In onze samenleving wordt ‘mooi’ zijn beloond en ‘lelijk’ zijn afgestraft. Socioloog Giselinde Kuipers laat in een nieuw boek zien welke vergaande gevolgen dat heeft. Journalist Stephanie Fairyington toont op haar beurt hoe we eruit kunnen breken.

We beginnen vandaag met perioden met zon en het is droog. In de loop van de dag neemt de bewolking vanuit het zuidwesten toe en stijgt de kans op wat regen of een bui. De grootste kans op neerslag is er later vanmiddag en vanavond. Het wordt opnieuw warm voor de tijd van het jaar met maxima oplopend naar 23 tot 25 graden. Er staat een matige wind uit een zuidelijke richting.

“Steen voor steen” wil Trumps regering het Internationaal Strafhof in Den Haag afbreken. Geopolitiek redacteur Hanneke Chin-A-Fo volgt het Strafhof al meer dan twintig jaar en…

Steeds meer ouders kiezen vanuit hun levensovertuiging voor thuisonderwijs. Maar een uitspraak van de hoogste rechter legt een tijdbom onder deze vorm van onderwijs.

xthylacine has added a photo to the pool:

Jiyugaoka, Tokyo, Japan

uchi uchi has added a photo to the pool:

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uchi uchi has added a photo to the pool:

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Comments come after Moscow warned it would ‘deploy its entire arsenal’ if Kaliningrad was threatened. What we know on day 1,680

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Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

A tidy little drama unfolded during today's US Senate hearings (C-Span, via YouTube).

Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt, who is being floated as a possible VP candidate for a Vance presidential run (Axios, sigh), lined up dutifully for his sound bite attacking former special counsel Jack Smith. Then things took a turn. The whole seven minutes or so are worth taking in. As a dessert, you can watch Alabama Senator Katie Britt at the moment of unraveling (YouTube).

US president Donald Trump has convinced six leading AI companies to sign up for non-binding and vague regulation called the “White House Accord on Superintelligence” that doesn’t require them to do anything but does let them set their own rules. Meta, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, and XAI signed the document, which appeared on Trump’s Truth Social account. The document, subtitled the "Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities,” opens with the observation that “every company is responsible for developing its own technology safely and in a way that builds trust with customers and the public.” “This starts with every company that is training and deploying frontier models having robust internal processes and controls to ensure that their technology behaves as intended and that any issues are promptly identified and resolved.” The document then outlines four “layers of controls and audits” the White House believes signatories should implement “in addition to any other precautions.” The four are: Implement robust internal controls to monitor the capabilities and alignment of its models during training and deployment around areas like cybersecurity, biosecurity, and chemical threats, and to ensure that its models do not hack or access technical systems in unintended ways. Empower an internal team to ensure all of the controls, monitoring, and detection are operating as intended, and that any issues are remediated. Partner with an independent external auditor or evaluator to carry out independent assessments of whether the controls, monitoring, and detection are operating as intended. Designate an independent committee of the board of directors to oversee and receive reports from the teams operating the controls and the internal and external auditors and evaluators, as well as to ensure any issues identified are remediated. The document offers no definition of what constitutes “robust” internal controls, does not specify how often external auditors should inspect signatories’ systems, and contains no references to how often evaluations should take place. It does state that participating companies “will meet regularly to establish standards and best practices to improve the safety of their systems.” Or in other words, they get to make their own rules. The document leaves open the possibility that one day “it may make sense to codify these steps into laws or regulations.” For now, all involved “believe that implementing these controls and audits is critical to ensuring a safe future for everyone, and each of our companies are committed to doing this.” The document reflects Trump’s belief that the artificial intelligence industry doesn’t need strong regulation, save in one matter: its name. To address that matter, on Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order requiring federal government agencies to use the term “Super Intelligence” and the acronym “SI” instead of “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI” in official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports, policy documents, and other government documents. The president wants that to happen despite not yet having a working definition of SI. He tasked his Assistant for Science and Technology to work with other agencies to sort that out within 60 days. Trump’s starting point for those deliberations, as explained in the executive order, is that frontier AI systems “do much more than imitate or automate discrete aspects of human intelligence” and “increasingly amplify human ingenuity and unlock new forms of creativity.” Those abilities apparently justify having the US government, which Trump has often accused of being enormously wasteful, devise a new definition. ®