For the first time since he was suspended following the violence on January 6, 2021 — and since Meta said in January that it would be lifting that suspension — former President Donald Trump has returned to using Facebook, posting a brief campaign video just days before a potential grand jury indictment in New York.

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Facebook parent company Meta had suspended Trump after the January 6 insurrection, citing his praise of violent rioters that sought to overturn the 2020 election at his behest. At the time, the company said his actions constituted a "severe violation of our rules."

The company said this January, two years after the insurrection, that it was lifting the ban, stating that "the public should be able to hear what politicians are saying so they can make informed choices."

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(Political science professor Alison) Dagnes said that being the first former president to be indicted would "crank up" his messaging and his ability to fundraise effectively by encouraging people to donate to his "legal defense fund" because "they're out to get me." And now, he can do that on Facebook, the platform that worked so well for him before.

Scientists across multiple disciplines are working to create revolutionary biocomputers where three-dimensional cultures of brain cells, called brain organoids, serve as biological hardware. They describe their roadmap for realizing this vision in the journal Frontiers in Science.

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Brain organoids are a type of lab-grown cell-culture. Even though brain organoids aren’t ‘mini brains’, they share key aspects of brain function and structure such as neurons and other brain cells that are essential for cognitive functions like learning and memory. Also, whereas most cell cultures are flat, organoids have a three-dimensional structure. This increases the culture's cell density 1,000-fold, meaning that neurons can form many more connections.

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Creating human brain organoids that can learn, remember, and interact with their environment raises complex ethical questions. For example, could they develop consciousness, even in a rudimentary form? Could they experience pain or suffering? And what rights would people have concerning brain organoids made from their cells?

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Even though Organoid Intelligence is still in its infancy, a recently-published study by one of the article’s co-authors – Dr Brett Kagan of the Cortical Labs – provides proof of concept. His team showed that a normal, flat brain cell culture can learn to play the video game Pong.