A given call might contain information about a suspicious figure’s identity (“hawk!” “coyote!”), speed of approach, and size—or, if they happen to be a nosy researcher, their height and the color of their shirt. These messages are responded to with the appropriate behavior—craning a neck for a wheeling falcon, diving into a burrow for a close-by dog. By hanging cutout shapes above a prairie dog colony, UFO-style, Slobodchikoff and his colleagues learned that the rodents can even differentiate between circles and triangles (although not, for whatever reason, between circles and squares).
“It has been unfashionable in scientific circles to refer to animal communication systems as language,” says Slobodchikoff. Plenty of people consider language to be unique to our own species. But to him, the prairie dogs clear the bar, exhibiting “all the elements that linguists say you have to find,” from sounds that carry distinct meanings to the capacity for expressing new combinations of thoughts.
Sony Music opts out of AI training for its entire catalog | Ars Technica
"Sony Music is sending warning letters to more than 700 artificial intelligence developers and music streaming services globally in the latest salvo in the music industry’s battle against tech groups ripping off artists.
The Sony Music letter, which has been seen by the Financial Times, expressly prohibits AI developers from using its music—which includes artists such as Harry Styles, Adele and Beyoncé—and opts out of any text and data mining of any of its content for any purposes such as training, developing or commercializing any AI system.
"The world’s second-largest music group is also sending separate letters to streaming platforms, including Spotify and Apple, asking them to adopt “best practice” measures to protect artists and songwriters and their music from scraping, mining and training by AI developers without consent or compensation. It has asked them to update their terms of service, making it clear that mining and training on its content is not permitted."
@jackwilliambell simulations have shown that something getting to the equivalent to best-seller status is based on chance (kind of a butterfly effect), but I only want a modicum of success.
Election Countdown, 176 Days to Go: ‘Hot dogs. Let's talk about hot dogs.’
"2) And speaking of a guy in a bar …
Among Donald Trump’s virtues is that he does not drink. That is useful to remember in considering his current speaking style. On Saturday night Deb and I sat through the nearly two-hour entirety of his rally performance at Wildwood, on the Jersey shore, as televised by Fox. The whole thing is archived here, courtesy of Right Side Broadcasting." https://fallows.substack.com/p/election-countdown-176-days-to-go
"But I find it hard to picture the voter who—if not already a member of the MAGA minority—will get a fresh look at today’s Trump and think: Yeah, I’d like the next few years of news to be all about this! Jerry Brown told me years ago that shrewd politicians know that the public doesn’t always want to hear from them. Less is more. This is not Trump’s approach."
"Here are just a few samples of what Trump said this weekend. As far as I can see, they went unmentioned in mainstream stories about the event. (“That’s just Trump.”)
Trump claimed at the start of the speech that “over 100,000 people” were there. “You can’t even see the end of the crowd.” Fox had earlier placed the attendance at “thousands” and, briefly, at “tens of thousands.” A huge crowd for a beach event would have been around 30,000.
More than an hour into his talk, Trump said: “You guys! Not a single person has left.” Photos from that time showed that most of the crowd had long since bailed. (The screenshot below is from a Xitter video by Zac Anderson, showing the thinning crowd.)"
"He riffed at length about hot dogs. Some parts of the speech included “policy points” and details; these Trump was obviously reading, reluctant-schoolboy style, from a prompter. But whenever a point struck him as interesting he would light up and freewheel into an aside like this one.
The hotdog section was a fair sample of his improvisations. This is my best effort at a cleaned-up transcription. What’s below was all part of the same continuous passage, with nothing cut out:"
"Hotdogs, let's talk about hotdogs. I just had one actually. I just had one. It was very good. I hope it was. You know it was very good.
"Frank Sinatra told me a long time ago, never eat before you perform. I said I'm not performing. I'm a politician. If you can believe it, I hate to be called a politician. I like ‘I'm a businessman’ much better. But I guess I'm a politician.
"Because we did great in 2016. We did much better in 2020 A lot better. We had millions more of votes. So I guess, and this time, and I will say this, this spirit that we have this time blows both of them away. You know why?
"Because you still like me. But you saw what the alternative is. The alternative. It's just, the alternative is not a good thing.
"But I just had the best hot dog, so I said, Frank, I'm sorry.""
(Trump said)
"Now Pavarotti was a good friend. [Out of the blue,] He didn't have that same. He ate all the time. He didn't care.
"But I just had a hot dog and it was very good. So the price of hot dogs is up 22%, chicken’s up 32%. Hamburgers are up 37%. That's why I had the hot dog. It went up the least.
"Eggs are up 50%, gasoline’s up 50%. Bacon is up 79% Bacon! That's why I don't have bacon anymore. So expensive. Not one thing is cheaper.
"There's not one thing anywhere, there's not one item that's cheaper. Energy is way up. That's what caused the problem."
(End Trump quote)
"The whole speech was like this. And I’m not even getting into the parts about Hannibal Lecter. Again, think if you encountered a person like this on the street. Also, remember the front-page coverage Joe Biden got for saying “President of Mexico” rather than “President of Egypt.”"
"OK, here is one other part. It’s about how Joe Biden is no longer up to the job. I’m presenting it as one long paragraph, verbatim, because that is how it came across:
(Trump said)
“He [Biden] doesn’t know what the hell he is saying. Don't forget, he can't put two sentences together. He can't find the stairs off the stage. Let's see this stage when I'm finished. I got stairs there. I got stairs there. I got a nice ramp there. I got stairs. If it got really dangerous, I could jump off the front. You ever seen him when he's finished? He finishes the speech which usually lasts about a minute and a half. And he always goes like this [looking around] and then he doesn't know where he goes."
(Trump said)
"But you know we have great people. Secret Service, they always run up on the stage and they lead him off the stage. But he wants to let our tax cuts expire. And I don't do that anyway. You know I don't imitate him anymore. Because I called my wife, our great First Lady, and I said: First Lady [he actually said this], we had a big speech. By the way, not as many people as this! This is like big record stuff on television. Even from the haters. They said this may be the biggest rally they've ever seen, a political rally.”"
(End Trump quote)
"We’ve all heard things like this. In bars. In public parks. In institutional care. We move away from people talking this way. Bill Barr, Mitch McConnell, JD Vance, the GOP as a whole think this person should be back in charge."
"What Will Americans Do When Birth Control is Illegal?
Are Republicans warming up the jail cells they want to put American women into who have the temerity to continue using birth control after the GOP’s bans take effect?"