🐤 Going to see Waymo of these

Driverless cars are picking up passengers in downtown Pheonix. What does that mean for the future?

Tuesday | August 30th, 2022
Early Chirp

Round two, fight. That's right, chirpers, it's round two for the week. Or as the uncool kids say, Tuesday. What else is there to do on Tuesday besides drinking warm green tea? Reading Early Chirp, of course.

Today's feature dives into driverless cars; can you imagine an I, Robot or Detroit: Become Human future where robots act as sentient maids? We may be headed for a future that in some way brings such concepts to life. Is that way we want? What if the machines rise up against us? Is anyone going to call the Terminator?

Anyway, that's enough science fiction. Let's get to the news.

-Walter Yeates

World

The Breakdown

A quick look around the world.

The Simpsons via Giphy

⚾️ A Mantle card went for what now? A Mickey Mantle baseball card has been sold for $12.6 million, becoming the most valuable piece of sports memorabilia ever sold at auction. The previous record was the jersey worn by footballer Diego Maradona when he scored the 'Hand of God' goal at the 1986 World Cup (sorry English fans, you would have liked VAR back then, right?).

💸 Education Department is looking to help 5 million excluded from Biden's student loan forgiveness plan. The plan, which slapped a band-aid on the higher education issue (including the insane prices which led to catastrophic student loan debt), left many with student loans without any relief. They were excluded because they owned a subset of federal student loans made before 2010 that were owned by private companies. Now the Education Department is attempting to find ways to relieve that debt.

🦁 A man was mauled to death by a lion after attempting to steal two white lion cubs. If you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. A man in Ghana won the prize of being mauled to death after attempting to steal two rare white lion cubs after climbing into a zoo enclosure. It's unclear which of the lion, lioness, or the two cubs took the man out.

🤔 Evidently, it's illegal for People Under 21 to buy canisters of whipped cream in NY. A sign from Stewart's convenience store in front of a refrigerator door read, "effective 8/12/22 we will be IDing for whipped cream! Must be 21 years old!" Why? Some teens use the nitrous oxide in the canister to get high, more commonly referred to as doing "whippits”.

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technology

Driverless Vehicles Are Operating In Phoenix

The driverless cars are here!

Waymo

Waymo's fully driverless vehicles are picking up passengers in downtown Phoenix, five months after the company expanded its service area to include denser, more complex areas of the city.

Waymo has been testing the vehicles around Phoenix since early 2017 in areas such as Chandler, Mesa, Tempe, and Gilbert.

Future For Waymo

Currently, those testing Waymo are covered under a Non-Disclosure Agreement, meaning they cannot discuss their experiences with the public. The plan is to eventually allow regular customers to share their experiences in order to help the company grow.

Waymo is also close to launching a driverless ride-hail service in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, but they have not received final approval to charge for those trips.

It looks like the future of inner-city travel is in front of us, only time will tell when all of us can blame driverless cars for us being late for work, meetings, and picking up the kids from school.

Those will be the good days.

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us politics

A Look At Gen Z Candidate Maxwell Frost

Maxwell Frost may be the first Gen Z member of Congress, but there is more to him than that.

Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Maxwell Frost is a 25-year-old activist who won the August 23rd Florida District 10 Democratic primary. Due to the demographics of the district, Frost will likely go on to win the seat, becoming the first member of Generation Z to serve in the United States House of Representatives.

There will be many other members of Generation Z in Congress, however, Frost having a Social Democratic platform and being a huge advocate of abortion rights garnered him attention against a race against older and more experienced primary candidates.

The former Uber driver is likely to join Congress as the newest member of a wave of Democrats who are challenging the establishment of the party.

Not Everything Is Smooth With Frost

Frost worked with local Palestinian activists in the Orlando area and signed a pledge Florida Palestine Network (FPN) to support the BDS movement, ending military aid to Israel, and rejecting the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

However, those in the movement feel Frost has already turned on the pledges he made to them, including erasing Palestinian activists' names from social media posts and receiving Super PAC money from a group that donates money to any campaign where a candidate is critical of the Israeli government.

It will be interesting to see what Frost's political future and platform hold.

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world politics

February Morning Is Fighting An Information War Against Putin

Not all battles are waged with weapons of war.

Adam Berry/Getty Images

What Is February Morning?

February Morning is an online media outlet using Youtube and Telegram to fight an information war against non-democratically elected Russian President Vladimir Putin. The outlet was founded by exiled former Russian Member of Parliament and dissident Ilya Ponomarev.

February Morning (Utro Fevralya in Russian) was one of the first outlets to report on the assassination of Darya Dugina, who was killed in a car bomb on the outskirts of Moscow on August 20th.

The Goal Of February Morning

February Morning was created shortly after Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24th this year. The war sparked the key figures of February Morning into action, countering the Russian state media controlled by Putin with counter-programming concerning the war.

February Morning covers Russian resistance throughout the country, which most outlets tend to ignore -- painting all Russians as behind Putin, despite many taking part in protests, being arrested, and facing harsh punishment for anti-war sentiment.

When times are dark, those fighting to get the truth to the masses are deserving of respect and a tip of the hat.

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Early Chirp

Written by Walter Yeates

90 N Church St, The Strathvale House
Grand Cayman KY1, 9006, Cayman Islands

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