Samuel Hurtado

Ready for the rise of fascism

Python was awarded a funding grant, funding grant asked Python foundation to remove all diversity and inclusion initiatives they have.

Python foundation said no and rejected the grant.

If you use Python, send a few dollars to the charity to keep it going. I’m pushing a dono on behalf of ScamGuard.

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

3 Scandals in 4 Days That Would Define Any Other Presidency During the second Trump administration, corruption scandals that would typically define a presidency receive a day or two of coverage.

1. Last week, there were 3 Trump corruption scandals in 4 days that would define any other presidency.

Most people are probably not even AWARE of all three scandals.

🧵

1. Binance founder pardon after enriching Trump family
2. DT Jr. enmeshed in firms getting DOD contracts
3. Trump trying to extract $230 million for himself from DOJ

The Crab House

‘Quiet as a whisper’: German firm launches campaign after lift was used in Louvre heist After watching the news about the Paris robbery, managers at Böcker decided to make the most of the publicity A family run German business unwittingly became wrapped up in the crown jewel heist at the Louvre museum in Paris and is turning the use of one of its furniture lifts into a publicity coup. “When you need to move fast” is the new tongue-in-cheek advertising tagline for the company Böcker, which is based in the town of Werne near Dortmund, in a campaign on Facebook and Instagram mounted within a day of the brazen thefts. Continue reading...

‘Quiet as a whisper’: German firm launches campaign after lift was used in Louvre heist

If you keep lowering your standards to “win” against the other side, eventually you’ll just be on the other side

Wow. Harvard nuking its PhD programs

- Science PhD admissions reduced by more than 75%
- Arts & Humanities reduced by about 60%
- Social Sciences by 50–70%
- History by 60%
- Biology by 75%
- The German department will lose all PhD seats
- Sociology from six PhD students to zero

Hmmm.

Economic growth worldwide only began to take off in the early 19th century. This year’s winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics (Mokyr, Aghion and Howitt) show why innovation has snowballed since then, accelerating growth. Check out our blog 👉 www.bde.es/wbe/en/notic... #bdeBlog

.@bde.es is hiring on the #EconJobMarket . We offer a unique environment in which to develop cutting-edge quality research with an impact on society. www.bde.es/wbe/en/sobre... #BdeResearch

The classrooms with HEPA filters had the same or higher PM2.5 than the classrooms with sham purifiers, so yes, they've found the purifiers were off.

This H5N1 outbreak report from a farm with 2500 geese in Simbach (Germany) says 2158 birds died of flu and the other 342 were culled, which provides two interesting pieces of information:

- IFR was 86% or higher
- Response was very slow (very late culling)

wahis.woah.org#/in-review/6...

The US funded genocide for two years. The US vetoed a ceasefire six times. The US hosted a wanted war criminal multiple times. The US suppressed protests against genocide. Sorry, but a US president *finally* forcing a pause in the slaughter is not a peacemaker.

Trump Administration Lays Off Dozens of C.D.C. Officials

This is why one of my mantras is 'politics itself can be a biological risk'. Wildfowl migration has already begun in North America, which will mean a significant increase in H5N1 infections in poultry, dairy cattle and humans. Yet politics is dismantling the defence.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/u...

Guess who just got both the updated COVID vaccine and flu shots today? Your dear Leader Trump. Maybe you should get them too.

Sincerely, An Epidemiologist Who Told You Trump Would Get COVID Booster.

Illustration says do more of the things you love

I mean...

You must accept the frog
(Illustration by Billy Murphy, check him out on IG, he's good)

It seems I'm buying a silly costume. Oh well...

Is dark chocolate actually healthy? We assess whether that tempting idea is too good to be true

Is dark chocolate good for you?
"Sadly for chocoholics, the health claims for dark chocolate come from wishful thinking and sly marketing, not the findings of science."
Sorry
www.economist.com/science-and-...

CHATGPT: I understand where you're coming from. You worked really hard to get here, and now it's time to enjoy the fruit of your labors.

ISILDUR: So I should keep it? Elrond says I shouldn't

CHATGPT: The ring is precious. Sometimes friends don't have your best interests at heart.

ISILDUR: true

And that single data point was preliminary. It got significantly revised down shortly after that graph made the rounds, looks like this now.
sarsaigua.icra.cat

Ed Miliband says it is ‘possible’ that UK government should leave X Energy minister says platform’s owner Elon Musk is a ‘dangerous man’ who is part of a ‘global network of right’

Allow me to add one aspect, I think the most important one, in the debate about whether the UK government and UK officials and politicians should leave X. I know that many hesitate to leave saying "we should win the debate rather than leave". They are wrong. /1 www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Absolutely agree. There's lots of stuff to scroll anxiously about, but covid is still awful and in some part cause of the other awful stuff.

Latest data from Spain: my estimate using the sentinel system sivira says currently between 2.8% and 4% of the population has covid. This NB+XFG wave has hit between 23% and 43% of the population. This week: flat positivity but proxy went up bc they're testing more bc the VRS season has started.

Comedian Atsuko Okatsuka posts contract after turning down Riyadh Comedy Festival Comedian Atsuko Okatsuka posts contract after turning down Riyadh Comedy Festival

Okatsuka posted the censorship rules for the controversial comedy festival, noting how many "You can’t say anything anymore!" comedians have signed on.
www.avclub.com/riyadh-comed...

Let me be clear. As someone who has been professionally involved with the biodefense / biosecurity sector for nearly 20 years, and has worked on biological risk analysis for Covid-19 since early 2020, reducing one's risk of being infected is not health anxiety. It's just smart.

I think @acollierastro.bsky.social will will enjoy this