US citizens: call on state legislatures to take the lead in regulating guns.

*US proposes UN [Security Council] resolution calling for temporary ceasefire in Gaza and for Israel not to attack Rafah.*

Step by small step, Biden is increasing the pressure on Israel. The small but painful US sanctions on certain Israelis may expand. I think he intends to ramp up the pressure until Israel stops the attacks.

That will be a good outcome, but if he doesn't speed it up, Israel's steadily mounting atrocities may truly amount to genocide before that happens.

US senators have proposed a bill that they say would "criminalize the spread of nonconsensual, sexualized images generated by [so-called] artificial intelligence." I agree with the goal, but a vagueness hides a dangerous detail in the bill.

I support criminalizing the making, publication and republication of nude deepfakes without the subject's permission. Any deepfake that misrepresents the subject's words or actions should get the same punishment. You have the right to claim someone said or did something, but creating fake evidence that falsely purports to prove that is the moral equivalent of perjury.

However, to criminalize "receiving" or simply holding on to a copy of such a deepfake is a broad threat to freedom.

This is not to say that there is anything redeeming about nude or disinformational deepfakes. Whatever you wish to say, it is wrong to say it that way. But they will be made, and people will receive them. What then?

To prohibit having a copy of an image or text — any image or text, no matter what it presents, no matter how disgusting we consider it — is an attack on history, journalism, and democratic politics. Ultimately, it becomes an attack on memory, creating the danger that governments will command people to forget. It becomes an attack on justice, since people will be ordered to destroy evidence of crimes they may wish to fight.

If we tolerate a law requiring people to forget one specific kind of material, that would invite more laws ordering people to forget other things as well. That road leads to tyranny (China is an example) and puts truth in danger.

It also opens the door to a kind of digital swatting. Once some texts or images (it doesn't matter which) are designated as criminal to possess, people could accuse you at random of having some. Then the digital SWAT team will seize all your computers and storage devices to check for them.

With a physical SWAT team of today, if you're still alive by the time it has ascertained that there was no need to break into your home, it will leave you in peace with the repair bills. Being raided by a digital SWAT team would be painful and dangerous too. They might find no forbidden deepfakes but they could copy your secrets. Worse, they could find something that you had been sent and did not remember to delete. They could find an email you had not noticed or with an attachment you had not tried to view, but you could not prove that. And supposing you could, would that exonerate you?

If Republicans get away with claiming to have won the next election, what sorts of documents or videos might they punish people for having?

We will all be safer, and democracy safer too, if we establish that no such law can be considered.

US citizens: call on the US government to stop using single-use plastics.

Putin is hiding Navalny's body, as his mother travels to search for it.

The suspicion is that this could involve something more rational than mere corpse fetishism. Navalny's body could provide evidence of torture or murder.