jwz

Millions yearn to be creativity-adjacent:

"I've always been jealous of the glory authors get," explained Wolverton, assembling fresh Ikea bookcases to display his newly-published oeuvre. "Actual writing takes time away from surfing for deepfake porn. I just want books with my name on them to impress my friends. ChatGPT made that happen."

Chaz is not alone. Machine learning engineers believe millions yearn to be creativity-adjacent.

"These people are entirely bereft of the basic skills necessary for creativity and they aren't interested developing them," said Victor Drolet, Spicy Autofill Evangelist. "A few could potentially string enough words together into something worth reading, but research shows they will never try."

Egon Hunt, who teaches a $4000, eight-week online prompt engineering course, asserted that "authors" like Wolverton can fulfill dreams of passing as a real-enough writer to those who don't read. "A creative vacuum like Chaz can manage to type in a few prompts, and then the LLM does all the rest." [...]

Accusations that LLMs combine greed with sloth are "narrow-minded", assert experts. With the right prompts, they insist LLM's can deliver far more comprehensive moral transgressions. "In addition to the classical seven deadly sins," adds Drolet, "LLMs even generate entirely new deadly sins such as grath, hoth, and lurm!"

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Still eagerly waiting for someone to tell me where I can go meet my local Blade Runner at one of my city's famed Open-Air Drug Markets. I assume COVID vaccines will remain harder to get than heroin for the foreseeable future.

Threat Model:

Led by Vinay Prasad and Martin Makary, the US FDA announced Tuesday that Covid vaccines will no longer be available for most Americans, only allowing access to adults over 65 and people with at least one high-risk medical condition. There are no exceptions for in-home caregivers, including those who care for disabled children, those with cancer, and the elderly. In line with a popular false conspiracy theory, the FDA has required Covid vaccine makers to expand warnings about risks of heart harms, which are rare.

One day after the US FDA said it would require new clinical trials for approval of annual Covid-19 boosters, Moderna was compelled to withdraw its application for US approval of its highly successful, outperforming combined flu-Covid shot.

Great Barrington Declaration backer Jay Bhattacharya delivered his first town hall speech as NIH head this week, triggering a mass walkout when he told the assembled NIH scientists that Covid was created in the US by NIH.

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Natasha Jay:

Carson Hill:

I found video, June 2024:

"The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping." There is no reporting on this from non-Musk-Fanboy sites, and there's nothing on the Vicksburg News site, but this video was on their Facebook. Remember kids, being mean to his cars is terrorism.

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Avelo Airlines quashed a boycott campaign over its polarizing decision to operate federal deportation flights.

"Polarizing". Never change, NYT.

Seth Miller, a New Hampshire lawmaker, placed billboard ads protesting Avelo Airlines' decision to operate flights for ICE. Avelo accused him of trademark infringement.

Seth Miller, an independent aviation journalist and state lawmaker in New Hampshire, began the campaign last week with advertisements on two billboards near Avelo's busiest airport urging travelers to avoid the airline. The ads, near Tweed New Haven Airport in Connecticut, featured a modified Avelo logo and the message: "Does your vacation support their deportation? Just say AvelNO!"

Days later, a lawyer for the airline sent Mr. Miller a letter saying he had violated Avelo's trademark. Mr. Miller said the airline had also persuaded the billboard operator, Lamar Advertising, to take down the ads. In response, he sued the airline Friday afternoon in Nevada, where the airline is incorporated, asking a court to affirm that he was only exercising his freedom of speech.

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This is a fun tale of largely-unsuccessful reverse engineering of a bricked and abandoned rental bike, but who could have predicted this nightmare except everybody.

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So apparently we're getting a "Holistic Wellness Influencer" for Surgeon General. And I am once again begging this administration to stop reminding me of mediocre Frank Miller comics from the early 90s:

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Just last week someone posted a previously-unseen 10 minute video of one of GWAR's performances at DNA Lounge in May or November 2004!

You will now crumble to dust as I remind you that that was 21 years ago.

We would love to have them back, but they seem to be playing much larger venues these days. Even back then, we were kind of small for them, but it may have been more about the size of the stage than the attendance. They had a few props they had to leave out of the show because they literally would not fit.

Oh yeah, also their music videos for War Party and Womb With a View were filmed at that November show at DNA Lounge. Anyone have higher quality versions of these videos?

Leopard reports faces "delicious".

At the instruction of managers, restaurant employees without legal citizenship status left the premises at The Diner, Honky Tonk Central and Kid Rock's Big Asshole Honky Tonk Rock N' Roll Steakhouse during a primetime rush on Saturday night to avoid detention by ICE agents. Locations, already struggling to provide full service, suffered through at least Sunday due to fears from employees who did not want to risk arrest by returning to work.

"We were already understaffed because of the ICE raids throughout the weekend," an employee, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation, tells the Scene. "Then, around 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, our manager came back and told anyone without legal status to go home. Events at the Ryman, Ascend, the Savannah Bananas' baseball game all let out, and it was crazy busy. But there was no one in the kitchen to cook the food."

In recent days, many restaurant employees have chosen to call out and stay home with family rather than risk detention in transit. This has prompted managers throughout the city to coordinate transportation for immigrant employees, including at Smith's downtown locations.

State troopers and unmarked ICE vehicles dramatically increased nightly traffic stops on May 3 in South Nashville, where the joint operation has resulted in at least 196 arrests by ICE agents. These arrests included 101 individuals with no criminal history, contradicting Trump administration claims that immigration enforcement has been targeted toward violent criminals.

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Northeastern in the bag for the Bullshit Fountain:

Ella Stapleton grew suspicious of her business professor's lecture notes when she spotted telltale signs of AI generation, including a stray "ChatGPT" citation tucked into the bibliography, recurrent typos that mirrored machine outputs, and images depicting figures with extra limbs.

"He's telling us not to use it, and then he's using it himself." [...]

After a series of meetings, Northeastern ultimately decided to reject the senior's claim. [...]

"If my experience can be something people can learn from," [said Professor Rick Arrowood], "then, OK, that's my happy spot." [...]

Renata Nyul, Vice President for Communications, Northeastern University, told Fortune: "Northeastern embraces the use of artificial intelligence to enhance all aspects of its teaching, research, and operations. The university provides an abundance of resources to support the appropriate use of AI and continues to update and enforce relevant policies enterprise-wide."

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