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Halloween might be over, but sky-watchers are in for a treat this week. On Wednesday, November 5, the night sky will be illuminated with the biggest, brightest full moon of the year, also called the beaver moon. And it’s a supermoon, meaning it will be full at the same time it’s closest to Earth. Here’s everything to know about this week’s sky-watching event. What’s the best time to see the supermoon? The best time to see a full moon typically is right after sunset, especially for a supermoon, when it appears biggest on the horizon, according to Live Science. According to the Weather Channel, the best time to see the beaver moon is from dusk on Tuesday, November 4, through Thursday, November 6, based on clouds and visibility in your region. In the U.S., prime time in the Northeast is forecast for Tuesday, November 4, and it’s Wednesday, November 5, for the Great Lakes region. When will the supermoon be closest to Earth? Per Astronomy, the beaver moon turns full at 8:19 a.m. ET Wednesday, when it is directly opposite the sun in the skybut only for a moment, and the change won’t be visible to the naked eye. The full moon reaches its closest distance to Earth in 2025, called the perigee, some nine hours after it turns full, on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. ET, at 221,726 miles away, according to Space.com. During perigree, full moons appear 14% bigger and 30% brighter, according to NASA. Why is this full moon called the beaver moon? November’s full moon originally got its nickname, the beaver moon, due to the “heightened activity among beavers around November, building dams and stocking up on food before winter,” says the BBC’s Sky at Night Magazine. What’s the next sky-watching event to look out for? The beaver moon is the second of three supermoons, starting with October’s hunter’s moon and ending with December’s cold moon, per the BBC. The December full moon gets its name as the month marks the beginning of the coldest time of year. This full supermoon will take place on Thursday, December 4.
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E-Commerce
In late September, President Donald Trump posted a racist AI-generated video depicting House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries standing before a podium, wearing a Sombrero and mustache, while Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer says insulting things about Democrats. In mid-October, the government of Ontario aired an anti-tariff ad in the U.S. featuring a clip of Ronald Reagan hammering home the futility of imposing tariffs on foreign goods. Trump charged, erroneously, that the video was an AI deepfake — Reagan, he claimed, in fact supported tariffs. While these two incidents — the first is AI disinformation, the second is labeling anothers video as such — may seem unrelated, theyre actually very much linked. This is more than just Trump lying and assuming others lie too. In fact, his dissemination of deepfakes and his accusations of deepfakery work together as parts of the same disinformation strategy. The first part of the strategy is the distribution of high volumes of lies and half-truths via campaign speeches, social media, ads, or TV appearances. The second part is the continual labeling of actual news stories from legitimate outlets as fake news. Recall what Steve Bannon told the writer Michael Lewis in 2018: The real opposition is the media, the Trump advisor said, adding And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit, he said. AI-generated deepfakes represent a dangerous technology upgrade to that same disinformation playbook. In the Schumer videos, Trumps circle spread the narrative that power-hungry Democrats want to provide healthcare benefits to illegal immigrants. In the case of the Ontario tiff, Trump labeled a credible video as an AI fake. As Trump and his allies create more of their own deepfakes, further sullying the information space, people are more likely to believe that real videos are fake too. [A] skeptical public will be primed to doubt the authenticity of real audio and video evidence, legal experts Danielle Keats Citron and Robert Chesney wrote in a 2019 law review article. This skepticism can be invoked just as well against authentic as against adulterated content, a problem Citron and Chesney dubbed the liars dividend. The problem may intensify as AI models improve and generate video indistinguishable from real, camera-shot video. As the line between truth and lies disappears, news consumers seeking objective truth eventually grow fatigued. For those who want to create an environment where disinformation thrives, that is a very good result — and not at all a new idea. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer exists, Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism, her 1951 book chronicling the rise of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. So far, much of the AI-generated video produced or shared by Trump and his allies — like the recent one of the president in a fighter jet dropping excrement on thousands of No Kings demonstrators — has been quite obviously fake. Much of it reprises classic own the libs memes. But the administration has been edging toward deepfakes designed to deceive. In mid-October, Trump loyalists in the National Republican Senate Committee, hoping to blame Democrats for the ongoing shutdown, produced a deepfake video showing Schumer saying every day it gets better for us, words taken out of context from a print interview Schumer did with Punchbowl News. The implication: that the Democrats care only about scoring political points during the standoff, not about the damage it has done — and will continue to inflict — on normal Americans.All that separates that video from being a pure deepfake is the fact that the (AI-generated) senator is shown vocalizing his own words. At the end of the video, Schumer smiles broadly, suggesting that he is cynically enjoying the shutdown. That smile is all AI. While some states, including California, Minnesota, Texas, and Washington, have added specific language prohibiting AI deepfakes to their election laws, the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) has not followed suit. The FEC considered passing a new regulation specifically targeting deceptive AI-generated content in 2023, but dropped the idea in favor of relying on existing rules on deceptive campaign media, fearing that broadly banning AI-generated content might be beyond its jurisdiction, and that any rulemaking might fail to withstand legal challenges based on free speech rights. On the Hill, Minnesotas Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar explicitly warned about AI-generated deepfakes in elections in 2024. Like any emerging technology, AI has great opportunities but also significant risks . . .and we have to put rules in place, she said in a hearing in April of 2024. In 2024, Klobuchar and Alaskas Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski co-sponsored the AI Transparency in Elections Act, which sought to require disclaimers on political ads that use AI-generated or modified imagery or audio. The bill never made it out of committee. Many AI companies have included in their terms-of-service rules against using their generative models to create synthetic media that imitates real people without their consent. Most have used some form of visual watermark or hidden data to indicate that an image is AI-generated. However, sources say that its not hard to find an open-source model that uses none of these safeguards. Meanwhile, numerous experts have expressed concern that as AI tools mature and become more accessible, more people (including foreign actors) have the resources they need to actively spread falsehoods about political issues, causes, candidates, or campaigns. A 2024 Harvard survey found that 83% of respondents (n=1,000) worried that AI could be used to spread false election-related information. In a tight congressional election next year, and especially in the 2028 presidential election, all restraint could go out the window. Think he wouldnt go that far? According to the Washington Post, Trump made more than 30,000 false or misleading statements during his first term. He was willing to see the Capitol mobbed and defaced if it meant staying in office. To Trump, a truth is no better than a lie, no matter the format. Theyre both just a means to more power.
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E-Commerce
Over the past several days, millions of low-income Americans who use SNAP, the nations biggest food aid program, have been left wondering how they will pay for basic necessities this month amidst the ongoing government shutdown. Today, they have an update: In a court filing submitted on November 3, the Trump administration said that it would pay just 50% of recipients normal allotments this month. Last year, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program helped 41 million people (or about 1 in 8 Americans) buy their groceries, nearly two-thirds of whom were families with children. To qualify for SNAP in 2025, a family of fours net income cant exceed the federal poverty line of around $31,000 per year. Normally, the debit cards that SNAP recipients use to buy food at participating stores are loaded each month by the federal government. But amidst the ongoing government shutdown, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) planned to freeze payments to SNAP on November 1, citing a lack of funding. However, just a day prior to the freeze, two federal judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island ruled that the government had to extend the funding, offering the Trump administration some leeway on whether to offer full or partial funding in November. Now, the Trump administration says it will use money from an Agriculture Department contingency fund to offer partial payments for Novemberthough the exact timeline of the funds distribution remains uncertain. Heres what to know: Why were SNAP benefits about to freeze? This new announcement follows an ongoing back-and-forth over whether the federal government had a legal obligation to continue providing SNAP funding despite the government shutdown, which has been in effect since October 1. On one side, the Trump administration said it wasnt allowed to use a USDA contingency fund with about $5 billion in it for the program, which reversed a USDA plan from before the shutdown that said money would be tapped to keep SNAP running. On the other, Democratic state attorneys general or governors from 25 states said that money from the contingency fund couldand mustbe used, arguing in a legal finding on October 28 that the USDA could also tap into another appropriated fund worth about $23 billion for the cause. Ultimately, two federal courts came down in favor of using contingency funding for SNAP. In Providence, Rhode Island, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell ruled that the government must use emergency reserves to backfill SNAP benefits, requiring an update from the administration by November 3. “There is no doubt, and it is beyond argument, that irreparable harm will begin to occurif it hasn’t already occurredin the terror it has caused some people about the availability of funding for food for their family,” McConnell said during the hearing, according to ABC News. In the Boston, Massachusetts case, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani called the SNAP suspension unlawful, similarly calling for contingency funds to be used for the program. What’s happening now? In response to these rulings, the Trump administration said in its own filing that it plans to use the $5 billion contingency fund to pay 50% of eligible households current allotments, adding that the expenditure will mean “no funds will remain for new SNAP applicants certified in November, disaster assistance, or as a cushion against the potential catastrophic consequences of shutting down SNAP entirely.” The administration opted against tapping into the additional funds identified by Democrats to pay the monthly benefits in full. Normally, the USDA spends $8 billion per month on the program. So far, its unclear when SNAP recipients will have access to the half funding. In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, said of the distribution, Theres a process that has to be followed. So, we got to figure out what the process is. President Trump wants to make sure that people get their food benefits. Meanwhile, local food banks, shelters, and state governments have been scrambling to prepare for an influx of hungry people. States including Louisiana, New Mexico, Vermont, New York, and Nevada have all acted to provide emergency funding for residents in need, while smaller organizations like food pantries are working overtime to get ready. When you take SNAP away, the implications are cataclysmic, Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, CEO of the nationwide food bank network Feeding America, told the AP last week. I assume people are assuming that somebodys going to stop it before it gets too bad. Well, its already too bad. And its getting worse.
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E-Commerce
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