Scott Boehmer

Author: Scott Boehmer

  • Detroit Zoo

    I spent last week in Michigan and had a chance to visit the zoo of my childhood. The Detroit Zoo has changed a fair bit since I last visited it a couple of decades ago. I enjoyed the few hours that I spent walking around and visiting the animals.

  • Ideas for a New North Carolina Constitution

    Carolina Forward takes a look at potential changes to North Carolina’s Constitution that could help reduce some of the dysfunction seen in the state’s government:

    1. Unifying the executive branch
    2. Reforming the redistricting process
    3. Staggering Senate terms & limiting time in leadership

    Does North Carolina’s constitution need a re-write? (Carolina Forward)

  • AI Necromancy

    Using any means to put words into the mouth of a dead person feels grotesque, especially for the purposes of a legal case. Generative AI unfortunately makes it easy to accomplish in a rather compelling way.

    An AI avatar made to look and sound like the likeness of a man who was killed in a road rage incident addressed the court and the man who killed him: “To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me, it is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances,” the AI avatar of Christopher Pelkey said. “In another life we probably could have been friends. I believe in forgiveness and a God who forgives. I still do.”

    It was the first time the AI avatar of a victim—in this case, a dead man—has ever addressed a court, and it raises many questions about the use of this type of technology in future court proceedings.

    Matthew Gault, Jason Koebler

    ‘I Loved That AI:’ Judge Moved by AI-Generated Avatar of Man Killed in Road Rage Incident (404 Media)

  • Screwworm

    This was an interesting video from Sarah Taber. I had never heard of screwworm before or how they were eradicated within the United States and the rest of North America.

    Screwworm: MAGA is bringing back flesh-eating maggots 😦 (Farm to Taber – YouTube)

    Cochliomyia hominivorax (Wikipedia)

  • 5 Star Reviews Are Ruining Your Life

    This video from Adam Conover covers something that I’ve been thinking about myself – online review systems and ratings are pretty horrible. You shouldn’t care what anonymous people rating things on websites think. If you need a recommendation, get it from a trusted person instead.

    5 Star Reviews Are Ruining Your Life (Adam Conover – YouTube)

  • 2024 NC Elections Finally Over

    After spending over six months vigorously contesting his narrow loss in the 2024 North Carolina Supreme Court election, Jefferson Griffin conceded the race on Wednesday following a federal judge’s ruling against him.

    Griffin, a Republican judge on the state Court of Appeals, lost the election to Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs by 734 votes. But he and the state Republican Party refused to accept the results, instead embarking on an unprecedented campaign to challenge over 65,000 votes in a legal battle that has roiled the state and drawn national rebuke.

    Earlier this week, Chief U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers, an appointee of President Donald Trump, decisively ruled against Griffin’s efforts, saying that he sought to “change the rules of the game after it had been played.”

    Kyle Ingram

    Griffin concedes NC Supreme Court race, ending unprecedented effort to overturn election (The News & Observer)

  • Money, Money, Money

    Must be funny, in the rich man’s world

    ABBA

    Here’s another song I like: ABBA’s Money, Money, Money.

    ABBA – Money, Money, Money (Official Music Video) (ABBA – YouTube)

  • Cuts Threaten Climate Modeling

    Proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency whose weather and climate research touches almost every facet of American life, are targeting a 57-year-old partnership between Princeton University and the U.S. government that produces what many consider the world’s most advanced climate modeling and forecasting systems. NOAA’s work extends deep into the heart of the American economy — businesses use it to navigate risk and find opportunity — and it undergirds both American defense and geopolitical planning. The possible elimination of the lab, called the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, in concert with potential cuts to other NOAA operations, threatens irreparable harm not only to global understanding of climate change and long-range scenarios for the planet but to the country’s safety, competitiveness and national security.

    Abrahm Lustgarten

    White House Proposal Could Gut Climate Modeling the World Depends On (ProPublica)

  • Brendan Carr’s FCC

    In less than 100 days the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been converted from a media and telecom watchdog into a bizarre, rights-trampling grievance machine built for one purpose: to coddle and protect the ego of President Donald J. Trump.

    Karl Bode

    Brendan Carr’s FCC is an anti-consumer, rights-trampling harassment machine (The Verge)

  • The Bathroom Bill is Back

    House Bill 2 is unquestionably one of the most infamous pieces of legislation in North Carolina state history. Passed by a Republican supermajority in less than 12 hours, HB 2 mandated that transgender individuals use the bathroom that matches the biological sex listed on their birth certificate, regardless of their gender identity.

    The law was widely criticized as discriminatory, unnecessary and cruel; its passage cost North Carolina billions of dollars and thousands of lost jobs; led to travel bans against North Carolina and an NCAA boycott; and made the state into a laughingstock of the nation. The fallout from the bill led to a partial (and for some, begrudging) repeal by moderate Republican lawmakers working with Democrats.

    It’s easy to forget, but even then-candidate Donald Trump criticized the bill: “You leave it the way it is… There have been very few complaints the way it is. People go, they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate. There has been so little trouble.”

    Yet as the MAGA movement has embraced more and more extremely conservative politics, many Republican politicians today feel none of the regret their predecessors did nine years ago. Enter SB 516, a bathroom bill even more aggressive, cruel, and poorly planned than HB 2.

    Miles Kirkpatrick

    The Bathroom Bill is Back (Carolina Forward)