thanne

Infographic with AI slop published in Nature Scientific Reports

"Runctitiononal features"? "Medical fymblal"? "1 Tol Line storee"? This gets worse the longer you look at it. But it's got to be good, because it was published in Nature Scientific Reports last week: www.nature.com/articles/s41... h/t @asa.tsbalans.se

Panel One: A sportscaster speaks to a television camera "You join us just in time for the annual booksellers versus librarians tug of war." Panel Two: We see the participants warming up as he continues... "Two very strong teams this year, they’ve both been in training since February. As always, the real skill in this match is not to start chatting about boo-" Panel Three: "Too late!! A pair of librarians are discussing the new Margaret Atwood! A crowd is forming! The booksellers are joining in! It's all over!!" We see all the participants chatting. Panel Four: The sportscaster finishes up to the camera: "The rope lies untouched! The discussions continue! We have a draw for 325th year in a row! Join us again next year!" End. Bonus alt-text Content: Fun fact! The first tug of war was between the staff of Cranston Library and those of Daniel Midwinter Booksellers www.cranstonlibraryreigate.com/ www.blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscripts/2017/11/10/booksellers/

Now for some sports news...
(this week's cartoon for @theguardian.com books pages)

『王子装束ゑの木大晦日の狐火』 New Year's Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Ōji A print depicting a flock of supernatural foxes at the base of a tree overlooking a city at night. It glows with mystery

I saw a new exhibit of some of hiroshige’s 100 famous views of edo today and this one stopped me in my tracks

Something just occurred to be about that 'ask a chatbot to draw a clock' thing that is going around this morning. If you search the web for "draw a clock", what you get is a bunch of papers on diagnosing cognitive decline. The clocks the chatbots draw look just like the examples in those papers […]

World Central Kitchen | WCK in Jamaica After Historic Hurricane World Central Kitchen’s Relief Team is in Jamaica after Category 5 Hurricane Melissa made landfall. The storm brought destructive winds, torrential rain, and widespread flooding. We’re working with local partners to serve meals as to families impacted by the storm.

WCK Responds to Historic Hurricane Melissa
#ChefsForJamaica #WorldCentralKitchen #hurricanemelissa
https://wck.org/relief/melissa-25

This is a natural reaction of your brain to repeatedly seeing horrific things. It will pay less and less attention to those images and have less of a visceral reaction. You can accept horrors.

This is what the fascists want. They want you to accept things continually getting worse and more violent.

A big sign showing Trump with the hair and jacket of his friend Kim Jong Un

A cheerful young woman holding a hand-lettered sign saying "The Only Good Orange Monarch Is A Butterfly" with several paper Monarch butterflies attached

Street view of a large crowd holding signs, the US Capitol building in the distance.

[No Kings Rally]

Nice turnout in DC.

Next year in November, the Voyager 1 spacecraft will be ONE full light day away from the Earth!

Launched in 1977, it took almost 50 Earth years to reach "just" distance of 1 light day

Space is so big and we are so tiny :blobcatgiggle:

I've been doing election recommendation pages for over twenty years. Usually there are dozens of state and local measures to sort through. This years there's One. And it's and easy choice. Vote YES on 50 to help stop Trump and the Republicans. http://acme.com/jef/propositions/

Mike Johnson tried tonight to characterize the upcoming No Kings 2.0 day on 10/18 as a “Hate America” movement. Wrong. Utterly wrong. To reject dictators, authoritarians, and tyrants is to love America, to love the very idea at the heart of it.

GGB #Gradient checks in.

I had just assumed Steve Bellovin was in the Internet Hall of Fame, but he's not.This seems like something that needs remedying when nominations open up again.

Panel 1. image of a huge nuclear plant. “Reactor Overheating” 2. A worker in a hazmat suit works at a computer. The screen reads: “Press cancel to avoid critical overload” 3 - 9. The worker continues to type at the computer. The screen changes in each panel and reads: “Enter password to confirm” “Incorrect password” “Incorrect password” “Do you want to reset your password?” “Reset link has been sent to your email” “Please choose a new password” “New password can't be the same as old password” The colour gets hotter in each panel. Starting blue in 1 and ending in red in 9. Panel 10. Wide view. The entire earth is blown up.

My latest cartoon for @newscientist.com

p.s. this week I am on a USA/Canada tour with my new book. Details and preorder links at tomgauld.com

@ai6yr @mattblaze I had the same thought. Pretty shortsighted in any case. I hope they can still make changes based on passenger feedback.

ONLY DICTATORS FEAR SIDEWALK CHALK (in multicolored chalk, on a sidewalk)

Seen today in DC

I want us to be at the point where "Were you exposed to AI brainrot in the workplace? You may be entitled to compensation" ads by lawyers are filling all the top ad slots.

Andrew Kadel @DrewKadel@social.coop My daughter, who's had a degree in computer science for 25 years, posted this about ChatGPT on Facebook. It's the best description I've seen. Something that seems fundamental to me about ChatGPT, which gets lost over and over again: When you enter text into it, you're asking "What would a response to this sound like?" If you put in a scientific question, and it comes back with a response citing a non-existent paper with a plausible title, using a real journal name and an author name who's written things related to your question, it's not being tricky or telling lies or doing anything at all surprising! This is what a response to that question would sound like! It did the thing! But people keep wanting the "say something that sounds like an answer" machine to be doing something else, and believing it *is* doing something else. It's good at generating things that sound like responses to being told it was wrong, so people think that it's engaging in introspection or looking up more information or something, but it's not, it's only, ever, saying something that sounds like the next bit of the conversation.

The only thing ChatGPT ever does.

@lemay This is how you know you’ve really Arrived.

In a stunning reversal,
the Pentagon said it will uphold a longstanding program that supplies critical hurricane data to federal weather forecasters
—just days before it was set to end.

The move follows outcry from meteorologists and public officials blindsided by the planned cancellation at […]

@VeroniqueB99 The capitalization is an excellent touch here

The Trump administration is set to incinerate nearly 500 tonnes of emergency food, enough to feed 1.5 million children for a week. Despite repeated requests from USAID staff to distribute the food, which was intended for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the new political leaders of USAID […]

Breaking: The Supreme Court provides the Trump Administration with a stack of pre-signed, blank orders.

Fun game a reader sent me: www.word.golf

On the awfulness that this way comes.

Later.

After the votes are counted.

Screenshot of a press release from June 8th saying that the city of Glendale canceled an ICE detainee contract

Glendale, which is a city in LA County, just canceled its contract with ICE.

Because protesting works. Protesting works. Protesting works. Protesting works. Protesting works. Protesting works. Protesting works. Protesting works. Protesting works. Protesting […]

[Original post on social.coop]

When people say "scientists (or experts generally) are untrustworthy because they change their opinions all the time", they're actually describing an important reason science is *more* trustworthy.

Breaking: FDA chief Marty Makary to reorganize the FDA into divisions each focused on one of the four humors.

How Antivaxxers sound to the rest of us: Gordon Scott I once almost choked to death while eating food. I did my own research and discovered that I am not alone. Thousands of people choke every year while eating, and hundreds of those people die. Thats why I don't feed my kids. Its dangerous. Now plenty of people will point out that food supposedly "prevents starvation," and that might be true, but its not fair to completely ignore all the dangers food poses, like choking, allergies, gingivitis, and garlic breath. I'm just saying, do your own research and decide what you think is best for your kids. If you choose to give your kids potentially deadly food, thats your problem, but as a parent, I don't think the government has any right to tell me that I need to feed my kids.

Wake up, sheeple. Food is killing our kids

#antivaxxers #conspiracy #conspiracists #humour

I’m exasperated by any energy spent now on Biden’s cognitive health in the final years of his term? It was obvious he should not have sought a second term; should have to stuck to his promise to serve one term. Had he, the Democratic presidential nominee might or might not have won in 2024 […]