Simpson's driveway, (6) blood on socks in OJ's home matched Nicole's.

5. Glove evidence: (1) left glove found at Bundy and right glove found at Simpson residence are Aris Light gloves, size XL, (2) Nicole Brown bought pair of Aris Light XL gloves in 1990 at Bloomingdale's, (3) Simpson wore Aris Light gloves from 1990 to June, 1994.

6. Shoe evidence: (1) shoe prints found at Bundy were from a size 12 Bruno Magli shoe, (2) bloody shoe impression on Bronco carpet is consistent with a Magli shoe, (3) Simpson wore a size 12 shoe.

7. Other evidence: (1) flight in Bronco, (2) strange reaction to phone call informing him of Nicole Brown's death, etc.

Do you believe the police planted evidence?

Did the police bungle the job?

Was this “pay back” time, as has been said?

Other thoughts on that case.

I raise this OP question because, in light of Trump’s upcoming trials, I’m wondering if Trump will “get away with” all the shenanigans he’s been seemingly involved in.  Will it end up just like O.J.’s case, where all the evidence in the world won’t be convincing enough?  So, while you’re at it, comment on Trump’s potential trial outcomes.

News bits: Regrets from Faux News employees; The futility of arguing with self-identity; Etc.

The Hill reports that three former executives at Faux News now regret helping to build Faux into a disinformation machine:

A trio of former Fox executives said in a joint statement Wednesday that they are disappointed in themselves for helping build up the corporation in its early days, labeling Fox a “disinformation machine.”

“For what little it may, or may not, be worth at this point, Preston Padden, Ken Solomon and Bill Reyner wish to express their deep disappointment for helping to give birth to Fox Broadcasting Company and Fox Television that came to include Fox News Channel — the channel that prominently includes news that, in the words of Sidney Powell’s counsel, ‘no reasonable person would believe,’” the three former executives wrote in a blog post.

The trio’s post is titled “How Our Efforts to Bring Competition To Television Unknowingly Helped Create the Fox Disinformation Machine”.  

“At the time of our work in the 1990’s, we all greatly admired Rupert Murdoch and his vision and bold efforts,” they wrote. “We genuinely believed that the creation of a fourth competitive force in broadcast television was in the public interest.”

Yeah, for what little it may or may not be worth at this point. It's not going to faze Faux, Rupert Murdoch or his offspring Laughlin. They are all full blown, shameless fascists.

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True statement, very few exceptions: "When your politics becomes who you are, you can't debate that."

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About the strikes in Hollywood: The NYT reports: 

The union representing more than 150,000 television and movie actors announced Thursday that it would go on strike at midnight, joining screenwriters who walked out in May and creating Hollywood’s first industrywide shutdown in 63 years.

Pay is often at the center of work stoppages, and that is the case here. But the rise of streaming and the challenges created by the pandemic have stressed the studios, many of which are facing financial challenges, as well as actors and writers, who are seeking better pay and new protections in a rapidly changing workplace.

Both groups also want aggressive guardrails around the use of artificial intelligence to preserve jobs.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents major studios and streamers, has said it offered “historic pay and residual increases” as well as higher caps on pension and health contributions. They also say their offer includes audition protections, a “groundbreaking” proposal on artificial intelligence and other benefits that address the union’s concerns.

What is a person to make of the threat to jobs of artificial intelligence? The writers and actors see it as an existential threat. Their fear is that AI could displace most of their jobs and income. Is that a serious threat, or too abstract to be taken seriously? 

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A WaPo opinion reminds us of what democracy and inconvenient truth are up against from America's radical right. This is about the House hearing with FBI director Chris Wray being slandered by hard core authoritarian Republicans and the American people lied to and insulted:

Republicans celebrate their successful deception of voters

“The American people fully understand,” Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) informed Wray at Wednesday’s hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, “… that you have personally worked to weaponize the FBI against conservatives.”

Right. Hageman, the election denier who ousted Liz Cheney in a primary, would have you believe that Wray — senior political appointee in the George W. Bush Justice Department, clerk to a noted conservative judge, contributor to the Federalist Society, Donald Trump-appointed head of the FBI — is part of a conspiracy to persecute conservatives. “The idea that I’m biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me, given my own personal background,” he replied.

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), a close ally of Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), told Wray that his FBI “suppressed conservative-leaning free speech” on topics such as the unconfirmed theory that covid-19 resulted from a lab leak in China.

“The idea that the FBI would somehow be involved in suppressing references to the lab-leak theory is somewhat absurd,” Wray answered, pointing a finger, “when you consider the fact that the FBI was the only — the only — agency in the entire intelligence community to reach the assessment that it was more likely than not that that was the explanation for the pandemic.”

And several Republicans on the panel floated the slander that the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection was an inside job perpetrated by the FBI.

“This notion that somehow the violence at the Capitol on January 6 was part of some operation by FBI sources and agents is ludicrous,” Wray responded, “and is a disservice to our brave, hard-working, dedicated men and women.”

Good for him. But here’s what’s especially insane, absurd and ludicrous: No matter how many refutations Wray and others provide, Republicans are persuading people to believe their lies — and they are proud of the deception. 

Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.) taunted: “People trusted the FBI more when J. Edgar Hoover was running the place.”

Reps. Wesley Hunt and Nathaniel Moran, both from Texas, also needled Wray about the FBI’s popularity. “You’re not aware of those numbers?” Moran jeered.

The Republicans are well aware of “those numbers” — because they are the ones who assassinated the reputation of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency. Support for the FBI isn’t low among all Americans; it’s at rock bottom among Republicans — only 17 percent of whom had a positive view of the FBI in the NBC poll, compared with 58 percent of Democrats. 

Now why would that have happened? Well, maybe it’s because they’ve been fed an endless diet of lies and conspiracy theories about the FBI by elected Republicans and their Murdoch mouthpieces. .... But the lies are also destroying the right’s support for the most basic functions of government that even conservatives long supported, such as law and order and national defense. Maybe that’s the goal.

Now, the arsonists are admiring the ashes.

I agree with that analysis. Authoritarian extremists have to relentlessly attack both pro-democracy institutions and inconvenient truth. Sadly, the tactic works. Dark free speech works. Period.

Political cartoons

 For a change:

News bits: Legalized discrimination spreads; Next generation telescopes get huge; Etc.

After the recent Supreme Court decision in the 303 Creative case that legalized discrimination by Christians in commerce against non-heterosexuals, cases of discrimination were widely expected to increase. Apparently, the increase is beginning. A post on Threads says this about a hair salon in Michigan: 

If this is true, and it's being reported by several news outlets, savagery like this is just the beginning of a sustained, bigoted, cruel Christian assault on groups of people that God hates. God hates a lot of groups, including some groups of Christians. One can just feel the self-righteous, childish hate rising.

Note the gratuitous, childish insult "💋 my ass Governor

Witchmere 😝"

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Scaling up telescope size: An article in The Conversation:

A new, thin-lensed telescope design could far surpass James Webb 

– goodbye mirrors, hello diffractive lenses

Almost all space telescopes, including Hubble and Webb, collect light using mirrors. Our proposed telescope, the Nautilus Space Observatory, would replace large, heavy mirrors with a novel, thin lens that is much lighter, cheaper and easier to produce than mirrored telescopes. Because of these differences, it would be possible to launch many individual units into orbit and create a powerful network of telescopes.

Existing telescopes can detect exoplanets as small as Earth. However, it takes a lot more sensitivity to begin to learn about the chemical composition of these planets. Even Webb is just barely powerful enough to search certain exoplanets for clues of life – namely gases in the atmosphere.

Conventional lenses use refraction to focus light. Refraction is when light changes direction as it passes from one medium to another – it is the reason light bends when it enters water. In contrast, diffraction is when light bends around corners and obstacles. A cleverly arranged pattern of steps and angles on a glass surface can form a diffractive lens.

Over the following two years, our team invented a new type of diffractive lens that required new manufacturing technologies to etch a complex pattern of tiny grooves onto a piece of clear glass or plastic. The specific pattern and shape of the cuts focuses incoming light to a single point behind the lens. The new design produces a near-perfect quality image, far better than previous diffractive lenses.

Using the new technology, our team thinks it is possible to build a 29.5-foot (8.5-meter) diameter lens that would be only about 0.2 inches (0.5 cm) thick. The lens and support structure of our new telescope could weigh around 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms). This is more than three times lighter than a Webb–style mirror of a similar size and would be bigger than Webb’s 21-foot (6.5-meter) diameter mirror. 

The lenses have other benefits, too. First, they are much easier and quicker to fabricate than mirrors and can be made en masse. Second, lens-based telescopes work well even when not aligned perfectly, making these telescopes easier to assemble and fly in space than mirror-based telescopes, which require extremely precise alignment. 

 

Finally, since a single Nautilus unit would be light and relatively cheap to produce, it would be possible to put dozens of them into orbit. Our current design is in fact not a single telescope, but a constellation of 35 individual telescope units. 

Each individual telescope would be an independent, highly sensitive observatory able to collect more light than Webb. But the real power of Nautilus would come from turning all the individual telescopes toward a single target.

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Justice in Italy: The BBC reports:

Italian uproar over judge's 10-second groping rule

Does it count as sexual harassment if an assault lasts less than 10 seconds?

Many young people in Italy are expressing outrage on social media, after a judge cleared a school caretaker of groping a teenager, because it did not last long enough.

The case involves a 17-year-old student at a Rome high school.

She described walking up a staircase to class with a friend, when she felt her trousers fall down, a hand touching her buttocks and grabbing her underwear.

"Love, you know I was joking," the man told her when she turned around.  

A Rome public prosecutor asked for a three-and-a-half year prison sentence but this week the caretaker was acquitted of sexual assault charges. According to the judge, what happened "does not constitute a crime" because it lasted less than 10 seconds.

That judge has more MAGA!! in him than any Trump judge! Go Italy!! Grab 'em by the pu$$y or whatever, but only for less than 10 seconds!

The gropee the groper groped

is not happy about having it grabbed

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Climate change bits: A NYT opinion piece cites a couple of facts worth consideration:

Forget About Hiding From Climate Chaos in America

LINCOLN, Vt. — The capital of Vermont — the state that often tops those “best states to move to avoid climate change” lists — was, until Tuesday afternoon, mostly underwater.

The receding water sloshing in our streets was ferried by storm tracks from fast-warming seas 1,000 miles south. The storm dumped four to nine inches of rain on towns up and down the Green Mountain State, where the ground was already saturated.

Left: Hey! I wanted to park there! (see parking meters)

Right: Kayaking fun in nature

For each degree Celsius of warming, the atmosphere holds 7 percent more water vapor, driving the extreme precipitation events in New England that have increased by 55 percent since 1958, according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment.

There is pulling ticks — which recently expanded their empire into my high, cold piece of Vermont, courtesy of warming winters — off my daughters almost weekly.

Our infrastructure wasn’t built for these extremes, for this pace of change. Neither were our prevailing risk models. Just two weeks ago, researchers from the First Street Foundation warned in a new study that the database that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses to estimate the risk of extreme rainfall events is being outpaced by climate change and is in urgent need of updating. Americans can now expect to experience “once in a hundred year” rain events at 20-year intervals, on average. And the trend won’t stop there: That interval will keep shrinking, thanks to unchecked fossil fuel burning.

To be fair and balanced, or not, the global warming and climate science denier's response: You global warming people are just plain deplorable. See, I told you booboisie boobs that global warming blither was all just alarmism and malarkey. Just look at the great things going on here. The ticks are finding new habitats. Kayakers have new places in nature to kayak. Water vapor from the Caribbean falls out of the sky in Vermont. The guy living in the woods has a cozier winter. And even better than all of that, now everyone gets to experience fun weather events every 20 years instead of very 100 years. I believe and support Rick Scott's reasonable, carefully considered Republican plan to deal with the weather, not climate change:

The weather is always changing. We take climate change seriously, but not hysterically. We will not adopt nutty policies that harm our economy or our jobs.*

Weather changes, no nutty policies, no hysteria. Calm down. Calmly protect profits. Jobs, jobs, jobs and more jobs, but calmly. MAGA!!, but calmly.

* Those three sentences constitute 100% of Scott's detailed plan to deal with global warming. That's deep, sophisticated thinking for sure. 

He's from Florida, so 

no surprise there

News bits: Anti-climate change paint invented!; Climate changing the ocean; Etc.

The NYT reports about a new white paint that is highly reflective of sunlight:

Xiulin Ruan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, didn’t set out to make it into the Guinness World Records when he began trying to make a new type of paint. He had a loftier goal: to cool down buildings without torching the Earth.

In 2020, Dr. Ruan and his team unveiled their creation: a type of white paint that can act as a reflector, bouncing 95 percent of the sun’s rays away from the Earth’s surface, up through the atmosphere and into deep space. A few months later, they announced an even more potent formulation that increased sunlight reflection to 98 percent.

The paint’s properties are almost superheroic. It can make surfaces as much as eight degrees Fahrenheit cooler than ambient air temperatures at midday, and up to 19 degrees cooler at night, reducing temperatures inside buildings and decreasing air-conditioning needs by as much as 40 percent. It is cool to the touch, even under a blazing sun, Dr. Ruan said. Unlike air-conditioners, the paint doesn’t need any energy to work, and it doesn’t warm the outside air.

In 2021, Guinness declared it the whitest paint ever, and it’s since collected several awards. While the paint was originally envisioned for rooftops, manufacturers of clothes, shoes, cars, trucks and even spacecraft have come clamoring. Last year, Dr. Ruan and his team announced that they’d come up with a more lightweight version that could reflect heat from vehicles.

“We weren’t really trying to develop the world’s whitest paint,” Dr. Ruan said in an interview. “We wanted to help with climate change, and now it’s more of a crisis, and getting worse. We wanted to see if it was possible to help save energy while cooling down the Earth.”

This is really good news. Really good. The reflective, opaque white material is hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) nano particles, mostly tiny flat platelets. 

hBN platelet chemical structure

It is a low-toxicity, biocompatible compound used in drug delivery and tissue scaffolding to help regenerate damaged living tissue. Even better, the solvent for the reflective hBN is dimethylformamide or DMF. It appears to be a non-carcinogen and a fairly low toxicity solvent and apparently it does not bioaccumulate in the environment.

The original paint was thick (left) and required a layer 0.4 millimeters thick to achieve sub-ambient radiant cooling. The new formulation can achieve similar cooling with a layer just 0.15 millimeters thick, which is thin and light enough for its radiant cooling effects to be applied to vehicles like cars, trains and airplanes.

Image of the flat platelets of hBN

from 2022 research paper

This stuff is ~98% reflective!

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The NYT reports about ocean waters around Florida: 

How Hot Is the Sea Off Florida Right Now? 

Think 90s Fahrenheit

Researchers are recording ocean temperatures that pose severe risks to coral reefs and other marine life

Florida’s coral reefs are facing what could be an unprecedented threat from a marine heat wave that is warming the Gulf of Mexico, pushing water temperatures into the 90s Fahrenheit.

The biggest concern for coral isn’t just the current sea surface temperatures in the Florida Keys, even though they are the hottest on record. The daily average surface temperature off the Keys on Monday was just over 90 degrees Fahrenheit, or 32.4 Celsius, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The real worry, scientists say, is that it’s only July. Corals typically experience the most heat stress in August and September.

This much worse than the bit about the white paint. 🥺

Qs: What should one say to a person who denies or downplays the reality of global warming, climate change and attendant environmental damage, e.g., species extinctions, and human damage, e.g., deaths from heat exposure? Just call them names, like idiot, jackass, stupid, flat out wrong and/or deluded? Or, try to respectfully reason with them by pointing out facts and hoping you don't get dismissed as a tyrannical socialist, alarmist liar? Or, try to see if there's any aspect of global warming that they think might be of some concern and work with that?

Should the onus of being respectful, reasonable and fact-grounded be on the reality believer, the reality denier, both or neither?

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The NYT reports about America's demagogic, authoritarian radical right's intention to ramp up culture wars beyond the ridiculous point they are already at:

Hard Right Presses Culture War Fights on 

Defense Bill, Imperiling Passage

Right-wing Republicans want to use the annual military budget and policy legislation, traditionally a bipartisan affair, as a tool to pick fights on abortion and other social issues

Hard-right House Republicans are pushing to use the yearly bill that sets the United States military budget and policy as an opportunity to pick fights with the Biden administration over abortion, race and transgender issues, imperiling its passage and the decades-old bipartisan consensus in Congress around backing the Pentagon.

Republican leaders have scheduled votes beginning on Wednesday on the $886 billion measure, but as of Tuesday evening, they had yet to dissuade their ultraconservative colleagues from efforts to load it up with politically charged provisions to combat what the G.O.P. calls “wokeness” in the military.

The GOP wants an anti-woke military. Great. The radicalized Republican Party has gone from ridiculous speed stupid politics to plaid ludicrous speed idiotic politics:

Plaid ludicrous speed idiocy = 

the idiotic but viciously authoritarian Republican Party