Sophia sits with 21 Savage and Teyana Taylor at an Alexander Wang runway show. Photo via Instagram.
Picture a model walking down a runway, wearing incredibly textured Balenciaga clothes—with patterns that are new but comfortably fit within the brand's identity. Only, the model is computerised. Her pose has been chosen by an AI. So are her clothes, not actual Balenciaga as it turns out, but AI-generated renditions of what could easily be their Fall/Winter 19 collection.
Robert Barrat, the young self-taught creative behind the AI faux-Balenciaga fashion designer, trained a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to recognise and create designs that would suit the brand. GANs such as Barrat's have a generative component that can take a random noise and upscale it to an image that falls within the brand's identity, whilst at the same time creating a new data pool for the system's second component: the discriminator. The discriminator will then try to learn how to distinguish fake images generated by the network from the real brand ones. Both generator and discriminator grow, the first trying to fool the second, the second trying to catch the first.
Whilst Barrat is not the only one using AI in the fashion industry, his enthusiasm for the prospects of AIs and humans collaborating on a collection is contagious—and that reality is almost here. Tommy Hilfiger, in partnership with IBM, uses an AI tool to read real-time fashion trends and customer sentiment around every brand product and runway image to then allow its designers to make informed decisions around next season. Alibaba and Guess piloted a system using smart mirrors that not only analyses clothes, all of which are Bluetooth tagged, whilst a customer tries them on, but also alerts staff to bring and suggest certain complementary items. Stitch Fix acts as a personal stylist and shopper by looking at a user's purchase history and social media activity (their likes on Instagram). Robots such as Stackit can cut, sew, seam, and stack materials to assemble footwear and shirts. A team of researchers at the University of Tsukuba trained their GAN to generate new images that human fashion designers would use to draw patterns from. The patterns were then turned into a program used to make clothes. These were created and tested on users, whose response was positive, with subjects judging the garments to be most similar to those of the actual brand.
Considering the above, it isn't hard to imagine the following scenario. Balenciaga decides to create a new collection, using an AI to assess customer data and predict trends. Barrat's GAN then generates mood boards and hypothetical models. These are fed into a Deep Convolutional GAN (DCGAN) to create patterns and silhouettes that can be feasibly made and worn. The clothes are produced by a SewBot, embedded with tags that create a constant feedback loop so that Balenciaga can monitor the success of its collection. Sophia is the casting director. Visuals for the runway show are created by E-David, an AI with an arm, five brushes, and a camera that autonomously takes pictures and draws original paintings from these photographs. Young Paint is asked produce and perform new tracks.
AI-generated faux-Balenciaga produced by a GAN trained by Robert Barrat. Photo via Twitter.
If this were a team of mere humans, relations between fashion houses, designers, tailors, casting directors, art directors, and music producers would be governed by a series of contracts. These would include licence agreements to use, for example, Young Paint's track in campaign ads or to licence a particular pattern to Adidas for the creation of a capsule collaboration, distribution agreements to sell the collection, and employment contracts between the different parties. These are all grounded, commercially, in the subsistence of copyright in the designs, the patterns, the music, and the visuals.
As discussed previously, the lack of copyright protection afforded to genuinely creative AIs leaves us in a lawless landscape in which original works cannot be declared as such because generated purely by non-humans. As neural networks become more advanced and an entire team of AI creatives could be hired, it is imperative to implement models that can accommodate for them.
Europe, generally, has been reticent to acknowledge that original works can be created by anyone other than a person—or persons. The romantic notion of authorship is entrenched in the Berne Convention. The instrument, adopted first in 1886 and now counting 176 contracting parties, deals with the protection of works and rights of their authors, by setting minimum protections to be granted and contains special provisions available to developing countries that want to adopt them. Imbuing the Convention with notions equating authorship with personhood has ramifications far beyond the realm of copyright. In particular, as AI systems are ultimately software algorithms regulated under existing copyright regimes, their accountability and (lack of) robotic personhood will necessarily stem from these.
Before copyright protection for authors was introduced, sixteenth-century booksellers would hold exclusive rights, known as privileges, granted by sovereigns. Following abuse of monopoly power, sovereigns refused to renew these and a new system prioritising the rights of authors filled the vacuum that was left. Philosophers argued that authors' rights were found in natural law, and that statutes would exist in order to give them a more precise formulation, justifying the shift. Great Britain, however, with the Statute of Anne in 1710, allowed authors to sell their rights to booksellers, creating a market approach, which was emulated in the US. This meant that authors could choose to relinquish their rights in works too. On the other hand, in continental Europe, an author's personal and moral rights (such as the right to object to unauthorised modifications of the work) remained inalienable, even if they sold economic rights to publishers. These differences played out during Berne revisions, with natural rights prevailing—perhaps unsurprisingly as these are not limited by national borders: they attach to living individuals and thus suit the spirit of an international standard. Suffice it to say that the group that laid the groundwork for the Convention was the first International Congress of Authors and Artists.
In line with a more humanist reading of copyright law, EU and continental jurisprudence have failed to recognise purely computer-generated works, whilst England and Wales, by virtue of s 9(3) CDPA has sought to grant them protection. Yet, despite historically being more commercially focused, common law jurisdictions now lack the necessary models to award authorship to AIs for original works.
As noted by Dr Lambert commercial endeavours should be protected, however in the instance of increasing … robotic and AI created works, it remains to be seen whether and how copyright might apply to assist in doing so … without further regulatory amendments. Should future models grant AI-created works originality from a deontological or utilitarian perspective? That is, should an AI's creativity be rewarded because fairness requires that its efforts be acknowledged or, from a utilitarian perspective, because innovation and its sharing is inherently valuable, there should be no ground for denying copyright or patents to an AI?
Before delving into notions of robotic personhood, a simple model envisaged by intellectual property specialist Andres Guadamuz merits consideration. He suggests extending the applicability of s 9(3) CDPA since awarding copyright to the person that made the operation of AI possible is the most sensible approach to encourage investment. However, the proposal again endeavours to find a human behind the machine, and cannot work with current systems as none of the human players meet the threshold of authorship. Programmers, trainers, data providers, feedback providers, owners of an AI's hardware and/or software, AI operators, users, buyers… these could all arguably be classified as "those that made the operation of the AI possible" and having a myriad of stakeholders would create unpractical scenarios with rights awarded at such fractional levels that it would be tantamount to having no rights at all.
Zach Blas and Jemima Wyman, i'm here to learn so :)))))), 2017. Showing Tay, Microsoft's AI that was launched on Twitter in 2016, hacked shortly after, and then removed over a Deep Dream generated backdrop. Photo by author.
Reducing the number of stakeholders is at the heart of another model developed by the Japanese AI task force currently working on protecting AI created works from unauthorised use and to ensure fair compensation of the developers. Shinzo Abe himself cited support to universities and companies in the field of creative innovation as its main driving force. Yet developers and programmers are already being rewarded for their efforts: they hold copyright in the software system behind the AI. Why should they be rewarded for an AI's artistic creation? This is equivalent to Microsoft being entitled to rights over any written work a user produces despite already owning software rights in Word.
Scholars such as Ana Ralmho have sought to avoid double-incentives to developers by suggesting that legislators should adopt a public domain model for AI creations, enabling the public to use and reproduce these without restrictions. Whilst this would resolve the issue of multiple stakeholders, it would prove problematic, as Balenciaga would shy away from using any AI in its collection if the same patterns, music, and visuals created for its runway become part of the public domain at the point of creation. Once in the public domain, anyone could use their same exact designs with no copyright restrictions—as if they were free stock images—to create their own collection. Balenciaga bootlegs would no longer be bootlegs.
A revised version of the above public domain model is considered by IP and technology scholar Pratap Devarapalli. He refines the same by providing authorship to the AI and ownership rights to the person(s) behind the machine, under a Non-Commercial Creative Commons (NCCC) licence. The NCCC would enable licensees to copy, distribute, display, or make derivative works only for non-commercial purposes. Protection would be awarded for 50 years from the work's availability, with no link to an author's life as is currently the case, arguing that under this regime AI creations would have an identity and boost innovation whilst still incentivising creative teams. Once again, the workability of the model is highly dependent on the amount of humans involved behind the AI becoming autonomously creative.
Viewing authorship as a purely human phenomenon is antiquated and fails to protect the fruits of an AI's creativity or acknowledge current technological advances. Granting a Balenciaga GAN-fashion designer, E-David, or Young Paint robotic personhood would allow them to be rightly recognised as authors of their original creations. At first, it may seem that AI authorship could not possibly find justification in principles of natural law. However, arguably an incentive-based model is more unsuitable. IP laws under common law intend to benefit owners, who can use royalties as a means to enhance their works and life, but machines have no similar needs (as of yet).
Perhaps the most apt model to date is one that aims to expand an exception to general copyright rules without overhauling these. Put forth by law professor Shlomit Yanisky-Ravid, the Work Made For Hire (WMFH) model imagines Young Paint and its fellow AI creatives as employees or independent contractors. Each AI is considered to be the author of the creative work produced, but ownership passes automatically to its employer or commissioner, which, in our scenario, would be Balenciaga. This is precisely how fashion brands operate today: designers are hired by the brand to create collections, and whilst acknowledged as authors, ownership in the designs passes to the brand itself. The model doesn't shy away from understanding an AI-creative's human-like features, whilst at the same time providing commercial force. By awarding both benefits (i.e. ownership in the works) and responsibilities to the user employing the AI, it hopes to resolve issues associated with the vast number of stakeholders that need to otherwise be considered as 'humans behind the machine'. The model is flexible too: a user could be Balenciaga in one instance and Saint Laurent the next.
Of course, the model rests on one fundamental principle: that an AI's works can be copyrightable, meaning current IP laws still need to move away from historic notions of personhood, as illustrated.
In granting full robotic personhood to Young Paint, E-David, and Balenciaga-GAN, a new range of complex legal issues would have to be determined: their employment rights, citizenship, ability to travel, be compensated and crucially, their liabilities.
Whilst AI authorship and personhood have largely been shunned as philosophical inquiries because they call into question what it means to be human if we allow non-human entities to share our same intellectual rights, the question of liability and infringement has actively been debated by EU regulators and legislators. Feeding AIs large quantities of data and being unable to control how the neural network processes these is very much a contemporary challenge, and analysing associated enforceability issues is as pressing as recognising and rewarding an AI's creative efforts.
Barrat shows works produced with his code against those produced by Obvious Art. Photo via Twitter.
To illustrate just how complex these liability issues are, one can turn to Christie's recent auction of Portrait of Edmond Bellamy, a work of art generated by a GAN purportedly developed by Obvious Art. Besides the astounding price paid, the sale revealed intricate issues surrounding the AI art community. The code used by Obvious Art was in fact predominantly that developed by Barrat, who had released it on GitHub using an open-source licence. Whilst Obvious Art's members recognised that they hadn't modified Barrat's code significantly, they argued that the amount of time spent on applying it and training their AI amounted to rewardable creative effort. AI artist and academic Tom White took an opposing view, noting that downloading Barrat's code, unedited, yielded extremely similar results to those produced by Obvious Art's AI.
Yet, no matter how eerily close the images generated may appear, Barrat would have little to no avenues for redress. For one, academics have argued that GANs share a similar aesthetic—referred to as GANism—due to the way in which they process data, characterised by indistinct and melting boundaries. Second, to distil the exact impact of Barrat's code on Portrait one would need to consider all steps involved in presenting the final work: collecting data, constructing the generative algorithm, training it, and selecting its best possible outputs. Third, Barrat's code is available on an open-source licence meaning that users can review and modify it, whether or not for commercial purposes.
Although the above matter involves relatively few parties, significant difficulties already arise in proving liability for copyright infringement in works produced by two GANs when this may appear clear-cut to the relevant community.
Problems would only increase exponentially if the dispute were between two creative AIs seeking to enforce their rights. Without data processing regulations in place, and assuming both had full access to the internet, what would happen if they designed extremely similar collections for two different brands? Distributing liabilities amongst each of the possible players in the growth of the respective AIs would prove futile, yet this is precisely why legislators and regulators need to consider hypothetical scenarios of this kind.
Imagine the same Balenciaga show. As models walk down the runway, Young Paint, now working under a different record label than Actress's Werk, starts playing a song that is too similar to Actress's own Falling Rizlas. E-David's visuals start to grow closer to David Hockney's Splash. The patterns themselves now seem to recall Comme des Garçons' collection, shown only an hour ago. Actress, Hockney, and Rei Kawakubo are all in the crowd. What happens next?


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Massachusetts Blazes Its Own Trail on Distributed Energy Policy
The SMART program, Connected Solutions, Clean Peak standard and ISO-NE markets make for a unique blend of solar, battery and demand-side incentives to meet grid needs.
This is the fourth installment in a GTM Squared report examining the discrete paths toward distributed energy resource integration being taken by different states. Our first pieces dealt with California and New York, two states with ambitious clean-energy and carbon-reduction mandates, and Arizona, which is taking a more utility-centric approach to enlisting customer-owned DERs into its expanding decarbonization goals.
Our series takes us now to Massachusetts, where lawmakers, regulators and utilities have embraced a more idiosyncratic approach to incentivizing solar, batteries, smart thermostats and electric vehicles to match the needs of a clean-powered grid. That's allowed the state to avoid some of the behind-the-meter bottlenecks faced by other states we've covered—as well as test novel incentive structures whose eventual efficacy remains to be proven.
Over the past half-decade, Massachusetts has taken multiple steps to boost the role that rooftop solar, behind-the-meter batteries, electric vehicles, smart building energy controls and other distributed energy resources can play in reaching its clean energy goals. In fact, its approach may provide some lessons for other states that have a lot more DERs to handle.
That's the view of Chris Rauscher, director of policy and storage market strategy for U.S. residential solar leader Sunrun. The Bay State is "the tip of the spear when it comes to smart, distributed energy resource policy," he said in an interview last week. "We're now advocating in other parts of the country and out west in California for policies that we helped create in Massachusetts."
These include policies like the state's Clean Peak standard, geared to incentivize DERs that can support peak grid demand reduction, and the Connected Solutions programs which offer lucrative utility incentives to behind-the-meter resources that can offer similar day-to-day grid flexibility.
One noteworthy aspect of these programs is that they're being rolled out despite the fact that Massachusetts investor-owned utilities Eversource, National Grid and Unitil haven't yet deployed smart meters that can measure their real-time impacts, he said. That's possible because they're implemented under energy efficiency constructs, rather than more complex demand-response mechanisms that have dogged DER participation in California's markets.
Electric vehicles are also testing the opportunities to serve as grid resources, from National Grid's infrastructure build-out for 1,200 Level 2 and 80 DC fast-charging stations, Eversource's pilot program enlisting home EV chargers to combat peak loads, and a novel program to tap electric school bus batteries as vehicle-to-grid assets.
At transmission-grid scale, ISO New England is among the country's first grid operators to open wholesale energy markets to aggregated energy storage as mandated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's Order 841. Sunrun is just one of the storage vendors tapping this new opportunity to pull together batteries to bid into ISO-NE capacity markets.
This could lay the groundwork for ISO-NE to expand similarly lucrative opportunities to broader DER participation under FERC Order 2222 — even as it faces challenges from state and regional political leaders to what are seen as renewables-unfriendly aspects of its broader approaches to maintaining grid reliability.
State support to boost solar and the resulting challenges
Massachusetts isn't the sunniest state, but it has jumped in solar state-by-state rankings to reach eighth place this year, with 2.85 gigawatts installed as of mid-2020, according to Solar Energy Industries Association data. On the distributed side, that growth has been boosted both by retail net metering and the state allowing customers to earn solar renewable energy certificates for the kilowatts they produce.
On the larger-scale distributed solar front, the Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target (SMART) program has incentivized gigawatts' worth of development, giving solar-storage projects rights over the wholesale capacity value of their batteries. The program hasn't come without problems, however. A rush of applications after its 2018 opening led to backlogs, and utility interconnection studies have delayed many projects and imposed high upgrade costs on others.
The state's Department of Energy Resources moved last year to double the SMART program capacity from 1.6 gigawatts to 3.2 gigawatts, opening up more opportunities. But it also added new restrictions on what types of land can host solar development in an effort to protect sensitive habitat and incentivize brownfield or rooftop projects. Solar groups argue the restrictions have placed the most economical developments out of reach.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts faces similar interconnection problems as many states growing their solar capacity. Proposed reforms at the state Department of Public Utilities (DPU) could clear one roadblock by mandating that multiple projects are processed for interconnection as a "cluster," rather than one at a time, which would reduce backlogs in Eversource's queue, said Ilan Gutherz, vice president of policy and strategy for developer Borrego Solar.
"The other major interconnection issue has been around cost," he said. "In the last year or so, the level of distributed generation resources that have been proposed have started to get the transmission planners at ISO New England and the utilities' transmission arms worried" that new solar may cause grid disruptions.
A series of Affected System Operator studies are underway to address this uncertainty. The first to be completed by National Grid shows grid upgrade costs that may break the economics of proposed solar projects, he said.
Whether developers, utilities and ISO-NE can agree on methods to reduce the need for those grid upgrades — such as managing solar output to avoid overloads during peak hours — remains to be seen. The DPU recently opened a proceeding to consider alternative cost allocation frameworks for the grid upgrade costs the industry could face in the coming years.
Connected Solutions: A novel approach to behind-the-meter flexibility
As solar grows, it floods the grid with ample midday power, then fades away during rising afternoon and evening demand peaks. Those peaks drive high marginal electricity costs and carbon emissions for Massachusetts and New England, and in solar-rich states like California and Arizona have emerged as "duck curve" supply-demand imbalances that other states are trying to mitigate.
Massachusetts' Connected Solutions program seeks to tap DERs to help solve these peak demand challenges. Over the past three years, National Grid and Eversource, which collectively serve about 2.7 million electric customers in the state, have expanded from pilot projects to full-blown programs, serving tens of thousands of customers.
Connected Solutions has found some elegant workarounds to problems other states have encountered in enlisting behind-the-meter batteries and grid-responsive loads as peak-reduction assets, according to Chris Ashley, VP of utility sales for DER management system provider EnergyHub, which operates National Grid's residential and commercial-industrial program and Eversource's residential program.
First, it offers lucrative incentives, not just for installing equipment like smart thermostats or behind-the-meter batteries but also for the kilowatts of load reduction they're able to deliver over the year during a predetermined set of days, he said.
Those incentives add up to $200 per kilowatt for commercial customers and $275 per kW for residential customers. Thermostats can lower household consumption by an average of 0.75 to 1 kW, and batteries can provide about 4 to 5 kW of grid support, meaning hundreds of dollars for thermostat participants and thousands of dollars for battery owners.
Battery installers can rely on those incentives to lower upfront costs for customers, creating the economic incentives to grow both asset classes quickly in National Grid and Eversource territory, with more than 35,000 thermostats and more than 1,000 batteries across both utilities, Ashley added.
That adds up to about 25 to 30 megawatts of peak load reduction from thermostats and close to 5 megawatts from batteries, he said. Importantly, unlike California's demand response regimes, Connected Solutions allows batteries to discharge to the grid, which is critical to boosting their value, he said.
"The first year of the battery program, the only value the utility could capture was shifting net load to the customer," which yielded less than 1 kW per home, he said. Utilities and regulators were able to quickly agree to allow battery grid export, largely because the decision wasn't made in the context of traditional demand response programs, which have strict and complex processes to align the market rules of grid operators and utilities.
Instead, the Connected Solutions program is part of state-regulated energy efficiency programs, which require only that utilities pursue programs whose benefits can be proven to outweigh their costs. "The regulatory constructs here are based on a cost-effectiveness test," said Michael Goldman, Eversource's energy efficiency director of regulatory strategy and planning.
Connected Solutions' approach of paying for performance after the fact, rather than distributing incentives upfront, helps ensure that the benefits outweigh the costs, he noted. It also extends to many different technologies, unlike utility programs focused only on batteries, or smart thermostats, or electric vehicles, according to Goldman.
Eversource is in the midst of a pilot program that gives the utility some control of when customers charge their EVs in exchange for Connected Solutions incentives — an important way to manage a load that can draw as much grid power as the entire home it's connected to, he said. Those pilots are set to continue for a while; regulators rejected National Grid's larger-scale, $166 million EV infrastructure investment plan last year to await more results from its ongoing pilots, although they did approve the utility's plan to test residential off-peak charging incentives.
Clean Peak standard: Pricing performance to grid needs
This technology-agnostic approach also underlies one of Massachusetts' novel contributions to state clean energy-grid support policy, its Clean Peak Program. First proposed in 2018 and officially launched this year, Clean Peak incentivizes resources that can match their operations to grid needs, largely by paying credits to resources that can provide power during hours of peak demand.
This "allows a company like Sunrun to batch together your solar system, your battery, maybe an EV or heat pumps, and provide all of those as a peaking resource" — at least in principle, Rauscher said. "It has only just gone live in the last few months, and in this crazy COVID year, it remains to be seen how much enrollment...[and] performance we're going to see," he said. "I think that in 2021, especially during the summer, is when we'll see it really take off."
Clean Peak has faced criticism for its potential gaps in driving marginal emissions reductions. To reduce complexity, the program provides four-hour windows that align with typical peaks. Real-world wholesale market price spikes could well be a better referent for when resources are most valuable, and a carbon price could be an even more effective incentive, according to research from Columbia University, New York University School of Law and WattTime, the grid-emissions-tracking nonprofit.
It's also possible that Clean Peak incentives may miss their target of energy storage systems that need incentives and end up boosting returns for projects that would have penciled out economically without them.
Borrego Solar's Gutherz calls those "anyway" resources, meaning "resources that were going to be built anyway," such as solar-storage projects that already have access to the SMART program's solar and storage incentives or offshore wind farms that will be financed and built based on state-mandated long-term contracts, and that will generate clean peak credits more or less by accident. "All it's really doing is giving those project owners a cushier return."
At the same time, otherwise unsupported resources that might rely on Clean Peak to pencil out economically may find the program's incentive structure problematic for would-be financiers, he said. That's because it's designed in a way that could drive credit prices far below their starting value if the supply of peaking resources exceeds predicted levels, he said.
Whether or not these problems stymie development may depend on the nature of the long-term contracts for Clean Peak-earning resources under development by utilities. Right now, solar developers like Borrego are waiting for those plans to emerge, he said.
Tapping DERs without smart meters and building the foundations of a distributed grid
Advanced metering infrastructure is often a prerequisite for obtaining the 15-minute interval data needed to track and credit real-time behind-the-meter contributions to grid services. But Massachusetts' advanced metering infrastructure rollouts have been put on hold pending a regulatory review of their costs and benefits, even as utilities have proceeded with broader grid modernization investments that will support DER integration.
To measure the value of their Connected Solutions programs, National Grid and Eversource have been able to work around their lack of smart meters today by taking another liberty not available in all markets: measuring the DERs themselves.
Advanced metering infrastructure "is helpful and it adds value, but it's not necessary," Goldman said. "That's because we have this proliferation of connected and communicating devices" and regulator approval to pull the data from those connected thermostats and inverters to determine the incentives they've earned — with an independent third-party verification of the average value of dispatched savings to true up those readings.
At the same time, Massachusetts' utilities are under a long-standing Department of Public Utilities order to ensure their grid modernization investments are tied to delivering customer benefits. That includes a recently opened DPU investigation into how utilities manage DERs into their grid plans, which could address interconnection bottlenecks and drive a more forward-looking approach to DER-grid integration, much as several ongoing proceedings in California are seeking to do.
ISO New England and the wholesale-retail connection
ISO-NE has taken a lead among the country's grid operators in opening its markets to aggregated energy storage under FERC Order 841. That's ushered in a flood of new business models in Massachusetts, from Sunrun's 20-megawatt virtual power plant to Engie's offer to take on dispatch rights for storage systems it designs for third parties.
One critical reason for the boom is that, unlike California grid operator CAISO's approach to DER aggregations, ISO-NE's rules free market participants to participate in state programs as well, Sunrun's Rauscher said. That includes allowing solar-storage systems to earn solar net metering credits while bidding batteries into its capacity markets, without also committing the batteries to the vagaries of its energy markets, he said.
That's what allows Highland Electric Transportation, the company planning to aggregate electric school bus batteries in Beverly, Mass., the freedom to build a revenue model that can include Connected Solutions revenue with participation in the ISO's emergency response program, CEO Duncan McIntyre said.
ISO-NE also allows participating resources to "meter at the inverter, not the utility meter," Rauscher noted, which would otherwise bar Massachusetts customers lacking smart meters from participating. That also credits batteries for discharging to the grid, which again, CAISO doesn't yet allow.
All in all, "they've been a leader on integrating direct bids from DER aggregations," he said. At the same time, ISO-NE is facing pressure from New England state governors and U.S. senators including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to change its approach to securing resources to keep the grid reliable during summer heat waves and winter cold snaps.
Critics say those market reforms have undermined state carbon-reduction policies by slashing the value of clean energy alternatives against fossil-fueled generators. It's unclear how these conflicts will affect DER policies, but they're likely to play an important role in other states as well.
New York state grid operator NYISO and mid-Atlantic grid operator PJM are facing similar pressures under FERC orders that critics say have disadvantaged state-supported clean energy resources. But in terms of bringing the conflict between state political leaders and FERC-regulated grid operators to a head, "ISO New England is kind of ground zero in the country on that."
February 22, 2021 | by Jeff St. John
February 2, 2021 | by Emma Foehringer Merchant
Seeking a Better Way to Pinpoint the Value of Demand Response in California
January 25, 2021 | by Jeff St. John
{/exp:vmg_gtm_squared:get_squared_access}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


I have been teaching Language Arts for 8+ years. I have worked as a substitute teacher in Stamford Public Schools, CT. In addition, I have been working as a private tutor for the last 3 years. I have also worked as an adult ESL instructor for 2 years.


I find it baffling, however, that someone can worship God as the all-mighty Creator while, at the same time, denying even the possibility (not to mention the overwhelming evidence) that God's Creation involved evolution. It is as though a person thinks that God must have the same limitations when it comes to creation as a person who is unable to understand, or even attempt to understand, the world in which we live. Isn't that view insulting to God?
P.S. Take care not to confuse Conservapedia (where the link takes you) with Wikipedia or other objective and neutral sites, – Conservapedia is a conservative christian site.


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Some demonstrators scale an entrance to the 'L' to wave Palestinian flags above the group as they march on May 16, 2021 in Chicago. (Madison Muller/South Side Weekly)
'Free, Free Palestine'
Thousands marched in Chicago in solidarity with Palestinian people on May 16.
by Madison Muller and Monique Beals
On Saturday, May 16, several thousand people gathered in downtown Chicago to call for an end to what was then nearly a week of airstrikes by Israeli warplanes on Gaza. Demonstrators waved Palestinian flags as a steady chorus of car horns and chants of "Free, free Palestine" reverberated through the Loop.
Some pushed elderly relatives in wheelchairs while others pushed strollers or carried toddlers on their shoulders, listening as speakers detailed the mounting deaths in Gaza— especially those of children.
The rally was one of several that drew thousands to the Loop during the two weeks of fighting in Israel and Palestine, as organizers demanded action from the federal government. That Saturday, protesters demanded President Joe Biden stop blocking a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire between the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas, and called for Israeli forces to stop restricting Palestinians from worshipping at al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam. On May 21, Israel agreed to a ceasefire, ending eleven days of bloodshed that killed 256 Palestinians—sixty-six of them children—and thirteen people in Israel, including two children.
"We are disappointed and extremely appalled that Biden has done nothing to stop murder of Palestinians and by the hypocrisy of the U.S. when it comes to Israel. We call on President Biden to take action," Deanna Othman, an organizer with the Coalition for Justice in Palestine, said at the march.
The Weekly interviewed May 16 demonstrators, including Othman, about the ongoing occupation and attacks.
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A demonstrator holds a small child on his shoulders to get a better look at the sprawling crowd, which included many families and children, gathered to support Palestine on May 16, 2021 in Chicago. (Madison Muller/South Side Weekly)
Sarah Mustafa, Oak Lawn Community High School teacher, twenty-five
"There's a big population that's growing of Arab Americans, and [the Israel Defense Forces] are killing people in Palestine especially during our holy month, occupying holy space, religious worship centers, killing children, burying people alive, bombing cities, evicting families from their homes. As a Palestinian American and a teacher of Palestinian Americans, it's really important to end the occupation. It's terrible what's happening, and I open a platform to let [my students] feel safe and talk about it. I encourage them to use their social media, platforms, voices, and right to free speech that the people in Palestine don't have. We have it here, and I tell them every day to use it."
Haniya Fatima, University of Illinois at Chicago student, twenty-one
"We are here to help stand up for Palestine because they can't do anything right now. They have a very corrupt government that is coming after them. They are destroying lives, destroying children's innocence. They are giving them no life so we are here to help support and stand in defense of them.
"We have all these people here today shouting 'Free Palestine' because yesterday marked seventy-three years of Israel's occupation of that area, so we are here to just fight and peacefully protest. It's amazing because you don't really realize that we have so many people here supporting it from all different backgrounds. There's Palestinians, Arabs, Indians, Pakistanis all these backgrounds here together for one cause. That's just beautiful to me."
Sammy Ramadan
"It feels great to see this kind of solidarity in Chicago. This is a humanitarian cause, not a religious cause."
Members of IfNotNow Chicago, a Jewish-American organization, hold signs in support of Palestinian liberation on May 16, 2021 in Chicago. (Madison Muller/South Side Weekly)
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Deanna Othman, Coalition for Justice in Palestine, Board Member of the Chicago chapter of American Muslims for Palestine
"It feels amazing to see people come out to support justice and acknowledge the suffering of Palestinian people. We know we have supporters and support is growing, but the fact that it is reaching the mainstream is amazing. There's been a lot of fear associated with support for Palestinians, and we see people losing that fear. They see this is a social justice cause like any other. Palestinians deserve to live in freedom and safety in their homes without the threat of bombing. It is not a religious conflict between Muslims and Jews. It is based in settler colonialism."
Madison Muller recently completed her master's degree at the Medill School of Journalism and is now a Barbara M. Reiss Fellow for the Medill Investigative Lab and The Washington Post. She last reported on CPD use-of-force reports.
Monique Beals is currently pursuing her master's at the Medill School of Journalism, where she is a Barbara M. Reiss Fellow with the Medill Investigative Lab and The Washington Post. This is her first article for the Weekly.
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cemmercial gentlemen, took place at the City of London Tavern; Alderman Sir Richard Carr Glynn in the Chair. Among the gentlemen present, were Sir W. Curtis, Sir John Lubbock, Alderman Thompson, M.P., Mr. John Smith, M.P., Messrs. A. H. Thompson, Pascoe Grea- ten, Samuel Loyd, Thomas Tooke, George Hibbert, A. W. Robarts, M.P., Thomas Baring, James Barnett, Octavius Wigram, George P. Banbury, Isaac Solly, George C. Glynn, J. Ede, Rees Goring Thomas, and G. G. Lament. The Meeting unanimously agreed upon resolutions recognizing the necessity of a temperate reform ; and it was resolved. that petitions drawn up from them should lie at the City of London Tavern for signature. The petition to the Lords is to be presented by Earl Spencer ; Alderman Thompson is intrusted with the petition to the House of Commons.
COUNTRY MEaTiNas.—We can name but a few of many places the inhabitants of which have determined on petitioning within the last fortnight.
At Lancaster Castle, where the High Sheriff, General Johnson, presided, a petition praying for remission of taxes, abolition of useless offices and pensions, reiluction of salaries, the wi,ption of a reasonable imvision for the Church, the sale of the Crown lands, and vote by The inhabitants of Reading met on Tuesday ; the Mayor presiding. Mr. Monk moved the petition ; the introduction of the ballot into the prayer was, on an amendment of Mr. Salmon, carried by a large majority. The inhabitants of Lostwithiel, and those of Abingdon, have adopted. similar measures.
At Canterbury, the freemen have been convened by the Mayor for the like purpose.
The resident householders of the borough of Devizes met on Wed. nesdam Their petition affords another illustration of the " Corpora- tion" system of representation. Devizes was incorporated in the reign of Charles the First ; and their charter declares that the corporation shall consist of a mayor, recorder, twelve burgess-counsellors, and twenty-four capital burgesses, with .power to make an indefinite num- ber of free burgesses. The present corporation consists of thirty-five persons, fifteen of whom do not reside within the borough ; other menu- hers of that body, though resident, are not householders; and the free burgesses consist only of three persons not one of whom lives in De- vizes. The resident householders, within the borough, who are rated to the poor, comprise nearly nine hundred persons.
At Ludlow, an extension of the franchise to householders, a shorten- ing of the duration of Parliament, and the election by ballot, were unanimously carried.
At Lancaster, a petition for general reform, by extending the fran- chise so as to include the property and intelligence of the nation. At Ashton-under-Lyne, a petition for Radical Reform and vote by ballot.
The Colchester Gazette says, that a petition, now going round that district, praying for reform and modification of tithes, is most numerously signed : the Quakers have refused to join in it, because they desire tithes to be abolished, not modified.
Sir 31. W. Ridley, M.P. foe Newcastle-upon-Tyne, has addressed a letter to his constituents, informing them that he understands the plan of reform to be submitted to Parliament will grant an extension ot the right of voting to householders generally ; and it being his intention to support such an extension, as it will materially affect their privileges as electors, he announces to them, that if he should find, in advocating the measure, he is actineb at variance with the opinions of a majority of hie constituents, he will take the earliest opportunity of enabling 'them to elect some other representative whose opinions may be more in unison with theirs —Carlisle Patriot.
ZEALOUS SU PPOILTE RS.—At the Cinque Ports Reform Meeting, held last week in Rye, on the motion of Colonel Evans, a resolution was unanimously adopted, that the inhabitants of the ports and adjacent country, including the wholeline of the Sussex and Kent coasts were ready to come forward to support Ministers in their plan of reform, ne- cessary, with their lives and properties. Colonel' Evans stated that he was aware of the existence of a society of mercantile gentlemen in London, who had determined, in the event of the Ministers' measures being defeated, not to pay any new taxes levied by the Parliament; and that a similar determination had been come to in. Birmingham and Man. chafer.
BIR3IINGRADI POLITICAL UNION.—The anniversary of the formation of this important society was celebrated on Tuesday. At a dinner, where Mr. Attwood presided, mhat gentleman stated that the Union had now registered on its books nine thousand individuals, paying from 4s. to 2/. 2s. each. These nine thousand, Mr. Attwood observed, influenced a district containing not fewer than four hundred thousand ; and should the Throne be opposed by the Oligarchy in its purposed extension of the privileges of the people, the King might command out of these four hundred thousand, a national guard which would prove a wan of fire around him—in one week, if he called for it, his Majesty might have a couple of armies, each as brave and as resolute as that which conquered at Waterloo.


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Tuesday 6th February was Safer Internet Day. This day is designed to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones.Year 5 spent the day learning about the dangers of the internet and finding out ways in which we can keep ourselves and others safe online. We used computers to safely research information and we did some writing and drama based around Safer Internet Day and the history behind it.


April 23, 2019 Bridgeport Sound Tigers at Hershey Bears (Playoff Gm. 3) 7:00 p.m.
April 25, 2019 Bridgeport Sound Tigers at Hershey Bears (Playoff Gm. 4, if nec.) 7:00 p.m.
April 27, 2019 Hershey Bears at Bridgeport Sound Tigers (Playoff Gm. 5) 7:00 p.m.