What are you reading?

silvermouse · November 24

"For this Google worker, the biggest concern with AI training is the feedback given to AI models by raters like him. “After having seen how bad the data is that goes into supposedly training the model, I knew there was absolutely no way it could ever be trained correctly like that,” he said. He used the term “garbage in, garbage out”, a principle in computer programming which explains that if you feed bad or incomplete data into a technical system, then the output would also have the same flaws.

The rater avoids using generative AI and has also “advised every family member and friend of mine to not buy newer phones that have AI integrated in them, to resist automatic updates if possible that add AI integration, and to not tell AI anything personal”, he said."

“Once you’ve seen how these systems are cobbled together – the biases, the rushed timelines, the constant compromises – you stop seeing AI as futuristic and start seeing it as fragile,” said Adio Dinika, who studies the labor behind AI at the Distributed AI Research Institute, about people who work behind the scenes. “In my experience it’s always people who don’t understand AI who are enchanted by it.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/22/ai-workers-tell-family-stay-away

silvermouse · November 24

Where Was the Big Bang? - Universe Today

https://share.google/NgwHi9RzWtveJBsNR

ShawnOL · November 25

A long way away.

Amos_Umwhat · November 25

@ShawnOL said:
A long way away.

Out there in the middle

silvermouse · November 25

Something about the big bang theory doesn't make sense to me. A singularity in nowhere and it makes a "where" ?

silvermouse · November 25

What Role, If Any, Do Ambrosia Beetles Play in Rapid Apple Decline?

https://entomologytoday.org/2025/11/25/ambrosia-beetles-rapid-apple-decline/

Yakster · November 25

@silvermouse said:

What Role, If Any, Do Ambrosia Beetles Play in Rapid Apple Decline?

https://entomologytoday.org/2025/11/25/ambrosia-beetles-rapid-apple-decline/

Source: Wikipedia

silvermouse · November 26

Another questionable politician.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/24/jim-justice-sued-taxes-west-virginia-coal.html

ShawnOL · November 26

Aren't they all, Edward?

silvermouse · November 26

How ‘Acid Patriotism’ Swallowed Britain Whole
The movement that has defined the country in 2025 is a strange blend of rave hedonism and nationalist hostility.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/how-acid-patriotism-swallowed-britain-whole/

silvermouse · November 28

"For centuries, scholars have been puzzled by the movement of the Rapa Nui moai, monolithic stone figures that represent deified ancestors. Between A.D. 1200 and 1700, the statues were hewed from compacted ash in a quarry inside the crater of the extinct volcano Rano Raraku, and then transported as far as 11 miles across rugged terrain; some reached 33 feet in height and weighed as much as 86 tons."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/science/archaeology-easter-island-rapa-nui.html?unlocked_article_code=1.4U8.LAtd.cncEJEpEfFHe&smid=url-share&utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=ec6f17302f-nature-briefing-daily-20251127&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-33f35e09ea-49863420

silvermouse · November 29

"People are living longer than they used to. They are also having fewer children. The evidence of what this combination can do to a society is growing around the world, but some of the most striking stories come from Japan. For decades the Japanese health ministry has released an annual tally of citizens aged one hundred or over. This year the number of centenarians reached very nearly a hundred thousand. When the survey started in 1963, there were just 153. In 1981 there were a thousand; in 1998 ten thousand. Japan now produces more nappies for incontinent adults than for infants. There is a burgeoning industry for the cleaning and fumigating of apartments in which elderly Japanese citizens have died and been left undiscovered for weeks, months or years. Older people have far fewer younger people to take care of them or even to notice their non-existence. That neglect is a brute function of some simple maths. In 1950, Japan had a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 4, which represents the average number of children a woman might expect to have in her lifetime. Continued over five generations, that would mean a ratio of 256 great-great-grandchildren to every sixteen great-great-grandparents – in other words, each hundred-year-old might have sixteen direct descendants competing to look after them. Today Japan’s TFR is approaching 1: one child per woman (or one per couple, half a child each). That pattern continued over five generations means that each solitary infant has as many as sixteen great-great-grandparents vying for his or her attention. Within a century the pyramid of human obligation has been turned on its head."

Long article, more here:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n21/david-runciman/are-we-doomed

ShawnOL · November 29

I read somewhere that Japan was offering free breeding visas to get men to go knock up their women.

Yakster · November 29

There's also a lot of unoccupied houses in the countryside of Japan if you're looking to move. 1 in 10 I hear.

Cheapsmoke · November 29

@ShawnOL said:
I read somewhere that Japan was offering free breeding visas to get men to go knock up their women.

>
Do they offer anything for men that just want to go over and practice?

edz · November 30

@Yakster said:
There's also a lot of unoccupied houses in the countryside of Japan if you're looking to move. 1 in 10 I hear.

Heard that they may be hard to get de to the govt rules. Not sure exactly, bt something as to every member has to sign off on the title but what they pay in taxes is very high? Would like to spend time there though.

silvermouse · December 2

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/490428/origin-of-the-word-spudger

silvermouse · December 2

And this, not for TLDR-ers:

Age of Invention: The Century-Long Depression
https://www.ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-invention-the-century-long

Yakster · December 3

@silvermouse said:
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/490428/origin-of-the-word-spudger

I've often wondered where the word came from, having used telecom spudgers for years.

We called these spud wrenches, aka an erection wrench. The pointy end was used to line up the holes on sections of towers we were erecting so we could bolt them together.

Yakster · December 3

.

TRayB · December 3

@Yakster said:

@silvermouse said:
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/490428/origin-of-the-word-spudger

I've often wondered where the word came from, having used telecom spudgers for years.

We called these spud wrenches, aka an erection wrench. The pointy end was used to line up the holes on sections of towers we were erecting so we could bolt them together.

hehe, he said erection, hehe, hehe.

silvermouse · December 3

Drunk raccoon found passed out on liquor store floor after breaking in
A side-by-side image showing smashed bottles of alcohol in a liquor store and a drunk raccoon passed out between a toilet and bin of that store

Image source,BBC/Hanover County Animal Protection and Shelter
Image caption,The animal was found passed out in the bathroom

ShawnOL · December 3

My kind of party animal.

silvermouse · December 5

New research reveals the exercise six times more effective than walking

A new study suggests that more intense physical activity can deliver the same health benefits as moderate-intensity activities like brisk walking in a fraction of the time.

https://www.independent.co.uk/health-and-fitness/exercise-more-effective-walking-heart-health-b2878666.html

silvermouse · December 5

Summary: An increasing number of people experience fear, discomfort, or disgust toward nature—a phenomenon known as biophobia. The findings reveal that negative emotions form through both external factors such as urban environments and media portrayals, and internal factors like health and emotional traits.

Limited contact with nature can reinforce avoidance, reducing exposure to well-known mental and physical health benefits. Researchers suggest that early positive experiences with nature and greener urban spaces may help reverse this growing trend.

https://neurosciencenews.com/biophobia-neuroscience-30018/