Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Sign of the End? Lab-Grown Human Brain Cells ‘Exhibit Sentience’ When Scientists Teach Them to Play Pong

According to the 1991 blockbuster “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” Skynet was supposed to have become self-aware 25 years ago, on August 29, 1997.

I know this because I took my wife to see “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” on our honeymoon … which shows you just how self-aware I was in 1991. It’s amazing she’s stuck with me for so long. But I digress.

Skynet, of course, was the huge national-defense artificial intelligence network that kept sending terminator androids back in time so that they could fail to kill Sarah Connor and her son, John. I thought of the film immediately when I saw that Australian scientists recently taught lab-grown brain cells to play Pong.

Now that I write that down, I can see how some might consider it a stretch. Stay with me, here.

According to this report, which does not appear to have been peer-reviewed prior to its publication yesterday, a culture of 800,000 stem-cell-derived human brain cells and embryo-derived mouse brain cells displayed limited “sentience,” in the sense that they were “responsive to sensory impressions.”

The researchers called their human-mouse-brain-hybrid “DishBrain” — and there’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.

“DishBrain offers a simpler approach to test how the brain works, and gain insights into debilitating conditions such as epilepsy and dementia,” Cortical Labs CEO Dr. Hon Weng Chong explained. KOAM described Cortical Labs as a biotech start-up.

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Federal judge rules law criminalizing possession of guns without serial numbers is unconstitutional

A federal judge in West Virginia has ruled that a federal law banning possession of a gun with its serial number removed is unconstitutional, relying on the legal standard established by the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Second Amendment ruling in June.

The federal law in question, 18 U.S.C. § 922(k), prohibits “any person” from knowingly transporting, in interstate or foreign commerce, “any firearm which has had the importer’s or manufacturer’s serial number removed, obliterated, or altered,” or from possessing such weapons.

In U.S. v. Price, U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin found the federal law was not consistent with the United States’ “historical tradition of firearm regulation,” which was the standard established by the Supreme Court in its 6-3 New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen decision.

The criminal case concerns Randy Price, a man who was charged with illegal possession of a firearm that had the serial number removed. The weapon was found in his vehicle during a traffic stop in Charleston. The judge dismissed that charge, but kept another charge against Price of illegally possessing the gun after being convicted of previous felonies.

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Virginia Democrat Plans Bill To Charge Parents Who Do Not Affirm Their Child’s Gender Identity

Radical progressive Virginia Democrat Delegate Elizabeth Guzman announced plans to introduce a bill in the Virginia Legislature where parents could face a felony or misdemeanor charge if they do not affirm their child’s sexual orientation and/or  gender identity. According to her website, “Elizabeth was inspired by Bernie Sanders’ call for everyday people to run for office, a decision that was cemented when Hillary Clinton lost and Elizabeth’s 9-year-old son said the family had to return to Peru ‘because Donald Trump doesn’t like people who speak Spanish.’ ”

The bill is in response to recent guidelines released by the state’s Department of Education saying that sports teams should be based on biological sex and is focused heavily on parental rights.

The policies under Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin are sharp contrast to the 2021 guidance issued by former Democratic Governor Ralph Northam’s administration.

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Police Need Warrants to Search Homes. Child Welfare Agents Almost Never Get One.

The banging on Ronisha Ferguson’s apartment door in the Bronx started on a Thursday afternoon as she waited for her two sons to get home from school.

Ferguson, a nurse working 16-hour double shifts, knew instantly who she’d find in her hallway that day in February 2019.

For years, caseworkers from the Administration for Children’s Services, New York City’s child protective services bureau, had been showing up unannounced like this and inspecting her kitchen, her bathroom and her bedroom — and her children’s bodies — without a warrant.

A domestic violence survivor who previously lived in a shelter, Ferguson had never been accused of child abuse, ACS case records show. But she had faced repeated allegations of parenting problems largely stemming from her long hours at work, including that she’d provided inadequate supervision by having her 14-year-old daughter babysit the boys when they were 5 and 2, and had also allowed the kids to miss dozens of days of school.

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