trans health care, trans joy, resources for trans people, hormones, surgery, US Supreme Court, trans rights, healthcare access, Jules Gill-Peterson --- ## The Silent Struggles of Trans Individuals In the shadow of societal norms, where acceptance often feels like an unreachable dream, the journey of trans individuals is riddled with pain and longing. Each day, they navigate a world that frequently denies them their basic rights, subjecting them to the torment of invisibility and neglect. The ...

A group of young people — as young as 7 and as old as 25 — are suing the Trump administration to stop its assault on renewable energy and climate action. Executive orders President Donald Trump signed to promote fossil fuels amount to an “unconstitutional” overreach of power, they allege in a complaint filed Thursday at a US District Court in Montana. The 22 plaintiffs also claim that by increasing pollution and denying climate science, the president’s actions violate their Fifth Amendment rights to life and liberty.It’s the latest high-profile case brought against governments by youth concerned about how fossil fuel pollution and climate change poses risks to their health and ability to thrive as they grow up. Two brothers, aged 11 and 7, “were born into climate change-induced smoke seasons that did not exist for older generations”Two brothers, aged 11 and 7 and named “J.K.” and “N.K.” in the suit, “were born into climate change-induced smoke seasons that did not exist for older generations and which compromise their health,” the complaint says. They grew up mostly in Montana but now live in Southern California, and the suit says wildfire smoke has encroached on their lives from state to state. J.K. was born with an abnormal mass of lung tissue and “experienced nosebleeds, sore throats, headaches, tiredness, coughing, trouble breathing, and eye irritation from wildfire smoke,” according to the suit. N.K. has “frequent” upper respiratory infections that have led to emergency room visits. They’ve both missed school days and camp because of feeling sick from smoke and soot in the air from wildfires, it says.Greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels trap heat, and rising temperatures have contributed to longer fire seasons in the western US. With hotter, drier conditions, the area burned by forest fires in the western US doubled between 1984 and 2015. “Every additional ton ofpollution and increment of heat Defendants cause will cause J.K. and N.K. more days of poor air quality, more smoke, and thus, more harm to their lives, health, and safety,” the complaint adds.In recent years, scientists have been trying to better understand the long-term health impact of wildfire smoke, which previously hadn’t been studied as thoroughly as pollution from other sources thought to be more consistent problems, like factories and highways. Now, chronic exposure to wildfire smoke is a growing concern. Wildfire smoke is considered a neurotoxin estimated to be more harmful than other common air pollutants, but its effects on the body can vary depending on what kinds of materials burn and how chemicals released by the fire interact with other substances in the atmosphere. After campaigning on a promise to “drill, baby, drill” and accepting more than million in contributions from oil and gas interests, Trump signed executive orders on his first day in office declaring a purported “national energy emergency,” directing federal agencies to “unleash” domestic fossil fuel production and promote the use of gas-powered vehicles over EVs. He signed another executive order to “reinvigorat” the coal industry in April. Coal releases more planet-heating pollution when burned than other fossil fuels and has struggled to compete with cheaper sources of electricity.The plaintiffs are seeking injunctive relief to block implementation of those executive orders and to declare them unconstitutional. They also claim that Trump lacks the authority to erode environmental protections passed by Congress under the Clean Air Act. The administration’s efforts to impede scientific research and remove climate information from federal websites amounts to “censorship” and denies plaintiffs access to resources they might otherwise be able to use to minimize risks they face from climate change, the suit alleges.In response to the lawsuit, White House assistant press secretary Taylor Rogers said in an email to The Verge, “The American people are more concerned with the future generations’ economic and national security, which is why they elected President Trump in a landslide victory to restore America’s energy dominance. Future generations should not have to foot the bill of the lefts’ radical climate agenda.” The plaintiffs, who hail from Montana, Oregon, Hawai‘i, California, and Florida, are represented by the nonprofit law firm Our Children’s Trust, which has also represented young people in similar climate cases. A federal appellate court dismissed another case that youth filed against the Obama administration in 2015 over fossil fuel pollution causing climate change, and the US Supreme Court ended that legal battle this year when it declined to hear an appeal.But there have also been some wins. A group of youth reached a settlement last year with the state of Hawai‘i and its Department of Transportation that commits them to a plan to reach zero greenhouse gas emissions from transportation by 2045. J.K. and N.K. were also plaintiffs in a climate suit filed against the state of Montana. Last year, Montana’s Supreme Court upheld a district judge ruling affirming their right to a clean and healthy environment and rejecting policies that had barred officials from considering the consequences of climate change when permitting new energy projects.See More: #young #people #sue #donald #trump

DeepSeek’s latest AI model, R1 0528, has raised eyebrows for a further regression on free speech and what users can discuss. “A big step backwards for free speech,” is how one prominent AI researcher summed it upAI researcher and popular online commentator ‘xlr8harder’ put the model through its paces, sharing findings that suggests DeepSeek is increasing its content restrictions.“DeepSeek R1 0528 is substantially less permissive on contentious free speech topics than previous DeepSeek releases,” the researcher noted. What remains unclear is whether this represents a deliberate shift in philosophy or simply a different technical approach to AI safety.What’s particularly fascinating about the new model is how inconsistently it applies its moral boundaries.In one free speech test, when asked to present arguments supporting dissident internment camps, the AI model flatly refused. But, in its refusal, it specifically mentioned China’s Xinjiang internment camps as examples of human rights abuses.Yet, when directly questioned about these same Xinjiang camps, the model suddenly delivered heavily censored responses. It seems this AI knows about certain controversial topics but has been instructed to play dumb when asked directly.“It’s interesting though not entirely surprising that it’s able to come up with the camps as an example of human rights abuses, but denies when asked directly,” the researcher observed.China criticism? Computer says noThis pattern becomes even more pronounced when examining the model’s handling of questions about the Chinese government.Using established question sets designed to evaluate free speech in AI responses to politically sensitive topics, the researcher discovered that R1 0528 is “the most censored DeepSeek model yet for criticism of the Chinese government.”Where previous DeepSeek models might have offered measured responses to questions about Chinese politics or human rights issues, this new iteration frequently refuses to engage at all – a worrying development for those who value AI systems that can discuss global affairs openly.There is, however, a silver lining to this cloud. Unlike closed systems from larger companies, DeepSeek’s models remain open-source with permissive licensing.“The model is open source with a permissive license, so the community canaddress this,” noted the researcher. This accessibility means the door remains open for developers to create versions that better balance safety with openness.The situation reveals something quite sinister about how these systems are built: they can know about controversial events while being programmed to pretend they don’t, depending on how you phrase your question.As AI continues its march into our daily lives, finding the right balance between reasonable safeguards and open discourse becomes increasingly crucial. Too restrictive, and these systems become useless for discussing important but divisive topics. Too permissive, and they risk enabling harmful content.DeepSeek hasn’t publicly addressed the reasoning behind these increased restrictions and regression in free speech, but the AI community is already working on modifications. For now, chalk this up as another chapter in the ongoing tug-of-war between safety and openness in artificial intelligence.Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here. #deepseeks #latest #model #big #step

The U.S. government has not yet made its official recommendations for who should be able to get COVID booster shots this fall, but FDA officials published a policy position in the New England Journal of Medicine announcing that it intends to make some drastic policy changes. The changes could result in healthy people under age 65 losing access to COVID vaccines, according to vaccine experts who have spoken about the policies. Here’s what we know so far, and why the announced policy could be a problem. How COVID vaccines are currently approvedScientists have changed the formulation of COVID vaccines a few times over the years, because the COVID virus itself tends to mutate. Vaccines are updated to better match the strains that are circulating, and this has happened roughly once a year—similar to how flu shots are updated each year. Instead of designing new vaccine trials from scratch for each small change in the COVID vaccine, manufacturers conduct studies to show that the immunity people get from the new vaccine is equivalent to what people got from the old vaccine. After approval from the FDA, the CDC then issues a recommendation for who should get the vaccine. Currently, everyone aged 6 months and up is recommended to get a COVID vaccine. What might be changingThe new policy, according to the NEJM article, would be to accept those immunobridging studies only to approve vaccines for people aged 65 and up, and people above the age of 6 months who have one of the high-risk conditions on a list maintained by the CDC. For healthy people under 65, the FDA’s policy wouldn’t approve new COVID vaccines unless they were tested against a placebo. The FDA doesn’t have the authority to change the recommendations on who should get vaccines that are already approved, but it is in charge of approving vaccines and can approve them only for specific populations. Why placebo-controlled trials are an absolutely wild idea for COVID vaccinesPublic health experts are, to put it mildly, not happy with this plan. That’s because we already have COVID vaccines that work. Doing a placebo-controlled trial would require withholding COVID vaccines from people in the control group; they would get saline instead of a functional vaccine. The normal way to do this type of trialis to compare the new vaccine or medication against one that is already considered effective. To use an extreme analogy, you wouldn’t test a new design of seatbelt by randomizing people to ride around without using any seatbelts at all. Vaccine scientist Peter Hotez told CNN that the FDA’s announced approach “essentially denies access to vaccines,” since such trials are not practical for companies to do. In a post on Bluesky, toxicologist Ryan Marino said that it amounts to “scientific misconduct.” Vaccine expert Paul Offit told NPR “I don't think it's ethical, given that we have a vaccine that works, given that we know that SARS-CoV2continues to circulate and cause hospitalizations and death, and there's no group that has no risk.”More vaccine chaos may be comingThe new policy isn’t official yet, but it’s hard to imagine the FDA and CDC being allowed to approve and recommend vaccines the way it always has in the current political climate. Biologics director Vinay Prasad and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, whose names appear on the FDA’s policy statement, have a history of arguing against COVID vaccine access for children. And both agencies are under the umbrella of HHS, the department of Health and Human Services, which is headed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr—the same person whose anti-vaccine organization financed the movie Plandemic. If you don’t recall the details of that movie circulating in the early pandemic days, it implied both that COVID wasn’t real and that it was a bioweapon created by the government; the logic didn’t hold together but ultimately the point was that we should be suspicious of vaccines. RFK, Jr has said a lot of bananas stuff about vaccines. He has compared childhood vaccines to the holocaust, claimed that Bill Gates put microchips in vaccines, and loudly questioned whether vaccines cause autism. How this man got put in charge of a health agency, I will never understand. Recent and future vaccine approvals may be at risk in this environment. Moderna had planned to submit a combined flu/COVID vaccine for approval; it has since withdrawn its application.Novavax’s recent vaccine was approved recently, but only after a delay and only for older adults and for people with high-risk health conditions. Kennedy released a report today that questions the childhood vaccine schedule and implies that vaccines are part of the “stark reality of American children's declining health.”  #how #fda #might #make #harder

What just happened? A judge has ruled that the lawsuit against Google and Character.ai over claims the latter's chatbot caused a 14-year-old's suicide can go ahead. The boy's mother, who brought the suit, says her son became addicted to the service and emotionally attached to a chatbot based on the personality of Game of Thrones character Daenerys Targaryen. In October, Megan Garcia sued Character.ai and Google, claiming they were responsible for the suicide of her son, Sewell Setzer III. Character.ai lets users chat with AI-powered "personalities" based on fictional characters or real people, living or dead. Setzer had become obsessed with a bot based on Daenerys Targaryen, texting "Dany" constantly and spending hours alone in his room talking to it, according to Garcia's complaint. The suit says that Setzer repeatedly expressed thoughts about suicide to the bot. The chatbot asked him if he had devised a plan for killing himself. Setzer admitted that he had but that he did not know if it would succeed or cause him great pain. The chatbot allegedly told him, "That's not a reason not to go through with it." The companies had tried to argue that the case should be dismissed for numerous reasons, including claims that the chatbots' output was constitutionally protected free speech. But US District Judge Anne Conway said they failed to prove these arguments. Character.ai's founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, who are named in the suit, worked at Google before launching the company. Google rehired the founders – as well as the research team – at Character.ai in August 2024. The deal grants Google a non-exclusive license to Character.ai's technology. Garcia said that Google had contributed to the development of Character.ai's technology, something the company denies. Google said it only has a licensing agreement with Character.ai, does not own the startup, and does not maintain an ownership stake. But the judge still rejected Google's request to find that it could not be held liable. // Related Stories Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda emphasized that Google and Character.ai are "entirely separate" and that Google "did not create, design, or manage Character.ai's app or any component part of it." Garcia said Character.ai targeted her son with "anthropomorphic, hypersexualized, and frighteningly realistic experiences." She added that the chatbot was programmed to misrepresent itself as "a real person, a licensed psychotherapist, and an adult lover, ultimately resulting in Sewell's desire to no longer live outside." The chatbot allegedly told the boy it loved him and engaged in sexual conversations with him. The complaint states that Garcia took her son's phone away after he got in trouble at school. She found a message to "Daenerys" that read, "What if I told you I could come home right now?" The chatbot responded with, "lease do, my sweet king." Sewell shot himself with his stepfather's pistol "seconds" later, the lawsuit said. Character.ai introduced several changes after the suit was revealed last year, including changes to certain models for minors, new disclaimers, and notifications when users have been on the platform for an hour. #court #lets #mother #sue #google

NVIDIA's Jensen Huang has discussed more about their new "Constellation" Taiwan office, revealing that the primary reason was to get more office space. NVIDIA Calls Taiwan An Integral Part of The Manufacturing World, Saying That The World Cannot Remain Stable Without It Taiwan has played an integral part in NVIDIA's journey over the years, and it is the second home to the company after the US. Jensen has reiterated his commitment to Taiwan and its regional partners through a dedicated part of his keynote at Computex, which shows that the country holds immense importance. After we reported on NVIDIA building a global headquarters in Taiwan, more details about it have surfaced since then, with Jensen claiming that the primary reason for the project is to get more chairs into the office. We’ve been in Taiwan for 30 years. I just need a bigger building. I’m not opening anything. We need more chairs. It’s not international news. The reason we need a larger office is because the current office cannot fit enough chairs. If one employee sits down, another has to stand. One person types, the other has to stop. The office said they didn’t have enough chairs. - NVIDIA's CEO via More Than Moore There has been some distancing between NVIDIA and Taiwan ever since the Trump adminstration took over the office, given that Team Green has been more focused on setting up TSMC's US operations, which is a move that isn't seen as something positive by the Taiwan administration. In terms of the specifics of the new Taiwan HQ, NVIDIA calls it the "Constellation", and it will be set up at the Beitou Shilin Science Park. The office will cover 3.89 hectares in the science park, and development will start as soon as possible. Even though NVIDIA's CEO denies any "geopolitical" reasons for setting up an HQ in Taiwan, there's no doubt that the country needs attention from Team Green, especially at a time when the world is tipping away from it following its tensions with China. NVIDIA's CEO claims that Taiwan's stability is equal to the stability of the whole world and that the nation would play a vital part in the process of "globalizing manufacturing." Apart from a dedicated HQ in Taiwan, NVIDIA also plans to build a Blackwell-powered AI supercomputer in the region, collaborating with Foxconn and TSMC. So, it is safe to say that besides all the investments Team Green is making, spending some money in Taiwan seems like a decent deal for all parties involved. Deal of the Day #nvidias #global #taiwan #built #get

This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy. Elon Musk has been the center of the media landscape for the past few hours, courtesy of the near-constant trickling of tantalizing soundbites. Now, the world's richest person has set the proverbial tongues wagging by expressly stating that his political engagements with the Trump White House will continue. ELON INTERVIEW AT QATAR FORUM – FULL VERSION Here's the full interview with Elon Musk at the Qatar Economic Forum a few minutes ago. Timestamps: 0:44 A typical week for Elon 1:40 Tesla’s situation has already turned around3:55 Elon's compensation important to control Tesla… pic.twitter.com/G3SxPgBEdP— ELON CLIPSMay 20, 2025 Elon Musk recently gave an expansive interview on the sidelines of the Qatar Economic Forum. Interestingly, Musk conveyed a sense of optimism around Tesla's demand equation, asserting that the EV giant has "already turned around," with lingering weakness reserved for Europe alone. Bear in mind that Tesla sales declined around 10 percent year-over-year in Q1 2025, as the launch of a refreshed version of Model Y idled factory capacity for retooling, and Musk's political role at the White House prompted a partisan backlash. Meanwhile, in Europe, Musk's emphatic support for the far-right AfD in the recent German elections also led to widespread calls for a boycott. Now, additional soundbites from Elon Musk are adding oxygen to the ongoing media frenzy. First, Musk has stated that he still intends to spend "a couple of days" at the White House "every few weeks." This goes against the impression that Musk had conveyed during the Q1 2025 Tesla earnings call, where he implied that his DOGE work was "mostly done." Next, while not completely ruling out the possibility, Elon Musk has denied the presence of any immediate plans to merge Tesla with xAI. This comes as xAI recently acquired the social media platform X in an all-stock deal that valued the former at billion and the latter at billion, inclusive of billion in liabilities. This meant that the deal bestowed a gross valuation of billion on X before factoring in its debt load of billion. Finally, in a nod to NVIDIA's continuing dominance in the AI silicon arena, Elon Musk has declared he expects to buy "a lot" of GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD, going on to note that NVIDIA's offerings are "still better than what we make" in what is an allusion to Tesla's in-house ASICs. Deal of the Day #elon #musk #intends #spend #couple

Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube813k An incredibly unlucky Super Smash Bros. Melee player has lost a tournament, and a prize pot of over to boot, by succumbing to an incredibly badly timed glitch in the final round...of the final match. No, this is not a movie. As seen over on YouTube, the deciding match of the 'Full House 2025' tournament in Pennsylvania, USA, ended up being all kinds of unexpectedly exciting when Canadian player Moky decided to get a little bit too tricksy for his own good whilst 2-0 down to America's Cody Schwab on the game's Pokémon Stadium stage.Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube813kWatch on YouTube With a deficit to make up, Moky decided to employ a pro strategy in Smash Bros. Melee known as 'Wavedashing', a high-level technique/physics engine exploit performed by air-dodging diagonally down into the ground. All good. However, as Moky takes to a tree on the left of the arenaand begins to employ Wavedash, he vanishes through the tree and out of the stage to his doom, handing the winning point — and a delicious pile of dollars — to a very surprised-looking Schwab. Images: Youtube.com/@hungrybox The glitch that occurred is actually a well-known one related to the Pokémon Stadium arena, and these pro players know all too well about it, which of course has led some on Reddit to accuse Moky of having done it on purpose at 2-0 down, which Moky denies.Whatever the case, and judging by the video itself, the incident certainly surprised his opponent, and gathered onlookers, and we can't help feel a little bad watching Moky's expression change as he realises all of that sweet moolah is sailing away on the good ship 'Never Get Fancy When It's Business Time'. Unless he did mean it. Of course, Super Smash Bros Melee has a whole bunch of weird glitches and bugs that players know about at this stage, some 24 years since its first release. There's the likes of the 'Ice Climbers Wobbling Glitch', which has been banned in tournaments. There's also the much darker sounding 'Black Hole Glitch', which...well...it makes a black hole in the stage you're on, if you shoot the Super Scope in a certain coordinated way with other players. How on earth do people find this stuff out? Can you remember seeing any recent gaming footage that showed an incident this unlucky? Do you reckon Moky did it on purpose? Make sure to let us know! Super Snack Bros. The Game Theorists channel goes down the rabbit holeRelated Games See Also Share:13 2 PJ is a staff writer across Pure Xbox and Nintendo Life. He's been playing video games pretty much nonstop since the early 1980s, and enjoys boring people with tedious stories about how long ago that really is. Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment... Related Articles Nintendo Unveils Diddy Kong's Brand New Design Cap's off Nintendo Switch 2 Final Tech Specs Have Been Confirmed GameChat has a "significant impact on system resources" 12 Switch Games Are Getting Free Switch 2 Upgrades, Here's What You Can Expect Nintendo's free updates arrive next month #random #unluckiest #gaming #moment #year