«Characterizing a task as a mapping from inputs to outputs might be appropriate for machine learning. But if we adopt that as a way to understand what people do, we are complicit in the dehumanziation so rampant in the production and sales of so-called “AI”. I expect better from people involved in higher education and people reporting on higher education, and I hope you do, too.»

https://buttondown.email/maiht3k/archive/doing-their-hype-for-them/

This is similar to what I’ve been saying for a long time: people ascribe too much to computers and have been since they were invented.

«“So much of the food that we eat is coming from all over the world,” said Stephen Luby, who studies lead pollution at Stanford University. “So we are deluding ourselves if we think we can push pollution problems to low-­income countries and not worry about it.”

….

“Lead is a toxin like no other,” Luby said. “People think about ‘Oh, yeah. Lead’s bad. Mercury’s bad. Cadmium’s bad. Air pollution is bad. All these things.’ No — lead is really disproportionately bad.”

….

Spices are a good example of how this can happen: Lead chromate pigment is often used to produce a more vibrant color in spices such as cinnamon and turmeric. [Holy shit!]

….

“We cannot inspect our way out of this problem. You could spend a fortune in perpetuity and only catch a tiny fraction of contaminated goods coming into the United States,” McCartor said. “If we really want to solve this, it requires a whole-­of-­government commitment to work outside of our borders.”»

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24115827/lead-poisoning-symptoms-exposure-children-cinnamon-paint-battery-pollution-global

https://thehill.com/opinion/4566910-its-too-easy-to-get-the-wrong-idea-about-rural-rage/

«According to a RuralOrganizing.org study with Open Secrets, for every dollar a Democrat running for federal office spends in rural areas, Republicans spend $14. While about 30 percent of Americans and 20 percent of registered voters live in rural areas, barely 3 percent of Democratic-affiliated expenditures occur in rural geographies — a clear lack of priority given to cultivating rural champions.

….

Independent farmers are few and far between, with nearly every sector of agriculture consolidated — just a few multinational corporations squeeze the average farmer from the input side to the farm gate. Wealth gets extracted — by Dollar General or hospitals or multinational ag corporations — with little money invested back into these communities. When it comes to new wealth, as of a few years ago, 80 percent of the venture capital was invested in only 50 counties in our country – out of nearly 3,100. A lack of opportunity is eroding rural communities and sowing understandable discontent — discontent that Republicans point in the wrong direction.»

«For one thing, TMTG, which owns the conservative Twitter copycat Truth Social, makes basically nothing. Its total revenue was $3.4 million in the first nine months of 2023. Extrapolate that out, and the stock is probably trading at something like 2,000 times the company’s annual revenue. That is, um, high. Apple, for example, trades at about seven times its total revenue. And given TMTG’s paltry revenue, it actually lost $49 million in the same period.»

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-media-stock-price-crash-spac-djt-truth-social-2024-4

“Um.” 🙂

«I kept thinking about something a therapist had said – that she did not believe there was a healthy way to engage on social media. I was out of love with it.»

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/31/the-wellness-instagrammer-who-learned-to-let-go

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/28/us/donald-trump-bible-christianity-cec/index.html

«Graves-Fitzsimmons holds a Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City and also works with the group Christians Against Christian Nationalism. He says things like the “God Bless America” Bible overlook the many, many Christians who do not agree with Trump’s politics or the blending of patriotism with faith.

“There is a diversity within American Christianity that gets overlooked whenever politics and religion intersect,” he told CNN. “There’s this false notion that most American Christians are pushing for anti-abortion restrictions, and are anti-LGBTQ, and the opposite is actually true. Christians, I would argue, are the ones who are most concerned about the effects of Christian nationalism in this country.”»

Well, sure enough…

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/

Crystal Mason goes to prison for voting illegally once (and spends 8 years fighting her wrongful conviction), and this guy…

«Brian Pritchard, first vice chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine, as well as investigative costs, and be publicly reprimanded.»

https://wapo.st/3PDFzZe (gift link)

[edit: dammit, I can’t spell.]

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4562312-kentucky-bill-strips-governor-power-appoint-senator/

This is what happens when you don’t vote Dem all the way down the ticket.

«The world posts on Facebook and Instagram; relatively few outside of China use WeChat or Weibo. TikTok was the exception—a potential goodwill ambassador for China’s rise, cut off at the knees by the hard realities of Chinese authoritarianism.»

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/03/tiktok-bytedance-bill-national-security-risks/677860/?gift=ly-h2TZGdDJyaoFv6n-KaTOG3DDkJfLT5DTcN5Le88s&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

(Gift link.)

Source: https://www.editorialboard.com/ignore-the-hate-no-one-is-better-prepared-than-kamala-harris/

«One thing won’t change, however. That’s public opinion about Kamala Harris. Why? Because — my second point – no one cares about vice presidents! The only people who are paying attention to this one are people who say she was “picked because she was Black and female.” Moreover, if voters know nothing else about her, and they almost certainly know nothing else about her, because no one pays attention to vice presidents, they do know she’s Black and female, and they know that fact very well, because people who say she was “picked because she was Black and female” can’t stop won’t stop talking about it. »