@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

CurtAdams

@CurtAdams@urbanists.social

Semi-retired biologist with interests in speciation models, urbanism, liberal/left politics, economics, quartertone music theory, boardgames, ambient music, house rabbits, and yoga.

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RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

The most ridiculous thing about cop procedural shows is when they ask where a person was, and what they were doing at a specific time the person always has perfect and immediate recall. I'd be desperately trying to remember what day of the week that was, and trying to open my phone calendar. If I was the cop, I'd immediately be suspicious of the person who remembered exactly where they were and what they were doing.

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@RickiTarr I was in an accident once and an insurance investigator asked me to describe the person I had had an accident with. I described him as well as I could, and then he showed me a pic. I recognized him immediately, but was embarrassed that half my description was wrong. Real memories are messy.

TonyStark, to random
@TonyStark@progressivecafe.social avatar

A common sense approach, in my opinion.

Open Letter to College and University Presidents on Student Protests | ACLU
https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/open-letter-to-college-and-university-presidents-on-student-protests

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@GreenFire @TonyStark @MJ The protesters didn't have the power to close the campus. The administrators are the ones who closed it. Blame the perpetrators of the closure, not the victims.

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@TonyStark @GreenFire @MJ False analogy. A sit-in is not unsafe.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

Would half chicken half ducks be called Chucks or Dickens?

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@RickiTarr And, incidentally, if they could survive, a Chunk and a Dickens would probably be very different. Where there are sex chromosome, hybrids are typically very different depending on which parent is which sex. Ligers and Tigons, for example, are very different: https://a-z-animals.com/blog/liger-vs-tigon-6-key-differences-explained/

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@RickiTarr A common convention in naming hybrids is that the first part of the name comes from the male parent and the second from the female parent. So a Rooster-duck hybrid would be a Chuck and a Drake-chicken hybrid would be a Dickens.

But it's probably moot because the evolutionary distance is about 90 million year. I think the record evolutionary distance for a live bird hybrid was 55 million years, and it was a really messed up bird. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2907691/

ncrav, (edited ) to random
@ncrav@mas.to avatar

Today is the day bunDad decided I was born in, he doesn't really know the specific day and I was too busy drinking mommy's milk to care 🦫 anyway I'm three years old 🎉 :DsaprvingLua: (1 of 4)

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@ncrav Belated Hoppy birthday, Lua!

shoq, to random
@shoq@mastodon.social avatar

I am quite confident that someone is designing an LLM right now that will be able to help patients boil down all the web advice into usable chunks. Right now it’s just maddening trying to do that manually. Opinions vary so widely, often because there’s just a lot of obsolete data out there.

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@shoq Oh you sweet summer child. They're actually designing LLMs that will chop suey all those existing contradictory recommendations into thousands of NEW recommendations mixing fact, fiction, and errors with minimal to no source traceability, boosted by SEO to push any genuine recommendations, accurate or otherwise, to page 15 or below of search results.

We will soon be forced to go to primary sources to get anything meaningful.

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@shoq That's exactly the problem. Machine learning works by training the machine with the contrast of some low-quality data and high quality data. The problem with anything under study or with controversy is there is no high quality data. Sometimes there's no consensus, and even consensus is often wrong.

And insofar as you have accurate info to train the machine with, you'd be better off just releasing that rather than a complex AI that will produce somewhat less accurate paraphrases.

StillIRise1963, to random
@StillIRise1963@mastodon.world avatar

Don’t say shit about caring about trans people, gay people, Black people, brown people, immigrants or your own damn self if you don’t VOTE for Biden. And, you can kiss my ass too.

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@Jackiemauro @StillIRise1963

President Trump would be a horror show for saving the planet:

https://www.eenews.net/articles/trump-vows-day-one-executive-order-targeting-offshore-wind/

ajsadauskas, to car
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

Are microplastics from car tyres contributing to heart disease?

"Add one more likely culprit to the long list of known cardiovascular risk factors including red meat, butter, smoking and stress: microplastics.

"In a study released Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, an international team of physicians and researchers showed that surgical patients who had a build-up of micro and nanoplastics in their arterial plaque had a 2.1 times greater risk of nonfatal heart attack, nonfatal stroke or death from any cause in the three years post surgery than those who did not."

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-03-07/microplastics-may-be-risk-factor-for-cardiovascular-disease

The research is particularly noteworthy, given that one of the biggest sources of microplastic pollution is the synthetic rubber in car tyres: https://aus.social/@ajsadauskas/112015017609398126

So it's not just the sedentary lifestyles that car-dependent planning encourages that's causing health issues.

And it's not just exhaust fumes either.

There's also the health impacts of microplastics, including from car tyres.

Worth noting as well that internal documents from the big oil companies show that they knew since the 1970s that recycling wasn't going to solve the problem of plastic pollution. They promoted it anyway: https://aus.social/@ajsadauskas/112064312364853769

@fuck_cars

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@PowerCrazy Actually plastic water bottles leave water they contain LOADED with microplastics:

https://www.npr.org/2024/01/10/1223730333/bottled-water-plastic-microplastic-nanoplastic-study

It's not out of the question that the significant health risks we're finding for ultraprocessed food are partly, or even mostly, from microplastics introduced in processing or storage.

Wear makes microplastic issues much worse, yes, but plastic is turning out to be quite bad enough even new.

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@PowerCrazy @NotBillMurray You have to define "wear items" to include plastic packaging for that to be true. Probably also food and water processing as well, like plastic pipes.

ai6yr, to random

Remarkable how out-of-the-mainstream utilitarian cycling seems to be in my neighborhood. Strong car-centric culture in Southern California, for sure. (yes, I was, until recently, part of that). 🤔

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@John @ai6yr Even before I became a bicycling advocate, I felt I should cycle to the gym rather than drive there and use a cycling machine. That's just - ridiculous.

thomasfuchs, to random
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

Remember 10 years ago when the tech industry promised we’ll “3D print everything from food to houses”?

Now think about the promises about AI.

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@thomasfuchs It was overblown, but there is some reality. My husband works at a industrial valve company, and they now 3D print many of their valve parts. OTOH, I have an acquaintance who works printing 3D game settings for RPGs. Larger sets are insanely expensive, even now, because 2x dimensions is 8x printing. He has some amusing stories of the weird stuff that goes wrong in 3D prints, too.

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@Moonrise2473 @lgsp Too bad about the timing. If this had started right after an election the improvements would be done, and they could have locked in the fines by dropping other city taxes and making the city's budget depend on the fines.

ai6yr, to climate

Bloomberg: Southeast Asia heatwave: Thailand’s heat index tops 52 degrees as Philippines risks ‘overloaded’ power systems https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3260883/southeast-heatwave-thailands-heat-index-tops-52-degrees-philippines-risks-overloaded-power-systems

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@ai6yr I was in Death Valley once and a ranger there said when the temp goes above 120F (about 50C) you feel an instinctive panic. Your body KNOWS it's not supposed to be in that. And Death Valley is a lot drier than Thailand.

lilithsaintcrow, to random
@lilithsaintcrow@raggedfeathers.com avatar

“And as the internet becomes dominated by these centralized platforms and the sites they trawl for content, so begins the vicious cycle of the Habsburg AI...There's also no way to escape the fact that these hungry robots require legal plagiarism, and any number of copyright assaults could massively slow their progress.” https://www.wheresyoured.at/are-we-watching-the-internet-die/

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@lilithsaintcrow Deserves a double upvote for "Hapsburg AI".

ncrav, to random
@ncrav@mas.to avatar
  • Me comes home from gym
  • Lua comes running waiting for snacks
  • I get the snac box and drop it on the floor by mistake 👀
    I think Lua thought for a moment that she was in heaven as she tried to get as many snacs as she could before I got them from the floor 🤣

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@ncrav I did that with blueberries once. It was very exciting for both Xavier and me since blueberries roll and they ended over most of the kitchen. It was quite a race for a while!

shoq, to random
@shoq@mastodon.social avatar

CRAP! While giving mom the swab. she hit my hand and a drop of solution spilled. I got 3.2 drops into the specimen pad. They say LESS THAN 4 drops could be false negative or “invalid result.” But she showed positive in a few seconds. Do I assume she’s positive, or go get another test?

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@shoq Positive. Too little sample can give a false negative but not a false positive. Best to you and her; fortunately vax really reduces severity. Take it extra easy during recovery.

shoq, to random
@shoq@mastodon.social avatar

Indeed. Unfortunately, they often point to what they occasionally do right as cover for what they more often do wrong.

In reply to…
https://mastodon.social/@dangillmor/112412042267276156

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@big_louse @shoq Putting out the occasional decent piece is an important part of the Times propaganda system. They have to keep people reading it in order to have people read their clouds-and-shadows coverage trying to make it seem like Democratic candidates have done something wrong when they haven't.

Hypx, to Hydrogen
@Hypx@mastodon.social avatar

CSX debuts its first hydrogen-fuel cell locomotive

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/csx-debuts-its-first-hydrogen-fuel-cell-locomotive/

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@Hypx That's just pointless. Fuel cells are only half as efficient as batteries, and with trains it's straightforward to just use wires, which are even more efficient. Plus hydrogen is more expensive to make and transport than electricity. The companies involved have to know this. Why are they wasting everybody's time?
https://www.edmunds.com/electric-car/articles/hydrogen-vs-electric-cars.html

shoq, to random
@shoq@mastodon.social avatar

It’s astonishing how many words CNN and MSNBC can spew out every day, while saying so little. It’s hard to imagine how CNN’s new owner could make it worse than it was, but they’ve done an exceptional job. As for MSNBC, Rashida Jones has been another outstanding example of a media executive without a soul, a conscience, or lick of common sense.

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@shoq This is how a recent Guardian poll found, in the longest stretch of low unemployment since the 60s and the fiirst increase in manufacturing employment since the 70s, over 50% of Americans think we're in a recession.

Satori, to random
@Satori@mastodon.thirring.org avatar

BunMum and BunDad are busy working today (although honestly 99% of their attention is on me as it should be 😏) but the quick update is very happy - I woke up still feeling great! Eating, pooping, hopping, and grooming.

This critical care business is the pits for getting out of my white fur. I’m glad BunMum is easing back on the frequency of those feedings now that I’m eating!

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@Satori Keep eating that nommy hay, Skye, so you won't have to keep eating that Critical Care!

CurtAdams, to random
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

Xavier asked to go out into the backyard today and had a good time munching on the grass.

A sandy Flemish Giant enjoying eating grass next to some tree roots.

shoq, to random
@shoq@mastodon.social avatar

Women stars can get such shit from other women. I will never understand why so many I've met dislike Pink. I think she's another world class pop diva who, despite her massive success, has always been underrated. And you can see her influence in so many others. Is there something about her I never heard that puts so many off?

CurtAdams,
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

@shoq The sound is too loud at her concerts, maybe? I lost some cochleal hairs when I saw her. But yeah, Pink is a great songwriter, great performer, openhearted, and a good person as far as I can tell. I would really wonder about anybody who would hate her.

CurtAdams, to random
@CurtAdams@urbanists.social avatar

Worldwide groundwater measurements indicate PFAS "forever chemicals" may be even more of a hazard than previously thought : https://phys.org/news/2024-04-underestimating-future-impact-pfas-environment.html

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