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Pita Bread and Arson

Sherlock encounters his strangest mystery yet. Also, AI people say AI will kill us, we've set a NEW SPACE RECORD and Canada is pretty on fire.

Endeavorance

May 31, 2023 — 3 min read

Solve this one, Sherlock

A dude got Big Mad at Benedict Cumberbatch recently and decided to try and, I guess, set his home on fire?

Ol' Cucumberpatch was at home with his family when the would-be arson boy walked up to the house, kicked through the gate and began to yell, then destroyed the house's intercom speaker using a fish knife.

He reportedly was at a store moments beforehand, where he purchased some pita bread and told the shopkeep that he was gonna burn down the house.

So, a normal grocery store trip from my experience.

AI people say AI is gonna kill us

A bunch of AI industry leaders co-signed a very short statement about their outlook on artificial intelligence:

Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.

I don't think you need to go about preparing for the end of the world at the hands of AI just yet, personally. I do, however, think this is yet another step in technology where policy is lagging far, far behind where it needs to be.

NEW SPACE RECORD

A record number of humans are in Earth's orbit currently, as we now have 17 people just kinda floating out there.

China had a successful mission launch to send more astronauts to their space station on Monday, pushing the total count of orbit people to 17. That wont last super long though, because a different group of SPACE FOLKS will be plunging back to earth like, today.

Still, its a record, and given the number of times we've heard about really upsetting new records, it feels pretty dang good to hear about a new SPACE RECORD.

Shits on fire, yo

Nova Scotia is very much on fire right now, with seven active wildfires burning and over 100 more wildfires so far this year than last year.

Over 16,000 people have been forced out of their homes by the fires, but thankfully there are no reported casualties, just some singed houses and quite a few messed up lungs.

A confluence of a warm winter, drying climate, lack of recent snow melt and LIGHTNING is to blame for the worsening conditions. A lack of rain has made matters more dire.

This is all ongoing and I wanna end this with a joke but I mean like…

idk

thats fire

whatever

On this day

I… wish I could give you a positive one here but I feel its pretty important to say that on this day in 1921, the Tulsa race massacre (aka the Black Wall Street massacre) took place.

Wild mobs of white residents who were deputized and armed by the local government descended on a thriving Black district in Tulsa Oklahoma, violently attacking residents and destroying their homes.

Reports about how it all started are mixed, but mostly fall along the lines of: Black residents were at the courthouse after reports of a man who was to be lynched by a white mob. Some kind of scuffle took place, seemingly provoked by an old white man. It grew from there into a full on massacre, with the city itself working with the mob attacking Black citizens. 35 square blocks were destroyed.

Various reports over the years say somewhere between 36 and 300 people died, while thousands were left homeless.