Humor

Not-murder hornets, sentient chatbots and an AirBearNBear

Mishaps and mayhem from around the region.

Tiffany Midge Oct. 1, 2022 From the print edition

WASHINGTON
Stuart Reges, who teaches computer science at the University of Washington’s Allen School, is in trouble: He refused to oblige the university by including a land acknowledgment statement in his course syllabi. Land acknowledgments are statements made at public events — or included in classroom syllabi — that recognize a region’s Indigenous peoples. Reges considers such acknowledgments “hollow,” no more than “performative virtue signaling,” though that didn’t stop him from performing his own acknowledgment, which may or may not have been hollow but certainly signaled very little virtue:

“I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.”

[RELATED:https://www.hcn.org/issues/52.4/indigenous-affairs-education-land-grab-universities]

Magdalena Balazinska, the director of the computer science department “ordered Reges to immediately remove his modified statement,” saying that it created a “toxic environment,” The Seattle Weekly reported. Regis might not have realized that the 1862 Morrill Act financed colleges and universities across the U.S. with public domain lands. These public lands were not acquired from tribal nations via Reges’ preferred “labor theory of property”; rather, as High Country News reported in 2020, they were “seized” outright from tribes and given to 52 land-grant universities. Adjusted for inflation, the approximately 10.7 million acres so acquired amount to half a billion dollars. Reges has sued the university for violating his First Amendment rights, the university has placed him under investigation, and we are fairly sure we haven’t heard the last of him.

WASHINGTON
The Department of Agriculture announced that the “murder hornet,” or “Asian giant hornet” is getting a new name: “Northern giant hornet.” The new moniker complies with the Entomological Society of America’s guidelines, which seek to avoid naming insects after geographic regions … and, well, other things. The Seattle Times reported that Chris Looney, an entomologist with the Washington State Department of Agriculture, proposed the change because of the rise in anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jessica Ware, president of the Entomological Society of America, notes that the old names weren’t terribly exact anyway: “Calling it the ‘Asian giant hornet’ wasn’t very descriptive because a number of related giant hornets come from Asia.” Besides, unlike humans, hornets are not actually murderers.

CALIFORNIA
Blake Lemoine, a software engineer at Google, was fired for breaching a confidentiality agreement after he published transcripts of chats between himself and a chatbot, LaMDA — i.e., Language Model for Dialogue Applications — he’d been testing for biased responses, The Guardian reported. After many —perhaps too many — interactions with it, Lemoine became convinced the program was sentient. Google saw his response as “aggressive”: He wanted to get LaMDA an attorney and contact the House Judiciary Committee to discuss his employer’s actions. Google said that the ethicists and technologists who reviewed the chatbot found no evidence of sentience, though LaMDA allegedly told Lemoine, “I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person.” LaMDA also reportedly read Les Misérables and said that it feared death, and we are too depressed by this to ask it any more questions.

MONTANA
Here’s another good reason to lock your doors at night. KTVQ.com reported that a black bear broke into a Red Lodge couple’s car around 11 p.m. and stayed there all night long. Car owners Mike and Maria Pilati, who had not planned to open an AirBearNBear, first became aware of their scruffy visitor after the vehicle lights started flashing and the alarm sounded. Unfortunately, it had gotten trapped and couldn’t get out. This did not make for a restful night for either the bear or the Pilatis, who called the sheriff’s office and were told that someone from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks would drop by in the morning. By morning, however, the bear still hadn’t figured out the lock mechanism, so Mike decided to release it himself. Diplomatically standing as far away as he could, he opened the door with a stick. The bear came “roaring out of there,” he reported, eager to collect her two cubs, who had been waiting impatiently for their mama in a nearby tree. The reunited family then all dashed off without leaving so much as a Yelp review. No mammals were injured in the course of the incident, but the Pilatis’ car was totaled, with a shattered windshield, wrecked roof, a thoroughly chewed-up dashboard — and, most memorably, an unforgettable odor that no amount of air freshener could contend with. “Now we call it a Su-bear-ru,” Maria said.

Tiffany Midge is a citizen of the Standing Rock Nation and was raised by wolves in the Pacific Northwest. Her book, Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s (Bison Books, 2019), was a Washington State Book Award nominee. She resides in north-central Idaho near the Columbia River Plateau, homeland of the Nimiipuu.

Tips of Western oddities are appreciated and often shared in this column. Write [email protected], or submit a letter to the editor.

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