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Democratic senators, led by Cory Booker of New Jersey, say they worry about how Google's products and policies may perpetuate bias. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images hide caption

Democratic senators, led by Cory Booker of New Jersey, say they worry about how Google's products and policies may perpetuate bias.

A group of Democratic senators is urging Google parent company Alphabet to investigate how its products and policies may be harming Black people.

In a letter to the tech giant's CEO, Sundar Pichai, and other executives, Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Mark Warner of Virginia, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said they worried about bias and discrimination, both in the products Google makes and the way it's handled workplace diversity.

"We are concerned about repeated instances where Alphabet missed the mark and did not proactively ensure its products and workplaces were safe for Black people," the senators wrote.

They highlighted several examples of Google products that appeared to produce biased results or potential harms for Black people.

"Google Search, its ad algorithm, and YouTube have all been found to perpetuate racist stereotypes and white nationalist viewpoints," they wrote.

They cited recent reporting from Vice showing that a new app to identify skin conditions hadn't been trained using a "sufficiently diverse" dataset and therefore wasn't effective on people with dark skin.

They also pointed to the controversial firing of prominent artificial intelligence ethicist Timnit Gebru, who was the first Black woman to be a research scientist at Google as well as a vocal critic of the company's diversity efforts.

The senators suggested the company has not made good on racial justice pledges Pichai made in a letter to employees and congressional testimony following the murder of George Floyd a year ago.

The first step, the senators said, is a "racial equity audit." They want Google to work with outside civil rights and legal experts to identify the root causes of any discrimination within the company and its tools, and what it can do to address the problems.

Google and other tech giants have long come under criticism for making slow progress in diversifying their largely white workforces. At Google, for example, only 3.7% of U.S. staff is black, according to its 2020 diversity report, compared with 2% in 2013.

The companies have also been slammed for not paying enough attention to the impact of their technologies on people of color and the way their design and development may perpetuate bias.

In their letter to Google, the lawmakers pointed to Facebook and Airbnb, which have done similar audits examining racial bias and discrimination on their platforms and within their companies after outside pressure from activists and lawmakers.

Facebook's audit, completed last year, gave a damning assessment of what the outside auditors called the company's "vexing and heartbreaking decisions" to prioritize free speech over civil rights.

The senators said a similar investigation is long overdue at Google.

"As Congress and the federal government do more to protect communities of color from civil rights violations online, companies need to do their part by examining areas for improvement and ensuring their workplaces are safe for members of these communities," they wrote.

"We can no longer rely on promises and need Alphabet to take affirmative steps to protect Black people and other people of color."

Google did not respond to NPR's request for comment.

Editor's note: Google, Facebook and Airbnb are among NPR's financial supporters.

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Senate Democrats Urge Google To Investigate Racial Bias In Its Tools And The Company - NPR

AUSTIN, Texas Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa issued the following statement on the results of the Fort Worth mayoral election:

Deborah Peoples fought a strong campaign, and I thank her for stepping forward to offer Fort Worth her powerful leadership and true commitment to building a better future for Texas fifth largest city. While we didnt make it over the line tonight, the historic turnout in todays elections shows the groundswell of Democratic energy that is rising in Fort Worth and across the state. Texans came out in high numbers today to vote against the failures of Texas Republicans, and to demand the leadership they deserve.

To everyone who added their support in our push to elect a proven leader and the first Black mayor of Fort Worth, thank you for your hard work to bring change and progress that all Fort Worth communities can share in. From registering voters to defending voting rights, Texas Democrats will keep organizing to defeat Texas Republicans and fighting like hell for Texas future.

Chair Deborah Peoples issued the following statement:

From the beginning, this campaign has been about building One Fort Worth. While one nights results may not have been what we wanted, the historic turnout sent a clear message that voters are crying out for leaders who accept Texans of all backgrounds, races, and walks of life. I will continue the fight to give more communities a seat at the table, expand prosperity to all our neighborhoods, and elect leaders who truly represent all the people.

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Texas Democrats' Statement on the Results of the Fort Worth Mayoral Election - Texas Democratic Party

The dearth of polling on the question Do people like holidays? suggests that the answer is not complicated. (J. Scott Applewhite / AP Photo)

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Democrats tend to leave easy points on the playing field out of a misguided sense of modesty, the term Joe Biden used recently when recounting his experiences in the Obama White House. By refusing to take a victory lap and crow about his accomplishments, President Biden argued, Barack Obama failed to maximize the political benefits from the things he did.

Political scientists call this the art of credit claiming: convincing voters that you are the reason something good has happened. Biden himself missed an opportunity when he declined to put his name on the $2,000er, I mean $1,400economic relief checks sent out earlier this year, as Donald Trump had done. Liberals tend to see that kind of politicking as tacky, which of course it is. Its also important and necessary.

Theres nothing wrong with taking the layup, with pandering to voters most basic interests. With control of the White House and Congress, and with the predictable pushback to Bidens proposed infrastructure spending bringing his honeymoon period to an end, Democrats could make an easy play to curry favor with voters by creating new federal holidays.

Sure, some of the same people now loudly complaining that no one wants to work will oppose the idea of Americans working less for any reason. But its difficult to imagine that the issue would be, on balance, anything but a net political win. (The dearth of polling on the question Do people like holidays? suggests that the answer is not complicated.)

Creating a federal holiday requires a vote in Congress. Presidents can declare holidays unilaterally, but only for a single, nonrecurring date (such as when July 4 falls on a weekend, and a different date, like July 3, is given temporary holiday status). The worst-case scenario, politically, for a unified Democratic House and Senate proposing new holidays would be to force Senate Republicans to defend using their various obstructionist tricks to prevent passage. If Democrats cant collectively win a rhetorical battle framed as We voted to give you more holidays, they refused, then perhaps politics is the wrong line of work for them.The Argument

There are obvious candidates for additional holidaysJuneteenth and Election Day leap to mindbut its worth remembering how little most Americans use holidays for their official purpose. Is Labor Day really used to solemnly remember the victories and sacrifices of the labor movement? Or is it just a three-day weekend at a point in the calendar when most of us could really use one? Growing up in Illinois, I learned firsthand that having Casimir S. Pulaski Day off from work or school was enjoyable even for the majority of people who neither knew nor cared who Pulaski was.

While the number of federal public holidays in the United States is below but roughly comparable to that of our peer nations, the absence of paid vacation time (or the meager amounts for many who have it) puts American workers at a serious disadvantage when it comes to leisure. And messaging that leisure is good, that quality of life is important would be effective. For all the political posturing around the joys of work, most of us are thrilled to take a day off when the opportunity arises.Current Issue

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One complicating factor is the disparity between salaried and hourly workers, since the latter are often not paid if they do get a holiday off. But the hourly pay on holidays is often at time-and-a-half or better, giving the pro-holidays faction an argument that people can still benefit economically, if not in additional leisure time.

The usual suspects like the Chamber of Commerce will wail and rend their garments over any proposal for new federal holidays, and right-wing media will try to turn it into a culture war issue regardless of whether Congress proposes Juneteenth or National Corn Dog Day (the third Saturday in March, obviously). Let them. The counterpointWouldnt it be nice to have another three-day weekend?is formidable.

Expanding the holiday calendar is not the nations most pressing matter, but that is precisely the point. With other, more difficult issues that lack consensus still on the table and Republicans forever inventing issues that pander to their base (campus cancel culture), Democrats need to find issues that enable them to do some posturing of their own. Arguing that Americans work too much and deserve some additional days off has a very limited downside.

Its OK to do some politics. I promise. Democrats should learn to pick the low-hanging fruit when its available.

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Democrats Should Just Create More Federal Holidays - The Nation

The Justice Department said it would no longer seek records of reporters contacts when investigating government leaks of sensitive informationa change that reverses a longstanding practice after President Biden said he believed it was wrong.

Department spokesman Anthony Coley on Saturday said the agency completed a review of pending requests for reporters records and in the future federal prosecutors will not seek compulsory legal process in leak investigations to obtain source information from members of the news media doing their jobs.

Scrutiny of the practice rose in recent weeks after the department notified reporters at the Washington Post, CNN, and the New York Times that, under the Trump administration, the agency sought and obtained their phone records from 2017. That drew objections from the news outlets and press-freedom organizations.

Prosecutors have sought such records in leak investigations for years, often after exhausting other options for identifying suspects. Under the Obama administration, for example, the Justice Department used the tool for investigations involving reporting by the Associated Press and Fox News. Multiple former government employees and senior officials were prosecuted by the Obama Justice Department.

In response to a backlash from press advocates and others, then-Attorney General Eric Holder in 2013 added new hurdles that prosecutors had to clear before they could obtain subpoenas and search warrants targeting reporters. The measures included requiring prosecutors to give a media organization notice before a subpoena could be issued to seize records, unless the attorney general certified that doing so would harm the investigation.

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Justice Department to End Pursuit of Reporters Contact Records Over Leaks - The Wall Street Journal

The infamous Internet meme Pepe the Frog will be immortalized in non-fungible token (NFT) collectible form by the frogs original creator Matt Furie. Of course, Pepe has been featured in blockchain art before and a series of cards were created via Counterparty in 2016. However, despite the number of NFT rare Pepes on the web, Furie says when it comes to his famous frog, Everything else is a bootleg.

Nothing beats the real thing, the creator of the notorious Pepe the Frog Internet meme told the Washington Post (WP) this week. Matt Furie is well known for creating Pepe the Frog back in 2005 in a comic called Boys Club. When the picture hit the web, it went viral on Myspace, Reddit, 4chan and Tumbler, and later was recognized as one of the most popular memes of the last decade. Now Furie is getting into the non-fungible token (NFT) collectibles game and hes bringing Pepe with him.

Furie has launched a web portal called pegz.fun and it features animated 2-D and 3-D creatures that Furie crafted. Users can even sign up for plops which seem to be an airdrop of some kind featuring Furies NFTs. One of the NFT pegz features a colorful depiction of Furies famous Pepe the Frog character. While speaking with WP, Furie said a lot of NFT artists were creating interesting pieces.

The NFT world is new, and there are a lot of optimistic people creating cool things, Furie said during his interview. Pepe does not have the baggage here that he does in the real world, and I like working with utopians and optimistic freethinkers. There are so many possibilities, the Pepe creator added.

Now, Pepe is no stranger to blockchain as Bitcoin.com News has reported on the crew who created a series of Rare Pepe blockchain-based trading cards in 2016. The creation of these cards on Counterparty was after the Anti-Defamation League deemed Pepe as a hate symbol.

When NFTs started making headlines again in 2020 and into 2021, an NFT called Homer Pepe sold for $320,000 in February 2021. Furie briefly touched upon the flurry of Pepe NFTs that were invoked before his pegz concept during his WP interview.

Everything else is a bootleg, and Im very inspired by bootlegs in my life and in my art, Furie said. But nothing beats the real thing, he added. Pepe the Frogs creator further noted:

This new space is laying the groundwork for the Internet 3.0. In the future, youll be able to trace memes back to their source.

The popular NFT artist Matt Kane spoke about Furies entrance into the NFT space and applauded the meme pioneer. Matt Furie created Pepe, which inspired Rare Pepes, which provided us the proof-of-concept on which the modern NFT scene became based, Kane remarked. So for Matt to have had such a successful entrance to NFTs, it created a beautiful circle.

Of course, Furies other colorful pegz designs are just as fun as the frog, according to the Internet meme creator. We want to throw a rave in the metaverse for disco Pepes, lizards, tongue-waggling-whachamacallits, blobbies, gooies, pricklies and everyone, Furie concluded. Viral media is inside of our heads, our subconscious. It never ends. Its best to make friends with the worms in our minds and to dance with them.

What do you think about Pepe the Frog creator Matt Furie jumping into the world of NFTs? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Pepe the Frog Creator Launches NFTs Featuring the Infamous Internet Meme Blockchain Bitcoin News - Bitcoin News