I often think about how the government hounded Aaron Swartz to death for scraping Jstor, yet all these AI companies scraped almost literally all of human knowledge (and continue to do so even when they're told to stop) and have had no criminal consequences.

“Dana Defonte, 49, from New Jersey, has a mother-in-law in North Carolina who entered hospice care this week. She and her husband are concerned, she said, that they won’t make it in time to see her mother-in-law before she dies. As it stands, she and her husband are planning to drive nine hours”

Outbreak Investigation of Infant Botulism: Infant Formula Do not use certain lots of ByHeart Whole Nutrition Infant Formula. FDA’s Investigation is ongoing.

NEWS — FDA announces 13 cases of infant botulism across 10 states after babies were given ByHeart powder formula from two specific lots.

If I'm doing the math correctly, Musk's big pay packet yesterday could have made each of these now-dead people millionaires instead.
He is among the sickest men the world has ever produced.

The only appropriate safeguard to me that might help as a therapist would be to require a constant shattering of the fourth wall. A reminder that the machine is generating results probabilistically, not based on “judgement” or “knowledge”

This week's NT text feels too close for comfort:

The day of the Lord will not come (until) the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction. He opposes & exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple, declaring himself to be God.

'Viral Doesn’t Mean Verified': The Alarming Rise of Unsafe Baby Sleep Advice Online A new investigation from 'Consumer Reports' sheds light on the dangerous information online, just as rates of infant deaths are rising.

A new investigation from 'Consumer Reports' sheds light on the dangerous information online, just as rates of infant deaths are rising. (via Parents)

Part of the reason I think there isn’t as much pressure around stopping ChatGPT re: suicide/psychosis as compared to stuff like Panera Lemonade is because people are inclined to blame it on mental illness versus the tech, a kind of victim-blaming mentality that fits neatly into just world fallacy

Axios tried to bust James Talarico for following adult content creators on Instagram and I'm genuinely impressed by his campaign's response

Threads op: j.g_rubel Taught my kids how Socialism works. Let them Trick or Treat while I stayed home. Then took all their candy. Socialism 101 reply: johnrashotte The socialism part is where the community came together and fed your kids for free. The capitalism part is where you made them do all the work and stole from them.

*sip* ☕️

When contemplating the GOP's motives for destroying USAID, gutting the ACA, withholding SNAP, vaccine conspiracy mongering, etc. remember their wide, bloodthirsty streak of contempt for "welfare queens", "useless eaters" and pretty much anyone who isn't them.

They want their enemies gone...

Car culture is expensive. Costs of these crashes

$10,611,556 due to the deaths
$11,591,209 due to the incapacitating injuries
$21,001,512 due to the non-incapacitating injuries

= $43,204,277 total

Ray Lee is one of 43 people who received an incapacitating injury in a car crash last week. 246 people had non-incapacitating injuries last week.

this is a weekly phenomenon in Chicago. 🧵

"When I picked up my granddaughter from the federal agents, she had a dirty diaper, a bruise on her face, and was developing a rash. She was exhausted and cried… My heart aches knowing this could happen to others, to my kids, or even me, despite being U.S. citizens.”

There’s a young southern woman on tt doing an experiment: calling churches & asking if they can help her get baby formula, saying she can’t afford it. Of the 30+ she’s called, nearly every church has said no. The ones who said yes were:

Black Baptist Churches
A Mosque
A small Appalachian church

Mamdani's line that billionaires spent more to oppose his candidacy than he proposed to tax them really says it all.

Like a company that shuts down a profitable location as soon as it unionizes. The principle of maintaining control is more important.

Sorry to do litmus tests but I want candidates who understand and say out loud that the big tech industry is a hive of evil charlatans who get rich pumping poison into the world

And there are many other reasons I don't use LLMs. They're not reliable, they are built on theft, their creation incurs environmental costs & direct harm to people. The broader societal push to use AI for everything is destructive in countless ways & has horrifying political ramifications.

It's already a problem. The studies are already showing that AI use at the level most people are using it is making peoole dumber because they are basically outsourcing their brains.

Anyway, AI doesn’t have any value for me in anything I do. I understand this says something about *what* I do. But also? It’s only practically existed for maybe 18 months. I loved and worked almost 45 years without it so yeah, I’m cool.

Word.

The ballroom stuff cuts through to all the disengaged people who don’t follow politics. It’s very visual and meme-driven and hideous and genuinely shocking. Trump can’t help talking about it all the time, even as planes are grounded and children grow hungry.

Saturday in the woods with Rua ☺️

"Because of the dog's joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as well as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born."
~ Mary Oliver

One of the key things the Supreme Court is supposed to do on an emergency motion is to balance the hardships to each sides.

Here it is not even close--people starving v. the government not tapping a reserve they are supposed to tap anyway in the event of an emergency

Why America’s Government Shutdowns Exist and How to End Them One Legal Memo Created The Shutdown Era. Another Can End It.

Did you know gov shutdowns aren’t in the Constitution, any law, or Court ruling?
They exist because of a 1980 OLC memo—a lawyer’s opinion that everyone just went along with. Before 1980, funding gaps didn’t cause shutdowns.

What one memo created, another can undo. How the next D admin can undo it:

I think we need to stop calling it empathy and go back to calling it decency. It isn't a favour you're doing someone else, it's you proving that you aren't a fucking ghoul

I almost died of whooping cough (despite being vaccinated) as a child. I'm don't remember a lot of it, because I was young and because once I developed secondary pneumonia, I was pretty much out of it for a while. A peer caught in the same outbreak died - unsure of his vaccination status but we were

This may not sound like a lot compared to Texas but WV is roughly 5-6% the size of TX. This is a big deal.

www.hancockcountyhealthdepartment.com/news/health-...

What a banger

The fact that 30% of our stock market is wrapped up in “help-kids-kill-themselves” technology seems to be an important datapoint in the evolution of late stage capitalism.