Chicago Burb Pays Reparations, Iran Plots to Attack DC, AI Enabled F-16's? Why a Vegan Tiktoker Being Banned is a Big Deal (03/23/21)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
If you’re new around here (there was a pretty big uptick in readership last week, for whatever reason), this bi-weekly newsletter covers important stories that don’t always make front page news.
The Five isn’t a news outlet that runs to report on “breaking” events before the facts are known. So, you won’t find:
Anything in this issue about the Boulder, CO or Atlanta shootings. There’s nothing I can provide there that isn’t being reported on.
Coverage on the migrant crisis, until something new happens that I can provide a unique perspective on.
Anything about the English Royal Family, as my 7x great grandfather died with three redcoat musket balls in his chest so I could act like a subject write about the grandsons of the biological second cousins who currently sit on the throne.
Now, let’s get into the news.
[one]
An affluent northern Chicago suburb has become the first to pass a local reparations law.
The Hill reports:
Evanston, Illinois became the first city in the United States to approve a plan to pay reparations to Black residents who are the direct decedents of slaves or minorities who have been discriminated against over the last century.
The plan, approved Monday on an 8-1 vote, allocates $400,000 for eligible Black households to pay for down payments on property or house repairs. Eligible recipients of the funds must prove they or an ancestor lived in the city between 1919 to 1969 and was a victim of discrimination because of local housing laws during that period, The Associated Press reported.
The city says it plans to use tax revenue collected from the sale of recreational marijuana to pay for the program, which includes a larger $10 million package to provide more funds over the next decade.
Several localities across the country including Asheville, North Carolina, Chicago and Iowa City, Iowa are reportedly considering similar reparations programs.
Quick observations:
A. People still live in Chicago? What a silly thing to do.
B. Evanston, IL is one of the most divided cities I’ve ever seen, being mainly affluent (to very rich) with a notable poor part of town. It’s also home to Northwestern University, one of the highest ranking higher ed institutions, so I can see how they got here.
C. Historically, Chicago was one of the worst markets in the country for redlining (now giving loans to minorities to buy in certain neighborhoods. Evanston borders Chicago’s northernmost neighborhood (Rogers Park), but I’d never heard about redlining in Evanston until now. I’d like to know exactly what happened between 1919-1969 that those dates were chosen.
D. This story is happening in the larger context of Illinois bleeding residents and companies. I’m curious as to whether this will have an effect, positive or negative, for Evanston gaining or losing residents/business.
[two]
The Associated Press is reporting on an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate a U.S. General and attack a base in Washington DC:
Iran has made threats against Fort McNair, an Army post in the U.S. capital, and against the Army’s vice chief of staff, two senior U.S. intelligence officials said.
They said communications intercepted by the National Security Agency in January showed that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard discussed mounting “USS Cole-style attacks” against the Army post, referring to the October 2000 suicide attack in which a small boat pulled up alongside the Navy destroyer in the Yemeni port of Aden and exploded, killing 17 sailors.
The intelligence also revealed threats to kill Gen. Joseph M. Martin and plans to infiltrate and surveil the installation, according to the officials, who were not authorized to publicly discuss national security matters and spoke on condition of anonymity. The Army post, one of the oldest in the country, is Martin’s official residence.
The threats are one reason the Army has been pushing for more security around Fort McNair, which sits alongside Washington’s bustling newly developed Waterfront District.
City leaders have been fighting the Army’s plan to add a buffer zone of about 250 feet to 500 feet (75 meters to 150 meters) from the shore of the Washington Channel, which would limit access to as much as half the width of the busy waterway running parallel to the Potomac River.
So, the plot of a sworn enemy to blow up a military base on American soil was uncovered and the city of Washington D.C. wants to argue about…how the neighborhood might look?
Recently, DC residents have been complaining they don’t have representation in Congreess. Well,
A. That’s how it was set up. The nation’s capital was outside of all states to prevent bias in favor of the state that held it.
B. Move to Maryland or Virginia. Boom, you can vote in Congressional races!
C. It’s not the best look to say you need Reps/Senators for your non-state and also argue that landscaping is more important than preventing American soldiers from being blown up in the same month.
[three]
Bad news for all third graders who want to grow up to be fighter pilots….robots may be taking over a significant portion of those jobs sooner rather than later.
Two F-16s engaged with an opposing F-16 at an altitude of 16,000 feet above rocky desert terrain. As the aircraft converged from opposite directions, the paired F-16s suddenly spun away from one another, forcing their foe to choose one to pursue. The F-16 that had been left alone then quickly changed course, maneuvering behind the enemy with textbook precision. A few seconds later, it launched a missile that destroyed the opposing jet before it could react.
The battle took place last month in a computer simulator. Here’s what made it special: All three aircraft were controlled by artificial intelligence algorithms. Those algorithms had learned how to react and perform aerial maneuvers partly through a state-of-the-art AI technique that involves testing different approaches thousands of times and seeing which work best.
The three-way battle offers a glimpse of how AI may control future fighter jets—and the likely challenges of deploying the technology.
The Pentagon is interested. Last March, its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) invited teams to develop AI systems capable of controlling fighter jets in aerial combat situations that exceed human abilities, including scenarios involving several aircraft. AI could allow multiple aircraft to “swarm” together in ways that could change the dynamics of air combat.
“One of the things that really stands out is the ability to enable what you would call swarm warfare—rapidly overwhelming opponents,” says Chris Gentile, an ex–Air Force fighter pilot who is a program manager at EpiSci, a military contractor that is developing the technology for the contest, dubbed Air Combat Evolution. He says pilots may someday tell an AI program to scan an area or take care of one adversary while the pilot engages with another. The instructions would be the equivalent of “cover me, basically,” Gentile says.
Of course, the other side of the story is that hacking is one of the fastest growing crimes in the world, so a 13 year old in Croatia could theoretically take over a group of fighter jets and blow up whatever.
If you think that sounds far fetched, a 15 year old hacker shut down NASA’s computers for 21 days, and 18 year old David Dworken (below) hacked the Department of Defense in minutes during a (legal) contest to find vulnerabilities in the government’s computer system.
From the look of things, a genius level IQ doesn’t mean you know not to buy a suit jacket two sizes too big, further exaggerating your boyish look (or…that’s what he was going for, as a cover for being a Bond level supervillain).
[four]
Kadie Karen Diekmeyer, a.k.a. "That Vegan Teacher," has been banned from the rapidly rising social network TikTok with no explanation.
According to screenshots captured on Monday evening, Diekmeyer's page — which previously had over 1.7 million followers — no longer appears on the platform. Instead, viewers are now met with a message stating that her account was banned for violating "multiple community guidelines."
While it's unclear what exactly caused the ban, Diekmeyer's long been a polarizing figure on the platform for her controversial posts. Recently though, a Change.org petition calling for her removal from TikTok garnered over 20,000 signatures by arguing that she forcefully shamed people into adopting veganism, despite the diet not always being "the best option medically or financially" for some.
"She has made blatantly racist, bigoted, discriminatory statements against anyone who doesn't view veganism her way and her way alone," the petition read. "She has promoted multiple films that are dangerous to children given TikToks 13 yr old age requirement and many children under that age access it on a daily basis. These videos show violent depictions of animal slaughter in graphic detail."
The last thing I wanted to do when I got up this morning was defend a vegan TikToker, but…
A. My biggest issue with removing users from social networks is when it happens without an explanation (or even reason) of what policies were violated.
B. I personally think veganism has some very serious health risks that you should investigate for yourself. Health/nutrition is never going to be my beat…but I share that because I want it to be clear that I’m vehemently defending someone’s rights to push ideas in the public square that are nearly the opposite of my own.
If you can’t do that, you don’t believe in free speech.
Free speech only for people like you is called a dictatorship.
C. “Videos show violent depictions of animal slaughter in graphic detail.” You know what else showed that? My childhood growing up on a farm.
D. If you can’t draw the line between a vegan social media influencer being cancelled and the average Joe and Jane losing the right to express themselves freely, I don’t know what to tell you at this point. You don’t have to actually be canceled to lose your free speech, you just have to be terrified into not using it.
TikTok’s decision to cave to a random petition is one more step down that road.
[five]
Huh?
The City of Miami is contenting with…Spring Break…Riots?
NBC News reports:
Miami Beach, Florida, city leaders voted Sunday to extend emergency restrictions because of out-of-control spring break crowds that local officials believe are made up of more than just typical college students.
City commissioners voted to keep an 8 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew in their entertainment district, with an exception for restaurant delivery services, as well as restrictions on causeways beginning at 10 p.m.
The rules, which began Saturday in a 72-hour state-of-emergency order, will remain in effect through the end of the month, with the possibility that they could be extended to mid-April.
The city has made over 1,000 arrests since February, about half of them involving out-of-state-residents, and the influx has led to increasing crowd-control issues, Miami Beach officials said Sunday.
The types of crowds that have descended on the popular South Florida destination are not made up of the regular college-age students officials are used to, Mayor Dan Gelber and City Manager Raul Aguila said.
"I don't see this is a sort of spring break thing, because I don't think these are college kids," Gelber said. "I think it changes the nature of what we're in front of here. I think there are very few places that are open as we have been and as our state has been open. And there are even precious fewer places as beautiful as ours that is open."
Aguila said Florida's lax Covid-19 rules have encouraged people from outside the state to visit.
"This is a spring break like no other," Aguila said.
Gov. Ron DeSantis agreed to help provide Florida Highway Patrol reinforcement and resources from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for the city, Gelber said.
I debated whether or not include this story, as it’s so odd and difficult to pin down a motive as to why tourists are going this crazy coming out of a year of COVID lockdowns.
But the situation is no laughing matter. Two twentysomething men from North Carolina have been arrested for drugging and raping a woman who died in a Miami hotel, possibly from being drugged. The pair also stole and used her credit cards.
I’ve found no evidence that the alleged perps are college students, which could mean they simply came to town to commit the most heinous crimes human beings are capable of.
On one hand, it seems crazy to blame the lockdowns for this (and I’m not arguing for direct causation). On the other…there’s solid evidence that solitary confinement makes prisoners more violent and nihilistic.
There’s never been an experiment before COVID where much of the nation was in “solitary” at home for a calendar year…and it stands to reason that the most unstable among us may have mentally broken during that time, and are emerging with an increased tendencies towards the worst criminal behavior.
Until the next one,
-sth