October 14, 2008

Robot Cars

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ROBOT CARS….Matt Yglesias, riffing off a Tim Lee piece, says that self-driving cars could free up lots of parking spaces. Which is true, I guess, but seems sort of like saying that cold fusion would be great because it would allow us to build smaller cooling towers. If we ever do build a genuinely self-driving car, it means we’re only a stone’s throw away from nearly human-level artificial intelligence. More efficient parking will be the least of our worries at that point.

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A full one-third of our annual fundraising comes in this month alone. That’s risky, because a strong December means our newsroom is on the beat and reporting at full strength—but a weak one means budget cuts and hard choices ahead.

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Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do.

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