Portside

A new version of AlphaGo needed no human instruction to figure out how to clobber the best Go player in the world — itself.

Marsha de la O, a southern California poet, depicts most tenderly the hard wages of environmental pollution.

Strict gun laws with harsh penalties aimed at punishing violent criminals can ensnare law-abiding people who make mistakes. That these laws often affect people of color is not at all new. The history of gun control in this country is long and has usually been directly or indirectly tied to race.

Americans' confidence in the police is down to 52%, an all time low since 1993 in the wake of the the Rodney King police beating. Although this Gallup report concludes that the 52% figure means that the "majority of American remain confident in this institution and have more faith in it than in most other institutions," put another way, nearly half of all Americans do not have faith in most institutions including the police. The figures are nevertheless noteworthy.

The incidence of involuntary part-time work surged during the Great Recession and has stayed unusually high during the recovery. This may reflect more labor market slack than is captured by the unemployment rate alone. This suggests that involuntary part-time work may remain significantly above its pre-recession level as the labor market continues to recover.

Many workers are not only fighting for the $15 an hour and a union that first drew them to the campaign. They’re fighting for a better world. They see their actions as re-directing the course of history, as building a future for their children and grandchildren, and as helping workers not only in other fast food outlets but also in many other jobs and industries.

Airplane noise affects our taste perception, and tomatoes are the winners!