If more men learned to flirt from bird documentaries, the world would be a far more interesting place

took this amazing hummingbird shot completely by accident when testing out the 10x zoom on my phone

I just learned that the Japanese word for "knowledge" (知識) and the word for "trivia/snippet of knowledge" (豆知識) is only distinguished by the addition of the kanji for "beans" (豆) in front of knowledge. trivia is just a lil bean of knowledge. That's so cute.

And that's the problem: when you steal the entire Internet to create a statistical algorithm for determining the next word, you're going to end up outputting the statistically most likely next word. From the *internet*

A police officer is generating a transcript of an arrest and now it contains the phrase "throbbing essence of grizzly bear lust" Oh no, you've removed all the *most* likely outputs so it's now it's skimming the weird parts of AO3 that you stole while literally stealing the entire internet.

One way of thinking about genAI is: Suppose you steal every English word on the internet, and then look up what words are most likely to follow the word "throbbing." And then whenever you see "throbbing" you slap on a likely word You're gonna end up talking about throbbing dicks in weird contexts

This is what genAI "guardrails" are, and why they are inherently insufficient. genAI inherently outputs the statistically most likely sequence of words, and "guardrails" are basically just a list of words to filter from that output to the user. And they stole literally all the words to train on.

somebody *learned something*

Vaccines.gov, the CDC's vaccination site search engine, got a MAHA makeover in June. Then it stopped working altogether. New from me: www.notus.org/health-scien...

Salt water laced with cancer-causing chemicals, a byproduct of oil and gas drilling, keeps shooting out of the ground in Oklahoma. Experts say it means even more wastewater is spreading underground, poisoning the state’s water supply. With @readfrontier.bsky.social

I wrote for @theintercept.com about how prosecuting transportation of these pamphlets is a danger to all writers, journalists, and Americans. Possession of words is not a crime, even with intent to distribute.

“You will be visited by 3 spirits" The three spirits

Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea

somehow it's "hoarding" when I keep my old tech as long as possible and resent forced obsolescence but not "hoarding" when billionaires and tech companies suck up all the money and burn though the planet in search of endless growth

I really wish we'd stop calling them climate "skeptics" or "vaccine skeptics", if you jump off a cliff we don't call you a "gravity skeptic"

Anyway, I think a lot of organizers were taught to feel an unrealistic and often psychologically harmful level of personal responsibility for whether we saved the world or not, even if we were nominally taught the responsibility is collective.

A 12 year old girl died while sectioned in a psychiatric hospital because doctors missed autoimmune encephalitis Psychosis is exceedingly rare in a 12 year old. It’s heartbreaking that they locked her up rather than attempt to determine the true cause. Psychologizing patients must stop

"It is against the TOS to be talked into suicide by our LLM" is possibly the most evil tech bro thing I've ever read

Literally woke me up out of a dead sleep this morning. Called in to work cause I couldn't risk passing out on the drive.

The problem with this article is they asked too many lawyers and not enough historians. As a historian, I'd say the legality of Trump's immunity and pardons depends on how he leaves office. At 40 over 55 approval? He's immune. At 25 over 65? He's probably not immune & self-pardons aren't legal.

At 10 over 75? Non-zero chance his 'trial' is a note read aloud next to a burn pit. You know the joke that in some extreme circumstances you 'stop being biology and start being physics'? There is a point where your politics stop being law and start being history. It is not a good place to be.

My phone is doing all the same things from 2015 with only minimal benefits. The only reason we have to upgrade is increased software bloat. We should actually just have phones that last 15 years now.

You’re not meeting your landfill quota. Do you not feel the slightest tinge of guilt for starving the landfill god?

"device hoarding" also known as: When someone hasn't replaced the one phone that they have in a few years because they had no reason to. Words used to mean things.

also absolutely wild to see some of the same people who when schools were closed in 2020 saying "we must risk everything to get IRL classes back because nothing replaces Human Connections in education" now pushing "the Lie Machine can replace all teachers" 👀

1. This is disgustingly racist, 2. There is a long history of nonsensical tests which are ment to force helplessness. They are always formatted in ways that the goalpost can be moved to reflect whichever result the proctor would like to give.

"To see if you are civilised enough, if you can act like a human being." Disgusting dehumanization of Indigenous people. Eye contact can't determine someone's ability to parent! Nor do any of the questions Keira talks about! FKU test also includes an ink blot test bbc.com/news/articles/c1wlw2qj113o

1/ ⚠️ Breaking: At CDC, we've been told the US Government will not officially commemorate World AIDS Day this year. No explanation given.

IBSc is getting worse again lately.

Really wish I had had the presence of mind to launch into a lecture on compulsive grooming behaviors.

Customer scolded (???) me the other day for biting my nails (?????????) I don't even do that; I just clip them short so they don't break when I handle flooring returns??????????? Also, who gave him the chutzpah to scold a full grown adult stranger at their job for his weird assumptions???????????

Is the three second rule a global cultural custom? Has every culture come up with this independently? This is a genuine question, please help

I also will say, the moral panic thing sucks. It always boils down to, “why do you need drugs for your brain.” I don’t know! But we’re here now & it really works!

trying to start a moral panic and the stories are all like “the ADHD meds really helped but didn’t solve everything”

Hold up, hold up hold UP — ADHD is linked to smoking cigarettes?!?!

I think you might have missed it actually, I posted a jokingly strident opinion about what temperature is best to drink water at and it’s the most I’ve ever been yelled on here even though I have tens of thousands of followers now and post about politics all day

THE ONE TIME I WORK NIGHT SHIFT AND SOMEONE TRIES TO MAKE SMOORS ON THE EPS CONDUITS???!?!?!

And if you manage to commandeer the music player, get yourself a playlist of Baroque orchestras and you're golden. Frosty and (shudder) THAT GODDAMN RUMPAPUMPUM DRUMMER BOY are banished.

When I worked at a bookstore, I quickly learned that people cannot tell the difference between Xmas music and any Baroque or Elizabethan music album that doesn't get too organ-ish. I used this to my advantage. One customer caught on... AND THANKED ME

Just love that they choose to put this above a toilet, of all places (at the Center for Contemporary Art in Prague)

Everyone stop acting weird and shocked about MTG. She has been systematically distancing herself from the current GOP for months and months. She has a plan reform herself under a new image ON THE RIGHT that’s not part of a sinking ship. She’s not suddenly changing her tune! SHE’S AN OPPORTUNIST

You can’t retroactively diagnose anyone very accurately, but the whole “where are these people coming from all of a sudden?” narrative is at least partially based on no one seeing how a large percentage of the population would have behaved in a non-(self)-medicated state.

I keep saying this but it’s at least very interesting that many doctors didn’t think ADHD persisted into adulthood until you couldn’t buy Ritalin over the counter anymore and most people stopped smoking.

Whispers of Fate made me sad.