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Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, has scheduled a virtual meeting on Sunday with senior House Democrats to discuss President Bidens candidacy and the path forward, according to a senior official familiar with the plan.

The session, which is to include the ranking members of congressional committees who make up the top echelons of the party in the House, comes at a time of profound worry among Democrats on Capitol Hill about Mr. Bidens poor performance at last weeks presidential debate. House Democrats have not met as a group since, even as concerns have mounted about Mr. Bidens viability as a candidate and the impact he could have on his partys ability to win back control of the chamber and hold the Senate should he remain in the race.

Mr. Jeffries has been in listening mode all week, refraining from pressuring Democrats to rally around the president but also encouraging them not to be rash in their public pronouncements as Mr. Biden and his team determine the best path forward.

But Democrats have begun to splinter. Four in the House Representatives Lloyd Doggett of Texas, Ral Grijalva of Arizona, Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Mike Quigley of Illinois have called for the president to withdraw, while others have made public their serious concerns about his ability to prevail in the race.

On Friday, Mr. Quigley said he had had a hard time getting to the point of urging the president to get out of the race.

But, he told MSNBC, clearly, the alternative now is a very bleak scenario with, I would say, almost no hope of succeeding and it doesnt just affect the White House. It affects all of Congress and our future.

Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, has been working to organize a meeting of Democrats in his chamber to discuss their concerns about Mr. Bidens candidacy and what should be done, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the effort who spoke about it on the condition of anonymity.

Originally posted here:
Jeffries Plans to Meet Virtually With Top House Democrats on Biden's Path Ahead - The New York Times

Elon Musks latest cost-cutting victims: Summer interns.

Tesla Inc. is rescinding offers just weeks before internships were set to start, prompting aspiring employees to take to LinkedIn to appeal to other employers to take them in.

At 8:46am, I opened aTeslaemail for flight info. By 11:25am, my internship offer was gone,wroteMiami University student Joshua Schreiber, who said his start date was three weeks away and that he had already spent thousands on housing.

Schreiber, like many other would-be Tesla interns, are getting dangerously close to the end of the school year. They say the surprise calls from Tesla informing students that their offers no longer stand haveleft them without a lot of time to find replacement gigs for the summer.

In one instance, a current Tesla employee posted on LinkedIn, asking her own virtual network to step up and nab one of the interns that was meant to start soon at the carmaker. Please make our loss your gain!wroteDiana Rosenberg, whoworks inbattery supply at Tesla, according to her profile.

Rosenberg blamed the decision to rescind the intern offer on the massive layoffs unfolding at the carmaker.

Last month, Musk announced that Tesla had made the difficult decision to reduce our headcount by more than 10% globally. Since then,several executives have left the company as Musk has pushed for further cuts. Most of the companys 500-person Supercharger division and its newly formed marketing division have been axed, Bloomberg News has reported.

People familiar with Musks thinking have said the billionaire isdetermined to cut head count amid sagging electric vehicle sales and big expenditures for his Robotaxi dreams. They say Musk is targeting a 20% reduction, Bloomberg reported.

Revoking intern offersisnt likely to save Tesla much money. At least one of the posts was for an unpaid position, while paid internships at the automaker typically offer $18 to $28 an hour, according to data from Glassdoor.

But the decisions will have an impact in the companys hiring pipeline:More than3,000 university and community college students from around the world are hired for Tesla internships each year, according to the companys lastImpact Report.Perform meaningful work from day one, reads thecompanys intern website.

The move has also delivered a stark life lesson tothe students.

Rejection is redirection,wroteBrook Gura, a communications student at the University of Texas at Austin, who said that she got a call that her offer was yanked three weeks before her start date as part of the companys mass layoffs. While I am incredibly disappointed that I will not have the summer I intended to have, I know that this moment will only help me grow stronger as a professional.

Gura, Schreiber and Rosenberg declined to comment beyond their posts. Musk didnt respond to a request for comment.

Excerpt from:

Tesla slashes its summer internship program to cut costs, as Elon Musk fights to save his $45 billion pay plan - Fortune

Democracy on Trial by Michael Kirk is a thorough documentary of the systematic and lengthy evolution and execution of the attempt to overthrow the government. It has deep roots in the mindset of the dictator wannabe way before he was elected. The coup attempt on January 6 was the tip of the iceberg.

Anyone who watches this 2 h 23 minute film will see the complete truth of what happened inside the White House and throughout America that lead to what we all saw that historical day. Some of the watchers may become a jurors in the Jack Smith and other trials.

What is very comforting and an inspiration of what should happen this year is how manydid the right thing all along. The film makes me optimistic that the MAGA mob will not succeed because of the courage of many Americans going forward .

It deserves an Oscar for best documentary. (Poll bellow, hopefully many watched it already)

This documentary by PBS will play a role in the political dynamics going forward. Lets do what we can to make it happen.

This 18 minute interview with Michael Kirk, before the release, gives you the why and how of his warning to all about the possible future based on the rationally explained past. It gives a clear picture of the thinking and goals behind the documentary.

Read more here:
Democracy on Trial is a masterpiece documentary at the perfect time that should go viral. - Daily Kos

Thank God for Donald Trumps war on censorship.

Go to any Trump rally and youll not only hear Christians roaring approvingly when Trump uses obscenities that are unprintable in this newspaper, but you will also see Christians young and old wearing T-shirts that say things like F--- Joe Biden. Back in the day, you could see Hillary Is A Bihct T-shirts on little Christian tykes roaming about Trump gatherings, but with the operative word spelled correctly. I actually saw a baby in a onesie recently with F--- Biden on it, but again with all the necessary letters to sufficiently offend tender hearts. I cant confirm the infants religious preference, but she was white and professing hatred for Joe Biden, so she was either a right-wing Christian or a QAnon disciple, the line between which has become as nonexistent as reality at a Trump rally.

I never expected Christians to rail against censoring obscenity so openly, but Christian children sporting F--- Biden apparel makes it more acceptable, as pervasive use of profanity dilutes its power to offend. The F--- Biden flags and yard signs commonly seen in South Dakota may not be my preferred political message, but Im all for it if it means defeating the faux-Puritan censorship so pervasive in America.

With Trumps assistance, all manner of obscenity may soon be accepted as banal in the Press & Dakotan. We may even stop targeting bans on a certain caliber of books when obscenity loses its firepower.

Excerpt from:
Letter: War On Censorship | Letters to the Editor - Yankton Daily Press

Theres a joke, playing on the quantum worlds unique properties, that goes, There are three types of people in this world: Those who understand quantum computing, those who dont understand quantum computing, and those who simultaneously do and do not understand quantum computing. All kidding aside, Weiwen Jiang sees a world in which quantum computing is in widespread use; with new funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), he is taking steps toward that goal.

Jiang, an assistant professor in George Mason Universitys Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is leading two recently awarded NSF projectsworth a total $900,000for work on the development of these complex devices and on building the quantum workforce of tomorrow.

Quantum computers differ from classical computers in that they use elements of quantum mechanics to perform calculations, allowing them to operate much faster and crunch more data. While there are several operational quantum computers in useIBM and Google are among the top manufacturersthey currently are far from their promised potential and simply cannot yet make the large-scale calculations predicted of them.

Jiang said one key problem is, They are not stable. We can use them for computations, but you might get one answer today and then get an entirely different answer tomorrow.

Quantum devices are notoriously susceptible to noisespecifically, things like cosmic rays, changes in the Earth's magnetic field, radiation, and even mobile wi-fi signals. The noise contributes to the devices instability.

The $600,000 collaborative grant will fund the work of Jiang and his collaborators from Kent State University in developing an adaptor that will adjust to fluctuating noise, improving the performance of applications on quantum devices. Jiang is well versed on the topic, having recently won the Best Poster Award for System-level optimizations in improving the robustness of quantum applications on unstable quantum devices at an event at Oak Ridge National Lab.

According to Jiangs preliminary works, the deployment of the quantum applications faces several challenges, including: sustainabilityon one quantum processor, most quantum applications are sensitive to the temporal changes of quantum noise; portabilitydifferent quantum processors (even from the same vendor) with specific properties will lead to variation of model uncertainty; and transparencya lack of visualization tools can block users from tailoring their quantum applications to quantum computers for higher reliability. The NSF project will systematically provide solutions in response to these challenges.

Jiang is optimistic about the future of quantum computing: Every year, we see a lot of breakthroughs. Just a couple of months ago IBM published a paper on noise reduction. And every year, we see that the number of qubits in quantum computers increases from five in the year 2000 to over 400 on a new computer from IBM. (A qubit is the basic unit of information used in quantum computing, much like a 1 and 0 for traditional computing.)

Another grant, which Jiang shares with collaborators MingzhenTian and JessicaRosenberg in the College of Science, provides $300,000 from NSF to bolster the quantum workforce pipeline. The grant is for an end-to-end quantum system integration training program. The faculty members are developing a new course at Mason, organizing workshops at the IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing in September (where Jiang is the quantum system track co-chair), and conducting tutorials at international conferences. Recently the team, led by Rosenberg, coordinated a summer immersion program at Mason for high school students. In addition, in the coming months, Jiang will be conducting seminars at a variety of minority-serving institutions in the DC region.

Jiang said the opportunities for quantum-trained engineers are robust and growing. I have collaborations locally with Leidos and MITRE, for example, and they have needs in this field. Further, we know that quantum will make a difference in everything from finance to drug discovery to machine learning and beyond.

He is encouraged about the quantum futureboth in the world and here at Mason. He stressed that as student demand grows for this technology, we need to provide the appropriate materials for our students, because were seeing a lot of strong interest in this field.

More:
Quantum Conundrums: Navigating Noise and Enhancing Expertise - George Mason University