ProfT @ProfT@qoto.org

Posts about urban biking in #Dutch cities are routinely replied to with something like “well, they have the big advantage of being relatively flat.”

The Dutch also have the big advantage of not constantly making excuses about why they can’t make clearly smarter decisions.

A common argument I come across when talking about ethics in AI is that it's just a tool, and like any tool it can be used for good or for evil. One familiar declaration is this one: "It's really no different from a hammer". I was compelled to make a poster to address these claims. Steal it, share it, print it and use it where you see fit.

https://axbom.com/hammer-ai/

#AiEthics #DigitalEthics

Man Announces He Will Quit Drinking by 2050

https://theshovel.com.au/2021/10/26/man-announces-he-will-quit-drinking-by-2050/

#climate #climatechange #drinking #problem #plan #climatecrisis

In Fast Company, I reviewed a momentous year for both AVs and e-bikes, two mobility modes now on very different trajectories.

#AVs #ebikes #transportation

https://www.fastcompany.com/90994141/why-2023-was-the-year-of-the-e-bike-and-not-the-self-driving-car

Tomorrow I’m walking off the job with hundreds of my Washington Post colleagues because the company is breaking the law and bargaining in bad faith. Respect our picket line during our 24-hour strike by avoiding Washington Post journalism on Dec. 7, and send a letter to our bosses here: bit.ly/postguildsupport

(Reposted with alt text, thanks for the reminder @bodhipaksa!)

Great-grandfather: allowed to walk 6 miles on his own
Grandfather: could walk 1 mile
Mother: could walk a half mile
Son: could walk 300 yards (to end of street).

What happened? *Cars* happened.

M1, traffic, white vans...the shrinking geography of childhood in UK.

This is impressive!

#Paris already has 200 school streets, closed to traffic, to protect the safety of children.

Under its new Priorité Piéton plan, one hundred more will be added.

In addition...🧵

The brilliant Molly White (@molly0xfff) has given us the best coverage of the scam-ridden cryptocurrency "marketplace" -- a public service in a time when tech journalism resembles fanzines.

In a new piece, she turns her attention to deeply unattractive but central tenets of Silicon Valley's current mania, AI.

https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/effective-obfuscation

Savor every word.

(About everyday driving): "There’s absolutely nothing fun about that. My e-bike changes that completely. It’s all the fun of riding your bike that you remember as a kid, except you can actually go places and do things." -Collin Woodward in Jalopnik
https://jalopnik.com/i-bought-an-e-bike-and-its-now-my-entire-personality-1851039791
#BikeTooter #EBikes #cycling #CollinWoodward #Jalopnik #driving

As I put it last year in my blunt advice to Irish cities, “Your goal SHOULDN’T be to replace a million fossil fuel vehicles with a million electric vehicles. It should be to replace a million fossil fuel vehicles with 250K electric vehicles. The main answer HAS to be FEWER cars."

The use the term "artificial intelligence" for stuff like chatGPT and LLMs is like how people use the name "hoverboards" for things that ride on the ground and do not in fact hover.

On The Climate Brink, I explain the scariest climate plot in the world.

https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/the-scariest-climate-plot-in-the

Morning.

Here it is, several thousand years in the making: the protostellar jet HH212 as seen in the infrared by #JWST.

We discovered this jet in 1993, glowing in the light of shocked molecular hydrogen at 2.12 microns, as gas emerges symmetrically at about 100 km/s from the two poles of a young protostar not far from the Horsehead Nebula in Orion.

Our new JWST image spans six wavelengths & is ten times sharper than any previous infrared image.

#Astronomy #SpaceScience #Astrodon

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I had this essay by @karawynn saved in my bookmarks and I just re-read it.

It’s very, very, very good and covers so much of my thinking on this subject. Going to make it compulsory reading for my ethics course next year.

https://karawynn.substack.com/p/language-is-a-poor-heuristic-for

Wednesday's Most Read #1 - Why Norway is rethinking its reliance on electric cars https://bit.ly/3sh5fCB Vox @davidzipper