A new set of standards for African American history in Florida schools will teach middle schoolers how enslaved people “developed skills” that could be “applied for personal benefit”. Another guideline instructs high schoolers to be taught that a massacre led by white supremacists against Black residents in Ocoee to stop them from voting in 1920 included “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.” Members of the Florida Board of Education have defended the standards for African American history lessons they unanimously approved, with Ron DeSantis-appointed board member MaryLynn Magar assuring the attendees at a hearing in Orlando on 19 July that “everything is there” and that “the darkest parts of our history are addressed” in the curriculum. But civil rights advocates, educators and Democratic state lawmakers have warned that elements of the guidelines present a distorted, revisionist picture of the state’s history of racism. “The notion that enslaved people benefitted from being enslaved is inaccurate and a scary standard for us to establish in our education system,” Democratic state Rep Anna Eskamani told the board. State Senator Geraldine Thompson said that a recommendation suggesting that Black people sparked the Ocoee massacre is “blaming the victim”. Ms Thompson helped pass a law in 2020 that requires schools to teach lessons about the massacre. The Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, said in a statement that the standards represent “a big step backward for a state that has required teaching African American history” for more than three decades. “Our children deserve nothing less than truth, justice, and the equity our ancestors shed blood, sweat, and tears for,” NAACP president Derrick Johnson added in a statement. “It is imperative that we understand that the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow were a violation of human rights and represent the darkest period in American history. We refuse to go back.” The new standards add another victory in the DeSantis administration’s radical education overhaul and a “parents’ rights” agenda that has restricted honest lessons of race and racism in state schools, reshaped local school boards, and banned public colleges from offering classes that “distort significant events” or “teach identity politics”. Florida’s Board of Education also adopted five rules targeting LGBT+ students, including punishing transgender students and staff who use restrooms that align with their gender and add barriers to students who want their names and pronouns respected in and out of the classroom. LGBT+ advocates have accused the board and the governor’s administration of weaponizing state agencies to implement the DeSantis agenda as he mounts a national campaign, fuelled in part by what opponents have called “Don’t Say Gay” legislation adopted by several other states. That bill, which Mr DeSantis signed into law in 2022 and expanded earlier this year, has sparked fears that its broad scope could be used to effectively block discussion of LGBT+ people, history and events from state schools, and threaten schools with potential lawsuits over perceived violations. “This politically motivated war on parents, students, and educators needs to stop,” said Jennifer Solomon with Equality Florida. “Our students deserve classrooms where all families are treated with the respect they deserve and all young people are welcomed,” she said in a statement. “Let parents be parents. Let educators be educators. And stop turning our kids’ classrooms into political battlefields to score cheap points.” The African American history curriculum advanced by the board does not fully adopt the recommendations from the African American History Task Force, which urged the board to consider “contemporary issues impacting Africans and African Americans”. Education Commissioner Manny Diaz defended the standards as an “in-depth, deep dive into African American history, which is clearly American history as Governor DeSantis has said, and what Florida has done is expand it.” Under the new standards, students will be taught to simply “identify” famous Black people, but it fails to add requirements for students to learn about their contributions, challenges and stories overall. “We must do better in offering a curriculum that is both age-appropriate and truthful,” according to Democratic state Rep Dianne Hart, chair of Florida’s Legislative Black Caucus. “Education is a critical part of an individual’s personal foundation and when you chose to build a foundation on falsehoods, lies, or by simply erasing history, you’ve laid a foundation that will ultimately fail,” she said in a statement. The board’s adoption of the standards follow the board’s decision to ban the teaching of Advanced Placement African American Studies in high schools, claiming that the course “significantly lacks educational value” and “inexplicably” contradicted Florida law. A letter dated 12 January from the Florida Department of Education to the College Board, which administers AP exams, said the board is welcome to return to the agency with “lawful, historically accurate content”. Read More DeSantis campaign video crossed a line for gay right-wing pundits despite governor’s record on LGBT+ rights Florida schools remove books by John Milton and Toni Morrison and restrict Shakespeare under DeSantis rules Jury awards Florida girl burned by McDonald's Chicken McNugget $800,000 in damages Florida rulings ease concerns about drag performers at Pride parades, drag queen story hours What are the 10 largest US lottery jackpots ever won?

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Melanie Martinez fans have expressed their disappointment with the popstar over her VIP package on her Portals tour. The description of the package on Ticketmaster promises an "interactive photo experience" for VIP ticketholders, leading fans to believe this meant an in-person meet-and-greet with Martinez herself. However, this wasn't the case as the photo experience was Martinez in the form of an AI-generated hologram of that greets fans in her prosthetic mask, so the fans didn't get to meet the singer in person. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter With VIP tickets costing around $400, it has led to fans sharing their discontent on social media. "Does anyone else think the VIP AI meet and greet with Melanie is kinda stupid? I mean, the VIP tickets were $400, and you didn't even really get anything," one fan complained on TikTok. @melsgrippingtoes I still love melane and everything Im literally going to her concert. But she could atleast put in some more effort @kbhorsefan I’d be beyond upset oh my god #melaniemartinez #portals Another added: "When I saw videos of it, I thought that it was a joke, but then no that’s the real thing and it’s so disappointing." "It’s not even ai it’s just a pre-recorded video of her," someone else replied. A fourth person commented: "I would not pay for that… imma just take someone else’s video and photoshop me in. Same thing." Though some fans did defend Martinez, noting that a meet-and-greet was not mentioned in the package. One person said: "I thought it was cute everyone's hating it never said anywhere there was going to be a meet and greet. The concert was so fun." @katebellla I thought it was cute everyones hating it never said anywhere there was going to be a meet and greet. The concert was so fun ? #portalstour @Melanie Martinez "It wasn’t labeled as a meet and greet tho. It was 400 to be upfront in her concert, the ai thing was just an extra thing included," another person wrote. Someone else added: "I mean if it stated AI meet and greet and cost $400 maybe just don’t go." While other fans also claimed they didn't receive their VIP merchandise such as a signed poster, VIP merch and tote bag. One person said: "I didn’t even get the merch bruh," as another similarly echoed: "I heard someone bought VIP and didn't even get the merchandise stuff." Melanie Martinez's third album, Portals is out now after being released back on March 31. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

An adviser to Rishi Sunak has made a worrying confession about AI, and its ability to kill people in the near future, during a new interview with Talk TV. Matt Clifford is currently leading the prime minister on the government's Foundation Model Taskforce, using the likes of ChatGPT. "You can use AI today to create new recipes for bio weapons or to launch large-scale cyber attacks. These are bad things", he said. "You can have really very dangerous threats to humans that could kill many humans – not all humans – simply from where we would expect models to be in two years’ time." Click here to sign up for our newsletters

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Human beings are fascinating creatures and one of the oldest philosophical debates is over whether people truly have free will or not. For millennia, scientists have debated over whether free will is simply an illusion of the mind and is a concept that doesn’t even exist, or, if our species naturally possess it. Some experts, such as the philosopher Bernardo Kastrup, argue that we do have free will. He defined it as existing “if our choices are determined by that which we experientially identify with”. Kastrup claimed that his “tastes and preferences” are “consciously felt by” him, thus the choices he makes are “determined by these felt tastes and preferences”. Essentially, Kastrup argues, we are able to choose what action to perform and this gives humans a level of free will. On the other hand, neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky from Stanford University believes humans don’t have any free will, after studying the subject for “decades”. In his book Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, Sapolsky argues that almost all of our behaviour as humans is beyond our own conscious control. He argued: “The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over. “We’ve got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn’t there.” Sapolsky believes that behaviour that we believe originates from free will is actually related to your environment, body, upbringing and genes. Speaking on the CultureLab podcast by New Scientist, Sapolsky explained: “In terms of my orientation, my basic approach is you look at a behaviour and someone has just done something that’s wonderful or awful or ambiguously in-between or in the eyes of the beholder, but some behaviour has happened, and you ask, 'Why did that occur?' and you’re asking a whole hierarchy of questions.” He continued explaining that the prompts to our behaviour could include, “which neurons did what, 10 milliseconds before” and may even originate from “this morning’s hormone levels” and the impact this has on your sensitivity levels in the brain. Additionally, behaviour, he argues can determined by prior trauma and even go back to the “childhood and foetal environment” and our individual genes. To summarise, he argued: “If you’re talking about genes, by definition, genes and behaviour, by definition, you’re talking about evolution and you’re talking about neurobiology and genetic variance and neuronal function. “If you’re talking about, you know, early trauma in life, you’re talking about epigenetics and you’re talking about adult propensity. “So, they’re all one continuous seam of influences, and when you look at it that way, there’s not a damn crack anywhere in there to shoehorn in a notion of free will.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.