30-Day Public Comment Period & Public Hearing | Proposed Expedited Air Quality Rulemaking

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ADEQ welcomes comments on proposed expedited rulemaking for Arizona Administrative Code (A.A.C.) Title 18, Chapter 2, Articles 1 and 4. The expedited rulemaking proposes to amend two outdated rules. View Public Notice/Related Documents/Hearing Information > ADEQ encourages and values your input and participation. To view more ADEQ public notices, visit azdeq.gov/notices

About ADEQ Under the Environmental Quality Act of 1986, the Arizona State Legislature established the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality in 1987 as the state agency for protecting and enhancing public health and the environment of Arizona. For more information, visit azdeq.gov. ADEQ will take reasonable measures to provide access to department services to individuals with limited ability to speak, write or understand English and/or to those with disabilities. Requests for language translation, ASL interpretation, CART captioning services or disability accommodations must be made at least 48 hours in advance by contacting the Title VI Nondiscrimination Coordinator, Leonard Drago, at 602-771-2288 or Drago.Leonard@azdeq.gov. For a TTY or other device, Telecommunications Relay Services are available by calling 711. ADEQ tomará las medidas razonables para proveer acceso a los servicios del departamento a personas con capacidad limitada para hablar, escribir o entender inglés y/o para personas con discapacidades. Las solicitudes de servicios de traducción  de idiomas, interpretación ASL (lengua de signos americano), subtitulado de CART, o adaptaciones por discapacidad deben realizarse con al menos 48 horas de anticipación comunicándose con el  Coordinador de Anti-Discriminación del Título VI, Leonard Drago, al 602-771-2288 o Drago.Leonard@azdeq.gov. Para un TTY u otro dispositivo, los servicios de retransmisión de telecomunicaciones están disponible llamando al 711.

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60 Minutes climate archive: Running Dry

2022 Another Tumultuous Year

Author Simon Tisdall:

"On the brink of a new year, the world faces a daunting array of challenges:

the resurgent Covid-19 pandemic, the climate emergency, the struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, humanitarian crises, mass migration, and trans-national terrorism. 

There is the risk of new inter-state conflicts, exacerbated by the breakdown of the rules-based international order, and the spread of lethal autonomous weapons.

All in all, for most people on Earth – and a handful in space – 2022 will be another year of living dangerously.

The world in 2022: another year of living dangerously

The climate, pandemic and tensions between states means the year ahead is likely to be as tumultuous as the last 12 months

Simon Tisdall

the Guardian 

(Image credit: Storm on planet Earth. It’s unrealistic to expect any swift improvement in the global climate heating outlook in the coming year. Photograph: Nasa/Getty Images/iStockphoto)

OUTLINE OF KEY AREAS - Please take the time to read more details using this link to source:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/29/the-world-in-2022-another-year-of-living-dangerously

Middle East

Asia Pacific

Europe

Latin America

North America

Africa

Antarctica, the Arctic … and beyond

. . .It will be a busy year in space in terms of exploration and military competition. NASA is preparing 18 separate missions in 2022 as it gears up to resume manned flight to the moon. A new space station – Gateway – is planned. Russia, South Korea, India and Japan will launch lunar spacecraft. The European Space Agency plans to send a mission to Mars. China is said to be hoping to have a fully functional orbiting space station by the end of the year. Meanwhile space tourism organised by Russia and private companies such as Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin is taking off."

More sinisterly, a nuclear arms race in space will also accelerate. The US, Russia and China are all experimenting with new weapons, such as orbiting hypersonic glide vehicles capable of launching nuclear missiles from anywhere in the heavens. Russia caused anger in late 2021 with its reckless test of an anti-satellite missile. Others will follow suit, potentially threatening global communications. Not to be outdone, Nasa is planning to knock a giant asteroid off course in September by orchestrating a head-on collision, using a spacecraft launched on a rocket built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

The US calls this “planetary defence” – but the technology plainly has offensive applications. Some will deem this progress, others a giant backward step for mankind."

 

Elon Musk JUST REVEALED The Extraordinary Tesla Van!

BOOK: The Lords of Easy Money How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy | Christopher Leonard

The Lords of Easy Money tells the shocking, riveting tale of how quantitative easing is imperiling the American economy through the story of the one man who tried to warn us.

This will be the first inside story of how we really got here—and why we face a frightening future.

 

About The Book

simonandschuster.com |

The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy

Read more in THE LORDS OF EASY MONEY, published by Simon and Schuster. Copyright © 2022 Christopher Leonard.

The New York Times bestselling business journalist Christopher Leonard infiltrates one of America’s most mysterious institutions—the Federal Reserve—to show how its policies over the past ten years have accelerated income inequality and put our country’s economic stability at risk.

If you asked most people what forces led to today’s unprecedented income inequality and financial crashes, no one would say the Federal Reserve. For most of its history, the Fed has enjoyed the fawning adoration of the press. When the economy grew, it was credited to the Fed. When the economy imploded in 2008, the Fed got credit for rescuing us.

But the Fed also has a unique power to reshape the American economy for the worse, which it did, fatefully, on November 4, 2010 through a radical intervention called quantitative easing. In just a few short years, the Fed more than quadrupled the money supply with one goal: to encourage banks and other investors to extend more risky debt. Leaders at the Fed knew that they were undertaking a bold experiment that would produce few real jobs, with long-term risks that were hard to measure. But the Fed proceeded anyway...and then found itself trapped. Once it printed all that money, there was no way to withdraw it from circulation. The Fed tried several times, only to see market start to crash, at which point the Fed turned the money spigot back on. That’s what it did when COVID hit, printing 300 years’ worth of money in two short months.

Which brings us to now: Ten years on, the gap between the rich and poor has grown dramatically, stock prices are trading far above what’s justified by actual corporate profits, corporate debt in America is at an all-time high, and this debt is being traded by big banks on Wall Street, leaving them vulnerable—just as they were during the mortgage boom. Middle-class wages have barely budged in a decade, and consumers are buried under credit card debt, car loan debt, and student debt."

 

RELATED CONTENT

The Fed’s Doomsday Prophet Has a Dire Warning About Where We’re Headed

Thomas Hoenig speaks at a town hall meeting. | Nati Harnik/AP Photo

POLITICO |

Christopher Leonard is a business reporter whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Bloomberg Businessweek. He is the author of The Meat Racket and Kochland, which won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award. His new book, The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy, is out January 11.

"Thomas Hoenig doesn’t look like a rebel. He is a conservative man, soft-spoken, now happily retired at the age of 75. He acts like someone who has spent the vast majority of his career, as he has, working at one of the stuffiest and powerful institutions in America: the Federal Reserve Bank. Hoenig has all the fiery disposition that one might expect from a central banker, which is to say none at all. He unspools sentences methodically, in a measured way, never letting his words race ahead of his intended message. When Hoenig gets really agitated he repeats the phrase “lookit” a lot, but that’s about as salty as it gets.

This makes it all the more surprising that Tom Hoenig is, in fact, one of America’s least-understood dissidents. . ."

READ MORE: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/12/28/inflation-interest-rates-thomas-hoenig-federal-reserve-526177

 

WAYMO Hail-A-Ride: A Fleet of All-Electric Self-Driving Robotaxis | The Verge

Alphabet’s self-driving car company Waymo is partnering with Chinese automaker Geely to create a fleet of all-electric, self-driving robotaxis.

Waymo plans fleet of self-driving, all-electric robotaxis with Chinese automaker Geely

By James Vincent Dec 29, 2021, 6:35am EST

The Verge

"The cars will be designed in Sweden (where Geely owns Swedish carmaker Volvo) and will be adapted from Geely’s all-electric five-door Zeekr. Waymo will then outfit the cars with the hardware and software necessary for autonomous driving.

Waymo said in a blog post that it plans to deploy the vehicles in the US as part of its existing fleet of self-driving robotaxis some time “in the years to come.”

Concept images of finished vehicle shared by Waymo show a car that is designed specifically for autonomous ride-hailing trips. It has a flat floor, low step-in height, and B-pillarless design for easy entry and exit, as well as sliding doors, reclining seats, and plenty of headroom. Waymo says future models will have an interior without steering wheel or pedals — just a screen (presumably to let riders check on the progress of their journey).

Concept images show a minivan-like vehicle designed for riders, not drivers.

The car’s interiors will have no steering wheel or pedals — just a screen.

These are just concept images, though, and might not necessarily reflect the finished vehicles Geely and Waymo will eventually put on the roads. It’s notable that Waymo’s concepts make the car look much more like a minivan, while Geely’s Zeekr 001 has a design that’s more like a cross between a station wagon, a shooting brake, and an SUV.

News of the deal between Geely and Waymo is another demonstration of just how busy the auto world is with partnerships and collaborations as self-driving and electric tech shakes up old incumbents.

> Waymo has partnered with Stellantis and Jaguar Land Rover to deploy and develop its autonomous capabilities, while

> Geely plans to take Volvo public as an all-electric company, after doing the same with its new Polestar brand."

Paris mandates wearing masks even outdoors starting Friday • FRANCE 24 ...

2021, in 6 minutes

THE NAVY FREAKED: RUSSIA TRIED TO BUILD A MASSIVE NUCLEAR-POWERED AIRCRA...

Is Your State Friendly to China? See China’s Map

Linkin Park & Eminem - Soldiers (2021) Official Music Video

IT HAPPENED! Elon Musk FINALLY Reveals Artificial Gravity Starship 2021!

2021 BIG $CORE$$$$$$ FOR ENTERTAINMENT... | Forbes

Here's some 'news' from Lysette Voytko writing in Forbes:

From ‘South Park’ To Springsteen: The Entertainment Industry’s 2021 Scorecard

"Eyebrows were raised when, just six days into the year, Neil Young announced that he had spun “Heart of Gold” and the rest of his song catalog into actual gold by selling them to song management company Hipgnosis for $150 million. Coming on the heels of Bob Dylan’s similar, $300 million deal made just a few weeks earlier, it seemed clear that it was just the beginning of an entertainment bull market.

Then came the March announcement that Paul Simon was selling his song catalog for $250 million, followed by sales involving members of Fleetwood Mac, heirs to the Prince estate and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The year ended on an even higher note, when news broke that Bruce Springsteen reportedly sold his catalog to Sony Music for at least half a billion to Sony Music in December in apparently the biggest deal ever for the life’s work of an individual artist. 

The music sales were just the tip of a massive intellectual property iceberg that soared in value during 2021. In May, Friends once again cashed in on a show that has funneled more than $1.4 billion to the cast and creators as they switched loyalties from Netflix to HBOMax. Then Viacom signed a deal to pay the creators of South Park more than $900 million over a number of years.

And some say the pop-culture horse trading is just getting started, so look for plenty more drama in 2022. Until then, here’s a look at 2021’s highlights:

Reese Witherspoon cashed out.

Rihanna and Kim Kardashian West became billionaires.

And it was “Glory Days” for Bruce.

But not all stars glittered in a year of massive deals.  

 

>

With Friends Like These...

The actors and creative minds behind Friends, one of network TV’s most beloved sitcoms made a big splash with their reunion show, which aired on HBO Max in May. The cast earned an estimated $5 million each for their appearance. That’s just the icing on the cake: altogether Forbes estimates the show brought in more than $1 billion in pretax earnings since its 1994 premiere; the cast earned $816 million pretax, or $136 million each

Bilbo Baggins’ Billions 

Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson’s foray into visual effects through his shop Weta Digital paid off big time. The New Zealand-based firm, which he cofounded to provide effects for Heavenly Creatures (1994), grew into a Hollywood powerhouse, providing computer-generated imagery for everything from Wolverine (2013) to the 2019 remake of Lady and the Tramp. In November, Weta announced that a chunk of its assets were being sold for $1.6 billion to Unity Software, which makes software for videogames. Forbes conservatively estimates the deal officially makes Jackson a billionaire

Cuomo Non Grata

It wasn’t a great year for the Cuomo family—Andrew Cuomo resigned in August as New York governor amid fallout from his sexual harassment scandal—while younger brother Chris Cuomo was fired from his CNN anchor job in December after legal documents revealed the extent to which he aided Andrew in his battle against the harassment allegations—seen as an unforgivable breach of journalistic ethics. 

Gone, But Not Forgotten 

Even after death, success in show business can still command a marquee price tag. In September, 31 years after the creator of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory died of cancer at age 74, Netflix paid a reported $684 million for the Roald Dahl Story Company and rights to the British novelist’s stories

 

 

The Batman - Official Trailer #3 (2022) Robert Pattinson, Zoe Kravitz, ...

YOU ARE INVITED --> Go Read This

Intro: 

It's NOT A SURPRISE to read this finding in an excerpt: "Besides supposedly predicting individual crimes, a 2018 report by The Verge looked into Pentagon-funded research by PredPol’s founder Jeff Brantingham about using the software to predict gang-related crime.

The former University of California-Los Angeles anthropology professor adapted earlier research in forecasting battlefield casualties in Iraq to create the platform, and the paper — “Partially Generative Neural Networks for Gang Crime Classification with Partial Information” — raised concern over the ethical implications.

Go read this data analysis that uncovers predictive policing’s flawed algorithm

A co-reported investigation with Gizmodo and The Markup into PredPol

By Jasmine Hicks Dec 6, 2021, 4:40pm EST

The Verge |

"Gizmodo released a deep-dive look into the data collection process behind its co-reported investigation with The Markup into PredPol, a software company specializing in predictive policing (hence the name, which it has since changed to Geolitica) through machine learning.

PredPol’s algorithm is supposed to make predictions based on existing crime reports. However, since crimes aren’t equally reported everywhere, the readings it provides to law enforcement could simply copy the biases in reporting over each area. If police use this to decide where to patrol, they could end up over-policing areas that don’t need a larger presence.

When Gizmodo and The Markup evaluated the areas, they found that the places PredPol’s software targeted for increased patrols “were more likely to be home to Blacks, Latinos, and families that would qualify for the federal free and reduced lunch program.”

Even as police tactics evolved to include crime and arrest data, there has been a historical disparity in how these tactics affect communities of color. As Gizmodo points out in its analysis, in New York in the 1990s, researchers at the time found that the methods reduced crime without simply displacing it to other areas. However, the approach included tactics like stop-and-frisk, which have been criticized as violations of civil rights.

PredPol’s algorithm has already been looked into and criticized by academics more than once. As Vice quoted Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a member of the board of directors for ACLU Utah, in 2019:

“Because this data is collected as a by-product of police activity, predictions made on the basis of patterns learned from this data do not pertain to future instances of crime on the whole,” Venkatasubramanian’s study notes. “In this sense, predictive policing is aptly named: it is predicting future policing, not future crime.”

Still, there hasn’t been an investigation as thorough as this one. This investigation used figures retrieved from public data available via the web. According to Gizmodo and The Markup, they found an unsecured cloud database linked from the Los Angeles Police Department’s website. That data contained millions of predictions stretching back several years.

Besides supposedly predicting individual crimes, a 2018 report by The Verge looked into Pentagon-funded research by PredPol’s founder Jeff Brantingham about using the software to predict gang-related crime. The former University of California-Los Angeles anthropology professor adapted earlier research in forecasting battlefield casualties in Iraq to create the platform, and the paper — “Partially Generative Neural Networks for Gang Crime Classification with Partial Information” — raised concern over the ethical implications.

Critics said this approach could do more harm than good. “You’re making algorithms off a false narrative that’s been created for people — the gang documentation thing is the state defining people according to what they believe ... When you plug this into the computer, every crime is gonna be gang-related,” activist Aaron Harvey told The Verge. . .

[...] Relying on some algorithms can work magic for some industries, but their impact can come at a real human cost. With bad data or the wrong parameters, things can go wrong quickly, even in circumstances that are less fraught than policing. Look no further than Zillow recently having to shut down its house-flipping operation after losing hundreds of millions of dollars despite the “pricing models and automation” it thought would provide an edge. . .

Overall, Gizmodo and The Markup’s reporting is a good consideration of how significantly predictive algorithms can affect the people unknowingly targeted by them. The accompanying analysis by Gizmodo provides relevant data insight while giving readers a behind-the-scenes look into these measures.

The report indicates that 23 of the 38 law enforcement agencies tracked are no longer PredPol customers, despite initially signing up for it to help distribute crime-stopping resources. Perhaps by using methods that build transparency and trust on both sides, law enforcement could spend less time on tech that leads to pieces like this, which highlights the exact opposite approach.

Blastoff! 36 Oneweb satellites launch atop Soyuz rocket

The World Ahead 2022: five stories to watch out for | The Economist

PREDICTIVE POLICING (PredPol) is Racist Policing...Confirmation Bias Built Into The System | TechDirt

Mis-Uses of Technology - latest update yesterday from Tim Cushing published yesterday:

"Don't kid yourselves, techbros. Predictive policing is regular policing, only with confirmation bias built in. The only question for citizens is whether or not they want to pay tech companies millions to give them the same racist policing they've been dealing with since policing began.

Unsecured Data Leak Shows Predicitive Policing Is Just Tech-Washed, Old School Biased Policing

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the hey-that-data-isn't-accurate-says-AI-company-confirming-data's-accuracy dept

Mon, Dec 27th 2021 3:46pm — Tim Cushing

 

"Gizmodo (working with The Markup) was able to access predictive policing data stored on an unsecured server.

The data they obtained reinforces everything that's been reported about this form of "smarter" policing, confirming its utility as a law enforcement echo chamber that allows cops to harass more minorities because that's always what they've done in the past.

Between 2018 and 2021, more than one in 33 U.S. residents were potentially subject to police patrol decisions directed by crime-prediction software called PredPol.

The company that makes it sent more than 5.9 million of these crime predictions to law enforcement agencies across the country—from California to Florida, Texas to New Jersey—and we found those reports on an unsecured server.

Gizmodo and The Markup analyzed them and found persistent patterns.

Residents of neighborhoods where PredPol suggested few patrols tended to be Whiter and more middle- to upper-income. Many of these areas went years without a single crime prediction.

By contrast, neighborhoods the software targeted for increased patrols were more likely to be home to Blacks, Latinos, and families that would qualify for the federal free and reduced lunch program.

Targeted more? In some cases, that's an understatement. Predictive policing algorithms compound existing problems. If cops patrolled neighborhoods mainly populated by minorities frequently in the past due to biased pre-predictive policing habits, the introduction of that data into the system returns "predictions" that "predict" more crime to be committed in areas where officers have most often been located historically.

The end result is what you see summarized above: non-white neighborhoods receive the most police attention, resulting in more data to feed to the machine, which results in more outputs that say cops should do the same thing they've been doing for decades more often. Run this feedback loop through enough iterations and it results in the continued infliction of misery on certain members of the population.

These communities weren’t just targeted more—in some cases, they were targeted relentlessly. Crimes were predicted every day, sometimes multiple times a day, sometimes in multiple locations in the same neighborhood: thousands upon thousands of crime predictions over years.

That's the aggregate. . . 

=========================================================================

INSERT

Go read this data analysis that uncovers predictive policing’s flawed algorithm

The Verge

3 weeks ago · ... software company specializing in predictive policing (hence the name, which it has since changed to Geolitica) through machine learning.

Predictive Policing Reinforces and Accelerates Racial Bias | by Cory ...

OneZero

4 weeks ago · That may sound shocking, but really, it's par for the course with PredPol, which rebranded itself as Geolitica in order to distance itself...

After Backlash, Predictive Policing Adapts to a Changed World

Wall Street Journal

5 months ago · Santa Cruz-based Geolitica, which helped popularize the term “predictive policing,” changed its name in March to better reflect how police...

FRANCE : DGSI looks to get ahead with predictive algorithms

Intelligence Online

5 days ago · But these systems have always been found to be affected by cognitive bias. The systems developed by US pioneer PredPol (today Geolitica), for...

The dangerous rise of policing by algorithm

Prospect Magazine

9 months ago · Geolitica claims to avoid the bias programmed into individual risk assessment softwares by excluding personal characteristics. Its data is...

Data-driven policing's threat to our constitutional rights

Brookings Institution

3 months ago · As part of PredPol remodeling itself as Geolitica, the company is reframing its forecasting software as a tool for greater police...

LAPD ended predictive policing programs amid public outcry. A new effort shares many of their flaws

The Guardian

1 month ago · ... introduced DICFP, PredPol changed its name to Geolitica. ... Geolitica now boasts “data-driven community policing” that helped public...

Controversial technology

Global Times

2 months ago · This is why we changed our name from PredPol to Geolitica earlier this year," said CEO Brian MacDonald. But police use of AI technology is...

How We Determined Predictive Policing Software Disproportionately Targeted Low-Income, Black, and Latino Neigh

Gizmodo

4 weeks ago · We sent our methodology as well as the underlying data to PredPol, which renamed itself Geolitica earlier this year.

=========================================================================

[..] That's not policing. That's oppression. Both law enforcement and a percentage of the general public still believe cops are capable of preventing crime, even though that has never been a feature of American law enforcement. PredPol software leans into this delusion, building on bad assumptions fueled by biased data to claim that data-based policing can convert police omnipresence into crime reduction. The reality is far more dire: residents in over-policed areas are confronted, detained, or rung up on bullshit charges with alarming frequency. And this data gets fed back into the software to generate more of the same abuse.

None of this seems to matter to law enforcement agencies paying for this software paid for with federal and local tax dollars. Only one law enforcement official -- Elgin (IL) PD's deputy police chief -- called the software "bias by proxy." For everyone else, it was law enforcement business as usual.

That also goes for the company supplying the software. PredPol -- perhaps recognizing some people might assume the "Pred" stands for "Predatory" -- rebranded to the much more banal "Geolitica" earlier this year.

The logo swap doesn't change the underlying algorithms, which have accurately predicted biased policing will result in more biased policing.

When confronted with the alarming findings following Gizmodo's and The Markup's examination of Geolitica predictive policing data, the company's first move was to claim (hilariously) that data found on unsecured servers couldn't be trusted.

PredPol, which renamed itself Geolitica in March, criticized our analysis as based on reports “found on the internet.”

Finding an unsecured server with data isn't the same thing as finding someone's speculative YouTube video about police patrol habits. What makes this bizarre accusation about the supposed inherent untrustworthiness of the data truly laughable is Geolitica's follow-up:

But the company did not dispute the authenticity of the prediction reports, which we provided, acknowledging that they “appeared to be generated by PredPol.”

Geolitica says everything is good.

Its customers aren't so sure.

> Gizmodo received responses from 13 of 38 departments listed in the data and most sent back written statements that they no longer used PredPol. That includes the Los Angeles Police Department, an early adopter that sent PredPol packing after discovering it was more effective at generating lawsuits and complaints from residents than actually predicting or preventing crime.

This report -- which is extremely detailed and well-worth reading in full -- shows PredPol is just another boondoggle, albeit one that's able to take away people's freedoms along with their tax dollars. Until someone's willing to build a system that doesn't consider all cop data to be created equally, so-called "smart" policing is just putting a shiny tech sheen on old-school cop work that relies on harassing minorities to generate biased busywork for police officers."

Filed Under: biased policing, garbage in, garbage out, police tech, predictive policing, predpol
Companies: geolitica 

__________________________________________________________________________

RELATED CONTENT

>

Geolitica | Officer

www.officer.com › technology › computers-software › company › geolitica

Aug 13, 2021 · Geolitica was founded in 2012 with the goal of bringing greater transparency and accountability to policing through the use of objective data

 

> Geolitica stories at Techdirt.

www.techdirt.com › blog › company=geolitica

 

11 hours ago · stories about: "geolitica". Expand All Posts | Collapse All Posts. Unsecured Data Leak Shows Predicitive Policing Is Just Tech-Washed, ...

About Geolitica^SM

Trusted Services
for Safer Communities

We run operations for public safety teams to be more transparent, accountable, and effective.

Effectiveness

Identify highest risk locations to patrol

Add points of interest (POI’s) or custom boxes using SARA, Risk-Terrain Modeling, or your agency's unique intelligence

Proactively patrol to reduce crime rates and victimization

Geolitica is currently being used to help protect roughly one out of every 30 people in the United States

Accountability

Analyze daily patrol patterns

Manage patrol operations in real time

Create patrol heat maps

Identify resource hotspots