Students are taught in civics class that, under the American justice system, a defendant may be convicted of a crime only if a jury finds him or her guilty of the charged offense “beyond a reasonable doubt.” What’s rarely mentioned, however, is that federal law allows judges to ignore a not guilty verdict and sentence men and women to prison for illegal activity of which they were acquitted.

Louisianan Mike Johnson became House speaker by accident, when eight renegade Republicans voted with the Democrats to eject the unfortunate Kevin McCarthy from the chair in October. After a number of more senior members failed to win enough support, the booby prize went to Johnson.

Google recently made headlines globally because its chatbot Gemini generated images of people of color instead of white people in historical settings that featured white people. Adobe Firefly’s image creation tool saw similar issues. This led some commentators to complain that AI had gone “woke.” Others suggested these issues resulted from faulty efforts to fight AI bias and better serve a global audience.