Wonderful Scott Siskind piece on the evil Atlantean dwarves that populated Amazing Stories in the 1940s, and the widespread myths that seem related.
A writer in the Harvard Crimson trashes land acknowledgements, saying the university should "Either return the land that it occupies to whichever Native American tribe that it stole it from, or spare us the hollow, meaningless acknowledgements."
Meta-analysis of studies on people who have tried to give up social media, or take a break from it, finds that it does not make them happier.
The house mothers who ran boarding houses for working girls in Lowell, Massachusetts.
Mass grave of Roman soldiers found in Austria.
On Twitter/X, Nabeel Qureshi asked his followers to rate four translations of a passage from the Odyssey, one by GPT4 and three by humans. GPT4 won. I thought parts of the AI version were good, but it had a glaring modernism that rang harshly in my ears, so it wasn't my favorite. Via Marginal Revolution.
South Korea's Supreme Court finally removes their president from office for his bizarre coup attempt.
Using AI to find new uses for old drugs: NY Times, summary at Marginal Revolution.
Review of a new book about the Turkish siege of Malta in 1565.
The rain forest tree that thrives on being struck by lightning. (NY Times, Scientific American)
Should AIs hold financial resources, so they can be sued for bad behavior? (Marginal Revolution)
Review of the new volume of W.G. Sebald's essays: "Melancholy, far from being defeatist, is itself a kind of political resistance, a way of pushing back against the machinations of fascism by preserving the past against erasure."
NPR's Books We Love, 2024 edition.
Data on Russian recent casualties in Ukraine, via tire guy Trent Trelenko on Twitter/X:
75% are caused by drones;
20% by artillery;
4% by small arms fire.
2 comments:
South Korea's Supreme Court finally removes their president from office for his bizarre coup attempt.
Utterly wild that South Korea's broken and dysfunctional democracy nevertheless is feeling aspirational compared to the current state of our own.
Imagine being able to trust that the highest court in the land, responsible with upholding the constitution, would - in fact - uphold the constitution if the president flagrantly engaged in unconstitutional acts, and not be beholden to party politics and factionalism, but rather behave in an unbiased manner.
Should AIs hold financial resources, so they can be sued for bad behavior?
"A computer can never be held accountable. Therefore, a computer must never make a management decision."
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