tingilinde

global warming and changing climates

Changes in local climates can play havoc species and ecosystems.  Here Antarctic seabirds had a breeding failure.

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In these regions, climate change caused snowfall and snow accumulation to be significantly higher than in previous years. Now, a study published on March 13 in the journal Current Biology shows that these unusually strong snowstorms have interfered with the birds’ ability to breed.

“We know that in a seabird colony, when there’s a storm, you will lose some chicks and eggs, and breeding success will be lower,” says Sebastien Descamps, first author of the study and researcher at the Norwegian Polar Institute. “But here we’re talking about tens if not hundreds of thousands of birds, and none of them reproduced throughout these storms. Having zero breeding success is really unexpected.”

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the clean vehicle tax credit

It may not apply to many EVs for awhile.

A far better use of funding would have been to encourage smaller EVs - like electric cargo bikes - that could displace driving.  The best path would probably be addressing the infrastructure issue, but snowballs in hell.

 

 

 

 

 

a bit of history

Too many are claiming politicians are somehow above the law because - well something the framers must have wanted or semething like that.

But Aaron Burr was indicted for murder by both New York and New Jersey while sitting as Vice President. Two years after leaving office, he was federally indicted for treason.

The Framers had ample opportunity to create all-purpose legal immunity for politicians. They declined.  

Ex-presidents have always been subject to prosecution for their crimes. Vice-presidents, state governors, and congressmen have all been indicted and some have seen prison time. The only new twist is a  career criminal became president.

 

 

calling out the ai manifesto paper

Some movers in the field who also happen to worry about ethics. 

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While we are not surprised to see this type of letter from a longtermist organization like the Future of Life Institute, which is generally aligned with a vision of the future in which we become radically enhanced posthumans, colonize space, and create trillions of digital people, we are dismayed to see the number of computing professionals who have signed this letter, and the positive media coverage it has received. It is dangerous to distract ourselves with a fantasized AI-enabled utopia or apocalypse which promises either a "flourishing" or "potentially catastrophic" future [1]. Such language that inflates the capabilities of automated systems and anthropomorphizes them, as we note in Stochastic Parrots, deceives people into thinking that there is a sentient being behind the synthetic media. This not only lures people into uncritically trusting the outputs of systems like ChatGPT, but also misattributes agency. Accountability properly lies not with the artifacts but with their builders.

What we need is regulation that enforces transparency. Not only should it always be clear when we are encountering synthetic media, but organizations building these systems should also be required to document and disclose the training data and model architectures. The onus of creating tools that are safe to use should be on the companies that build and deploy generative systems, which means that builders of these systems should be made accountable for the outputs produced by their products. While we agree that "such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders," we also note that such decisions should not be up to the academics experiencing an "AI summer," who are largely financially beholden to Silicon Valley. Those most impacted by AI systems, the immigrants subjected to "digital border walls," the women being forced to wear specific clothing, the workers experiencing PTSD while filtering outputs of generative systems, the artists seeing their work stolen for corporate profit, and the gig workers struggling to pay their bills should have a say in this conversation.

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The AI longtermists are an odd and probably dangerous bunch in the way that Edward Teller was.

 

hcr on the state of affairs

Her commentary on recent news.

 

what so much of reporting is missing (particularly the nyts)

You need to put Trump indictment in its proper context:

It wasn't just a payoff to prevent something sleazy from going public. The reason they wanted to keep it secret was to win a presidential election. That's the issue: This was gross interference with a presidential election. And it worked.

 

justifications

a tip of the hat to dewayne

lips!

T-Rex may have had lips

 

what totalitarianism can do to science

 

Mmany other great scientists who hadn't been blessed with Swedish holy water also left.  Some stayed, but the loss was enormous. That could easily happen in the US.  It's already beginning to take place in red states.

 

finland joins nato

Sweden is still blocked, but now it's only paperwork for Finland

 

 

how christian is christian nationalism?

It's not.

Christian influence has waxed and waned in the US.  There's always been a tribal identity and the current flavor is white nationalist christianity is hardly that of Jesus.

 

 

 

on the threat to kids

Jessica Winters with a slightly different take on guns and kids.

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But this sympathy for individual decision-making doesn’t accord with what we know more broadly about homeschooling—research has shown that homeschooled children are at higher risk for abuse and neglect, partly because they have less contact with mandated reporters such as teachers and social workers. Nor does this sympathy match what we know about gun violence. Eighty-five per cent of children ages twelve and under who are killed by a gun are shot in their own home. Almost two-thirds of child deaths involving domestic violence are caused by guns. Among children killed accidentally by firearms, the vast majority either shoot themselves or are shot by a peer, sibling, or parent, at their own home or at the home of a friend. Suicide deaths by children and teens, which typically involve a firearm kept in the home, have increased sixty-six per cent in the past decade.

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digital ageism

Something that needs addressing

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The grounds for concern with the deployment of AI in nursing homes become obvious once we understand the problematic context of nursing homes themselves. Most are chronically understaffed institutions where residents have limited autonomy. AI and its predecessor devices like closed circuit cameras and bed-exit sensors are positioned to further institutionalize and restrict self-determination, which conflicts directly with both widely popular nursing home reform efforts and (less popular) abolition efforts. Engaging with critical scholarship on information and data technologies would enhance understanding of the social harms of AI in relation to the increasing adoption of surveillance technologies within nursing homes. In turn, it would enable us who study aging to take the implications for increased surveillance and control of both older adults and workers seriously, and to incorporate refusal into our analytical lens. It would also help us understand, accommodate, and develop alternatives to (individual) consent models and call out the opportunity costs of prioritizing further investment in surveillance technologies over structural change in long-term care.

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on ai risks

A reliable source offers commentary on the "slam the brakes" letter from AI industry types.  (the letter is filled with hype and errors)

gotham

the etymology of the word