‘La tapisserie, c’est moi’: Macron accused of putting politics first in Bayeux tapestry loan; The Guardian, August 30, 2025

 Jon Henley, The Guardian; ‘La tapisserie, c’est moi’: Macron accused of putting politics first in Bayeux tapestry loan

[Kip Currier: One can understand, on the one hand, wanting to promote more occasional public access to singular artifacts, like the Bayeux Tapestry. However, the risks in transporting the tapestry from France to the U.K. would seem to far outweigh the benefits of moving this priceless historical and cultural information object. Especially when one reads the assessments of the risks by world class experts.

France 24 reports that a French official asserts that the Bayeux Tapestry is "not too fragile to loan to UK", but offered no verifiable evidence of his claims:

Philippe Belaval, appointed by Macron as his envoy for the loan, said no decision had yet been taken on how to transport the tapestry.

But he said a study dating from early 2025 had made detailed recommendations about handling and transport.

"This study absolutely does not state that this tapestry is untransportable," Belaval said, without revealing the authors of the study or their conclusions."

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250822-bayeux-tapestry-not-too-fragile-to-move-to-uk-french-official-says  

Situations like this, as well as the current U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) crisis in which multiple vaccine experts are resigning and speaking out against RFK Jr's scientifically unsupported vaccine policies, remind me of Tom Nichol's 2017 book The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters.]

[Excerpt]

"“I’m not against the loan of cultural artefacts and I have always liked the UK,” said Didier Rykner, the editorial director of La Tribune de l’Art, an art news website, whose month-old petition against the loan has been signed by nearly 62,000 people.

“But this is a purely political decision. Here is an extraordinary work of art, a wholly unique historical document, an artefact without equivalent anywhere – and which expert opinion agrees, overwhelmingly, cannot travel. It’s not complicated.”...

Some of the most damning arguments against the plan have come from curators and restorers who have worked or are working on the tapestry, five of whom have told Rykner – on condition of anonymity – of their disbelief and concern.

Precisely because the tapestry was considered too fragile to move far, complex plans were already under way to remove it from display and store it during the museum’s rebuilding work, with a full restoration to follow once it was returned.

“We fell off our chairs when we heard,” said one conservator. “It’s the opposite of all we had prepared for.”

Any movement at all of the canvas, in a state of “absolute fragility”, was “fraught with risk, an incredibly delicate operation”, said another."

‘Public health is in trouble,’ says high-ranking CDC leader who resigned in protest; PBS News, August 28, 2025

 Amna Nawaz, Aznar Merchant , PBS News; ‘Public health is in trouble,’ says high-ranking CDC leader who resigned in protest

"Amna Nawaz:

• So let's just start with your decision. Why did you feel the need to resign?

• Dr. Debra Houry:

  It was such a tough decision. I love the CDC. The work we do is so important.

  But I had just felt we had reached a tipping point when it came to our science and our data and being able to do the work we needed to do. I was concerned about the future of CDC and my ability to be a leader at the CDC and to do what was needed to be done on the inside. I thought my voice and the voice of my colleagues that also resigned with me would be more powerful on the outside.

• Amna Nawaz:

  What does reaching that tipping point, as you put it, mean to you?

  You saw Dr. Monarez's lawyers reference the unscientific and reckless directives. What does that mean to you?

  • Dr. Debra Houry:

    Yes, so we have an immunization committee meeting coming up in a few weeks. And many of us, myself included, were concerned about some of the recommendations might walk back vaccines in our country.

    To me, that's one of the tipping points. I think another tipping point is just the loss of Dr. Monarez. We hadn't had a CDC director for several months. When she came on board, she brought scientific rigor and some new ideas around public comment and how to really make sure data drove the decisions.

    When she had done some of these changes, she was brought to the secretary's office for discussion. And, at that point, I became concerned that she wouldn't be able to implement changes that were needed at CDC, and without that leadership, it would just leave us vulnerable again. And I thought that was the point to say, enough is enough and to really raise that Bat Signal that public health and CDC is in trouble.

    
    

    • Amna Nawaz:

      You have also said previously that her firing makes it easier for Secretary Kennedy's appointees to change vaccine recommendations. You just mentioned fearing a walk-back in some of those vaccine policies.

      What does that mean specifically? What could we see ahead?

    • Dr. Debra Houry:

      So, if we don't have a CDC director, and if there's not an acting CDC director, then the secretary would sign recommendations like he did for the last ACIP, or vaccine committee, meeting.

      So things like the COVID vaccine or hepatitis B vaccine, they could choose to change ages on it or the populations that have access to it. I'm just concerned about changing vaccine access in our country and that we need to focus more on the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, shared decision-making around vaccines, and not talking about misinformation around vaccines.

      
      

      • Amna Nawaz:

        And changes to things like the hepatitis B vaccine, are those conversations you were a part of during your time there? Those are being discussed?

      • Dr. Debra Houry:

        So I know that the work groups have been asked to look at hepatitis B. They're in the middle of pulling a systematic review together right now.

        So I would imagine that means they will be discussed. My concern is, we have pulled evidence reviews together before for the ACIP meetings, that we had one that was pulled down and not discussed. I think it's really important when we do work at CDC for our data, our science and our evidence reviews to be publicly posted, so the public can also review them and understand.

        And, to me, that is transparency and something we were trying to move towards, particularly with the secretary's commitment to radical transparency. That would mean having publicly available data and documents."

Social Security whistleblower quits after saying Americans’ data was compromised; The Washington Post, August 29, 2025

 

Maegan Vazquez

 and 

Meryl Kornfield

, The Washington Post; Social Security whistleblower quits after saying Americans’ data was compromised

"A Social Security Administration official responsible for overseeing the agency’s data access resigned from his role on Friday, days after submitting a whistleblower complaint alleging that U.S. DOGE Service staffers uploaded critical personal information for more than 300 million people to the digital cloud."

Research suggests doctors might quickly become dependent on AI; NPR, August 19, 2025

 Geoff Brumfiel, NPR; Research suggests doctors might quickly become dependent on AI

 "Artificial intelligence is beginning to help doctors screen patients for several routine diseases. But a new study raises concerns about whether doctors might become too reliant on AI.

The study looking at gastroenterologists in Poland found that they appeared to be about 20% worse at spotting polyps and other abnormalities during colonoscopies on their own, after they'd grown accustomed to using an AI-assisted system.

The findings, published in the journal Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology, suggest that even after a short period of using AI, experts may become overly dependent on AI to do certain aspects of their jobs...

But not everyone is convinced that the paper proves doctors are losing critical skills because of AI...

Hulleman believes statistical variations in the patient data might be part of the explanation for why the numbers appear to drop. Factors such as the average age of the patients used in different sections of the study might explain the variation, he says."

DHS references Mexican IndyCar driver to promote ‘Speedway Slammer’ detention center; The Guardian, August 7, 2025

 Agencies , The Guardian; DHS references Mexican IndyCar driver to promote ‘Speedway Slammer’ detention center

[Kip Currier: Not only is this statement by a DHS spokesperson factually inaccurate, as there's a cogent argument these actions by DHS may negatively impact trademark rights (and rights of publicity) -- “An AI generated image of a car with ‘ICE’ on the side does not violate anyone’s intellectual property rights" -- it's also morally offensive to either recklessly or intentionally appropriate without permission the racing number of one of the top Mexican drivers for use in a DHS promotion that demeans human beings.]

[Excerpt]

"IndyCar driver Pato O’Ward and series officials were shocked by a social media post from the Department of Homeland Security that touts plans for an immigration detention center in Indiana dubbed “Speedway Slammer.” It includes a car with the same number as that of O’Ward, the only Mexican driver in the series.

“It caught a lot of people off guard. Definitely caught me off guard,” O’Ward said Wednesday. “I was just a little bit shocked at the coincidences of that and, you know, of what it means ... I don’t think it made a lot of people proud, to say the least.”

The post on Tuesday included an AI-generated image of a IndyCar-style vehicle with O’Ward’s No 5 that has “ICE” stamped on it. In the image, the car is in front of a jail...

“We were unaware of plans to incorporate our imagery as part of yesterday’s announcement,” IndyCar said in a statement Wednesday. “Consistent with our approach to public policy and political issues, we are communicating our preference that our IP not be utilized moving forward in relation to this matter.”

A DHS spokesperson said it would not change the social media post. “An AI generated image of a car with ‘ICE’ on the side does not violate anyone’s intellectual property rights. Any suggestion to the contrary is absurd,” the spokesperson said in statement. “DHS will continue promoting the ‘Speedway Slammer’ as a comprehensive and collaborative approach to combatting illegal immigration.”

Anthropic’s settlement with authors may be the ‘first domino to fall’ in AI copyright battles; Fortune, August 27, 2025

 BEATRICE NOLAN, Fortune; Anthropic’s settlement with authors may be the ‘first domino to fall’ in AI copyright battles

"The amount of the settlement was not immediately disclosed, but legal experts not involved in the case said the figure could easily reach into the hundreds of millions. It’s also still unclear how the settlement will be distributed among various copyright holders, which could include large publishing houses as well as individual authors.

The case was the first certified class action against an AI company over the use of copyrighted materials, and the quick settlement, which came just one month after the judge ruled the case could proceed to trial as a class action, is a win for the authors, according to legal experts."

Step back and take it in: the US is entering full authoritarian mode; The Guardian, August 29, 2025

 Jonathan Freedland , The Guardian; Step back and take it in: the US is entering full authoritarian mode

"Meanwhile, apparently prompted by his meeting with Vladimir Putin, he is once again at war against postal voting, baselessly decrying it as fraudulent, while also demanding a new census that would exclude undocumented migrants – moves that will either help Republicans win in 2026 or else enable him to argue that a Democratic victory was illegitimate and should be overturned.

In that same spirit, the Trump White House now argues that, in effect, only one party should be allowed to exercise power in the US. How else to read the words of key Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who this week told Fox News that “The Democrat party is not a political party; it is a domestic extremist organisation.”

It’s the same picture on every front, whether it’s plans for a new military parade in Trump’s honour or the firing of health officials who insist on putting science ahead of political loyalty. He is bent on amassing power to himself and being seen to amass power to himself, even if that means departing from economic conservative orthodoxy to have the federal government take a stake in hitherto private companies. He wants to rule over every aspect of US life. As Trump himself said this week, “A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we’d like a dictator.’” The former Obama adviser David Axelrod is not alone when he says, “We have gone from zero to Hungary faster than I ever imagined.”

The trouble is, people still don’t talk about it the way they talk about Hungary, not inside the US and not outside it. That’s partly the It Can’t Happen Here mindset, partly a reluctance to accept a reality that would require, of foreign governments especially, a rethink of almost everything. If the US is on its way to autocracy, in a condition scholars might call “unconsolidated authoritarianism”, then that changes Britain’s entire strategic position, its place in the world, which for 80 years has been predicated on the notion of a west led by a stable, democratic US. The same goes for the EU. Far easier to carry on, either pretending that the transformation of the US is not, in fact, as severe as it is, or that normal service will resume shortly. But the world’s leaders, like US citizens, cannot ignore the evidence indefinitely. To adapt the title of that long-ago novel, it can happen here – and it is."

Medicare Will Require Prior Approval for Certain Procedures; The New York Times, August 28, 2025

 Reed Abelson and Teddy Rosenbluth , The New York Times; Medicare Will Require Prior Approval for Certain Procedures

[Kip Currier: Does anyone who receives Medicare -- or cares about someone who does -- really think that letting AI make "prior approvals" for any Medicare procedures is a good thing?

Read the entire article, but just the money quote below should give any thinking person heart palpitations about this AI Medicare pilot project's numerous red flags and conflicts of interest...]

[Excerpt]

"The A.I. companies selected to oversee the program would have a strong financial incentive to deny claims. Medicare plans to pay them a share of the savings generated from rejections."

Trump Is Ruling by Willful Blindness; The New York Times, August 29, 2025

 Hannah Bloch-Wehba, The New York Times; Trump Is Ruling by Willful Blindness

[Kip Currier: This article's author chillingly dissects Trump 's "Execute Order 66-esque" war on information and data. 

Data, in essence, is evidence. And without evidence -- in a court of law, a research laboratory, or a governmental agency  -- it becomes harder to make a case for laws, ethics, and policy. Without data and information, authoritarians can project the sense that they are unfettered by adherence to logic and scientific validity and are inoculated from accountability and the rule of law. In short, they can do whatever they want or don't want to do.

"Destroy, distort, and disregard data" is right out of the authoritarian playbook. Orwell's 1984 showed us that in a work of fiction. But it's on stark display in the real world, too. 

Reading this piece, I recalled having heard about the conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government having literally destroyed hundreds of years of fisheries and environmental data. As Vice reported in 2015 (see The Harper Government Has Trashed and Destroyed Environmental Books and Documents):

In the first few days of 2014, scientists, journalists, and environmentalists were horrified to discover that the Harper government had begun a process to close seven of the 11 of Canada’s world-renowned Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries, citing a consolidation and digitizing effort as the reason. Reports immediately proliferated that the process was undertaken in careless haste, with the officials sent to gather and transfer the documents allegedly neglecting to take proper inventory of the centuries’ worth of documents containing vital information on environmental life, from aquatic ecosystems to water safety and polar research, with some documents reportedly dumped in landfills or burned, leading some scientists to refer to it as a ‘libricide.’ 

Soon after, a widely disseminated photograph emerged displaying a dumpster at the Maurice Lamontage Institute in Mont-Joli Quebec, stuffed with hundreds of carelessly discarded historic books and documents. In Winnipeg, Gaile Whelan-Enns, an environmental researcher with the Manitoba Wildlands told CBC News that he saved hundreds of documents that he found abandoned in an empty library. “It was really hard to figure out where to start because there was so many documents that you just went ‘Oh my God,’” he said, disbelief palpable in his voice. “They just left this lying here?” 

The incautious nature of the consolidation effort adds another alarming chapter to a Harper government that appears deadset on directing how scientific research is conducted in Canada. Last Sunday, CBC’s the Fifth Estate aired an investigation on how the Harper government has dealt with scientists over the past seven years. The doc illustrated a battle between an ideology driven administration and mostly apolitical scientists simply pursuing the facts gleaned from their research, and how it led many to be silenced and defunded.

            https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-harper-government-has-trashed-and-burned-environmental-books-and-documents/  

Sound familiar at all?]

[Excerpt]

"The Trump administration has identified a key weapon in its campaign to remake the federal government: information control. Shortly after taking office, it ordered federal health agencies to freeze their communications with the public. The government promptly scrubbed many of its websites of data about climate change, public health, foreign aid and education. The Department of Government Efficiency slashed federal data-gathering activities, and the president fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after a middling July jobs report.

As a scholar of information law and policy, I see a dangerous transformation: Instead of using data to determine how to govern, the administration is manipulating, ignoring and even jettisoning data altogether. Those who balk at the administration’s wishful thinking about reality face threats to fall in line or leave, as Jerome Powell, Lisa Cook and now the C.D.C. director, Susan Monarez, have all experienced.

The administration has clearly embraced the strategic cultivation of uncertainty and ignorance. It is not just trying to trim the fat from its statistical agencies, which were already underfunded before President Trump took office. Nor is it simply trying to spin the available data to its political advantage. Instead, it is turning away from the government’s responsibilities as a steward of information by minimizing, cherry-picking, misusing and sometimes even destroying data.

The idea that government ought to make decisions using evidence and hard data is a cornerstone of our political order...

A government based on deliberate indifference to information and data is a dangerous one. By turning away from evidence when it doesn’t suit, the administration is showing that it doesn’t think it matters whether it has the better argument, so long as it has the power to rule as it desires." 

Putin’s Twisted Drone Scheme Now Has Kids Helping to Kill Kids; The Daily Beast, August 29, 2025

 Anna Nemtsova, The Daily Beast ; Putin’s Twisted Drone Scheme Now Has Kids Helping to Kill Kids

"Children as young as 7 are now being forced to join Vladimir Putin’s dystopian drone war, which rained down attacks on Kyiv on Thursday that left 23 people dead, including four kids.

The 7-year-olds are not directly involved in the war in Ukraine, but in a chilling escalation, they will be trained as future drone pilots as part of their education in school from next year. And then, starting in ninth grade, children are being actively recruited to work in a drone factory that is part of a college where unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that are sent to kill civilians in Ukraine are being manufactured.

Conditions are brutal in the drone factory at Alabuga college, 600 miles west of Moscow, with allegations of bullying and physical abuse. One of the young workers, who asked to be called Kate, told the Daily Beast that she was being reprogrammed into an “unbreakable” part of Putin’s war machine...

Putin said drone piloting had to become a part of the school program to teach children “to pilot, assemble and construct drones.”

“I am convinced that it will make the kids busy with something useful and interesting, distract them from things they should not be doing,” he explained."

Anthropic’s surprise settlement adds new wrinkle in AI copyright war; Reuters, August 27, 2025

Blake Brittain, Reuters; Anthropic’s surprise settlement adds new wrinkle in AI copyright war

"Anthropic's class action settlement with a group of U.S. authors this week was a first, but legal experts said the case's distinct qualities complicate the deal's potential influence on a wave of ongoing copyright lawsuits against other artificial-intelligence focused companies like OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta Platforms.

Amazon-backed Anthropic was under particular pressure, with a trial looming in December after a judge found it liable for pirating millions of copyrighted books. The terms of the settlement, which require a judge's approval, are not yet public. And U.S. courts have just begun to wrestle with novel copyright questions related to generative AI, which could prompt other defendants to hold out for favorable rulings."

Think you actually own all those movies you’ve been buying digitally? Think again; The Guardian, August 27, 2025

 J Oliver Conroy, The Guardian; Think you actually own all those movies you’ve been buying digitally? Think again

[Kip Currier: This article underscores why the First Sale Doctrine (Section 109a) of the U.S. Copyright Statute is such a boon for consumers and public libraries: when you (or a library) buy a physical book, you actually do own that physical book (though the copyright to that book remains with the copyright holder, which is an important distinction to remember).

The First Sale Doctrine is what enables a library to purchase physical books and then lend them to as many borrowers as it wants. Not so for digital books, which are generally licensed by publishers to users and libraries who pay for licenses to those digital books.

The bottom line: You as a digital content licensee only retain access to the digital items you license, so long as the holder of that license -- the licensor -- says you may have access to its licensed content.

This distinction between physical and digital content has put great pressure on library budgets to provide users with access to electronic resources, while libraries face ever-increasing fees from licensors. This fiscally-fraught environment has been exacerbated by Trump 2.0's dismantling of IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services) grants that supported the licensing of ebooks and audiobooks by libraries. Some states have said "enough" and are attempting to rebalance what some see as an unequal power dynamic between publishers and libraries/users. See "Libraries Pay More for E-Books. Some States Want to Change That. Proposed legislation would pressure publishers to adjust borrowing limits and find other ways to widen access." New York Times (July 16, 2025)]

[Excerpt]

"Regardless of whether the lawsuit is ultimately successful, it speaks to a real problem in an age when people access films, television series, music and video games through fickle online platforms: impermanence. The advent of streaming promised a world of digital riches in which we could access libraries of our favorite content whenever we wanted. It hasn’t exactly worked out that way...

The problem is that you aren’t downloading the movie, to own and watch forever; you’re just getting access to it on Amazon’s servers – a right that only lasts as long as Amazon also has access to the film, which depends on capricious licensing agreements that vary from title to title. A month or five years from now, that license may expire – and the movie will disappear from your Amazon library. Yet the $14.99 you paid does not reappear in your pocket."