Good afternoon, Friday is the deadline by which legislative committees are supposed to agree on numbers for each part of the budget. There's been little sign one way or the other whether the Legislature's various working groups are on track to meet this deadline. Failure to do so would be an early warning sign about lawmakers' ability to pass a budget before July 1, and thus avert a government shutdown. Business owners whose establishments were damaged during last year's unrest along Lake Street are still trying to rebuild. The total cost of reconstruction is estimated at around $500 million for 1,500 businesses, and some have been hoping lawmakers will pass aid as part of a budget deal in next month's special session. [Read more from Nina Moini] Minnesota's Northwest Angle, which is separated from the rest of Minnesota by the Lake of the Woods, has been hit harder by COVID-19 restrictions than most other places, especially since Canada has closed its border — the only way in or out of the Angle by land — to tourists. [Read more from MinnPost's Ashley Hackett] Gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen is one of several people suing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to stop COVID-19 vaccinations in children. The petition calls the widely adopted vaccine "an experimental biological agent" and opposes "using America's children as guinea pigs." Jensen, a doctor, cites the low risk of COVID-19 death in children as a reason not to give "the experimental COVID-19 vaccine" to them. [ Read more from MePage Today's Kristina Fiore] Context: More than 62,000 Minnesotans aged 12 to 15 have been vaccinated in the roughly two weeks since federal regulator approved their vaccination after clinical trials. That's more than 20 percent of the total population.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has created a federal political action committee, letting her spend money to raise her profile ahead of a possible 2024 presidential campaign. [ Read more from The Associated Press' Stephen Groves] It looks like a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol will fail to secure the 60 votes it needs to pass out of the U.S. Senate, with Republican leaders increasingly turning against the project. Some four to five Republican senators are interested in the commission and have been trying to strike a compromise, but it remains unclear whether they'll be able to find a deal that can get the commission over the Senate's 60-vote threshold. [Read more from Politico's Burgess Everett ] President Joe Biden is asking U.S. intelligence officials to investigate the origin of the COVID-19 virus, in the wake of escalating pressure from advocates of the theory that the virus might have escaped from a Chinese biomedical lab. Most prominent experts believe a natural origin for the virus — crossing over from animals to human — is most likely, but "lab-leak" proponents have long pushed for a deeper investigation. [Read more from The Associated Press] Former Navy Secretary and U.S. Sen. John Warner of Virginia is dead at the age of 94. Warner became one of the Senate's leading experts on military affairs and a leading moderate, but was most famous in his younger years for being Elizabeth Taylor's sixth husband. [Read more from The Associated Press] The Biden administration is proposing endangered species protections for the "lesser prairie chicken," a once widespread bird native to the southern Great Plains. There are economic and political implications as well as environmental, since protected status could make oil and gas exploration more difficult in parts of Texas and New Mexico. [Read more from the Washington Post's Joshua Partlow and Juliet Eilperin] Something completely different: There's a philosophical thought experiment called the "paperclip maximizer ," posited by philosopher Nick Bostrom, which hypothesizes an artificial intelligence with the benign goal of manufacturing as many paperclips as possible: "The AI will realize quickly that it would be much better if there were no humans because humans might decide to switch it off. Because if humans do so, there would be fewer paper clips. Also, human bodies contain a lot of atoms that could be made into paper clips." So far, so trippy. But the idea of the "paperclip maximizer" prompted game designer Frank Lantz to create "Universal Paperclips," a fascinating (and free) browser game in which you play just such a paperclip-maximizing AI. This is what's called an "incremental" game, in which you'll start off by clicking a button to make paperclips, then quickly develop the ability to buy a machine to make paper clips for you, and on and on in a dizzying number of levels of complexity. It's surprisingly compelling, quite weird, and always thought-provoking. [Play "Universal Paperclips"] Listen: Harry Chapin is best known for "Cat's in the Cradle," but if you're in the mood for other depressing story-songs, he's got a whole back catalog! For example, take his story of dashed dreams, "Mr. Tanner." [Listen]
