RICH LOWRY: Academia’s twisted reasons for shelving the SAT. “The deeper problem with the SAT, of course, is optics; it doesn’t produce the racial outcomes that the people who run institutions of higher education, especially elite ones, want. At the end of the day, the test that has been smeared over the years as a tool of white supremacy is a conveyor belt for Asian Americans into top colleges in numbers that college administrators find embarrassing and inconvenient. . . . This is where the SAT is unwelcome in another way. As an objective measure of preparedness with hard numbers attached, it provides incontrovertible evidence of the racial bias against Asian Americans in admissions. Who wants that? With a likely loss in the Supreme Court’s big affirmative-action case looming, colleges and universes are already finding a way to finagle out of the decision.”

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"The Russian side reserves the right to take retaliatory measures where and when it sees fit."

The post Kremlin Claims Ukraine Tried to Assassinate Putin With Drones first appeared on Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.

"Our secret weapon will be the college accreditation system," he said.

States are realizing there is a much-needed alternative to today's watered-down, useless standardized tests: the Classic Learning Test.

My latest book, A Hacker’s Mind, is filled with stories about the rich and powerful hacking systems, but it was hard to find stories of the hacking by the less powerful. Here’s one I just found. An article on how layoffs at big companies work inadvertently suggests an employee hack to avoid being fired:

…software performs a statistical analysis during terminations to see if certain groups are adversely affected, said such reviews can uncover other problems. On a list of layoff candidates, a company might find it is about to fire inadvertently an employee who previously opened a complaint against a manager—a move that could be seen as retaliation, she said.

So if you’re at a large company and there are rumors of layoffs, go to HR and initiate a complaint against a manager. It’ll protect you from being laid off.

OpenAI has just over a week to comply with European data protection laws following a temporary ban in Italy and a slew of investigations in other EU countries. If it fails, it could face hefty fines, be forced to delete data, or even be banned. 

But experts have told MIT Technology Review that it will be next to impossible for OpenAI to comply with the rules. That’s because of the way data used to train its AI models has been collected: by hoovering up content off the internet. 

In AI development, the dominant paradigm is that the more training data, the better. OpenAI’s GPT-2 model had a data set consisting of 40 gigabytes of text. GPT-3, which ChatGPT is based on, was trained on 570 GB of data. OpenAI has not shared how big the data set for its latest model, GPT-4, is. 

But that hunger for larger models is now coming back to bite the company. In the past few weeks, several Western data protection authorities have started investigations into how OpenAI collects and processes the data powering ChatGPT. They believe it has scraped people’s personal data, such as names or email addresses, and used it without their consent. 

The Italian authority has blocked the use of ChatGPT as a precautionary measure, and French, German, Irish, and Canadian data regulators are also investigating how the OpenAI system collects and uses data. The European Data Protection Board, the umbrella organization for data protection authorities, is also setting up an EU-wide task force to coordinate investigations and enforcement around ChatGPT. 

Italy has given OpenAI until April 30 to comply with the law. This would mean OpenAI would have to ask people for consent to have their data scraped, or prove that it has a “legitimate interest” in collecting it. OpenAI will also have to explain to people how ChatGPT uses their data and give them the power to correct any mistakes about them that the chatbot spits out, to have their data erased if they want, and to object to letting the computer program use it. 

If OpenAI cannot convince the authorities its data use practices are legal, it could be banned in specific countries or even the entire European Union. It could also face hefty fines and might even be forced to delete models and the data used to train them, says Alexis Leautier, an AI expert at the French data protection agency CNIL.

OpenAI’s violations are so flagrant that it’s likely that this case will end up in the Court of Justice of the European Union, the EU’s highest court, says Lilian Edwards, an internet law professor at Newcastle University. It could take years before we see an answer to the questions posed by the Italian data regulator. 

High-stakes game

The stakes could not be higher for OpenAI. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation is the world’s strictest data protection regime, and it has been copied widely around the world. Regulators everywhere from Brazil to California will be paying close attention to what happens next, and the outcome could fundamentally change the way AI companies go about collecting data. 

In addition to being more transparent about its data practices, OpenAI will have to show it is using one of two possible legal ways to collect training data for its algorithms: consent or “legitimate interest.” 

It seems unlikely that OpenAI will be able to argue that it gained people’s consent when it scraped their data. That leaves it with the argument that it had a  “legitimate interest” in doing so. This will likely require the company to make a convincing case to regulators about how essential ChatGPT really is to justify data collection without consent, says Edwards. 

OpenAI told us it believes it complies with privacy laws, and in a blog post it said it works to remove personal information from the training data upon request “where feasible.”

The company says that its models are trained on publicly available content, licensed content, and content generated by human reviewers. But for the GDPR, that’s too low a bar. 

“The US has a doctrine that when stuff is in public, it’s no longer private, which is not at all how European law works,” says Edwards. The GDPR gives people rights as “data subjects,” such as the right to be informed about how their data is collected and used and to have their data removed from systems, even if it was public in the first place. 

Finding a needle in a haystack

OpenAI has another problem. The Italian authority says OpenAI is not being transparent about how it collects users’ data during the post-training phase, such as in chat logs of their interactions with ChatGPT. 

“What’s really concerning is how it uses data that you give it in the chat,” says Leautier. People tend to share intimate, private information with the chatbot, telling it about things like their mental state, their health, or their personal opinions. Leautier says it is problematic if there’s a risk that ChatGPT regurgitates this sensitive data to others. And under European law, users need to be able to get their chat log data deleted, he adds. 

OpenAI is going to find it near-impossible to identify individuals’ data and remove it from its models, says Margaret Mitchell, an AI researcher and chief ethics scientist at startup Hugging Face, who was formerly Google’s AI ethics co-lead. 

The company could have saved itself a giant headache by building in robust data record-keeping from the start, she says. Instead, it is common in the AI industry to build data sets for AI models by scraping the web indiscriminately and then outsourcing the work of removing duplicates or irrelevant data points, filtering unwanted things, and fixing typos. These methods, and the sheer size of the data set, mean tech companies tend to have a very limited understanding of what has gone into training their models. 

Tech companies don’t document how they collect or annotate AI training data and don’t even tend to know what’s in the data set, says Nithya Sambasivan, a former research scientist at Google and an entrepreneur, whose 2021 paper laid out the ways the AI industry undervalues data.  

Finding Italian data in ChatGPT’s vast, unwieldy training data set will be like finding a needle in a haystack. And even if OpenAI managed to delete users’ data, it’s unclear if that step would be permanent. Studies have shown that data sets linger on the internet long after they have been deleted, because copies of the original tend to remain online.

“The state of the art around data collection is very, very immature,” says Mitchell. That’s because tons of work has gone into developing cutting-edge techniques for AI models, while data collection methods have barely changed in the past decade.

In the AI community, work on AI models is overemphasized at the expense of everything else, says Sambasivan. “Culturally, there’s this issue in machine learning where working on data is seen as silly work and working on models is seen as real work,” Mitchell agrees.

“As a whole, data work needs significantly more legitimacy,” Sambasivan says. 

Update: This story has been amended to make Nithya Sambasivan’s role in the field of data work clearer. 

The demo ratings released yesterday from Tuesday night reveal every show on Fox from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. significantly dropped in numbers.

21ST CENTURY LOGISTICS: The Marines are getting supersized drones for battlefield resupply. “The big flying machines are designed to carry about 150 pounds and can fly at about 67 miles per hour.”

Colorado-based Biofire Tech is taking orders for a smart gun enabled by facial-recognition technology, the latest development in personalized weapons that can only be fired by verified users.But in a sign of the long, challenging road that smart guns have faced, a prototype...

Regardless of one’s station in life, we must turn to God to find true peace.

The dramatic turn in the 18-month-old case arrived on the same day that Baldwin and other cast members resumed filming the movie in Montana.

The governor's office did not respond to a clarification request about whether transgenderism would be considered a 'psychological disorder.'

The billionaire’s proposed artificial intelligence platform, which he calls TruthGPT, ‘might be the best path to safety’ that would be ‘unlikely to annihilate humans’.

Fox News averted a potentially humiliating defamation trial after a last-minute settlement over its coverage of false vote-rigging claims in the 2020 US election.

Parler will 'maximize' free speech, new owner says

Christopher Hutton

April 19, 04:00 AM April 19, 04:00 AM

Parler's new owner said the social network will focus on expanding free speech.

Ryan Coyne, who purchased Parler from Parlement Technologies last week for an undisclosed sum and then shut down the platform for a rebuild, told the Washington Examiner that he aims to bring it back with an assortment of new features to serve those censored by Big Tech.

Video Embed

TRUMP TRASHES DESANTIS FOR BETTING 'DESTROYED' BY DISNEY

"The DNA of this technology is lifting up and allowing a voice for those that are silenced, giving them an opportunity to maximize their First Amendment Rights," said Coyne, who founded Starboard, an online publisher that operates the conservative websites BizPac Review and American Wire. "That will always be the focus and mission of the technology."

What those new features would look like, Coyne acknowledged, remains to be seen.

"There's no definitive path forward," Coyne said. "And I won't want to guarantee exactly anything."

He said he would consider his options, including replicating Mastodon's localized community building and Facebook Groups.

Coyne said that he hoped to create "additional value" for content creators and ensure users have a "greater level of access to their First Amendment rights."

He was unwilling to commit to a release date but said the platform would go up once they had a viable business plan.

Kanye West offered to acquire Parler in October after his Instagram and Twitter accounts were suspended but then backed out in November.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Parler was launched in 2018 by John Matze and Rebekah Mercer as a free speech alternative to Twitter. The platform first saw growth as Republican lawmakers and conservative personalities migrated there in case they were banned on Twitter. The platform saw a surge of interest in 2020 after the presidential election due to Big Tech platforms limiting election misinformation.

Parler made headlines in January 2021 after Apple and Google removed the app from their app stores and Amazon Web Services removed the service from its cloud computing services. The Big Tech companies claimed Parler had not done enough to stop or block posts inciting the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Google and Apple have since reinstated Parler in their app stores.

© 2023 Washington Examiner

Musk to launch AI startup to compete with OpenAI and Google

Christopher Hutton

April 14, 04:18 PM April 14, 04:18 PM Video Embed

Elon Musk has begun plans to launch a new artificial intelligence startup to compete with OpenAI in the race to commercialize AI for the public.

Musk is assembling a series of AI technicians and researchers to begin the startup, according to the Financial Times. He is also speaking with several investors at Tesla and SpaceX to have them put money into the startup. The billionaire also acquired over 10,000 graphics processing units, the tools required to power the large language models behind the chatbots that have gained massive attention in recent months. Musk is making the investments just weeks after signing a letter asking AI creators to pause training of the software.

AMAZON TO RELEASE AI SOFTWARE IN ATTEMPT TO COMPETE WITH MICROSOFT, GOOGLE

"A bunch of people are investing in it. ... It's real, and they are excited about it," a person familiar with the matter said.

Musk was one of the initial investors in OpenAI when it was founded in 2015. Still, he sold his stake to Microsoft in 2018 due to a "future conflict of interest" related to his role at Tesla and the car company's development of self-driving car software.

The billionaire slammed the company in February when it received a $10 billion investment from Microsoft. OpenAI has "become a closed source, the maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft," he tweeted. "Not what I intended at all."

Musk and other AI researchers posted an open letter in late March calling for a pause on all training of AI model more potent than GPT-4.

"This pause should be public and verifiable and include all key actors," the letter said. "If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium."

Several members of the AI development industry slammed the letter, claiming it misrepresents the problems, OpenAI's competitors pushed it, and several unique signatures were fake.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

The Pentagon's top cyberwarfare officer dismissed Musk's call to suspend training. "Artificial intelligence machine-learning is resonant today and is something that our adversaries are going to continue to look to exploit," Gen. Paul Nakasone said in congressional testimony.

Microsoft, Google, and Amazon compete to control the AI marketplace. Microsoft invested in OpenAI and incorporated ChatGPT into several of its products, while Google launched the Bard chatbot in March.

© 2023 Washington Examiner

It's tempting to shrug off the annoying pronoun questions from your doctor because they're not hurting you. That's where you'd be wrong.

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HMM: Elon Musk Founds a New Artificial Intelligence Company Named X.AI.

OH: Low-Rent Mind Control? Anheuser-Busch CEO Is a Former CIA Agent.

Security researchers are jailbreaking large language models to get around safety rules. Things could get much worse.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The governments of the US and UK do NOT want the UN to determine who sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines. A UN Security Council vote on Monday, Mar 27, 2023, denied the Russian Federation’s petition for a UN-led investigation.

The UN’s press release stated the “Russian Federation said his delegation was proposing the establishment of a United Nations-led, independent investigation into the Nord Stream gas pipeline attacks due to its ‘serious and very well-founded doubts’ about the transparency of national investigations currently being conducted, namely by Denmark, Germany, and Sweden.” Three members voted in favor and 12 voted “abstention,” resulting in insufficient votes to pass. Abstention blocks passage.

Are you curious who secretly blew up the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, simultaneously attacking Russia and Germany in the act of war? Evidently, Washington, DC, does not want the UN to poke around in this business. It could get messy. What might happen if we found out who did it?

Shortly after the undersea explosions, I concluded that the US government did not want us to know who did it. There was a fishy smell coming from Washington back in September when it happened. The first official story was that Russia did it, and immediately a handwaving denial of involvement by the CIA and White House. Now festering for half a year, what is emanating from DC surrounding this question has only grown stronger and fouler.

Nord Stream

The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipeline pairs were sabotaged on Sept 26, 2022, by targeted underwater demolitions, rupturing three of the four 48″ diameter natural gas pipes running 750 miles under the Gulf of Finland and Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. The demolitions occurred near the German end of the lines, close to the Danish island Bornholm, in Danish and Swedish economic zones.

The pipelines are owned by Gazprom, GAZP, the world’s largest publicly listed natural gas company, with $120B in sales in 2019. Gazprom is the largest company in Russia and the 36th largest in the world. Privatized in 1989 by Boris Yeltsin, converting the Soviet Ministry of Gas Industry to a corporation, the Russian government now owns the majority of shares after the 2000 return to state rule by Vladimir Putin. As of 2017, 49.8% of the shares were held by investors in foreign stock markets, other legal entities, and individuals, with the Russian government owning a controlling interest of just over half the shares.

Russia has the largest natural gas reserves in the world. Gazprom has a legal monopoly on exporting natural gas from Russia. The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines together were capable of moving four trillion cubic feet per year of natural gas from Russia to Germany. Gazprom supplied 2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas to Germany and Western Europe in 2021 via Nord Stream 1. 55% of the natural gas and 30% of the oil used in Germany had come from Russia, and Germany was reselling some of the imported Russian gas at a profit to other European states. In 2021 45% of the natural gas imported in the European states came through Nord Stream. Instead of a massive amount of clean and low-cost Russian natural gas, firewood was suddenly in high demand in Germany over the winter, and Germany’s energy prices have skyrocketed.

The Nord Stream 2 (NS2) pipeline pair completed construction in 2021 but did not enter service following strong pushback. The US government has opposed NS2 since the proposal phase. Sanctions were imposed by the US on Nord Stream 2 construction in 2019 and expanded in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to “thwart the progress.” The European Commission stated that the US was threatening Europe’s energy supplies. In February 2022, the US imposed additional sanctions on NS2. The two NS2 A and B pipelines were complete and pressurized but had not yet been certified for transmission by the German government when the war with Russia in Ukraine started. NS2 has never been used to deliver gas.

When the sabotage occurred, the ruptured NS2 A pipe had been filled with 11 billion cubic feet of natural gas, and the pressure dropped from 105 to 7 bar. The NS2 B pipe remains intact and pressurized, available to deliver gas according to Russia.

The four pipes were not transmitting gas when blown up but were pressurized. Methane makes up the largest component, a greenhouse gas worse than CO2. The EDF estimated the demolition resulted in 250M pounds of methane released into the atmosphere, and a German estimate put it at 660M pounds. This is the largest gas leak in human history, equivalent to the yearly emissions of 5.5 million cars. Care about global warming, anyone?

Russia’s initial estimate of the repair costs was reported to be about $500M. Nord Stream AG stated that a repair might be impossible unless done quickly due to seawater corrosion. The Washington Post reported the demolition is likely to put an end to the project. Nord Stream 1 construction cost was about 6B euros, and Nord Stream 2 cost about 10B euros.

Somebody took out about 16B euros total worth of property, ended 54% of the gas imports into Europe, and produced greenhouse gases for a year operation of 5 million cars. Yet the US government doesn’t want the UN to find out and tell us who did it and officially appears uninterested in knowing itself.

Does this make you wonder if the US government knows who did it, doesn’t want us to know, and would rather the question fade from the public mind as uninteresting and not a concern?

Biden’s Verbal Snafu

President Joe Biden made the US government’s position on Nord Stream 2 quite clear. Apparently, his handlers lost control for a minute.

“If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it… I promise you, we will be able do that.” ∼President Joe Biden, 2021, Joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, C-SPAN

Following Biden’s statement at the news conference, Chancellor Scholz spoke of “severe measures” Germany would implement against Russia, saying Germany is “well prepared with far-reaching measures.” Scholz said, “We will be united, we will act together, and that we will take all the necessary steps.” What Scholz did NOT say is anything about Joe Biden’s “there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2” —yet he spoke immediately after Biden. Should Scholz’s silence after such an astounding statement of intent be interpreted as concurrence with whatever Biden was referring to? One might suspect Scholz knew what Biden was talking about but had the sufficient mental capacity to know not to blurt it out at a news conference.

Sometimes if you listen, people will tell you what they are up to. Occasionally a neuron in Joe Biden fires in a way his superiors can’t stop until it’s too late, and we accidentally learn something. Oops!

Russian Request

The Russian Federation’s request for an independent investigation was “heatedly debated” in the UN Security Council in February 2023 and denied then. Russian ambassador Vassily Nebenzia had presented a request from Moscow, saying the UN Secretary-General is “someone we trust.” US Ambassador to the UN John Kelley responded that Russia’s investigation request was a “blatant attempt to distract” the UN from the real problem – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ah, yes, the “conspiracy theory” defense—from the government that invented the phrase “conspiracy theory” for use in propaganda to distract the public from the truth. From the government that knows nothing about the Kennedy assassination, lied to the UN about weapons of mass destruction to get a war started, and secretly traded guns for cocaine. “Trust me!” says Washington, DC.

The UN Security Council vote might be interpreted to indicate they know who the terrorists are and consider it best to keep quiet. It might be construed to indicate that some countries were told to shut up and not ask questions. But the question won’t go away because most of the UN Security Council willfully ignore it.

Who Done It?

The US and UK governments are on the list of suspects in the sabotage. The US government’s words and actions demonstrated motive, and the US is technically capable of pulling off the complex operation. The US and UK had the personnel and equipment in the area shortly before the explosions during the July BATOPS 22 NATO exercise, when 45 ships, 75 aircraft, and 7,500 people practiced destroying Russia in the Baltic region. Not proof, of course, but enough to arouse suspicions and bring in a suspect for questioning.

Yet these suspects were on the UN’s Grand Jury, determining if the crime should be investigated. The suspects determined no investigation should be conducted. Should we be surprised when there is no indictment from a Grand Jury when suspects sit on the jury itself?

“Nothing to see here, folks; move along.”
– paraphrasing the US government’s official position on Nord Stream

 

 

This article is Part 1 of a series covering the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. Part 2 covers the operation’s technical challenges and the three different culprits to the demolition that has been attributed so far. Part 3 analyzes the possibilities for each of the three possible culprits blamed so far and wonders why the US government doesn’t want us to know who did it.

The post Who Done It? Suspects in the Nord Stream Bombing Vote, “Move Along, Nothing to See Here” appeared first on UncoverDC.

I suspect, gentle readers, you’ve heard of the shooting of Newport News elementary school teacher Abby Zwerner. I also suspect you were shocked to learn the student that shot her was six-years-old! What you may not know is despite being shot in the hand and chest, Zwerner managed to get the rest of her little students to safety. She nearly died, but is undergoing a slow and painful recovery.

I’ve often written about school discipline issues. When adults abrogate responsibility for discipline, little or no learning happens and students and teachers are routinely preyed upon, injured, even killed. It is every principal’s primary job to ensure teachers are able to teach. Without policies in force to ensure kids who disrupt school are punished and/or removed, the kids that want to learn are denied the opportunity.

Why would “educated” adults allow chaos to reign in schools? Education remains largely a female-dominated occupation, and women tend to shy away from confrontation and violence. Yes, there are differences between men and women, yet most teachers have dealt with fearful administrators as well. Many “educators” are D/S/Cs with all the pathologies that mindset embraces and imposes. They see juvenile criminals and sociopaths as victims of society, who can be “fixed” by the correct policies, such as “restorative justice,” and merely talking about why their purposeful, even insane, behaviors are not nice. The Parkland killer was the beneficiary of that kind of non-thinking.  

In Texas, for example, if a student is removed from a class by a teacher, state law requires that student not be returned to the classroom that period. This is absolutely essential to minimal discipline. If a student’s disruptions are so serious as to require immediate removal, if they’re sent right back to class, smirking and arrogant, the principal involved has removed that teacher’s control of their classroom. Misbehaving kids are emboldened, kids that want to learn are convinced they won’t have that opportunity and juvenile criminals will be able to prey on them at will. It’s state law in Texas, yet principals routinely break the law, refuse to allow teachers to remove kids, or sending them back to class.

Why, apart from incompetence, fear of confrontation, and political ideology would principals refuse to discipline misbehaving, even overtly dangerous students? Fear of exposure and public condemnation. Schools routinely refuse to report drug dealing and use and violent crime, crimes that if occurring outside school property would likely result in arrest, because they want to maintain the illusion there is no crime in their school. They’re professionals. They have it all under control, and their D/S/C policies, which cannot possibly fail because they’re perfect, dreamed up and imposed by perfect, intellectually and morally superior, people, are succeeding beyond all expectation, as such policies must. Such concealment can be a policy handed down from the school board, superintendent, or limited to individual schools. However, in such districts, any principal involving the police when necessary against a superintendent or school board’s wishes, even if not in a formal policy, will soon find themselves an ex-principal.

With that background in mind, let’s visit The Blaze:

A Richneck, Virginia, woman who was shot by a 6-year-old in early January 2023 has filed a $40 million lawsuit against the Newport News School Board, claiming negligence led to the shooting, according to Yahoo News.

Richneck Elementary went into lockdown on Jan. 6, 2023, after first-grade teacher Abby Zwerner was shot in the hand and chest by a child who reportedly obtained a gun belonging to his mother, which was allegedly secured.

Zwerner says she told the school’s administration that the boy, whose family says he has an ‘acute disability,’ had threatened another student at the school, but nothing was done.

‘They didn’t call security, they didn’t remove the student from the classroom, the school administration failed to act,’ said her attorney Diane Toscano in January.

In the 20-page complaint, many of the previous assertions about the small boy are made, with expansions on key individuals involved in different incidents. he lawsuit claims that the 6-year-old ‘had a history of random violence,’ including attacking ‘students and teachers alike.’

This is another factor in schools that refuse to enforce civilized behavior: the age of students. One doesn’t normally think of a 6-year-old as inherently dangerous, but teachers know otherwise. However, such tender age often gives incompetent, fearful principals license to do even less to restraint horrible behavior and real threats.

In a confirmed incident, the boy had previously ‘strangled and choked a teacher,’ along with allegedly inappropriately touching a female student who fell in a playground, resulting in moving the boy from Richneck Elementary to the Denbigh Early Childhood Center.

Did the “Early Childhood Center” certify the child cured and safe for return to regular classes, or as so often happens, did they, recognizing the danger to their staff, have the political juice to get him off their hands? Were the teachers at Richneck Elementary fully informed of the danger? Were they informed at all?  I’ve not been able to find any information regarding this transfer. Local station WTFR provides additional details about the day of the shooting:

Zwerner’s lawyers claim the following information in the filed court documents:

*On Jan. 4, two days before the shooting, the student took Zwerner’s cell phone and slammed it on the ground so hard that it shattered. Zwerner took the student to the lead teacher and called school security. School security did not respond, so she called the guidance department. The guidance counselor came to the classroom and the student called them all ‘bitches’. He was suspended for one day.

*On the morning of Jan. 6, the day of the shooting, the student came back to school with his mom who then left.

She was supposed to accompany her son to class every day, which is an admission by the school district of how dangerous and uncontrollable he is.

*During lunchtime, Zwerner told the then-Assistant Principal of Richneck Elementary, Ebony Parker, that the student was in a ‘violent mood’ and had threatened to beat up a kindergartner during lunchtime. Parker had no response and didn’t even look up at Zwerner when she expressed concern. Another teacher was in the room during this time and witnessed Zwerner being practically ignored.

These are allegations, but one presumes Zwerner’s attorneys would not make them if they couldn’t reasonably prove them. Competent attorneys would have already interviewed witnesses and gathered other evidence before filing the lawsuit. I can attest from experience this kind of behavior in a principal is hardly, sadly, unusual.

*Assistant Principal Parker had a reputation for ignoring concerns from teachers. Teachers expressed similar concerns when she was the assistant principal at Newsome Park Elementary School. Teachers say Parker would let students get away with misconduct and students would often brag about getting candy from the assistant principal.

Another mark of an ineffective principal is an intense, juvenile and destructive, desire to be a student’s “friend.” Such principals, and teachers, try to be children’s peers, and want students to like them, above all else. They want students to think they’re “cool.” I always told my students, on the first day of class, we could be friends, but I would be their adult friend who was responsible for their behavior and safety, and they could absolutely expect me to “rat on them” if they did anything wrong or illegal. Kids who understood that became my friends—within the limitations of a professional relationship. The rest understood I was a teacher they dare not push. Those few that did immediately came to that understanding, because I had the good fortune to work in a school with adults in charge.

*At 11:45 a.m., two students informed a reading specialist, Amy Kovac, that the student had a gun in his backpack. When Kovac asked the student if he had a gun, he said he did not, but he refused to hand over his backpack and told her he was angry people were picking on his classmate.

Any suggestion a kid has a gun in their possession is grounds for immediate action; everything stops until the gun is found or the kid is cleared. Merely refusing to hand over the backpack should never have been allowed. Unfortunately, in schools that refuse to discipline students, teachers know they have no power to enforce discipline, and any teacher who dares to demand principals do their jobs, or who goes around them to involve the police, will likely be out of a job. Principals fearful of disciplining children aren’t afraid to discipline teachers who do the right, sane, thing when it exposes principal’s incompetence.

*When recess began at 12:30 p.m., Zwerner told another first-grade teacher, Jennifer West, that she saw the student take something out of his backpack and thought it may be a weapon. West observed the student and his friend and noticed they kept going behind a rock-climbing wall on the playground.

Another chance to deal with a potentially dangerous issue. Why didn’t Zwerner call for a principal? I suspect because she already did and knew nothing would be done. They probably wouldn’t even acknowledge her complaint.

*During recess, Kovac also told Zwerner that she saw the student take something out of his book bag and put it in his hoodie pocket. Kovac searched the student’s backpack but didn’t find a weapon.

*Kovac still went to the school office and told Assistant Principal Parker that the student told other kids he had a gun and that Zwerner saw the student put something in his hoodie pocket. Parker responded that the student’s pockets were too small to hold a handgun and took no further action.

Insanity and incompetence that nearly got Zwerner killed.

*West pulled the student’s friend aside after recess, who was crying, and told West that he couldn’t share what the student told him out of fear of being hurt. The friend then told West that the student showed him a gun in his pocket.

See what I mean about kids being preyed upon by unrestrained juvenile criminals and lunatics?

*West kept the friend in her classroom because she feared him being near the student. She then contacted the school’s office. A music teacher, John Sims, answered the phone and told West he would inform Parker of the situation.

*At 1:11 p.m., Sims called West to tell her that he had told Assistant Principal Parker. Parker told Sims that she was aware of the threat and that the student’s backpack had already been searched. No further action was taken, despite clarification that it was believed the gun was on the student’s person rather than in the backpack.

In any competent school, at this point the building would have gone into lockdown, the police would have been called, and the student isolated, and his person, and any place he could have put a weapon, thoroughly searched. Actually, that should have happened at the first intimation the kid had a gun.

*A guidance counselor, Rolonzo Rawles, then asked Assistant Principal Parker for permission to search the student’s person for a firearm. Parker refused to grant permission and said the student’s mother would be arriving soon to pick him up.

Imagine, gentle readers, how all this is going to play before a jury. I’m sure depositions will expose even more damaging information, which will probably lead to a substantial settlement. Even knowing only what appears in media accounts, few, if any, school districts, would want a case like this to go to trial.

*At 1:59 p.m., the student pulled a firearm out of his pocket, aimed it at Zwerner, and shot her while she was seated at her reading table in the classroom.

Let’s return to The Blaze:

The legal complaint insists that ‘concerns with [the boy’s] behavior were regularly brought to the attention of Richneck Elementary School administration, and the concerns were always dismissed.’ [skip]

According to the lawsuit, that very day of the shooting, around 11:15 a.m., Zwerner told the assistant principal that the child was ‘in a violent mood’ and ‘threatened to beat up a kindergartner during lunchtime, and angrily stared down a security officer.’

Then, at about 2 p.m., the boy shot Zwerner while she was sitting at a table after pulling a gun out of the front pocket of his hoodie.

The single shot went through the teacher’s left hand and into her chest.

This sounds like a classic case of defense wounds. Seeing the gun, Zwerner likely reflexively raised her hand to ward off danger, which is why the bullet pierced her hand on the way to hitting her chest.

The lawsuit names Newport News School Board as the lead defendant, along with Assistant Principal Ebony Parker, former school Principal Briana Foster Newton, and the superintendent.

Amazingly, the school district is threatening to file a counter-suit against Zwerner! For what? Getting shot? NBC has information on Zwerner’s continuing recovery:

Zwerner was praised for her handling of the shooting, in which she escorted about 20 students to safety. She was hospitalized for nearly two weeks.

She said in an interview with NBC News on Monday that she still doesn’t have full function of her left hand, making the most simple tasks, such as making a fist, opening a water bottle and getting dressed, extremely difficult. She said her doctors are still uncertain about whether she will be able to use her hand like before.

‘Physical therapy is not only physically exhausting but mentally exhausting as well. I’m supposed to be moving them once every hour, throughout the hour,’ she said of her fingers, ‘just manipulating them to get that blood flowing and to get that movement back into the hand.’

Americans are conditioned by TV and movies to believe people can shrug off gunshot wounds. TV cops are often shot in the shoulder, and after wearing a sling for a week or so, are good as new. In reality, gunshot wounds, even in the limbs or shoulder, can be absolutely debilitating, and cause permanent, life-long pain, suffering and loss of function. This is telling:

School board members voted to oust Schools Superintendent George Parker III ‘without cause’ less than three weeks later. Richneck’s principal was transferred to a different role within the school district, while Richneck’s assistant principal resigned.

I’m sure Parker did. What we don’t know is whether she was forced out, as she should have been. My guess is the school district wanted her gone, but firing her would have been too obvious an admission of incompetence and liability. How do you defend Parker refusing to ensure the kid didn’t have a gun, when repeatedly told by multiple people? It certainly sounds like the school district is trying to cut it’s losses.

Final Thoughts: This, gentle readers, is what happens when the inmates, even six-year-old inmates, are allowed to run the asylum. It’s a reminder of how dangerous human beings of even tender age can be. It’s a reminder of how important it is that parents in every school district in the country make it their business to know what’s happening in their schools, and demand school officials not only follow the law, but behave as responsible adults.

Unsurprisingly, local authorities are suggesting there will be no criminal—juvenile justice—consequences for the attempted killer. State law does allow such, but they’re apparently choosing not to invoke it. How would you, gentle readers, like to be a teacher in whatever school is forced to enroll this kid in the future?

More as it develops.

The former US vice-president will not appeal against the ruling, and will comply with the subpoena from the special counsel investigating Trump.

In his 67-page straight-talking opinion, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk stuck to the facts — something Americans desperately need to hear after decades of euphemistic discussions about abortion.

Yesterday, President Joe Biden declared that “it remains to be seen” whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) is “dangerous.” I would beg to differ. I have been writing about the threat of AI to free speech. Then recently I learned that ChatGPT falsely reported on a claim of sexual harassment that was never made against me on a trip that never occurred while I was on a faculty where I never taught. ChapGPT relied on a cited Post article that was never written and quotes a statement that was never made by the newspaper. When the Washington Post investigated the false story, it learned that another AI program “Microsoft’s Bing, which is powered by GPT-4, repeated the false claim about Turley.” It appears that I have now been adjudicated by an AI jury on something that never occurred.

When contacted by the Post, “Katy Asher, Senior Communications Director at Microsoft, said the company is taking steps to ensure search results are safe and accurate.” That is it and that is the problem. You can be defamed by AI and these companies merely shrug that they try to be accurate. In the meantime, their false accounts metastasize across the Internet. By the time you learn of a false story, the trail is often cold on its origins with an AI system. You are left with no clear avenue or author in seeking redress. You are left with the same question of Reagan’s Labor Secretary, Ray Donovan, who asked “Where do I go to get my reputation back?”

Here is my column in USA Today:

"I can’t count on both my hands the irregularities that put me in that position when a call for service came out for an act of deadly aggression at a school"

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