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New warning signs on Lake Travis not a priority; LCRA focuses on social media to alert boaters

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:51 GMT

LAKE TRAVIS, TEXAS (KXAN) — Lake Travis is considered by many to be a dangerous lake. Since 2010, the Travis Country Sheriff's Office has tracked 61 deaths on the lake. To prepare boaters and swimmers about the potential danger, the agency that manages the lake Lower Colorado River Authority is pivoting to social media."A traditional approach to trying to get information into people's hands, in today's world, is limiting," said John Hofmann, Executive Vice President of Water at the LCRA. KXAN Documentary ; "The Wake: Secrets of Lake Travis" "We wanted to make sure that we had very clear cut, very social media-friendly messages, that could go out with things that are simple for families to be able to do when they go and spend an afternoon with the lake."The campaign, called "Be LakeWise", focuses on tips for going to the lake. The campaign includes social media posts and distributing flyers and items like koozies to re-enforce safety messages about swimming safely and boating respo...

Mainly dry, warm weather to finish the week

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:51 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Storms in West Texas will make a run at our area late this morning through midday, but I wouldn't hold your breath on meaningful rain.Mainly dry conditions under a mix of sun and clouds can be expected for most today. Afternoon highs will return to the mid-80s, slightly below normal for this time of year. BLOG: Summer forecast released: When do 100º days begin Hotter, mainly dry weather is in the forecast Friday through Sunday, but scattered late-day storms return on the Memorial Day holiday. Be sure to download the KXAN Weather App so you get lightning alerts as you are enjoying the outdoors.Flood Awareness WeekWhile this weekend's rain chance does not appear to bring a high flood threat at this time, Memorial Day floods in Central Texas in 2015 killed 14 people and destroyed thousands of homes. On Memorial Day 1981, an all-time record Shoal Creek flood in downtown Austin killed 13 people and destroyed countless businesses. That flood led the City to create the F...

Georgetown, TxDOT hearing opinions on RM 2243 improvements starting Thursday

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:51 GMT

GEORGETOWN, Texas (KXAN) – The Texas Department of Transportation said Tuesday it and the City of Georgetown will host a two-week virtual public meeting starting Thursday on proposed improvements to Ranch to Market Road 2243 in Williamson County. Here are the proposed changes according to TxDOT: widening RM 2243 (Leander Road) from Southwest Bypass to Norwood Drive to two lanes in each directionadding raised medians with turn lanesproviding pedestrian and bicyclist paths from Southwest Bypass to the I-35 frontage road. install a signal at RM 2243 and River Ridge Drive reconstruct the intersection of RM 2243 and Southwest Bypass to be compatible with nearby project plansTxDOT said additional right of way would be required but said "no residential or non-residential displacements are anticipated at this time."Location of proposed improvements to RM 2243. (Map courtesy: City of Georgetown) According to TxDOT, the virtual public meeting will include a pre-recorded presentation and other...

Travis County STAR Flight to host open house Thursday

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:51 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) – Travis County STAR Flight will host an EMS Week open house Thursday, Travis County said in a press release Tuesday. According to the release, the open house will give the public a chance to meet STAR Flight crews, see a STAR Flight helicopter and learn the basics of stop of the bleed and hands only CPR. Travis County said refreshments will be provided. According to the release, the open house will be at the STAR Flight Hangar on 7800 Old Manor Rd. from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. National EMS Week is May 21 to May 27. According to the press release, President Gerald Ford designated the third week in May as EMS Week in 1974 "to honor EMS clinicians and the important work they do in our nation's communities".

Ross Douthat: What has Trump cost American Christianity?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:51 GMT

When religious conservatism made its peace with Donald Trump in 2016, the fundamental calculation was that the benefits of political power — or, alternatively, of keeping cultural liberalism out of full political power — outweighed the costs to Christian credibility inherent in accepting a heathen figure as a political champion and leader.The contrary calculation, made by the Christian wing of Never Trump, was that accepting Trump required moral compromises that American Christianity would ultimately suffer for, whatever Supreme Court seats or policy victories religious conservatives might gain.These calculations weren’t made by disinterested forecasters, looking out across the full sweep of American society and weighing aggregate costs and benefits. They were made by people embedded in particular communities, in red states and blue states, in different regions and congregations and traditions, whose immediate horizons shaped their expectations and analysis.As we approach primariesT...

Parmy Olson: Don’t believe your lying eyes in the AI era

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:51 GMT

A fake photo of an explosion near the Pentagon went viral across Twitter on Monday, and stocks dipped. The incident confirmed what many have said for months: Misinformation is on course to be supercharged as new AI tools for concocting photos get easier to use.Fixing this problem with technology will be an endless game of whack-a-mole. It’s certainly worth trying to track image provenance, as Adobe Inc. is doing with its Content Authenticity Initiative. But as the saying goes, a lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is still lacing up its boots. In a world where more content than ever is being generated artificially, we’ll all need to become more skeptical about what we see online — especially in the run-up to a U.S. presidential election next year.The Pentagon “photo” became particularly messy because of Twitter’s poor excuse for a verification system. Elon Musk revamped the site’s blue ticks so that they would no l...

Other voices: Immigration can help solve the nursing shortage

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:51 GMT

The U.S. nursing workforce is shedding workers. About 100,000 nurses quit or retired during the pandemic, while another 800,000 have signaled an “intent to leave” by 2027. And yet, the country is failing to tap an available group of qualified health-care workers: immigrants. While there’s no single fix for the U.S.’s nursing shortage, a more efficient system to bring in foreign-trained professionals would go a long way toward easing it.Immigrants comprise about 16% of registered nurses and have been a crucial part of the health-care workforce for decades. Even so, the U.S. lacks a dedicated pathway for foreign-trained nurses to work in the country. Most come through the employment-based immigration system, which is capped at 140,000 green cards per year for all applicants and their family members. Of that number, roughly 40,000 are allocated to “skilled workers, professionals and other workers,” a category that includes nurses. Because most of tho...

Post-it power: Lake Elmo teacher lifts student with supportive messages

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:51 GMT

With Finn Helwig, 10, at her side, fourth-grade teacher Pam Mohs goes over a civics project with students at Lake Elmo Elementary School on Wednesday, May 24, 2023. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)When Maggie Helwig opened her youngest son’s locker at Lake Elmo Elementary School, she didn’t know what to expect.Maybe a forgotten homework assignment, candy wrappers, a collection of Tupperware containers or “a bunch of garbage and old food,” she said.Instead, the locker was papered with a collection of colorful Post-it note messages that her son Finn, 10, has received from his fourth-grade teacher, Pam Mohs.The colorful notes, which Finn had stuck to the sides, back and roof of the locker, are handwritten messages of love and support for Finn, who has struggled in school since kindergarten, Helwig said.“Great job in reading yesterday!” read one. “You worked hard on Friday afternoon!” read another.“I didn’t even know this was happening,” Helwig said. “He never mentioned it. I cr...

Eileen Bjorkman: Flight canceled? Stuck on the tarmac? Here’s a solution: more women in aviation

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:51 GMT

The aviation industry has a problem. A shortage of airline pilots is causing a “constraint on capacity,” which translates to canceled flights and delays for travelers — especially on smaller airlines. There’s more: In early April, the FAA warned that a shortage of air traffic controllers is expected to gum up travel this summer, especially in the Northeast. And according to one industry observer, the lack of maintenance personnel in aviation is reaching crisis levels.Aviation’s capacity woes underline a massive industry blind spot: Women remain largely grounded. Women make up less than 20% of those employed in all aviation jobs in the U.S., a figure that skews that high only because so many flight attendants and customer service agents are women. Only 4.6% of airline pilots are women, and aviation mechanics fare even worse, at 2.6%.The low pilot numbers are especially discouraging compared with women’s progress in other professional fields. In 202...

Theodore Kim: Can today’s AI truly learn on its own? Not likely

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:40:51 GMT

One of the boldest, most breathless claims being made about artificial intelligence tools is that they have “emergent properties” — impressive abilities gained by these programs that they were supposedly never trained to possess. “60 Minutes,” for example, reported credulously that a Google program taught itself to speak Bengali, while the New York Times misleadingly defined “emergent behavior” in AI as language models gaining “unexpected or unintended abilities” such as writing computer code.This misappropriation of the term “emergent” by AI researchers and boosters deploys language from biology and physics to imply that these programs are uncovering new scientific principles adjacent to basic questions about consciousness — that AIs are showing signs of life. However, as computational linguistics expert Emily Bender has pointed out, we’ve been giving AI too much credit since at least the 1960s. A new stu...