Notices by Minoru Saba (minorusaba@toad.social), page 19

↪ :twitter: #OmidDjalili

(3/n)

traditional organisation.”

We are expected to believe spontaneous protests by concerned local citizens sprung up simultaneously in several cities at once. The truth is, these are coordinated events. Those involved are ‘foot soldiers’. Whether they know it or not.

The #Southport suspect is now believed to be a #Christian. This information is irrlevent. The attack on #Islam has begun. And those involved are world-wide. ⏩

"A human shield made up of dozens of people heroically held back anti-immigration protesters who had made their way to a hotel housing asylum seekers"
https://www.bristol247.com/news-and-features/news/14-people-arrested-protesters-clash-bristol-streets/
#Bristol #UK

"...in 1942, Enrico Fermi and a small number of co-workers demonstrated a controlled fission chain reaction"
"More than 80 years later, the corresponding control-of-fusion principle has yet to be demonstrated experimentally"
"With fusion power being so difficult to demonstrate—even in principle—it will likely suffer a much longer time between proof of principle, if we ever get there, and significant commercial application"
https://thebulletin.org/2024/02/whats-fueling-the-commercial-fusion-hype/
#FusionPower #hype

Mom & Dad were dust bowl/depression kids in OK, but they never talked about it much. I just got around to watching Ken Burns film - references to the worst environmental/economic disaster in history, caused by greed. Black blizzards, dust pneumonia, mass homelessness. I think a lot of people have little comprehension of history & how bad things can get. CW for the full nearly 4 hr series - it's graphic.
A 1 minute trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmalQfucyIE
#Environment #ClimateChange #Immigration #History

On second thoughts "変 (hen)" as in "変な人 (hen na hito)" [strange/weird people] would probably convey the nuances of "weird" better to a Japanese audience.

Am reminded of the urban legend of the early days of computer translation when the phrase "Out of sight, out of mind" was translated into Russian/Chinese/whatever and translated back into English, resulting in "Invisible idiot".
#LostInTranslation

So Bloomberg translated "weird" as "奇妙 (kimyō)" in Japanese which will do, but loses impact as kimyō comes across as being merely "odd" which doesn't ring alarm bells with the Japanese public. Probably "異常 (ijō)" i.e. "abnormal" would have hit truer.
https://www.bloomberg.co.jp/news/articles/2024-07-28/SHBJJJT0G1KW00

(In English) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-27/harris-tests-out-weird-label-in-attack-on-trump-vance-rhetoric
#LostInTranslation

Fun for the last hour of work today as power went out for several blocks. Everything, lighs, computers, even the local cell tower must have gone as phone reception died (meaning using the 4g signal backup to wifi for our card machines was a non-starter).

This also took out traffic lights at busy Holy Corner. Most tried to slowly negotiate the four way junction, taking turns, but the SUV Wankpanzer brigade just barreled through, heedless of anyone's safety.

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg

Was wondering if the phrase "Turn the tables" had anything to do with railway turntables, but found that it came from 'tables' games like backgammon.
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/390300.html

Was reminded of a trip on a steam locomotive in Gunma one summer before the pandemic.
#Gunma #Japan

Infection status
Released Aug 2, 2024.
- As of period from July 22, 2024 - July 28, 2024 -

No. of patients per medical facility (nationwide) 14.58
Change from prev. week +0.96
[Source: Health-Labor-Welfare Ministry weekly report]
https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/001282915.pdf
🔸Twelfth week of increases. Saga at 31.38, Tokyo at 9.13, Chiba at 15.82, Akita at 6.73, Hokkaido at 5.95, Okinawa at 16.51.
#Influenza monitoring paused by Health-Labor-Welfare Ministry until Sept.
#CovidIsNotOver #Japan

Still testing positive today—the test line on the RAT appeared immediately and was darker than the control line, perhaps the most positive test I've seen yet—nine days after my first positive test and at least 11 days since infection.
I feel terrible today, had to take a sick day from work. Paxlovid rebound is real.
My blood pressure is also elevated.
*sigh*
#COVID

#globalwarming #resilence
“by 2050, about 80% of #Arabica production is predicted to decrease because of #climatechange”
“#Robusta can combine the following 3 elements for #coffee cultivars:
#Sustainability—produce more with fewer inputs
Quality—good flavor to meet consumer demand
Plasticity—capacity to adapt to new production systems
“Now that they've found good results with #Robusta in #Brazil, scientists are trying to see if it can grow in #Florida” 🤯

https://phys.org/news/2024-07-climate-smart-coffee-explore-robusta.html

Corporate capture of #media and targeting of #journalists has contributed to the #trust fails of the #FourthEstate. It’s taking people a long time to figure out the landscape has changed. There is no neutral point of view, there are only multiple views and people don’t know how to parse that. What’s the solution? I think it’s #generative trust building. #pointofview #impartiality #citizenjournalism #fifthestate #socialmedia #news #opensource #esport

Interesting paper- AI is not boosting your creativity

“We found that support from an AI image generator during ideation leads to higher fixation on an initial example. Participants who used AI produced fewer ideas, with less variety and lower originality compared to a baseline.”

https://dl.acm.org/doi/full/10.1145/3613904.3642919

A new #Louisiana law goes into effect Thursday that will make it a misdemeanor for anyone, including #journalists, to be within 25 feet of a #police officer if the officer orders them back.

#News #Crime #CriminalJustice #CivilRights #Protests #Journalism #PressFreedom #Government #FirstAmendment

https://www.propublica.org/article/louisiana-police-buffer-law

"During the 1970s and 1980s, Hewlett-Packard used RPN in all of their desktop and hand-held calculators"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation
🔸Couldn't afford HP calculators as an undergrad, but had access to one bolted to a lab bench.
Took a while getting used to RPN.
Eventually bought a Sinclair Scientific in kit form; it had a red LED display, was painfully slow, but worked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Scientific
#ReversePolishNotation

After Tokyo, Blinken and Austin will hold security talks with the #Philippines re: #WestPHSea.
---
The talks attended by #Australia's #PennyWong, #India's #SubrahmanyamJaishankar, #Japan's #YokoKamikawa and #AntonyBlinken from the #US, follow security discussions between #Tokyo and #Washington on the region's strategic challenges. #China

#Quad foreign ministers meet in Tokyo for talks on #MaritimeSecurity, #cyber
https://www.rappler.com/world/global-affairs/quad-foreign-ministers-tokyo-talks-maritime-security-cyber-defense/

Back toot: https://noc.social/@Norobiik/112863954607550173

The cloud industry has a combined market cap of around $250Bn, and the stakeholders (MSFT, AMZN, AAPL, etc) have combined market caps on the order of 10% of planetary GDP, and they're locked in a multiway prisoner's dilemma game with escalating stakes.

When this bubble bursts it's potentially going to cause a global recession. Never mind all the folks whose wages have been depressed or whose jobs have gone away because management bought into the AI grifters' spiel.
https://wandering.shop/@cstross/112869289783952402

Reading all these articles about the high traffic from AI bots, here is my experience from a small German hoster: It's a huge problem, and it is getting worse very fast. There are bots like claudebot from Antrophic which are so aggressive that they block whole systems, outranking actual attacks for example against WordPress. And they change their AWS cloud IPs so often that blocking doesn't help for long and they also ignore robots.txt. Our on-call is regularly alerted for such issues.

@albertcardona

We need this as a mascot.

" Do say: “Safety videos need to work hard to make people watch them.”
Don’t say: “Because the threat of death apparently isn’t enough.” "
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jul/29/the-british-airways-safety-video-why-have-half-a-million-people-watched-it-online

🔸Timely reminder re importance of following safety rules on planes which was highlighted when JAL516 and Japan Coast Guard's JA722A collided at Haneda Airport on 2 Jan 2024.
https://apnews.com/article/japan-haneda-runway-collision-jal-airbus-fire-6aff794f9d2eb004db2122928cc873b2
#Airlines #SafetyVideo