herid @herid@qoto.org

This is one of the iconic #Antonov #An-124 #Ruslan freighters originally designed for the Soviet military. Roughly 50 of those have been built. After the collapse of the Soviet Union quite a few of the planes have been used in the commercial charter business. This one, operated by Antonov Airlines flew cargo for the German military prior to the withdrawal from #Afghanistan. I saw it at #LEJ airport in spring 2021. A totally different time, it seems. In the meantime Russia has attacked Ukraine, including an eventually unsuccessful attempt to seize the Airport of #Kiev Hostomel where Antonov was based. The huge #An-225, the bigger sister of the #Ruslan was destroyed. The Ukrainian #An-125, though, seem to be still in business. They occasionally pop up on the flight tracker app of your choice hauling cargo all over the planet.

I love this one about #FreeSpeech from https://xkcd.com/1357/

That.

https://t.me/liveukraine_eng/2738 🇭🇺 Hungary managed to get the European Union to unfreeze part of the funds intended for it. In exchange, the country lifted its veto on some important issues, in particular on €18 billion of macro-financial assistance for Ukraine. #Ukraine #News #War #Russia

Twitter just disbanded its trust and safety council, per an email shared with Platformer

Big thread on Mastodon links being blocked on Twitter. Basically, it’s not the link - it’s text mentioning Mastodons paired with any link (even a link about something with no mastodons).

Specific phrasing matters and, notably, some obvious phrasing is not filtered out in a way that makes me question whether this is intentional on Twitter’s part.

https://mastodon.social/@JoeUchill/109503414540128381

I'm feeling increasing limited by the lack of a good QT feature. I just inadvertently hijacked someone else's post with a tangential point that I ended up having to make as a reply. QT would have avoided that and allowed me to cite the original.

AI's aren't sentient. They can't "steal."

Programmers and institutions select the data with which to train the model. They take art and writing from artists and authors without credit or payment. The software then remixes and mimics what it is given.

Displacing agency by attributing intent to the AI is exactly how people and institutions erase human action in the creation of technology. It also leads to further perceptions of technology as acultural, unbiased, and, in essence, magical.

Zager & Evans - In the Year 2525

https://youtu.be/zKQfxi8V5FA

#FovoriteMusic 30/

Harry Chapin--Taxi

https://youtu.be/c5dwksSbD34

#FovoriteMusic 29/

Um. A founding investor of Post.news is going to participate in #QElon’s “Twitter Files” #psyop.

This seems problematic.

Awesome news on fusion, and a good reason to continue to invest going forward: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/science/nuclear-fusion-energy-breakthrough.html

But its only one milestone on a long road to make it cheaper than fission and other clean firm generation sources.

It would establish one standard phrase to indicate when food is at its highest quality, and another to identify the date after which safety is a concern

It means more food is grown, transported, and refrigerated than needed — which creates carbon pollution

And when food rots in a landfill, it releases methane, a potent global warming gas.

So Gunders’s group is pushing for passage of a federal bill to regulate date labeling

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/12/confusion-over-food-labels-creates-unnecessary-waste-and-pollution/

#environment
#ClimateChange #Climate #food

1) Quebec on Monday reported 3,157 Influenza A cases in the week ending Dec. 10 — a decrease of 5 per cent from the week before, suggesting the earlier-than-expected flu epidemic may have peaked in this province. But a smattering of Influenza B cases ticked up from 8 to 18.

Its a sad sign that saying this is even remotely controversial these days but...

COVID-19 killed one out of every 300 people in the US, a tragedy that defies comprehension. Vaccines are highly effective at preventing death and hospitalization, particularly for vulnerable groups: