Generating “bodyoids”: Humans with no minds. Wisconsin trick increases school funding for 402 years. And Sweden’s murder ads.
Generating “Bodyoids”: Humans with No Minds
Stanford Researchers Carsten T. Charlesworth, Henry T. Greely, and Hiromitsu Nakauchi have published an article in the MIT Technology Review entitled Ethically sourced “spare” human bodies could revolutionize medicine, with the deck, “Human ‘bodyoids’ could reduce animal testing, improve drug development, and alleviate organ shortages.”
We could also do that with animals, generating their bodies without their “neuro-networks” so that we could eat them without subjecting them to pain. The result would be “ethically sourced” meat.
What could possibly be wrong with this? Give your answers in the comments.
Wisconsin Trick Increases School Funding for 402 Years
In the state of Wisconsin, where I used to live, governors not only have the power to veto legislation, they also have a “partial veto.” This enables them to veto part of a bill, crossing out sections they disapprove of, while keeping the rest of it.
In 2023, the two houses of the Wisconsin state legislature, both of which are controlled by Republicans, passed a bill increasing public school funding through the school year 2024-25. The Democratic governor, Tony Evers, took out his pen and exercised his partial veto by crossing out the first two digits of the number and the hyphen, thusly: 2024–25. So the bill now increased public school funding through the school year 2425. That is to say, for 402 years after the measure was passed!
Republicans went to court, charging executive over-reach. But the Wisconsin Supreme Court, with its recently-elected Democratic majority, on a 4-3 party line decision, ruled that the governor’s re-writing of the statute is legal.
I like the dissent from one of the justices, as reported by Noah Rothman:
“Instead of reading what the bills actually say, and construing the partial veto power accordingly, this court treats bills presented to the governor as simply a set of alphanumeric ingredients from which the governor can cook up whatever he pleases,” read Justice Brian Hagedorn’s dissent. Not only did the Wisconsin Supreme Court abandon a “reasonable reading” of the state constitution, it redefined the word “veto.” Even the so-called “Vanna White veto” is “still at root the power to influence legislation by subtraction, not addition.” It is the “power to say ‘no,’” Hagedorn observed; “it logically cannot be the power to create.”
Sweden’s Murder Ads
The Scandinavian countries have long had a reputation for happiness and well-being, the product of a generous welfare state–a.k.a. “Lutheran socialism”–and a culture of liberal acceptance.
This openness and generosity has attracted lots of immigrants, including criminal gangs from the Balkans and the Middle East, which have set up shop in Sweden. But these different ethnic-based gangs are at war with each other.
Now Sweden ranks second only to Albania in murders per capita, with twice as many gun deaths as England and Wales, which have six times the population.
That was twice the figure for England and Wales, which have six times the population, and ranked Sweden second only to Albania that year for gun deaths per capita in Europe.
Making it worse, the gangs are recruiting children to do their murders for them. And they are advertising online. Colin Freeman of the London Telegraph reports in How Sweden’s Multicultural Dream Went Fatally Wrong:
To show me just how bad gang crime has become in Sweden, all journalist Diamant Salihu has to do is forward a few mobile phone messages. At first glance, they look like spam, written in garish fonts and promising large sums of money, there to be earned. It’s only on closer examination that the purpose of the pistol and skull emojis becomes clear.
These are so-called “murder ads” – posted online by gang leaders, offering bounties to anyone willing to carry out the hits.
“All types of jobs are available,” reads one, promising up to one million krona (£78,000). “Age doesn’t matter”, adds another – explaining why many of Sweden’s new contract killers aren’t hardened hitmen, but children. Part of the problem, some say, is that Swedish law dictates anyone aged under 15 is too young to be prosecuted.
“We have so many child soldiers that nobody can count anymore,” sighs Salihu, an investigative reporter for SVT, Sweden’s answer to the BBC. “There are kids as young as 13 being arrested.”
Barely a week passes in Sweden today without a teenager being arrested for such a hit, keeping Salihu extremely busy, and the public in the grip of a national crisis like no other before it.
Gangs will lend guns and grenades to any adolescent who asks for them, then pays a “bounty” when the killing takes place. Countries like Somalia, the origin of some of the gangs, have a tradition of child soldiers. But it isn’t just ethnic minority young people who are going for the million-krone bounties. Now some Swedish teenagers are taking advantage of this job opportunity, to be a hitman.
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