Portside

That's what computers are really good at, relentless grinding. I can't call it intelligence, and I can call it artificial intelligence only in the sense that an inflatable palm is an artificial tree. I realize that we do have to call it something, though, but the term "artificial intelligence" probably confuses more than it illuminates.

Potential Impacts of Privatizing the Tennessee Valley Authority

The 1960s were a period of great ferment in many musical genres, but especially in jazz, where new and musically transgressive styles were combining with the political defiance that characterized the developing Black Power movement.

And she had a courageous voice: There was a tremendous sense of joy and energy and courage in her voice. She was able to be very gentle, too; she did wonderful ballads and lullabies and things; but there was that trumpet sound she had that I found very encouraging, because it said, oh, you too! You’re not a misfit, there’s somebody else out there with a big voice!

There is a lesson in the past fifty years of litigation. When the fight for equal rights for women narrowed to a fight for reproductive rights, defended on the ground of privacy, it weakened. But when the fight for gay rights became a fight for same-sex marriage, asserted on the ground of equality, it got stronger and stronger.

The Obama Administration continues to champion Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández as a key regional partner and wants to send even more money to his corrupt regime. Hernández’s government, on a six-year-long march against human rights, the rule of law and civilian policing, is now embroiled in an exploding corruption scandal. Just how heinous does the Honduran regime have to be before the U.S. stops supporting it?

Highlighting the failure of the U.S. government to keep adequate records on the number of civilians killed by police, news outlets are now tallying the lives lost to police violence. According to a new database launched by the Guardian on Monday, local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies are killing people at twice the rate calculated by the U.S. government. The data further illustrates “how disproportionately” black Americans are killed by police.

The wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan have left nearly 150,000 soldiers and civilians dead since 2001, a new US study estimates. Another 162,000 have been wounded since the US-led offensive that toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks, says the study by the Costs of War Project, at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. And, according to the study, “the war in Afghanistan is not ending. It is getting worse."

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko has tapped yet another foreigner to help rule his people. But this one may be the most bizarre yet. On May 31, Poroshenko awarded Ukrainian citizenship to fugitive ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and appointed him governor of Odessa, the complex, primarily Russian-speaking region that is also geographically close to the western Ukraine. Saakashvili is wanted in his homeland for embezzlement and human rights abuses.

Ian Angus, editor of Climate and Capitalism, responds to critics of Anthropocene scholars who assert the Earth has entered a new geological epoch due to human activity. Angus argues the criticism that Earth System scientists in the forefront of the Anthropocene project blame all of humanity for the actions of a small minority simply doesn’t hold water. And he urges ecological Marxists to be positive contributors to the Anthropocene discussions.