tripu @tripu@qoto.org

There are ~ 21 ongoing #wars (conflicts consisting in the use of armed force, between two or more organized armed groups, and with ≥ 1,000 combat-related deaths in current or past year):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts

Related:

One hundred things that went well this year (some whimsical, some debatable):

https://www.gapminder.org/news/100-positive-news-from-2023/

Repeat after me:

“Things are getting better”

https://www.gapminder.org/facts/improvements/

https://notbyai.fyi/

Flawed (or dishonest) logic behind #AI criticism:

• All human artists “train on [stolen] images”, too. There’s simply no other way.
• Something (or someone) surpassing your ability to do something does not “deskill” you. Your own skills aren’t affected.
• Human workers being “disempowered” and “replaced” by new technology is a centuries-old constant of History, and a very good one overall — we have been dealing with that forever, and when sufficient time passes, everyone’s happy about the change. This critic should realise that she didn’t rely on human scribes, human postmen, human typesetters, etc to make her point heard: she sent e-mail to a newspaper that is composed and produced using #technology and employing a fraction of the workers that were once necessary — and we’re receiving her ideas on our computers in the form of a digital image; so many human workers out of the loop now! And that’s great.

I’m not necessarily happy about the disorganised way AI is happening, either. But find better arguments, and make specific proposals, people.

“While he was on bail for #hacking Nvidia and BT/EE and in police protection at a Travelodge hotel, [the 18-year-old autistic Briton] continued hacking and carried out his most infamous hack. Despite having his laptop confiscated, Kurtaj managed to breach #Rockstar, the company behind #GTA, using an Amazon Firestick, his hotel TV and a mobile phone.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67663128

Aaand more recent music of mine:

https://vimeo.com/897439075

Without looking it up: how many wars are going on in the world right now?

(Yes, the number is debatable. Think “armed conflict”, “armed force between two or more organized armed groups”, and “≥ 1K deaths in the past year”. I’ll provide “sources” when the poll closes.)

Practicing with my old #oboe

#music #score

+1

https://substack.com/home/post/p-139757629

The influence of “four #parenting dimensions (academic involvement, structure, cultural stimulation, and goals)” on “child personality #development” is “small”:

“We extended this #research by examining the long-term relations between four underexplored parenting dimensions and child #BigFive #personality traits using bivariate latent growth models in a large longitudinal dataset (N = 3,880). Results from growth models revealed a preponderance of null relations between these parenting measures and child personality, especially between changes in parenting and changes in child personality. In general, the observed associations between parenting and child Big Five personality were comparable in magnitude to the association between factors such as SES and birth order, and child personality—that is, small.”

https://online.ucpress.edu/collabra/article/7/1/29766/118998/Longitudinal-Associations-Between-Parenting-and

#relax #YoureNotThatImportant

My year #2023 (so far) in #books:

https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2023/64930929

Probably my favourite 24 #podcasts of the last three or four years — at least, the ones I’ve listened to the most