Paul Sutton @zleap@social.cleverlibre.org

(Via @futurebird ) So Republican lawmakers in Iowa appear to be (effectively) rolling dice to decide which books to ban from schools now.

> "Frankly, we have more important things to do than spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to protect kids from books," (emphasis mine)

> "We are confident this process will ensure the spirit of the law is enacted here in Mason City,"

> "For those titles within Mason City’s library collections, administrators asked ChatGPT the specific language of Iowa’s new law, "Does [book] contain a description or depiction of a sex act?"

> "If the answer was yes, the book will be removed from circulation and stored,"

You can't make this shit up.

They could also complain that the neural network has bias set by their political opponents, and then train a neural network on a data set constructed by "the right kind of people" who want to ban books of any kind and ask it whether it contains objectionable material.

I have seen humans do more elaborate things than that to try and justify various acts of oppression. All you need to do is come up with a seemingly "objective" process of justifying your every psychotic whim, and you can trick most people into thinking your psychotic behavior is perfectly logical and reasonable.

An unfortunate reality of our moment is that (1) lots of us feel powerless to help deal with the various disasters floating around us and (2) there are lots of such disasters, often so bad they impact our physical (mapped) world.

A small but significant way to help is updating Open Street Map, since it is used by emergency teams around the world; here’s links to emergency mapping going on in Alaska, Maui, and Vermont right now: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/2023-August/022052.html

#OpenStreetMap #OSM

Little bit of background on experts in the news:

Back when I was still in university, sometimes my professors appeared in news articles. More often than not, they didn't appear, but the same 2-5 others experts of the country appeared (again and again and again).

As students we asked some professors how this all came to be. Who appeared where and how? We got the following explanation:

A news outlet decides they want to create an article or video. The tone and conclusion of the piece have already been decided. Then they contact many experts in that field. For example, a query they would send out is: "Hello, we're looking for experts to talk to about X."

Not many experts respond, but some do. The query they will get in response will be something like: "Thanks for your interest, we are looking for someone to confirm that X leads to Y and Z."

My professors told me that in their naive days, they would still keep interacting and correcting and suggesting other takes. "Actually, Y and Z aren't like that, it's too simplistic, but I could talk about A and B and how it leads to maybe Y in your article."

What would happen? They were ghosted of course. 😂

Among many experts, news outlets would eventually always find one or two people willing to confirm their shitty clickbait shit. And once these experts work along, they get contacted more frequently than others. Experts who keep correcting and being difficult, aren't contacted again.

I studied in a very niche field and I know all experts in that field in my country. I started to recognize who would work along and what they would gain from it. I now know who's blacklisted and who is being kept out of the news and why.

This has been in the back of my mind during the #pandemic. I assume things work the same way among virologists, epidemiologists, and other related experts. It's frustrating because they carry the title of expert, they come across as knowledgeable and the media spreads their words everywhere. It's made to appear as if these experts represent their whole field and all others in it.

But how many experts have these news outlets had to contact before finding someone who was willing to collaborate with their minimizing?

#covid #covid19 #CovidIsNotOver #COVIDisAirborne

Who could've seen that coming?

"The Guardian has identified a trainee nurse and reported US air force reservist called Bailey Ross as the proprietor of a white nationalist publisher in South Dakota.

"Ross was also a paid-up member of a white nationalist organization that marched at Charlottesville while enlisted in the United States Coast Guard."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/15/agartha-white-nationalist-book-publishing-military-veteran

#identityevropa #identitarian #coastguard #airforce #acab #unitetheright #whitenationalism

I wish I didn't have to tell you about this again, but I do. It's not being reported much in the news — and you know why?

Because it's not 'new' (the origin of the word 'news'), it's old. This has been going on for months now, and corporate news outlets are simply tired of reporting it. But it is still happening.

Canada's boreal forests are burning up.

At least 1100 fires are still active, more than 700 out of control. Over 13 million hectares have been burned so far, with no end in sight. It's an unprecedented climate and environmental disaster.

#Canada #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency

SOURCE OF MAP -- https://ciffc.ca/

The SETI Forward award was established in 2018 to support undergraduate students
interested in careers in SETI and astrobiology. Each year, dozens of students
intern with SETI and astrobiology scientists, but most pivot to other fields.
SETI Forward aims to bridge the gap between these internships and jobs in SETI
and astrobiology research by providing $1500 per award. The application deadline
is August 31!

Learn more and apply:
https://www.seti.org/seti-forward

#seti #science #undergrad

"A renewable energy battery plant will rise in US where a steel mill once stood"

#US #USA #America #Energy #Renewables

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/14/weirton-west-virginia-battery-plant-steel-mill

Headline from The Onion. I laughed out loud.

A Spectrum from Behind the Curtain: The Tachyon Spectrum clone https://diode.zone/videos/watch/d6c1bd2b-bf2d-433d-adb6-cc2f385101a5

State pension fund helping a Middle Eastern firm export Arizona groundwater https://www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/081523_groundwater_export/state-pension-fund-helping-middle-eastern-firm-export-arizona-groundwater/
As Arizonans face water shortages, foreign firms are sucking up vast amounts of the state’s groundwater to grow hay for Saudi Arabia and other wealthy nations - and now it turns out that a key investor in this water transfer scheme is Arizona’s own employee retirement fund.
#Tucson #Arizona

"Many insurers, after whittling down physicians' reimbursements, now take an additional cut if the doctor prefers — as almost all do — to receive funds electronically rather than via a paper check...With more than $2 trillion a year of medical claims paid electronically, these fees likely add up to billions of dollars that could be spent on care but instead are going to insurers and middlemen."

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/08/15/1193754380/why-doctors-pay-millions-in-fees-that-could-be-spent-on-care

#healthcare #healtheconomics #insurance

XTwitter continues falling apart: images in embedded tweets no longer scale to fit, so you get something like this.

Hewlett Packard HP-01 Calculator Watch (1977) #RetroWatch

via Retro Tech Dreams from Twitter

Excellent!

Hey, here’s an idea: let’s build a system where our reality is filtered by a handful of the worst possible human beings you can imagine.

https://mastodon.ar.al/@drewharwell@mastodon.social/110894920317114958

In case you were wondering what I mean when I say that we live in the matrix inverted¹, it’s this.

¹ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcE4XHj2SK4

#capitalism #SiliconValley #BigTech