Sterling Weatherford signs as undrafted free agent with the Indianapolis Colts - Hustle Belt

Sterling Weatherford is the latest Mid-American Conference prospect to be signed to an NFL roster as an undrafted free agent, signing with the Indianapolis Colts on Saturday evening.

Weatherford, a native of nearby Cicero, Indiana, will start his professional career just 45 minutes away from home.

The signing was first reported by Zach Hicks of Horseshoe Huddle via Twitter and later confirmed independently by multiple sources.

The hybrid defensive back/linebacker was an important part of the Miami RedHawks defense, which dominated the MAC in his four years at the helm of the center. Weatherford was at the center of Miami’s domination, finishing with 209 tackles, 10.5 tackles-for-loss, three sacks, four interceptions, 19 passes defensed, two fumbles forced and three fumble recoveries over his four seasons in Red and White.

2019 was his breakout season, with 98 tackles, 5.5 tackles-for-loss, two sacks, an interception and 10 passes defensed during the RedHawks’ MAC title campaign. Weatherford did not make it onto the all-MAC team in 2019, but it was a superb effort which propelled Miami to the top of the league.

Photo by Michael Wade/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

At the professional level, Weatherford is a bit of a tweener, as his size dictates his playing at safety (six-foot-four, 215 lbs.), but his football IQ and run-gap discipline shows good potential at the linebacker role, something which he occupied with aplomb during the Senior Bowl.

Indianapolis will have to make a decision early, as Weatherford’s ceiling will be dictated by what the team decides to do with him moving forward. Indy could take advantage of his Swiss Army knife tendencies and play Weatherford at four different spots as he did in college, or have him specialize in one position and form him up.

Regardless of the choice, Weatherford will need some seasoning before he sees a full-time role on the roster, and will likely begin his career as a special teams contributor or reserve piece.

In selecting Weatherford, the Colts will get an intelligent player who has immediate athletic upside, and projects as an eventual starting-level prospect at whichever position he ultimately falls into.

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UDFA tracker: Patriots undrafted free agent signings, rumors, news - Pats Pulpit

The 2022 NFL Draft is coming to an end, which means that now is the time to start turning our attention towards undrafted free agency. Given their long history of finding diamonds in the rough after the seventh round, the New England Patriots are one of the most attractive destinations for unselected prospects.

The team still has an active 18-year streak of at least one undrafted rookie making the opening day regular season roster, even though only one UDFA was added last year. No matter how many will come in this time, they will be given a fair shot to compete under head coach Bill Belichick.

Accounting for the players drafted by the team, the Patriots will have nine open spots on their 90-man offseason roster at the end of Round 7. Needless to say that they have potential to be quite active in rookie free agency over the coming hours and days.

Regardless of what will happen, we will track all of the rumors and additions right here. Welcome to the Patriots Undrafted Free Agent Tracker.

QB D’Eriq King, Miami: At 5-foot-9, 196 pounds, King is a realistic candidate to make the move from quarterback to wide receiver upon joining the Patriots. He does have some experience in this area, as well: over his six-year career at Houston and Miami, he caught 61 passes for 520 yards and three touchdowns. | Source

S Brenden Schooler, Texas: At 6-foot-2, 206 pounds Schooler projects primarily as a special teams player at the next level. He played wide receiver at both Oregon and Arizona before transferring to Texas and making a position switch to safety. He recorded 50 tackles for the Longhorns as a sixth year senior in 2021. | Source

C Kody Russey, Houston: Another transfer player, the 6-foot-2, 292 pound Russey spent his first five collegiate seasons at Louisiana Tech before transferring into Houston. He started 60 games across six seasons, being named second team all-conference as a super senior. | Source

DT LaBryan Ray, Alabama: They finally got their Alabama guy. Ray is 6-foot-5, weighs in at 284 pounds, and played five full seasons under Nick Saban. The run stuffing defensive tackle recorded just six sacks and 13.5 tackles for loss in his collegiate career. | Source

LB DaMarcus Mitchell, Purdue: Mitchell started his career on offense and at Southwest Mississippi Community College. He ended it as an edge in Purdue. In two years as a Boilermaker, he registered 5.5 sacks and three forced fumbles. | Source

P Jake Julien, Eastern Michigan: Julien is a Canadian-born punter who spent five seasons punting for the Eagles. He averaged 43.4 yard per punt across his career. He will join Jake Bailey as the only two punter on New England’s roster. He is right footed. | Source

IOL Liam Shanahan, LSU: The Marlborough, Massachusetts native finds himself returning home after just two seasons at LSU. He started his college career at Harvard, starting 30 games across three seasons, being named the teams best offensive player in 2019. He was an all-academic team member for the Tigers in 2021, obviously. | Source

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Tampa Bay Buccaneers Undrafted Free Agents Signing Tracker - Sports Illustrated

2022 Kansas City Chiefs undrafted free agents tracker - Arrowhead Addict

Jul 28, 2021; St. Joseph, MO, United States; Fans pose for photos on large letters provided during training camp at Missouri Western State University. Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports

KC Chiefs add developmental talent with seventh round picks by Matt Conner

Every year we’re surprised by a couple of undrafted players who end up contributing to the Chiefs. Here’s our rundown of this year’s signings.

Every year, the Kansas City Chiefs land a list of several players following the draft with signing bonuses and hopes of making their NFL hopes come true following the NFL’s annual first-year player draft. Whether they’re called rookie free agents or priority free agents or undrafted free agents, the definition is the same for prospects who were passed over by all 32 teams in the seven-round event.

Lest you think that means these players have no real shot at the professional level, think again. Every year features plenty of UDFAs making the leap to active rosters. As the saying goes, all they need is a chance.

Recent Chiefs’ history speaks to this very truth. Byron Pringle was a rookie free agent who signed and went to make more money with the Chicago Bears in free agency this offseason. Charvarius Ward was an undrafted free agent when he made the Chiefs and he cashed in with the San Francisco 49ers only a month ago. Darrel Williams is now on the market hoping to do the same.

The Chiefs have plenty of other former UDFAs on the roster right now, from punter Tommy Townsend to quarterback Shane Buechele. Defensive lineman Turk Wharton and Malik Herring both went undrafted, as did defensive backs DiCaprio Bootle, Zayne Anderson, and Devon Key. In other words, there’s every reason to believe that one or more of the players who land with the Chiefs following the draft will make the most of their opportunity..

We will keep track of all undrafted free agents here as they sign with the Chiefs along with some indication of the value they bring and how they might make it work in Kansas City.

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The price of free speech: why Elon Musk’s $44bn vision for Twitter could fall apart - The Guardian

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The price of free speech: why Elon Musk’s $44bn vision for Twitter could fall apart  The Guardian
The price of free speech: why Elon Musk’s $44bn vision for Twitter could fall apart - The Guardian
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Zach LaVine ready to explore free agency, open to re-signing with Chicago Bulls - ESPN

3:44 PM ET

• Associated Press

CHICAGO -- Though he didn't rule out re-signing with the Chicago Bulls, Zach LaVine didn't slam the door on joining another team either.

The two-time All-Star played it coy. And with that, the offseason took a dramatic turn in Chicago.

LaVine made it clear Friday that he plans to explore the market as an unrestricted free agent for the first time in his career, calling it a "big decision" for him and his family. The high-flying guard insisted he is keeping an open mind, as much as he has enjoyed his five seasons in Chicago.

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He indicated he intends to meet with other teams when free agency opens, saying: "I plan to enjoy free agency. We're going to have to experience A through Z without making any fast decisions. I think that's something me and [agent Rich Paul] are going to go through and experience."

Are the Bulls the leader to sign him? LaVine was noncommittal.

"You guys have been a really, really soft spot in my heart," he said. "I have to do this as a business decision, as a man, to not just be viewed one way and be like I'm automatically coming back or I'm automatically leaving."

The Bulls got off to a solid start this season en route to a 46-36 record and their first playoff appearance since 2017. But they were hit hard by injuries, with LaVine, guards Lonzo Ball and Alex Caruso, and forward Patrick Williams missing significant stretches. Chicago struggled down the stretch and was knocked out 4-1 by defending NBA champion Milwaukee in the first round.

LaVine averaged 24.4 points per game in the regular season, made his second straight All-Star team and got his first taste of the playoffs in his eighth year. But it was hardly a smooth season.

He dealt with an early thumb injury and was in and out of the lineup the final few months because of a sore left knee. He had platelet-rich plasma therapy, a cortisone injection and fluid drained from the knee in Los Angeles before the All-Star break.

LaVine also missed the final playoff game after entering the health and safety protocols. He said he tested negative Friday after he "felt terrible" the first two days.

"I have to do this as a business decision, as a man, to not just be viewed one way and be like I'm automatically coming back or I'm automatically leaving."

Zach LaVine on testing free agency

LaVine said he needs to get his knee back to 100%, and he will have it reexamined soon after he returns home to Los Angeles.

As for his expiring four-year, $78 million contract? The Bulls clearly want to keep him.

"The thing is that we have a relationship with him. He knows exactly what to expect here," executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas said. "We have a really good relationship with him. The last two years have been the best two years of his career, so we'll see what happens."

Karnisovas said the knee problem won't impact negotiations.

A supermax deal worth about $245 million over five years appears to be out of reach since he would need to be chosen All-NBA, MVP or Defensive Player of the Year to become eligible. The Bulls can offer a max contract worth more than $210 million over five years.

But LaVine didn't seem too inclined to give the Bulls a discount so they might have a little more salary-cap flexibility.

"I think it's important to me you get paid what you're valued at," he said. "I see myself as a top guy in this league. I think I've proven that over the last four years."

He also sees potential for the Bulls to become an elite team. Karnisovas has been aggressive in reshaping the roster since he was hired two years ago, acquiring Nikola Vucevic, DeMar DeRozan, Ball and Caruso, drafting Ayo Dosunmu and hiring coach Billy Donovan.

But the injuries made it difficult to develop the continuity they needed to compete with the NBA's best. That's a point the players as well as Donovan and Karnisovas mentioned the past two days. A major part of that would be re-signing LaVine.

"I don't think Rome was built in a year," LaVine said. "I don't think you can be a championship-caliber team right off the bat. Maybe some teams are. But it's tough. It's the first time a lot of us made the playoffs. I think it was a really good experience. And not all of us got to really play together due to circumstances of COVID and injury. I definitely think this is a good team and has the potential to be a championship-caliber team."

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Canadian doctors are prescribing free passes to national parks to treat patients - CNN

(CNN)Much has been said about the healing power of nature. Now, some medical professionals in Canada are increasingly prescribing it.

Doctors are instructing their patients to wander park trails, feel the crunch of leaves beneath their feet and breathe in fresh air. It's part of BC Parks Foundation's growing PaRX program, which intends to improve people's mental and physical health by connecting them with nature.

Since PaRX launched in November 2020 participating doctors have prescribed countless hours in the sun.

"We do have a standard recommendation that you spend at least two hours in nature each week and at least 20 minutes each time to maximize those health benefits," PaRx director and family physician Dr. Melissa Lem told CNN. "There's almost no condition that nature isn't good for, from diabetes to high blood pressure. ADHD in children, anxiety and depression."

A recently announced partnership with Parks Canada Agency will build on that success by allowing doctors to prescribe and provide Parks Canada Discovery Passes to their patients. The free passes grant admission to 80 sites, including national parks, marine conservation areas and historic places throughout Canada.

"We are very lucky in Canada to have a world of beautiful natural spaces at our doorstep to enjoy healthy outdoor activities," Steven Guilbeault, minister of Environment and Climate Change, said in a news release announcing the new initiative. "This exciting collaboration with PaRx is a breakthrough for how we treat mental and physical health challenges, and couldn't come at a better time as we continue to grapple with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our daily lives."

'The fourth pillar of health'

Lem grew up in a predominantly White suburb of Toronto where she was usually the only person of color in her school and neighborhood, she says. Often confronted with racism and the feeling she "just didn't belong," Lem sought solace in nature, whether it was her parents' garden or a nearby park.

After visiting a national park for the first time at the age of 8, Lem realized she wanted to work in a profession that would allow her to bring nature into people's lives.

Decades later, after graduating from medical school and becoming a family physician, she found a way to combine her passion for nature with health care. In 2019, Lem reached out to BC Parks Foundation and shared her research showing how spending time in nature can lead to better physical and mental health.

Within a year, she had worked with the foundation to launch the PaRx program.

"There's so many different ways that nature is good for our bodies and brains, so it's also really effective health intervention," said Lem. "We like to say that it should be the fourth pillar of health, along with healthy diet and sleep and exercise."

Lem isn't alone in her belief that nature can heal.

Numerous studies have shown that exposure to nature can counter depression, decrease stress levels, improve blood pressure and boost creative and cognitive abilities.

A 2017 study by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston found that living in, or near, green areas can help women live longer and improve their mental health. Another study, published in 2021, found that city children who have daily exposure to woodland have better cognitive development and a lower risk of emotional and behavioral problems.

PaRX isn't the first program to act on such findings. Similar programs have been implemented across the world, including the United States and United Kingdom.

"It has been so gratifying to be a part of this important work and helping reduce barriers to nature access," Lem said. "I think we're well on our way to socializing the idea that nature is the fourth pillar of health and making nature prescribing a mainstream idea."

'Within six weeks, the depression had lifted so much'

Marjorie Schurman says she doesn't need medical studies to prove nature's healing power -- she's experienced it first hand.

In 2020, the Vancouver resident visited a doctor to get help for her depression.

"I just said, 'I can't shake this depression. I just feel so like I can't get up from playing spider solitaire,'" Schurman told CNN. "He says, 'I've got just the thing a prescription for you.' Oh, goody, one more pill."

But instead of a pharmaceutical solution, Schurman's doctor prescribed her with nature time -- at least two hours a week, each time a minimum of 20 minutes.

"Within six weeks, the depression had lifted so much...," Schurman said. "We know that there is the science about the impact of being in nature, being with trees, going to hug a tree, you'll feel better. So I supported it wholeheartedly, and I'm an example of how it works."

BC Parks Foundation fully supports Schurman's urge to hug trees. They hope PaRx will inspire more Canadians to see the value in nature and take climate change seriously.

"If you love something, you want to protect it. They tend to recycle more, they tend to save more electricity and engage in more climate action," Lem said. "So we like to think with our program that every time someone writes a prescription for nature that we're doing our little part for the planet."

As of February 2022, more than 4,000 licensed healthcare professionals, including nurses, doctors and psychologists, had subscribed to the PaRx program. However, due to privacy laws, it's unclear how many nature prescriptions they've written.

The partnership between BC Parks Foundation and Parks Canada Agency will see doctors prescribe 100 free park passes in its first year. The passes will be prioritized for Canadians living near national sites and those who doctors believe need them most, Parks Canada spokesperson Megan Hope told CNN.

"This partnering initiative will support the health and wellness of Canadians, increase their connection to nature and improve accessibility to natural heritage places," Hope said, adding that the number of passes provided "will be reassessed in the following years."

PaRX has already changed the way many Canadian medical professionals and their patients think about nature, Lem said. But the program still has a long way to go.

"When medical schools start teaching nature, prescribing and recommending nature as just important as a healthy diet and lifestyle, I'll know we're getting there," she said.

CNN's Evelio Contreras and Jeff Kopp contributed to this report.

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NAP 0.5.0, free realtime visual tool, adds GPU computation, Web, RasPi support, new look - CDM Create Digital Music - Create Digital Music

NAP, the free and open-source live visualization toolkit, has an all-new look, powerful GPU computation capabilities, a Web portal … and it even runs on a Raspberry Pi. Your next installation is calling. Let’s check it out.

NAP 0.5.0 hit earlier this month. The developers emphasize that this is a major (emphasis theirs) new release, full of fixes and improvements and a new look. The artist-driven toolkit I’ve covered here before, so here’s your refresher:

That story also includes lots of dreamy use cases involving lights and installations and digital art. And that’s the important thing about this breed of tools – it’s indie, underground stuff that comes straight out of real-world digital artmaking.

And if you’re overwhelmed by choice, maybe the key advantage of NAP is that it’s so low-overhead – even energy efficient. In today’s world, that surely matters, and it makes this your shoe-in choice if you’re looking for something efficient for an installation, not just “throw a bunch of GPUs and fans at it” festival stage stuff. (I do love that, too, natch.)

Let’s get to what’s new, though.

Computation on the GPU. NAP is powered by Vulkan, the latest Khronos cross-platform API (so the next generation of legacy APIs Direct3D and OpenGL). The latest is the ability to run computation on the GPU, too.

What does that mean in real terms?

Flocking! Particles!

… and other stuff, of course.

Web portal. The ability to run stuff from a Web portal is just great in practice – all you need is a browser view to work with parameters in your creation. I’ve talked about this being great in Resolume’s REST API, Isadora does this – it’s great. And it’s especially welcome here, especially when you have options like running on Raspberry Pi (see below), because it facilitates easy remote control of your stuff.

There’s a node module that does the work for you, then you get a NAP Dashboard that spits out the website – see the webportal demo.

This is running on a RasPi. Damn.

All of it runs on Raspberry Pi 4. Yeah, and it runs well. And you can use Vulkan compute. Just going to quote them on this:

Added full support for the Raspberry Pi 4, Raspbian Bullseye (11), armhf, including access to the GPIO pins & Vulkan Compute / Rendering. Performance is quite impressive, most demo apps run at about ~80-90 fps. And we expect it to improve. You can download the pre-compiled package right here or compile NAP from source, following the regular build instructions. To make life easier we pre-compiled QT for you. The entire engine and toolset is supported, including the compilation, packaging and running of all demos, apps and editor. We are already using it in production. The pipins demo shows you how to get started with the GPIO pins & NAP.

Tim Groeneboom wrote a great tutorial on how to develop and deploy NAP on the Raspberry PI 4 using CLion. Including general tips & tricks to get more out of NAP running on the Raspberry Pi. 

Theme it dark, theme it light, or go vintage like this.

New themes, new look. They’ve also totally rebuilt the UI and icons, everything looks nicer, and you get multiple themes.

Full release notes

Oh yeah, and that new logo will look stylin’ on your tee / tattoo:

https://www.instagram.com/nap_labs/

Download:

https://nap-labs.tech/

Tags: awesomeness, coding, computation, cross-platform, embedded, free, free as in freedom, GPGPU, GPU, installations, Linux, Mac, motion, NAP, netherlands, open-source, programming, Raspberry Pi, raspi, RasPi 4, Software, visualization, visuals, Vulkan, Web, Windows

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Microsoft is adding a free built-in VPN to its Edge browser - The Verge

Microsoft is adding a free built-in virtual private network (VPN) service to its Edge browser in a bid to improve security and privacy, a Microsoft support page revealed.

Called ”Edge Secure Network,” Microsoft is currently testing the Cloudflare-powered VPN service and says it will roll it out to the public as a part of a security upgrade.

When turned on, Edge Secure Network should encrypt users’ web traffic so internet service providers can’t collect browsing information you’d rather keep private, like, say, health-related searches or just plain bizarre queries.

The new feature will also let users hide their location by making it possible for them to browse the web using a virtual IP address. That also means users could access content blocked in their countries like, for instance, Netflix or Hulu shows.

There’s a catch for this free service, though. Data use is limited to 1GB per month, and users will need to be signed in to a Microsoft account so the company can, well, ironically track their usage.

Microsoft adds that while Cloudflare will collect support and diagnostic information from the service, the company will permanently get rid of that data every 25 hours.

While the feature is still under development and not yet available for early testing either, Microsoft detailed how users could try out a preview. That suggests it could roll out soon to one of the Microsoft Edge Insider channels first, which users can download and join here.

Once it does, you can try out the preview version by opening up Edge, heading to Settings and more,and clicking on Secure Network.

At that point, users will be prompted to sign in to or create a Microsoft Account. After doing so, a solid shield icon will appear in the browser frame, indicating Microsoft’s Edge Secure Network is now turned on. It will turn off after the user closes the browser.

Microsoft is one of many browsers that offer some kind of VPN service. Opera comes with a free one as well, but more popular browsers like Mozilla only offer a paid VPN service, as does Google Chrome, thereby potentially help improving Edge’s value proposition.

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India Will Test Elon Musk's Twitter Free Speech Pledge | Time - TIME

Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter could give the Indian government extra leverage to crack down on critics—despite Musk’s stated aims to preserve free speech on the platform—due to Tesla’s business ambitions in the country.

Under its current leadership, Twitter has alienated the Indian government by repeatedly rejecting its demands to remove tweets critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party. It comes at a time when observers are warning that the country is becoming an increasingly dangerous place for Muslims and oppressed castes—especially women belonging to those groups—thanks in part to hate speech, threats and harassment on social media.

But Musk’s Tesla, Inc., is currently lobbying the Modi government to reduce taxes on vehicle imports, which are preventing the electric vehicle maker from accessing a potentially giant market of customers in India.

“Elon Musk would be CEO of both a company seeking policy adjustments from the Indian government, as well as the owner of Twitter,” says Jessica Dheere, the director of Washington D.C.-based tech watchdog Ranking Digital Rights. “There are certainly conflicts of interest there.”

Read More: Twitter Employees Worry About Elon Musk Ownership

Many, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, have wondered publicly whether Musk’s business ambitions for Tesla in China, its second most-important market after the U.S., will give the Chinese government leverage to demand Musk suppress the speech of critics of the ruling communist party on Twitter. Tesla’s incentive to keep the government happy in India will perhaps test even further how much Musk really means what he says about freedom of speech.

Last summer, Musk tweeted that Tesla wants to enter the Indian market, but can’t because “import duties are the highest in the world by far of any large country.” New Delhi has frustrated Musk’s ambitions by levying import taxes of 100% on cars worth more than $40,000, and 60% on cheaper vehicles. ”We are hopeful that there will be at least a temporary tariff relief for electric vehicles,” Musk added in another tweet. “That would be much appreciated.”

Tesla has proposed an import duty for 40% on electric vehicles, but reports in the Indian press say the government has asked for more assurances of investment in the country. “Still working through a lot of challenges with the government,” Musk tweeted in January 2022, after an Indian user asked him when Teslas would be available for purchase.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Musk has said he will run Twitter based on free-speech principles to the extent that the laws of countries where Twitter operates will allow. “By ‘free speech,’ I simply mean that which matches the law,” the billionaire tweeted on April 26. “I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.”

In the U.S., freedom of speech is protected by the first amendment. But in India, national laws include restrictions on free speech online, including the legal necessity for platforms to remove content that threatens “decency” or that government officials believe threatens the “interests” of India. Last year, Twitter clashed with the Indian government after it demanded the platform remove content critical of the ruling party. Twitter ruled instead to leave up some of the content for reasons of freedom of expression.

Read More: Elon Musk and the Tech Bro Obsession With ‘Free Speech’

“In keeping with our principles of defending protected speech and freedom of expression, we have not taken any action on accounts that consist of news media entities, journalists, activists, and politicians,” Twitter said in a statement at the time. The platform also began labeling some government tweets containing disinformation, prompting Indian police to raid Twitter’s New Delhi offices.

“There is also the worry that Twitter being taken private would erode the transparency that Twitter has shown up until this point,” Dheere says. “Without that transparency, it’s very difficult to evaluate any sorts of conflict of interest and how it would play out on the platform.” Dheere’s organization Ranking Digital Rights recently ranked Twitter top among all tech companies for standing up for its users’ digital rights, though said the company could still be doing much more.

As with other social media companies in India, Musk’s business incentives present a potential conflict of interest when it comes to protecting users’ safety. In 2020, India’s political opposition criticized Facebook over reports that it repeatedly refused to remove instances of anti-Muslim hate speech, while it was campaigning to lobby Indian telecoms regulators for a permit to expand its WhatsApp payment systems—a potentially multi-billion dollar business opportunity.

In what could already be seen as a potential olive branch to the Indian government, Musk has suggested that he wishes to rid Twitter of its top policy executive, Vijaya Gadde, who is of Indian descent and who was ultimately responsible for the company’s decisions to reject the Indian government’s demands to remove critical tweets. In the days following the announcement of the planned acquisition, Musk targeted Gadde specifically in his tweets, effectively accusing her of being Twitter’s lead censor, resulting in legions of his fans harassing her on the site. Several Twitter employees told TIME they assume her days at the company are limited.

“People have no idea how wrong Musk is about this,” wrote Mike Masnick, editor of the tech news site Techdirt, in a tweet. “I know of few people on this planet more supportive of ACTUAL free speech than Vijaya. She has done more to protect free speech than he ever has.”

Risk for marginalized groups in India

The harassment levied by Musk fans against Gadde mirrors the systemic harassment that supporters of India’s ruling party have long used to silence critics and marginalized groups on Twitter.

Many marginalized groups in India fear that they will be the biggest victims of any rollbacks of Twitter’s content moderation policies. Chief among them are Dalits, formerly known by the pejorative term “untouchables,” the most oppressed class of peoples under India’s rigid caste hierarchy.

In 2020, Twitter added caste as a “protected category” under the site’s policies, making it easier for Twitter to tackle caste-based hate speech and harassment. The change only came after a sustained campaign of advocacy by the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), an organisation working on the policy and advocacy for the issues of marginalised communities in India.

Beena Pallical, the director of the NCDHR, says the campaign arose from her experience witnessing rampant caste-based abuse on Twitter, but seeing no mechanism to report it. “The current Twitter policy team [led by Gadde] has been very cooperative and understanding,” she tells TIME. “These changes are not enough as the space continues to be unsafe for many marginalized community voices, but the current team is still very receptive to these changes, making many efforts to fix loopholes on Twitter that make the space unsafe.”

Read More: Caste Is More Relevant to Indian Politics Than Ever

Pallical expressed concerns over Elon Musk’s self-professed “free speech absolutism,” as many caste-based slurs are not recognized by Indian law and thus would not fall under content that Musk has professed he would be bound to take down.

In India, public conversation on Twitter is predominantly directed by dominant castes, and despite caste now being a protected category by Twitter, caste-based abuse and harassment is still common. “Not a single day goes by when I don’t get a casteist remark on Twitter,” says Meena Kotwal, a Dalit journalist who reports primarily on gender and caste issues. “I regularly get death and rape threats and I have filed two police complaints, but no actions have been taken yet.”

Recently Kotwal was pressured by police to remove a tweet that was critical of the caste system. “When the government and the police themselves are hounding anti-caste voices, you can imagine how hard it is to be vocal about our oppression,” Kotwal says.

Musk has said he wants Twitter to respect freedom of speech in line with the law. By doing so in India, he will satisfy a government that is using speech laws to crack down on its critics and its most oppressed communities. “Laws in India, specifically pertaining to free speech, have been used against marginalized communities, instead of favoring them,” says Subhajit Naskar, associate professor of Political Science at Jadavpur University. The takeover of Twitter by Musk, Naskar says, represents “a grave danger to the anti-caste movement.”

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India Will Test Elon Musk's Twitter Free Speech Pledge | Time - TIME
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NAU will offer free tuition to thousands of Arizona students starting in 2023. Here's who qualifies - The Arizona Republic

New Mexico leads the nation as Governor Lujan Grisham makes childcare free for most families | Office of the Governor - Michelle Lujan Grisham - Office of the Governor

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New Mexico leads the nation as Governor Lujan Grisham makes childcare free for most families | Office of the Governor - Michelle Lujan Grisham  Office of the Governor
New Mexico leads the nation as Governor Lujan Grisham makes childcare free for most families | Office of the Governor - Michelle Lujan Grisham - Office of the Governor
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These scientists bonded over toilet tech. Now they're working on carbon-free cement - CNBC

Hugo Leandri (Left) and Cody Finke, the co-founders of Brimstone Energy.

Photo courtesy Brimstone Energy

Cars and electricity get a lot of attention in conversations about decarbonization, and they should. But building materials like cement and steel also need to be scrutinized.

The production of cement is responsible for about 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions and 5.5% of total global greenhouse gas emissions.

On Thursday, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Bill Gates' climate finance firm, and DCVC, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, announced they led a $55 million funding round in Brimstone Energy, a start-up aiming to commercialize carbon-negative cement.

"We need to recognize that cement is a massive problem for climate and that nobody has figured out how to address it at scale without dramatically increasing costs or moving away from the regulated materials that the construction industry knows and loves," Breakthrough partner Carmichael Roberts told CNBC.

Brimstone was founded by two scientists who grew up halfway around the world from each other, bonded in Beijing where they traveled to talk toilets and are now aiming to solve that massive cement problem.

Toilets don't scale

Co-founders Cody Finke and Hugo Leandri overlapped while doing graduate work at the California Institute of Technology in 2017, where they were both working on wastewater treatment. But the pair really bonded when they both attended the Reinvented Toilet Expo in Beijing in 2018.

"We had a lot of fun eating cockroaches in the tourist market and going on runs around Beijing and talking about environmental problems like sanitation and greenhouse gas emissions," Finke told CNBC. They also tried eating snakes, as this photo shows:

Code Finke (L) and Hugo Leandri bonding over eating snakes on a sticks in Beijing in 2018.

Photo courtesy Hugo Leandri

Finke, who hails from Seattle, had already worked to develop a solar-powered toilet that was also able to generate hydrogen and electricity, and his CalTech team won $100,000 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for winning first place in the philanthropic organization's Reinvent the Toilet Challenge in 2012.

He was excited about the idea, but it was expensive to scale.

"I felt like the wastewater technology did a great job at treating wastewater, but to actually save lives, it would need to be deployed. Even with optimistic assumptions, I did not understand how this technology could be deployed as it was just too expensive," Finke told CNBC. "So therefore, the chances of impact were low."

Coming out of the toilet research, Finke started looking at other places to devote his energies. Around that time, David Danielson at Breakthrough Energy Ventures gave a talk at CalTech about heavy carbon emitting sectors that weren't getting much attention from innovators yet. Finke remembers Danielson mentioned steel, cement and fertilizer, to name a few.

Finke used his chemistry knowledge to develop ideas to co-generate clean hydrogen and other commodities, such as sulfuric acid or cement. In 2019, the two decided to be co-founders to develop and commercialize their lab science.

Leandri, who grew up on the French territory of Reunion Island near Madagascar, was somewhat familiar with the cement world because he interned at his father's concrete business.

In 2020, they got $500,000 in funding from the Department of Energy as part of the federal government's ARPA-E, or Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, program to continue developing their chemistry ideas.

While neither of them are working on solar-powered toilets now, a core belief of Brimstone comes from their toilet days: Any solution they create cannot just be good for the world; it has to make financial sense for customers in order to make a big impact.

"One of our key criteria at Brimstone is that we believe that in order to be adopted globally, the technology that we're developing has to save people money fundamentally," Finke said.

"We don't know of an example in history where worldwide adoption has gone from lower cost to higher costs. It always goes higher cost to lower cost."

A new process to make ordinary cement

Normally, creating cement involves heating up limestone, which releases carbon dioxide. Even if the energy used to heat up the limestone is 100% clean, 60% of the carbon emissions would remain because of what is inherently in the limestone rock, Finke said.

Some companies are working to make climate-friendly cement by capturing the carbon dioxide and storing it underground or using it. Other companies innovating in the space make an alternate product that serves the same functions as cement but is not cement.

Brimstone's process creates what's known as ordinary Portland cement (OPC), but instead of using limestone, it involves grinding up calcium silicate rock and using a leaching agent to pull out the calcium. Calcium silicate makes up about 50% of the Earth's crust, according to Finke, and is so common that it's often crushed up and used to make gravel. The process is subject to four patents.

Incidentally, the company's name comes from an archaic term for sulfur, which was used in a previous version of its process. "We no longer use sulfur, but we still use stones, and we have a fiery passion for decarbonization," says Finke.

Investors like the company's focus on creating industry-standard cement at a similar or cheaper price point, instead of an alternative that might be more expensive and have to clear new regulatory hurdles.

"Brimstone is the first company we've seen that can make the same exact material that we use today to build our buildings and bridges — ordinary Portland cement – but without carbon emissions and with the potential to cost the same as, or less than, traditional cement," Roberts told CNBC.

That's the key for DCVC, too.

"Brimstone's ability to make actual OPC is essential because over 95% of all cement produced is OPC," Rachel Slaybaugh, principal at DCVC, told CNBC in a statement. "Ergo, no new regulations, material specifications or standards are required. This is a key differentiator from other companies working in the space, all of which are producing a new type of material that is not well-known or understood by the construction industry."

The Brimstone Energy team in the lab in Oakland, Calif.

Photo courtesy Brimstone Energy

Super valuable byproducts

Once cement is produced, it is mixed with other ingredients — known in the industry as "supplementary cementitious material"— in order to make concrete. The chemical process Brimstone has developed to make cement also produces these materials, which "are increasingly in short supply globally and correspondingly increasing in monetary value," Slaybaugh told CNBC.

In legacy cement production techniques, these materials are usually either fly ash, a byproduct of burning coal, or slag, a byproduct of steel production. Burning coal is falling out of favor because of its contribution to climate change, and it's become cheaper and more common to recycle steel, which means there is less slag.

As a byproduct, Brimstone's chemical process also produces a couple forms of magnesium that will react with carbon dioxide and make it into a solid form, pulling it out of the atmosphere.

"Sitting on the ground doing nothing, they will react with carbon dioxide and turn that carbon dioxide into a rock," Finke told CNBC.

Altogether, Brimstone's cement can be carbon negative even if the industrial processes are powered by heat produced from fossil fuels, the company claims.

Brimstone would prefer to avoid fossil fuels for production and use clean heat from companies like Antora Energy, but only when that technology is available at scale and at low cost.

"My view is that, unfortunately, only cheaper things get built and more expensive things do not, so today a clean energy plant would not be financed or built," Finke told CNBC.

Next steps for Brimstone

Brimstone has its main lab facilities in Oakland, California, and a secondary lab space in Ketchum, Idaho. The 14-person start-up has not yet generated any revenue, and the $55 million funding round will go toward building a pilot plant, which it aims to have operational in 2023.

There's a long road ahead for Finke and Leandri.

But they're driven. Growing up in Seattle, Finke remembers watching Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," and being "devastated" by the idea that Mount Rainier might melt.

"Climate change is something I certainly care very deeply about," Finke said, and working on one spoke of the network of solutions necessary to decarbonize gives him a sense of purpose.

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Transit users 18 and younger ride free under new WA program - Crosscut

But about half of the money comes with a specific condition attached: Transit agencies must let people 18 and under board buses and trains  free.

Agencies that adopt a zero-fare-for-youth policy by Oct. 1 can receive their cut of $1.45 billion in new transit support grants. Agencies that don’t adopt such a policy will not qualify.

The requirement is embedded in a new statewide transportation package, which will spend $17 billion on bridges, highways, transit, and bike and pedestrian improvements between now and 2038.

State Sen. Marko Liias, who chairs the Senate Transportation Committee, said his goal with the youth-ride-free policy is to foster a new generation of transit riders, as well as help lower transportation costs for families across Washington state.

Liias said getting young people in the habit of using public transit should also help curb carbon emissions, which are a major driver of climate change.

“For me and for kids growing up in the suburbs like me, getting your driver’s license at 16 was your ticket to freedom,” said Liias, D-Lynnwood, who grew up just outside Mukilteo in Snohomish County.  

“I want to teach the next generation that an ORCA pass is your ticket to freedom,” said Liias, referring to the cards that can be used to pay for transit across the Puget Sound. 

Although the state has set an Oct. 1 deadline for transit agencies to adopt zero-fare policies for young riders, Liias said there’s some flexibility about when those policies must actually be implemented. He hopes all transit agencies will start letting riders 18 and under board free by no later than spring of 2023.

Justin Leighton, the executive director of the Washington State Transit Association, said transit agencies around the state are busy developing zero-fare policies that they can put into place by autumn.

While many transit agencies still need their governing boards to approve their specific plans, so far, none of the local transit agencies represented by Leighton’s organization — 30 in all — has decided to forgo the state grant money by refusing to develop policies to let people 18 and under ride free, he said. 

Many agencies actually want to start letting kids board free even sooner than Oct. 1 — ideally, by the time a new school year gets underway, Leighton said.

Other agencies may take a few extra months to stop charging fares, as they figure out how to implement the new policy, he said.

“The big problem really is, how do we verify age?” Leighton said. He said transit agencies don’t want drivers and other transit workers to have to check IDs to confirm riders’ age during the boarding process.

“We also don’t want to be getting into fights with 17-year-olds who look like they’re 20,” Leighton added.

Ina Percival, supervisor of marketing and business development at King County Metro, said even if people under 18 ride free, Metro must track those riders to ensure the agency is providing adequate service and meeting riders’ needs. Transit agencies also must report annually how many times young people ride free under the new program, which will require some kind of tracking system, she said.

To make that happen, Metro is now brainstorming ways to get ORCA cards into the hands of all young people, which will most likely involve partnering even more closely with schools, Percival said. 

While some cities within King County Metro’s jurisdiction, including Seattle, already offer free ORCA ridership cards to middle and high school students, that’s not the case everywhere.

Metro is also looking at ways it could potentially let riders who are 18 and under use a specialized mobile app to board buses and trains, Percival said.

“The goal here is really to empower young people to be able to use transportation to benefit themselves and their families,” Percival said. That includes helping kids get to and from extracurricular activities and jobs, she said.

The plan to let young people ride free didn’t receive universal support at the Legislature this year. 

State Rep. Andrew Barkis, R-Olympia, said he remains concerned about the difficulty of implementing the program, as well as how much it will cost in terms of lost fare revenue.

Barkis said providing more state money for transit while requiring fewer people to pay to ride shifts the burden of paying for transit onto people who may never use it. That includes people who live in rural areas, where there are few transit options available, he said.

“We’re moving to a situation where a component of how we fund our transit is being removed, and that’s fare box recovery,” said Barkis, the ranking Republican on the House Transportation Committee.

For the transit agencies themselves, the money they expect to receive through the new state grant program is projected to far exceed the cost of letting kids and 18-year-olds ride free, said Matthew Sutherland, advocacy director at the Transportation Choices Coalition, a group that supported the new policy.

King County Metro, for instance, stands to receive about $31 million per year from the new state grant program, but estimates it will lose only about $10 million in revenue each year from lost fare collections.

Pierce Transit, meanwhile, projects losing $1 million in fare revenue each year, but expects to receive about $8.2 million a year from the new grant program.

“It is an absolute win-win for every transit agency,” Sutherland said. “They get money to help support their operations, and they get to increase affordability and access for kids.” 

The zero-fare for 18 and under program must extend to every type of transit service an agency offers, not just buses and trains. Ferries will be included, too. 

The corresponding state grant money can be used to buy new buses, build new transit facilities, expand transit service or even stave off service cuts. 

The money can’t be used to merely supplant local funding. That means a transit agency can’t cut local sales taxes that currently pay for transit, then use the state grant money to backfill the lost revenue.

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ESPN Anchor Sage Steele Sues Network Over Free Speech Claims, per Report - Sports Illustrated

SportsCenter anchor Sage Steele is suing her employer ESPN and its parent company, Walt Disney Co., after she alleged that the company treated her unfairly for comments she made on a podcast interview last September, according to the Wall Street Journal. Steele alleges that the company breached her contract and violated her free-speech rights.

The ESPN anchor was under fire after appearing on former quarterback Jay Cutler’s podcast, “Uncut with Jay Cutler,” last year. During the interview, Steele questioned COVID-19 vaccine mandates and made comments about former President Barack Obama identifying as Black instead of biracial. She also said female sports journalists are partly to blame for athletes making inappropriate comments about them if they dress a specific way.

Following the interview, Steele tested positive for COVID-19, causing her to go off air while recovering. ESPN required the anchor to issue an apology for her comments.

Before the controversy, Steele was one of the lead anchors for ESPN’s flagship show, SportsCenter. Since the interview, Steele claims she has been sidelined for prime assignments. She does, however, continues to anchor the noon SportScenter broadcast. 

The suit also alleges that ESPN failed to “stop bullying and harassment by Ms. Steele’s colleagues,” The Wall Street Journal reports.

In 2017, ESPN established a rule requiring employees to refrain from commenting on political matters without a tie to sports. Steele claims her case was “selective enforcement” of this rule.

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The suit states that ESPN “violated Connecticut law and Steele’s rights to free speech based upon a faulty understanding of her comments and a nonexistent, unenforced workplace policy that serves as nothing more than pretext.”

The Connecticut law in question, Sec. 31-51q., states companies cannot discipline employees for exercising their First Amendment rights, as long as the comments do not directly impact their work performance or company. Steele argues that because her comments were made on a third-party podcast that she should be considered a private citizen in this situation.

Additionally, Steele provided examples of her ESPN coworkers who have not been punished for political statements.

It is unknown what Steele is seeking to recoup in damages in the case.

ESPN responded to the suit with this statement: “Sage remains a valued contributor on some of ESPN’s highest profile content, including the recent Masters telecasts and anchoring our noon SportsCenter. As a point of fact, she was never suspended.”

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Elon Musk Isn't Buying Twitter to Defend Free Speech - The Atlantic

Conservatives on Twitter have greeted Elon Musk as a liberator. The mega-billionaire is in the process of purchasing the social-media platform and reorienting it toward what he calls “free speech.” The conservative columnist Ben Shapiro celebrated the news of the new free-speech era by insisting that Musk engage in politically motivated mass firings of Twitter workers based on their perceived political leanings.

For those who are not terminally online, a little explanation is in order. Compared to the big social media giants, Twitter is a relatively small but influential social network because it is used by many people who are relatively important to political discourse. Although the moderation policies of a private company don’t implicate traditional questions of free speech—that is, state restriction of speech—Twitter’s policies have played a prominent role in arguments about “free speech” online, that is, how platforms decide what they want to host.

When people talk about free speech in this more colloquial context, what they mean is that certain entities may be so powerful that their coercive potential mimics or approaches that of the state. The problem is that when private actors are involved, there's no clear line between one person's free speech and another: A private platform can also decide not to host you if it wants, and that is also an exercise of speech. Right-wing demands for a political purge of Twitter employees indicate just how sincerely conservatives take this secondary understanding as a matter of principle rather than rhetoric.

The fight over Twitter’s future is not really about free speech, but the political agenda the platform may end up serving. As Americans are more and more reliant on a shrinking number of wealthy individuals and companies for services, conservatives believe having a sympathetic billionaire acquire Twitter means one less large or influential corporation the Republican Party needs to strongarm into serving its purposes. Whatever Musk ends up doing, this possibility is what the right is actually celebrating. “Free speech” is a disingenuous attempt to frame what is ultimately a political conflict over Twitter’s usage as a neutral question about civil liberties, but the outcome conservatives are hoping for is one in which conservative speech on the platform is favored and liberal speech disfavored.

Conservatives maintain they have been subject to “censorship” by social-media companies for years, either by the imposition of terms of service they complain are unfairly punitive to the right or by bans imposed on particular users. There is ample evidence though, that social-media networks consistently exempt conservative outlets from their own rules to avoid political backlash, a fear seldom displayed when it comes to throttling left-wing content. And despite the right-wing perception of liberal bias on Twitter, an internal audit found that the site’s algorithms “amplify right-leaning political content more than left-leaning content.” The evidence suggests that for all their outrage, conservatives consistently receive preferential treatment from social-media platforms, but are so cavalier about disregarding the terms of service that sometimes they get banned anyway.

Nevertheless, it shouldn’t be surprising that many conservatives still complain that they are being censored even as these platforms’ algorithms continue to favor right-wing content. Indeed, the success of these complaints explains their persistence—if conservatives stopped complaining, the favorable treatment might cease. Musk is a sympathetic audience, even if that does not necessarily determine the direction Twitter will take under his ownership.

Liberal users on Twitter have greeted the news of Musk’s pending acquisition of the platform with everything from indifference to despair, while conservative reactions run the gamut from optimistic to worshipful, with some right-wing praise of Musk echoing the unending North Korean style flattery of the Trump years. For his part, Musk has said his priority is “freedom of speech,” a framing that some mainstream media outlets have credulously repeated.Musk’s subsequent tweets, stating that Twitter should ban only “illegal” content and that “If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect,” suggest that he has not thought all that much about the issue. The state broadly banning certain forms of expression is a much greater infringement on free speech than the moderation policies on a private platform, which anyone can choose not to use.

Every major right-wing Twitter alternative has imposed moderation policies while presenting itself as a “free speech” alternative to Twitter; most comically, posting disparaging comments about Trump originally violated the terms of service of Trump’s own app, Truth Social, which itself continues to ban “filthy” content, harassment, language that is “abusive or racist,” and “profanity.” The moderation of privately owned platforms is itself a form of protected speech; Musk’s ownership of Twitter simply means he will get to decide what those policies are.

And that’s precisely the point. Users on both the left and the right assume that during Musk’s tenure, Twitter’s policies will amplify conservative content and throttle left-leaning content. Both sides suspect that Twitter’s moderation policies regarding harassment will be altered to allow users to more frequently employ disparaging language about religious and ethnic minorities, women, and LGBTQ people. The extent of these changes depends on the balance between Musk’s financial concerns and his ideological ones. Right-wing alternatives to Twitter have failed to take off because conservatives want to make liberals miserable, not build a community in which there are no libs left to own. If conservatives successfully drive their targets off Twitter, or if the network becomes an unusable cesspool, it will become similarly worthless, both financially and politically. Social media platforms’ attempts to deal with harassment and disinformation have less to do with liberal political influence than making their platforms useful to advertisers.

The fact that conservative concerns about Big Tech vanish the second a sympathetic billionaire buys a social-media platform, however, illustrates the shallowness of their complaints about the power of Silicon Valley. Conservatives are not registering their concern over the consolidation of corporate power so much as they are trying to ensure that consolidation serves their interests. Put simply, conservatives hope that Twitter will now become a more willing vehicle for right-wing propaganda. Even if the platform tilts further in their direction, they will be motivated to continue to insist they are being censored—their criticisms likely exempting Musk himself in favor of attacking  Twitter’s white-collar workers, whom conservatives paradoxically perceive as the “elite” while praising their billionaire bosses as populist heroes. The insincerity of right-wing populism is represented by the fact that such “populists” find it preferable to be ruled by ideologically sympathetic barons than share a democracy with people who might put their pronouns in their email signatures.

In Republican-controlled Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis boasts of punishing Disney for its opposition to recent legislation forcing LGBTQ teachers to remain in the closet on the job. Last year, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned of “serious consequences” if the party’s corporate benefactors continued to issue anodyne statements in opposition to GOP legislation aimed at disenfranchising Democratic constituencies. The Supreme Court decision opening the floodgates to unlimited corporate cash in American elections bears McConnell’s name, but apparently money qualifies as constitutionally protected speech only when that money can be relied upon to serve the Republican Party. As concerned as they might be about social-media moderation, conservatives are currently engaged, along with this kind of strong-arming, in the largest campaign of state censorship since the second Red Scare.

Conservative propagandists have represented their demand that corporate America advance the interests of the Republican Party as a populist “break” with Big Business, when it is simply an ultimatum: Serve us, or suffer. The current ideological vanguard of the conservative movement isn’t breaking with business, but with democracy, seeking to keep labor weak, the state captive, and corporate power and religious institutions subservient to its demands. Money is speech, as long as you fund our interests. You have the right to vote, as long as you vote Republican. You have freedom of speech, as long as you say what the party would like you to say.

Corporate consolidation has made the Republican Party’s turn to authoritarianism much easier. Liberals focusing on how Musk’s acquisition of Twitter might affect their experience on the platform should look at the bigger picture. Corporate America has filled the void in civil society left by the weakness of organized labor, leaving a tiny number of extremely wealthy people with outside influence. All the right-wing “populist” rhetoric in America is geared not toward weakening this influence but toward harnessing it.

Many media outlets have curiously described Musk as a “free-speech defender,” a term Musk enthusiasts have interpreted as a euphemism for someone with a high tolerance for bigotry against historically marginalized communities. But Musk has been perfectly willing to countenance the punishment of those engaging in speech he opposes. Tesla, for example, was disciplined by the National Labor Relations Board for firing a worker who was attempting to organize a union. Similarly, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, but his commitment to free speech falters when it comes to unionizing the warehouse workers who are essential to his business.

Business moguls tend to be big on “freedom of speech” in this more colloquial sense, when it comes to the kind of speech that doesn’t hurt their bottom line. When it comes to organizing their workforces, however, a form of speech that could act as a check against their power and influence, that tolerance for free speech melts away. Workers fearful of how their wealthy bosses intend to use that power should take that reality into consideration.

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