Free Republic

Rite Aid is banned for five years from using AI facial recognition surveillance technology in hundreds of stores nationwide. The FTC Tuesday ordered the ban because that system falsely tagged people as shoplifters, disproportionately impacting people of color and women. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo Dec. 20 (UPI) -- A Federal Trade Commission order Tuesday banned Rite Aid from using artificial intelligence facial recognition surveillance technology for five years because it falsely tagged women and people of color as shoplifters. "Rite Aid's reckless use of facial surveillance systems left its customers facing humiliation and other harms, and its...

“I was just at multiple events with [Florida Gov.] Ron DeSantis, where he’s shaking their hands and looking them in the eye, while Donald Trump hangs out in his basement in Florida, afraid to actually debate,” Roy said in an interview on CNN’s “The Source, “If we’d gotten the policies in place, if he had worked with conservatives to get bills passed in 2018, ’19,” Roy said of Trump. “We wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in right now, where Joe Biden is leaving Texas fully exposed to have people running over our Border Patrol agents and our [Department of...

Christmas came a few days early for Hollywood stars who are celebrating Colorado’s Supreme Court ruling disqualifying former President Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot. Celebrities including Bette Midler, Rob Reiner, Mia Farrow, and George Takei broke out in festive jubilation over the left-wing court’s thinly veiled act of election interference. Heroes,” Takei gushed, referring to the Colorado court. “Thank you, Colorado!” Midler crowed. “So glad someone has some common sense!” Bravo’s Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi rejoiced.

Just now Biden says Trump “no question” supported an insurrection" Dec 20, 2023

Reports are beginning to emerge to suggest that Democrat President Joe Biden is planning to issue a presidential pardon for his son Hunter before he leaves office. Such a move would explain why Biden’s weaponized Department of Justice (DOJ) appears to be rushing charges through against the first son before the 2024 election. President Biden has repeatedly said, and the White House has likewise reiterated, that he won’t use his power of executive clemency to issue a pardon for his son. Hunter Biden is currently facing mounting legal woes and possible time in federal prison. Yet, not everyone believes Biden...

If you must exchange Christmas gifts this year, let it be something old and sturdy. Let’s give the landfills a break.The current minimalism fad might be the only sane response to having so much cheap junk in our lives. When considering Christmas gifts to buy or receive, many weary shoppers find that the most appealing present seems to be nothing at all. It’s a weariness induced by material overload of items that just don’t work.Writing on his Substack, author Walter Kirn bemoans living in “Generation Junk.” In painful detail, to which so many of us can relate, Kirn describes the...

The White House on Wednesday touted the record-breaking numbers of people signing up for health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges, with almost a month left in open enrollment. More than 15 million people to date have signed up for health insurance, a 33 percent increase over the same point last year. The administration said it estimates more than 19 million people will have selected plans by the Jan. 16 deadline, an increase of 7 million compared to when President Biden took office.

Police arrested the boyfriend of a woman who fell 100 feet to her death during a clifftop marriage proposal in Turkey — as authorities revealed that they discovered signs of a violent struggle. Nizamettin Gursu was arrested five months after his 39-year-old girlfriend, Yesim Demir, plummeted off a cliff in Canakkale, a city in northwestern Turkey, on July 6, Newsflash reported Wednesday. Gursu told authorities Demir had said “Yes” but as he was grabbing celebratory food and drinks from his car, he heard a blood-curdling scream — and returned to the romantic picnic site to find his bride-to-be had tumbled...

The Colorado Supreme Court's decision to bar Donald Trump from the state's ballot will help the former president in his quest to win next year's Republican nomination, political insiders in both parties say. Some Democrats fear it could boost him next November, too. Republican elected officials raced to rally around Trump in the hours after the ruling was released Tuesday — even those not backing him for president in 2024. Sen Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who has not endorsed Trump, wrote a bill aimed at preventing states from blocking presidential candidates from their ballots.

If there is a defense of Gay, it’s that she has countless co-conspirators: A woke (mostly) white world has for decades helped enable left-wing-favored black plagiarism. “Why is Harvard giving Claudine Gay ‘plagiarism privilege’?” asked the New York Post editorial board Saturday. It must be a rhetorical question. Professor Carol Swain, who was ripped off by Gay and complains “I feel like her whole research agenda, her whole career, was based on my work,” has some idea. “A white male would probably already be gone,” Swain, a black woman herself, told journalist Christopher Rufo recently. Instead, Gay, who assumed Harvard’s...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A man was hospitalized in serious condition Wednesday morning after colliding with an Amtrak train in the Dinsmore area of Jacksonville, the Sheriff’s Office said. Police said the Amtrak train was traveling south on the tracks along Moncrief Dinsmore Road when the driver of a Kia that was headed east on Dunn Avenue drove around the rail crossing arms and onto the track.

The distraught parents of a four-year-old boy shot dead in their car have demanded to know why the gunman was free to kill after two recent arrests. Convicted felon Byron Burkhart appeared in a Los Angeles court on Tuesday charged with the murder of Gor Adamyan who died in a hail of bullets during a road rage attack on Friday.

President Joe Biden greenlit the release of Colombian businessman Alex Saab, accused of acting as Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro’s top money launderer, on Wednesday. Saab’s release is allegedly the result of a prisoner swap with the rogue socialist regime that will also allow for the release of unjustly detained Americans in Venezuela, the Associated Press reported. Saab, 51, is a close personal ally of Maduro and is widely considered the socialist dictator’s financial brain. American law enforcement authorities arrested Saab in Cape Verde in 2020 after the Department of Justice indicted him in 2019 on charges of laundering $350...

Artificial intelligence developed to model written language can be utilized to predict events in people's lives. A research project from DTU, University of Copenhagen, ITU, and Northeastern University in the US shows that if you use large amounts of data about people's lives and train so-called 'transformer models', which (like ChatGPT) are used to process language, they can systematically organize the data and predict what will happen in a person's life and even estimate the time of death.

President Joe Biden is aiming to use a visit to the battleground state of Wisconsin on Wednesday to spotlight a surge in federal government support for Black-owned small businesses during his White House tenure and to highlight his administration's efforts to ramp up investment in distressed communities. The Small Business Administration in the last fiscal year backed 4,700 loans valued at $1.5 billion to Black-owned businesses. Under Biden, the SBA says it has more than doubled the number and total dollar amount of loans to Black-owned small businesses. Since 2020, the share of the SBA’s loans going to minority-owned businesses...

NYT’s Mara Gay on Republicans criticizing Colorado for banning Trump from the ballot: “Why are you standing with confederates who betrayed this country?”

It‘s Biden’s Fiscal Inferno! Insane open borders, insane green spending, wars in Ukraine, Gaza and growing restlessness around Taiwan. Inflation. And a demented 81-year old President in charge. The U.S. government ran a budget deficit of $381 billion so far into the 2024 fiscal year, which represents a 13% increase from this same time period last year. The deficit is $44 billion higher than it was at the end of November 2022, according to the latest data released by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The national debt in January of 2020 was $17.2 trillion, according to historical data from...

I, Harambe, saw this viral video the other day about the "12 Days of Christmas" gifts ALL being birds and I decided I had to do a little digging because the Not the Bee folks need to know about this. It's always been a joke about the song that after 4 days of birds, it must have been a relief to get the five golden rings. Except, according to some theories, EVERY gift in the 12 days of Christmas is a different bird. The song was originally written in a children's book called Mirth Without Mischief way back in the...

The New York Times beclowned itself by twisting the results from its own poll to suppress the reality that Americans are frustrated with President Joe Biden largely because his economy stinks. The latest Times/Sienna poll of 1,016 registered voters, dated Dec. 19, showed that the overall economy and “inflation and the cost of living” took the top spots as the “[m]ost important problem[s]” facing the country today, accounting for 20 and 14 percent of respondents, respectively (34 percent total). But that’s not what The Times chose to highlight in its write-up of the poll results: “Poll Finds Wide Disapproval of...

A group of just over 100 homeless people in California's Los Angeles County and San Francisco Bay Area were given $750 per month for a year — no questions asked. The newly released results of the first six months of the study into the impact of a basic income and social support intervention reveal what the recipients spent the influx of cash. ... Those who received the $750 monthly stipend were less likely to remain unsheltered and closer to having enough money to meet all of their basic needs as compared to a control group who accessed usual homeless services,...