ceoln @ceoln@qoto.org

From 18 Jan: Getting abortion medication online is easier than ever thanks to regulatory changes. The practice is pushing the boundaries of the traditional doctor-patient relationship. - https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/01/17/1140778856/with-telehealth-abortion-doctors-have-to-learn-to-trust-and-empower-patients #abortion #uspol #healthcare-access

@thedextriarchy
It's a direct side effect of the political struggle between the statistical/fuzzy side & the symbolic/GOFAI side of AI research.

Minsky shat on perceptrons in the 60s so from then until the 90s when backprop got really good for computer vision, all pop culture depictions of AI were influenced by expert system research (with the exception of stuff like Deadly Friend).

But backprop made neural nets more useful, & in the 90s they were getting to the point where they could run on commodity hardware; meanwhile, high-profile symbolic logic projects like cyc were failing. So statistical methods got a lot of hype.

Thing about statistical methods is they can't do reasoning except by poorly and expensively simulating reasoning they've observed somebody else do (which is why human beings are so bad at it), and the statistical simulations of reasoning are so overcomplicated that nobody can understand them. In other words, statistical methods are *only* really good for bullshit!

Technical people have known this forever -- it's obvious from first principles -- but pop culture is slow to catch up because pop culture is primarily shaped by writers half-listening to marketing people who half-listened to technical people 20 years ago.

It’s very funny to me that the dominant Twentieth Century conception of AI was a slightly awkward nerd with an inhuman mastery of facts and logic, when what we actually got is smooth-talking bullshit artists who can’t do eighth-grade math.

Masks are not a lockdown.
Nor is testing before events.
Or getting boosters.
Or improving ventilation & filtration.

None of those interventions (despite some people's best efforts to claim otherwise) cause more harm than good. Every person who cares about the economy, jobs & quality of life will support sensible #COVID19 precautions, not oppose them.

Some people are advocating for millions more to die and many more to be chronically disabled. Reject their patent lack of sense & empathy.

"Some say," the dragon proudly said, "that no being is more cruel than a dragon."
"That is also said of us," the cat purred.
"It could be argued," the dragon conceeded. "However..."
"Humans."
"Yes."
"They can be kind, though," the cat said.
"Huh. I bet I can be kinder."
"Me too!"
#MicroFiction #TootFic #SmallStories

They are no longer making pretense of targeting the drag community alone. Now they are explicitly targeting transgender people. Nebraska has recently done the same thing in dropping the pretense, although they don't explicitly spell out transgender people, just gender identity.

In case you missed it | This #disinformation narrative model is now being deployed against YMCA facilities across the United States -- Port Townsend, Washington in August 2022, Xenia, Ohio in November 2022, and now Santee, California, in January 2023. Each follows the same structure of the 2021 Wi Spa disinformation campaign, which is designed to whip up maximum #transphobia with little to no evidence:

https://www.truthorfiction.com/wi-spa-weaponized-disinformation-campaign/

Anyone up for a small writing challenge?

Reply to this toot, and I'll give you a word prompt for a microfic or poem. If you're a poet and want an additional prompt, ask for a poetic form or device that you must use for your piece.

No pressure to share what you come up with, but if you do, tag me!

🤔

Single-use coffee pods have surprising environmental benefits over other brewing methods

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2023/01/18/coffee-pods-sustainability-environmental-impact/

There's a narrative that Mastodon is "losing users". Okay, what do the actual numbers say?

According to this MAU chart, active users has been consistent -- albeit volatile.

Activity is based on how foolish Elon Musk is being at any given moment.

Mastodon usage spikes whenever people perceive Twitter as dying.

Prior to November, there's been spikes. You can actually see this in April/May.

What's different this time is that people are staying.

https://the-federation.info/platform/21

"But the allegations were always hollow, for instance in Alabama, where Republican-appointed U.S. Attorneys chased every accusation that was made for the eight years of the George W. Bush administration without finding anything of significance.

The Big Lie put the old trope on steroids, a Trump-sized version of the voter fraud complaints Republicans trotted out every election cycle. But none of it is true."

#VoterFraud #VoteSuppression #Republicans #racism

(2 of 2)

Hey did an AI steal your art

Did an AI steal your buddy's art

Saddle up, first class-action suit i've seen

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/class-action-filed-against-stability-ai-midjourney-and-deviantart-for-dmca-violations-right-of-publicity-violations-unlawful-competition-breach-of-tos-301721869.html

The Jan. 6 committee spent more than a year using subpoenas and interviews to find out where exactly each social media company fell down before, during and after the insurrection. And then printed almost nothing. My colleagues got the report they buried. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/01/17/jan6-committee-report-social-media/

There's no other way to say this: OpenAI is extractive-resource colonialism, and the resource being extracted is human's mental health. That fancy new tool you think is so shiny, that's a blood diamond.

https://twitter.com/dlberes/status/1615692829082193920

"OpenAI sent tens of thousands of snippets of text to an outsourcing firm in Kenya... Some of it described situations in graphic detail like child sexual abuse, bestiality, murder, suicide, torture, self harm, and incest. Some workers made just $1.32/hour."

#introduction toot!

I'm Iain (he/him). I mostly work in acrylics and inks, with occasional forays into pencils and oils.

I've been doing art for the Dublin and Glasgow Worldcons, for which I've somehow won a couple of BSFA Best Artwork awards.

I do a lot of fan art for various geeky things, notably #DoctorWho, but also #StarWars, #StarTrek, #TheSandman, #TheExpanse and others.

Twitter flotsam. Currently struggling to keep up with far too many social media platforms.

Every Ronald Reagan airport, library and public building should be renamed and his statues melted down for scrap, that'd be great.
And his supercarrier should be renamed the USS George Floyd.

Judd Legum looks at the global elite meeting at Davos, Switzerland, now — Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Mancin are featured there — and asks what are the priorities of the elite.

He concludes that with only 81 billionaires holding more wealth than 50% of the world combined, extreme wealth inequality is a policy choice "pushed for by corporations and the wealthy and enacted by government officials."

#EconomicElites #KyrstenSinema #JoeManchin

https://popular.info/p/the-true-priorities-of-the-global

Another 🔥 example of how behind 'automation' there are always HUMANS involved maintaining and sustaining it. This is what @ubiquity75 calls brand safety in her work on content moderators. As I talk in my work these low paid workers are an integral part of the service/channel!

https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/