Australia’s Rural Churches Are Being Snapped Up For Housing

Government Motion in Kepke Case to Exclude Expert Testimony About the Law 

I picked up an argument in a Government Motion to Exclude Defendant’s Proffered Expert Witness in the Kepke prosecution, United States v. Kepke(N.D. Cal. Criminal No. 3:21-CR-00155-JD), Motion dated 8/5/22, here. In general, the Government claims that Kepke’s expert witness disclosures were too cryptic to understand the expert witness’s proffered testimony, but the Government inferred that the expert witness would improperly testify about the law. Here are the three key paragraphs I focus on (Motion pp, 7-9):

             Expert witnesses are not permitted to offer opinions consisting of their interpretation of the law. See Hangarter v. Provident Life and Acc. Ins. Co., 373 F.3d 998, 1018 (9th Cir. 2004) (quoting Mukhtar v. Cal. State Univ., Hayward, 299 F.3d 1053, 1066 n. 10 (9th Cir. 2002), overruled on other grounds by Barabin v. AstenJohnson, Inc., 740 F.3d 457, 467 (9th Cir. 2014)); 

Google’s Search AI now looks for general consensus to highlight more trustworthy results engadget: “You know that highlighted piece of text at the very top of a Google search results page when you look up a piece of information? That’s called a “featured snippet,” and it’s meant to provide you with a quick answer to your query. Now, Google is making sure that the information it highlights is reliable and accurate by using its latest AI model, the Multitask Unified Model, so that Search can now look for consensus when deciding on a snippet to feature. 

Google’s Search AI can now check snippet callouts — those are the information with larger fonts that serve as heading for featured snippets — against other high-quality sources online. It can figure out if there’s a general consensus for that callout, even if sources use different words or concepts to describe the same fact or idea. Google says this “consensus-based technique has meaningfully improved the quality and helpfulness of featured snippet callouts.”

How Word Games Give Us A Sense Of Control In An Out Of Control World

"I started playing word games as a way to stop reading the news first thing in the morning. Death counts, infection rates, mass shootings, disasters on our overheating planet, and what could I do about it all? I’ve protested, voted, and written." - Nieman Lab

Australia’s Rural Churches Are Being Snapped Up For Housing

Those who buy the churches, for housing or co-working spaces or workshops or galleries, sometimes find it hard to get work done as all of the locals stop by to talk about history. - The Guardian (UK)

Popular Science – Slow sand and membrane filters can knock out nearly all of the tiny pollutants. “Out of all the plastic that has even been produced globally, less than 10 percent has been recycled. One of the biggest environmental dilemmas with this is that plastic does not decompose, 

it only breaks down into smaller pieces that can contaminate soil and water. Small plastic particles between one micrometer and five millimeters in length are called microplastics; those smaller than one micrometer are called nanoplastics. So far, microplastics have been found in water sources like lake water, groundwater, and tap water, and they likely contain the even tinier nanoplastics too.

 In fact, studies have identified nanoplastics in tap water in China, lake water in Switzerland, and even ice samples in the Northern and Southern polar regions. However, the full extent of tiny plastic contamination of drinking water sources has yet to be known because it is challenging to detect them, which can make it more difficult to address the problem…”