Chikere Ezeh

Spring AI & Embabel are the future...

Wall Street eases from record highs on rising economic jitters U.S. stocks retreated from all-time highs in choppy trading on Tuesday as investors, deprived of economic data resulting from the shuttered government, looked to secondary indicators and remarks from U.S. Federal Reserve officials for clues regarding economic weakness and monetary policy.

Wall Street eases from record highs on rising economic jitters reut.rs/4o8aMCI

EMEKA EGBUKA SLOW WALKS INTO THE ENDZONE FOR A 77-YARD TD

If only people would learn that AI doesn't actually exist, that not one technology in existence can… We have NOT invented a program that can think, and we are likely still at least another century from accomplishing that. Meanwhile, a whole…

AI, as popularly conceived, does not exist. No system thinks, reasons, or chooses. We’ve merely rebranded deterministic software as intelligence. The real innovation? Convincing the public that autocomplete is sentient. #AI #CriticalThinking

articulatedkat.medium.com/if-only-peop...

Panic attacks and anxiety plague a young immigrant mother navigating around ICE arrests The threat of forcible separation from family is a form of trauma that immigrants are facing, mental health experts say.

The threat of forcible separation from family is a form of trauma that immigrants are facing, and this kind of fear can have ripple effects, mental health experts say.
trib.al/agJpdoo

Reading…

Only Starmer can save the Tories The Conservative party will end up fighting a losing battle with Reform unless Labour’s immigration policies are broadly seen to work

Kemi Badenoch should be secretly hoping Labour’s immigration policies work and reduce the issue’s salience. The Tories can only beat Reform on day-to-day issues, writes @peterkellner.bsky.social.

He didn’t stand out, stop spouting rubbish

Israeli data shows 83 percent of Gaza war dead are civilians: Report Leaked Israeli intelligence confirms one of the highest civilian tolls in modern conflicts.

Leaked Israeli intelligence confirms one of the highest civilian tolls in modern conflicts.

Bank forced to rehire workers after lying about chatbot productivity, union says Australia’s biggest bank regrets messy rush to replace staff with chatbots.

While Australia's biggest bank claimed that its recently added chatbots justified the elimination of dozens of employees, the AI use only ended up creating a scramble behind the scenes.

Why it’s good to admit when you’re wrong – and how to improve

Admitting to being wrong can be difficult. But "intellectual humility" is a trainable trait that deepens relationships.

OpenAI Leadership Responds to Meta Offers: 'Someone Has Broken Into Our Home' As Mark Zuckerberg lures away top research talent to Meta, OpenAI executives say they're ‘recalibrating comp,’ according to an internal memo.

As Mark Zuckerberg lures away top research talent to Meta, OpenAI executives say they're ‘recalibrating comp,’ according to an internal memo. www.wired.com/story/openai...

The Queens of Botswana's Metal Scene South African photographer Paul Shiakallis’s series Leather Skins, Unchained Hearts provides a visual alternative to the stereotypical metalhead in the popular Western imagination.

Since mainstream culture often perceives metal as “satanic,” many women of Botswana’s metal subculture wear more traditional clothing by day and only reveal their brutal alter-egos in their Facebook photos, posing in full metal regalia, often in front of trees outside at night.

Wimbledon 2025: dates, schedule, seeds, how to watch on TV Wimbledon is a grasscourt Grand Slam organised by the All England Lawn Tennis Club. The tournament was first held in 1877. Here is what you need to know about the year's third major after the Australian Open and French Open:

Wimbledon 2025: dates, schedule, seeds, how to watch on TV reut.rs/3I6a35g

Minnesota House Democratic leader dead after targeted shooting; Democratic senator also shot • Minnesota Reformer House Democratic-Farmer-Labor caucus leader Melissa Hortman, who was among the most influential Minnesota elected officials of the past decade, died on Saturday morning after a man impersonating a pol...

House Democratic leader Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, dead after targeted shooting. Sen. John Hoffman was also shot, though he's expected to recover.

It is beautiful.

Leopards eating faces.

I have no issues with an echo chamber. It can offer emotional comfort, stronger group cohesion, and more efficient communication. There are challenging views which are essential for testing the strength of one's beliefs, but that's not what Twitter offers, Its pure bile out there.

MCP Elicitations: Standardizing Interactive AI Workflows Through Structured User Input Explore how the new MCP Elicitations protocol standardizes interactive AI workflows by enabling servers to collect structured user input dynamically, building upon AI-generated UI concepts.

If you're building with MCP or exploring agent UX, this is worth a look

blog.fka.dev/blog/2025-01...

Reading a blog post.

Please help find the other Walthamstow Stella ….😿

Molly Shah gave us Brexit.

Nigeria police investigate blast outside army barracks in Abuja Nigerian police said on Monday that they were investigating an explosion outside an army barracks in the centre of the capital Abuja and that one person was receiving medical attention in hospital after the incident.

Nigeria police investigate blast outside army barracks in Abuja reut.rs/4dwcKIZ

[CLICK here if you would like your name added to this letter] النسخة العربية من هذه الرسالة متاحة أدناه. Open Letter to the Bluesky Team About Their Treatment of Palestinians in Gaza The signatories of this letter are all members of the Bluesky community, many of us have actively participated on the platform since its inception. We came to Bluesky because it was a breath of fresh air, a place that felt different from many of the other social media platforms. The lack of a central algorithm, the ability to build and use custom feeds, and the lack of penalty for link promotion contributed to an environment that allowed diverse and interesting voices to find their footing and community on Bluesky. While some of the signatories of this letter have had no issues with speaking their mind publicly on Bluesky, unfortunately that is not true for all the signatories because many are Palestinians currently living in Gaza. These Palestinians are journalists, artists, engineers, teachers, grandmas, entrepreneurs, a man who owned an ice cream shop, a pediatrician who has been featured on CBS Morning News, aid workers, architects, waiters, pharmacists, students–and perhaps most essential to the backbone of Bluesky, posters. All of these people provide unique and interesting voices to the Bluesky community. However, unlike the other signatories of this letter, these Bluesky community members have struggled to keep their accounts on the platform. Most of them have lost multiple accounts and/or have had their accounts labeled as spam. Some cannot even make an account without it immediately being removed from the platform. Gazans undertake immense efforts to simply be on Bluesky. Sometimes, they walk for miles just to have access to the internet. They scale rooftops where they are exposed to potential military attacks just for the opportunity to get better cell signals–one signatory of this letter tragically lost her brother this way. They use what little money they have to pay …

Gazans have also been aggressively targeted and unfairly reported by bad actors. Many accounts openly encourage the reporting and targeting of any Palestinian. Several groups exist for the express purpose of looking for Palestinian accounts to report. We believe Bluesky owes Gazans, and the entire community who benefits from their voices, a greater duty of care especially in the context of the horrors they are enduring. We ask Bluesky to implement the following changes: Provide information on all Bluesky-affiliated websites in Arabic that explains the rules and expectations of the site in clear language. Investigate the accounts that are mass-reporting Palestinians on Bluesky. The mass reporting of Palestinians on Bluesky is a group effort to render the platform a hostile place for a community based on their ethnicity. As such, it is racism, and should be understood as such. Reports against Palestinians who have broken no community guidelines must be understood as racism, and the accounts that submit those reports should be disregarded in the future. Many Bluesky users encourage Gazans to tag or reply to them, and this is not always understood as unwelcome behavior. If an account is reported as Spam for tagging or replying to others, treat only reports from the tagged/mentioned account as legitimate, seeing as they were the only ones who received a notification. Send emails regarding disciplinary action every time it is taken. Gazans do not always get an email explaining what they did wrong, and those that do are required to parse a language they do not speak in order to understand their violation. Have these emails contain an easily visible link to information about their violations in Arabic. Respond to appeals in a timely fashion, many Gazans simply never hear back from Bluesky after they appeal a decision. In addition to removing Gazans for alleged spam behavior, Bluesky has also sometimes indicated that they are deleting an account for being a scam or …

End IP bans on any account from Gaza and allow them to make new accounts where they can comply with Bluesky rules and continue to be valued members of the community. We understand that even if all these changes are made, many Gazans may still violate Bluesky rules in the future, but we hope that Bluesky will abandon their punitive approach to these violations and instead embrace an attitude of education, cooperation and community care– one that works to ensure people in Gaza can participate in a way that keeps their voices heard. We also call on the Bluesky community to help and support these accounts however they can. We want to continue to build a healthy community with better community members and this cannot be done if Gazans continue to be shunned. We can use this as an opportunity to show how to protect all vulnerable groups in the future. We hope that Bluesky does not follow the path of other social media platforms and instead forges ahead with a different philosophy. After all, that is the reason so many of its users are there. Bluesky's ethos of "No Caesars” should apply to all members of its community. [To add your name to the list of signatories, click here.]

We were hoping that this letter to @bsky.app could first be shared by a Gazan, but we were too worried that doing so would get their account deleted so we are sharing first.

You can sign on to the letter about the unfair treatment of Gazans on Bluesky here:

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Words of deep wisdom from my 5 year old

“Even if you punch yourself in the face, time keeps moving”

Ah, I see we're back to "BlueSky is dying," discourse.

No, it's not.

Please read the whole thread before you try to disagree with the points made in it.

And stop asking people not to criticize leaders with power. The answer is no.

People with power are supposed to be criticized.

I suggest white people start doing the deep work in your own communities. Because at every demographic level white voters have supported the lawless racist candidate in 3 consecutive elections, driving our democracy off a cliff. Deflecting to talking about Black men won’t help. Do the work.

You happened to be born in the time future historians will call “The Great Chaos-ening”

Charles B. Rangel, Longtime Harlem Congressman, Dies at 94

Breaking News: Charles Rangel, the former dean of New York’s congressional delegation who became the first Black chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, died at 94.