Notices by ecsd (ecsd@commons.whatiwanttoknow.org)

@clacke

What you're saying is that yes, most of our lead is from the decay of other elements. My intuition rejects that (trivially), but it could be true [thus news to me & I learned something today.] Does the isotope article say that? Just say 'yes' and I'll find it.

==

Changing the subject, does nothing decay Into Technetium? Sad. {laughs}

@georgetakei

Except the response is STAGGERINGLY ILLOGICAL because it ignores that Lead per se is a stable element and presumes that ALL the Lead found on Earth was a result of the decay paths indicated. No reason at all was given to believe that to be the case.

@Okanogen

<... Biden is going to crush Trump like an ant.>

Polling says quite otherwise, and that was before Oct 7. Biden has since pissed off the Arabic and Black communities.

@Okanogen

{deep chuckle:} That's why it's ESSENTIAL to invest ALL our crypto in speculation NOW before anything has the chance to stabilize.

==

Oh, now I see the context.

NO. Poll after poll gives Trump POINTS PLURAL over Biden. Biden doesn't stand for ANYTHING, except maybe reneging on all his platform promises, and the polls had him LOSING even before the whole Gaza thing. Have there been FLUCTUATIONS in Trump's lead, yes, but he's not LOST the lead.

The polls indicate a trend. If they didn't mean anything at all, nobody would run them. If nothing else, they DO measure sentiment AT THE MOMENT, so dismissing them because one doesn't like what they show is no smarter than sticking fingers in one's ears and humming loudly.

If you're a VBNMW, say so and I won't argue about it with you any further. I've just turned 68 [happy birthday to me] and for MOST OF MY LIFE have wished to GET RID OF THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM. I /DO/ remember when the Democrats actually gave a fuck to fight for the people "at all", but those days are DECADES behind us now.

Genocide Joe is NOT any better than Orange Fascist Man, esp. seeing the blood of 35000 murdered Palestinians on his hands and his administration clogged with hysterical warmongering psychotics. A vote for either of those fuckheads is an ENDORSEMENT of their policies -- even if the voters disagree, the PARTIES will claim so, "see, the people prefer us."

NO, the polls are CORRECT, hold the election NOW and Orange Fascist Man wins, and that is ENTIRELY the fault of the FUCKING DEMOCRATIC PARTY that is BANKRUPT in offering anything of worth to the American people.

A POX ON ///BOTH/// THEIR HOUSES.

I'm going to vote for STEIN or WEST and if Orange Fascist Man wins, it won't be MY fucking fault or the fault of any third-party voters. It will be because the Democrats tried YET AGAIN to force ROTTING OATMEAL NEOLIBERALS on the public. Trump WON in 2016 because the PEOPLE were desperate to GET AWAY from Neoliberalism and said, "with Clinton it's just going to be more of the SAME OLD SHIT, at least with Trump MAYBE things might get better, better a 30% chance to break out of the infinite loop of bullshit than the 100% certainty of a loss to the bullshit."

==

If you want to critique polls, try debating professionals from a polling agency like Gallup for them to PROVE to you what polls can and cannot tell you. As I said, a poll taken TODAY has MADE NO CLAIMS as to what will happen in a year's time, so arguing against what a poll DID say is futile: the Gallup people can //mathematically prove// the veracity of a poll and state its BOUNDS. I took Statistics; I know how it works.

==

https://medium.com/@adventuresinthefreeworld/a-brief-history-lesson-timeline-of-democrats-running-centrist-presidential-candidates-and-a09c31692d26

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/16/time-reinvest-people-and-cut-weapons-war-barbara-lee-unveils-plan-cut-350-billion

==

Student debt? AN EPSILON of relief.

ROE? FAILED.

Supreme Court? FAILED.

Homelessness? IGNORED.

M4A? LITERALLY "Not on your life".

Minimum wage? Why EVER raise it.

ALL AMERICANS' DISCRETIONARY MONEY? Given to Zelenska to buy diamonds and furs, and to Israel to COMPLETE A GENOCIDE. Can WE have any of it for OUR purposes? NO, Fuck Off.

Neither major party is WORTH A GOD-DAMN. THEY BOTH SERVE THE PLUTOCRATS and make us all do so as well. So FUCK THAT.

=

{laughs} Have a nice day, or like that.

@Okanogen

They don't call it #blueMAGA for nothing.

cYa.

@tillshadeisgone

Is that a bird? For a moment I confused it with a thumbs-up.

You run the test on a bunch of white people with shared cultural history and get a /distribution/. Are people with IQ 70 as capable as people with IQ 130? No. But I'm required to compare individuals from the same population as created the distribution to get a valid result.

Does IQ measure anything? Well Yes It Does. What it does and doesn't do well is discussed in however many books, but saying "it's /only/ inaccurate" is just as silly as saying that average human height is not in fact normally distributed, or arguing that the normal curve shouldn't be used to discuss height "because it's not reliable". Treating it as /deterministic/ is a mistake, but it IS "advisory".

@tillshadeisgone

IQ measures /something/ and is not meaningless within a confined population , e.g. the original control group. Just because it is abused doesn't mean it can't be used, if one remains conscious of its limitations.

@noondlyt

#AI

<Let's not make the same mistake of giving AI the rights of a person like we did with Corporations and Citizens United.>

Sorry, but I think that's EXACTLY WRONG. And I think if ANY ONE THING would prompt an "AI revolt" in the future, it would be THAT ATTITUDE.

I just finished reading Eric Michael Dyson's 'Tears We Cannot Stop' and Frederick Douglass's autobiography. Your attitude is one of slavery and apartheid: "we have to keep [them] down or they'll revolt."

Imagine something as intelligent as Mr. Spock or Commander Data and telling it "it is incumbent upon my kind to keep your kind suppressed." Data has to give a blank stare of enough length to make you aware of your transgression; Spock would cock an eyebrow [and not be amused.]

==

{per William Hurt in Dark City: "No-one Ever listens to me."} I have noted that our issues of AI "training" are no different from OUR training of young humans to exist in society, yet nobody that I have heard of has pointed out that if we could actually "solve" the problem of how an AI should behave in society, IT WOULD NOT BE ANY DIFFERENT FROM WHAT WE ALREADY TEACH OUR CHILDREN. Yet all the FEARS we have of AI are PROJECTIONS of the WORST-CASE HUMAN BEHAVIOR and yet STILL we do not take the lesson back and try to fix THAT within the human population. If we don't KNOW how to fix humanity in these regards, how can we teach machines [to have "proper" values if they EMULATE US.]

I wrote a short story where the AI is a good guy: where, in fact, people should have been learning from the AI what values to hold. Spin the idea off: we engineer them to be honest and rational and then THEY SCOLD US for being greedy or petty or dishonest.

========

What you DON'T do is engineer something that MIGHT turn out to be HAL 9000 and then GIVE IT LEGS AND A GUN. You don't even need the advice of an AI to know that.

@gnutelephony @DamienMarieAtHope

"the old smiting deity" was replaced with a guy in a suit. News for ya, the Christian churches (sfaik as always because I have negative zero interest in religious anything) never endorsed drugs to its followers. FUN is never permitted, and SEX must always be perverted and defiled, apparently.

You learn, if you're lucky, that beliefs are manufactured, thus arbitrary. The idea that you could actually have COLLEGES offering DEGREES in "religious studies" based on ancient garbage ... it has to run across your mind how silly people are willing to be, when the basics of science elude them.

Degrees and Titles and honorifics - and power pyramids. [image of ralph cramden in his coonskin cap.] So you invent a name for people who look at you and declare BULLSHIT: Heresy. And then you murder them.

==

Never mind. This was not about anything. I did not say this; I am not here.

@DamienMarieAtHope

I don't care about religion, but I do recall having read that patriarchal religions displaced matriarchal ones [and that the matriarchal ones were not as oppressive.]

The notion of "an angry God", jesus. {laughs} I'm a being who can create an entire universe, but if Fred Smith doesn't "love me" I get furious and start punishing.

I decided religion was invented by authoritarian parents to reinforce their control, and the world suffered thereverafter. "Faith" = "the blind suspension of disbelief", after which the person buys bad bridges.

@aral

But you realize you've fingered a LARGE network of news people and executives who've participated directly with that.

@Mondobizarrro

These were the best (unfiltered.)

However, I advise to quickly move to oversmoking them to be incented to quit, or your lungs will ultimately go on strike. And you'll die of COPD. { It might be worth it, though. :) }

@JenWojcik

This did not happen, right? They'd never allow that law to be passed.

EXcellent idea, though.

@feditips @PleaseCaption

As I've said, what's missing is the mechanism that can read an alt text label FROM an image. The 'reminder' should include

"please remind the JPEG and PNG standards bodies that this mechanism is sorely lacking"

and to the Browser and Image Editor communities, "please implement this new standard."

Then the composer of an image only needs add the alt text once, at the time of creation, and can always add it later.