Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
And lets not forget the spotted owl, the excuse for shutting down the Northwest’s timber industry and the logging towns that once flourished there. The owls are thriving; the towns and their residents are gone, exactly as intended.
Senator James maroney WAtches how it’s done
The Balkanization of the United States continues.
A Democratic lawmaker who is among the nation's biggest legislative proponents of regulating artificial intelligence is hopeful to see legislation pass this year to protect residents from potentially discriminatory and harmful uses of algorithms.
State Sen. James Maroney, D-Milford, introduced legislation last year to regulate artificial intelligence that ultimately died when Gov. Ned Lamont signaled his dissentover concerns that Connecticut would legislate the issue differently than other states as the issue becomes more salient nationally.
Maroney said he believes this year can be different though after leading a consortium with representatives from 47 state legislatures last year.
“I think we’re in a different place from last year; the governor didn’t want to be the first or the tip of the spear,” he said.
Last June, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a comprehensive artificial intelligence regulation bill. Maroney said other states have adopted bills with smaller pieces of the Colorado bill and the bill proposed in Connecticut.
"I'm in close touch with Sen. (Robert) Rodriguez who passed this bill in Colorado and keeping abreast of what's going on with Colorado so we can make changes with our bill here," he said. "But our goal is to stay as close as possible to the Colorado bill."
DISKWINATION! It’s all about Diskwinimation
According to an overview of the Colorado bill that Maroney seeks to emulate, the law requires algorithm developers to disclose information demonstrating they took reasonable care to protect from discrimination. This can include providing a statement about the information used to train the model and a risk management policy, as well as making consumers aware they are interacting with an artificial intelligence model.
Maroney said one challenge of artificial intelligence algorithms is when they are deployed for things, such as approving housing and hiring, since they are only as good as the models they're trained on, which may include discriminatory biases.
“We have been doing our best in the absence of federal legislation, which I think is highly unlikely, to work across the states,” he said. "I think we will see a similar number of bills in other states."
AN ACT CONCERNING CONSUMER PROTECTIONS IN INTERACTIONS WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEMS.
(I drafted a lengthy summary of all 26 pages of the document, but then conceded to myself that only a law junkie would want to plow through it all, so I’ve just left the link, and you can dip into it or — almost certainly — not. Suffice to say that it places an incredibly onerous, time-consuming burden of AI developers and the companies that use their programs to draw up and submit to the state bureaucrats a detailed plan of how they are ensuring that the devloprs’ algorithms only discriminate against white, able-bodied males.)
Like this:
DEFINITIONS:
(1) (a) "ALGORITHMIC DISCRIMINATION" MEANS ANY CONDITION IN
WHICH THE USE OF AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM RESULTS IN AN
UNLAWFUL DIFFERENTIAL TREATMENT OR IMPACT THAT DISFAVORS AN
INDIVIDUAL OR GROUP OF INDIVIDUALS ON THE BASIS OF THEIR ACTUAL OR
PERCEIVED AGE, COLOR, DISABILITY, ETHNICITY, GENETIC INFORMATION,
LIMITED PROFICIENCY IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, NATIONAL ORIGIN, RACE,
RELIGION, REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH, SEX, VETERAN STATUS, OR OTHER
CLASSIFICATION PROTECTED UNDER THE LAWS OF THIS STATE OR FEDERAL
LAW.
No mention in Colorado’s law is made of how many new DEI graduates will have to be added to the state payroll to monitor and review all these new reports, and our own Senator Maroney is mum on the issue himself but I’ve never met a Democrat politician who considered expanding the unionized government labor force a bad thing, so I doubt they’ve even considered the matter, nor will they.
Greenwich here we come
Median Price up 30.34%, $2.9 million vs $2.225 December ‘23
Days on Market down 32.8%, 51 days vs 76
New to the market, up 33.333%, 16 vs 12
Inventory still dropping, down 21.6%, 98 vs 125.
And then this:
Tu es hors d'ici, espèce de raquette inutile! (Rough translation, “you’re out of here, you useless snowshoe!)
Who wants the socialist/commie Quebeckers?
19 Coventry Lane, under contract since October, has closed at $1.780 million on an $1.8 million ask. Built for a different price level in 1967, I’m guessing that this structure has reached its useful life and will be replaced by a far more expensive one.
New construction priced at $4.825 million at 30 Benenson Drive, Cos Cob, is reported pending today. Up to now, Benenson was a pleasant enough street of modest homes, but that has changed, just as other moderately priced neighborhoods have. That’s not to criticize, merely to observe.
Sun, Jan 12
Director: King Vidor Run Time: 151 min. Rating: Not Rated Release Year: 1925
Starring: Claire Adams, Claire McDowell, Hobart Bosworth, John Gilbert, Renée Adorée
One of the greatest silent films ever produced and regarded as one of the greatest films made about World War I, The Big Parade has influenced several subsequent war films and been praised for its realistic depiction of warfare.
The idle son of a rich businessman joins the Army when the U.S.A. enters The Great War. He is sent to France, where he becomes friends with two working-class soldiers and falls in love with a Frenchwoman he must leave to move to the frontline.
Starring John Gilbert, “The Great Lover” of the silent era rivaled in popularity only by Rudolph Valentino. The film will be introduced by Mr. Gilbert’s grandson, Gideon Fountain.
Maybe we should have a FWIW meet-up?
thank you for showing me the true path, obi-wan
Meta is ending its fact-checking program and lifting restrictions on speech to "restore free expression" across Facebook, Instagram and Meta platforms, admitting its current content moderation practices have "gone too far."
"We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a video posted Tuesday morning. "More specifically, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes similar to X, starting in the U.S."
Meta’s third-party fact-checking program was put in place after the 2016 election and had been used to "manage content" and misinformation on its platforms, largely due to "political pressure," executives said, but admitted the system has "gone too far."
"We went to independent, third-party fact-checkers," [Meta’s chief global affairs officer] Joel Kaplan,Kaplan told Fox News Digital in an interview. "It has become clear there is too much political bias in what they choose to fact-check because, basically, they get to fact-check whatever they see on the platform."
Kaplan told Fox News Digital that Meta is "ending that completely" and will replace it with a "Community Notes" model similar to the one used on X, formerly Twitter.
"Instead of going to some so-called expert, it instead relies on the community and the people on the platform to provide their own commentary to something that they’ve read," Kaplan explained, noting that if a note gets support from "the broadest cross-section of users," that note can be attached to the content for others to see.
"We think that’s a much better approach rather than relying on so-called experts who bring their own biases into the program," Kaplan said.
Kaplan also told Fox News Digital that Meta is changing some of its own content moderation rules, especially those that they feel are "too restrictive and not allowing enough discourse around sensitive topics like immigration, trans issues and gender."
"We want to make sure that discourse can happen freely on the platform without fear of censorship," Kaplan told Fox News Digital. "We have the power to change the rules and make them more supportive of free expression. And we’re not just changing the rules, we are actually changing how we enforce the rules."
Kaplan said Meta currently uses automated systems, which he said make "too many mistakes" and removes content "that doesn’t even violate our standards."
Remember when the Left was screaming about the threat Trump posed to democracy? (You should, it was only yesterday — in fact, they’re still screaming today). What a difference an administration makes:
"We have a new administration coming in that is far from pressuring companies to censor and [is more] a huge supporter of free expression," Kaplan said, referring to the incoming Trump administration. "It gets us back to the values that Mark founded the company on." [Uh huh; sure, Joel]
Last year, Zuckerberg sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee in which he admitted that he felt pressure from the Biden administration, particularly with regard to COVID content, and even items like satire and humor.
"The thing is, as American companies, when other governments around the world that don’t have our tradition or our First Amendment, when they see the United States government pressuring U.S. companies to take down content, it is just open season then for those governments to put more pressure [on their companies]," Kaplan explained. "We do think it is a real opportunity to work with the Trump administration and to work on free expression at home."
Split-level raised ranch
There’s been some discussion in the comments over the proper terminology for house designs. This link may be of interest for some, so here it is:
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