Article about an AI that aims to give treatment suggestions to doctors, with some alarming results.

Thanks, this is a great article. It completely tallies with my experience teaching higher ed as well.

In our case it was a city of about 40,000 that only existed for two weeks, so it’s hard to say how it might scale

Keeping order is one thing, but police do a bunch of things no one else has time for.

Endless follow ups, liaising with social workers, taking long statements for inquests, or spending all day protecting someone’s right to peacefully protest.

Maybe it’s because I live in a country where the police don’t carry guns (and sex work is legal), but I found it really hard to put my finger on exactly what they are advocating for here.

They seem to be saying that police only exist to enforce middle class interests? I don’t think that’s entirely true.

I would like to see more change in how policing is done, but the idea that communities self-police is idealistic. Sure they do in some ways, but it can be just as selective and just as damaging as anything police do.

Remarkably, the letter’s signees include Ilya Sutskever, the company’s chief scientist and a member of its board, who has been blamed for coordinating the boardroom coup against Altman in the first place.

I am so confused.

Yes this was pretty telling:

Instead, an individual’s economic success would be tied directly to the quality of their work and the strength of their ideas. Gesell imagined this would create a Darwinian natural selection in the economy: “Free competition would favor the efficient and lead to their increased propagation.”

Ah that explains it. Thanks!

I thought they had already done it. I got the notification months ago.

The top result is already out. Obviously the John Oliver fans got their wish and Pūteketeke won. Thousands of them had to be disqualified for cheating, though.

We are all waiting now to see who is in second. Fingers crossed for the Fairy Tern, New Zealand’s most endangered bird!

I’ve never used twitter in my life, still have a vague interest in what Musk is doing to it though.

Another way of looking at it is bottle openers look remarkably similar to beetle genitalia.

I think the beetles were here first.

That tracks.

Pretty sure Elon Musk railed against bots on twitter despite having been proven to have used bots on twitter to manipulate opinion himself.

I’m absolutely convinced!!!

Ah that’s a good point. Maybe they just use windows or large pools of water.

Or cellphones.

I have several hypotheses:

• the same force that stops them decaying also stops their hair from ever getting mussed up, falling out, or growing longer

• only we can’t see their reflection, they themselves can see it

• vampires are essentially a representation of a parasitical upper class and as such they look like idealised wealthy aristocrats

Apart from my illness support group, I’m only on fediverse social media now, and only via web browser. It’s a breath of fresh air.

I’m realising there are subtle ways that enshittification constrains and shapes actual conversations between us.

We are “social animals” though. It’s normal for the social animals to attempt to regulate what each other does and how they treat others in the group.

You see this in apes, elephants, whales, etc.

Nothing. It’s not really a thing here except for children who want lollies (candy) or for (mostly young) adults who are going to a theme party and mostly seem to want to look sexy.

But thanks for the reminder, I had better buy some lollies to hand out just in case.

I don’t tip because I live in a country that doesn’t tip and I’m very against it ever taking root here.

Those things about controlling the service, and choosing who “deserves” what, are anathema to me.

The person is doing a job however they and their employer see fit. If they want to run a business like Basil Fawlty that’s on them.

My input into what they get paid is to vote for strong labour laws, min wage rises, and workers’ rights. If a tipping culture emerged it would most likely weaken those things and make wages more capricious and less fair. We must resist it.

I think Medecines Sans Frontiers is good?