spit_evil_olive_tips

-oxidoreductase

let's play a fun game where we read a "breaking news" story about a scientific "discovery" and count the reasons to be skeptical about it

by Patty Wellborn, University of British Columbia

...

Dr. Mir Faizal, Adjunct Professor with UBC Okanagan's Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science

right off the bat - you have a conflict of interest where the person writing this is from the same university as the lead author.

this article is stylized to read like "news" but it's probably more accurate to treat it like you would a press release.

and in fact, this same text is on UBC's website where it explicitly says "Content type: Media Release"

Patty Wellborn's author page there seems to indicate that writing this kind of press release is a major part of her job

and his international colleagues, Drs. Lawrence M. Krauss

huh...that name sounds familiar...let me go check his wikipedia page and oh look there's a Controversies section with "Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein" and "Allegations of sexual misconduct" subsections.

Their findings, published in the Journal of Holography Applications in Physics

that journal is published by Damghan University in Iran

there's a ton of xenophobia and Islamophobia that gets turned up to 11 when people in the English-speaking world start discussing Iran, so I don't want to dismiss this journal out-of-hand...but their school of physics has 2 full professors?

if I was going to find out "oh Damghan is actually well-regarded for physics research" or something that's not what I'd expect to see

but anyway, let's look at the paper itself

except, hold on, it's not a paper, it's a letter:

Document Type : Letter

that's an important difference:

Letters: This is a very ambiguous category, primarily defined by being short, often <1000 words. They may be used to report a single piece of information, often from part of a larger study, or may be used to respond to another paper. These may or may not go out for peer review - for example, I recently had a paper accepted where the decision was made entirely by the editor.

reading a bit further:

Received: June 6, 2025; Accepted: June 17, 2025

this is "proving" something fundamental about the nature of the universe...and the entire review process took 11 calendar days? (basically one work week, the 6th was a Friday and the 17th was a Tuesday)

"Hey" is an email thingy run by the company that DHH owns.

the rest of those "apps" are probably thrown in to make the list seem more complete. the real goal is to promote his paid email service.

This would do two things. One, it would (possibly) prove that AI cannot fully replace human writers. Two (and not mutually exclusive to the previous point), it would give you an alternate-reality version of the first story, and that could be interesting.

this is just "imagine if chatbots were actually useful" fan-fiction

who the hell would want to actually read both the actual King story and the LLM slop version?

at best you'd have LLM fanboys ask their chatbot to summarize the differences between the two, and stroke their neckbeards and say "hmm, isn't that interesting"

4 emdashes in that paragraph, btw. did you write those yourself?

some important context: this is the 2nd confirmed case in Florida of a disease that is widespread among deer in the rest of North America.

if you only read the headline (which uses "zombie deer" clickbait instead of the actual name of the disease) you might come away with the mistaken impression of this being a wholly new disease (especially with the mention of Florida - there are other examples of diseases migrating north from the tropics due to climate change, but this is not one of them)

from Wikipedia:

The disease was first identified in 1967 in a closed herd of captive mule deer in contiguous portions of northeastern Colorado. In 1980, the disease was determined to be a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy. It was first identified in wild elk and mule deer and white-tailed deer in the early 1980s in Colorado and Wyoming, and in farmed elk in 1997. The disease did not affect Canada until 1996.

...

In 2022, it had been recorded that outbreaks of CWD had shown themselves in both the United States and Canada. CWD was present in 29 states, infecting herds of moose, deer and elk in 391 different counties. Alabama (1), Arkansas (19), Colorado (27), Idaho (1), Illinois (19), Iowa (12), Kansas (49), Louisiana (1), Maryland (1), Michigan (9), Minnesota (7), Mississippi (9), Missouri (21), Montana (23), Nebraska (43), New Mexico (3), New York (1), North Carolina (1), North Dakota (7), Ohio (2), Pennsylvania (14), South Dakota (19), Tennessee (14), Texas (7), Utah (7), Virginia (10), West Virginia (5), Wisconsin (37) and Wyoming (22).

By Courier Newsroom

Bank of America announced

Joining the bank at the minimum wage is a launchpad for a long-term career.

Bank of America also offers industry-leading benefits and employee programs for all.

Bank of America’s leadership as a global employer of choice has been recognized by many external organizations

this is just a Bank of America press release dressed up to look like a news article

This is an inflammatory way of saying the guy got served papers.

ehh...yes and no.

they could have served the subpoena using registered mail.

or they could have used a civilian process server.

instead they chose to have a sheriff's deputy do it.

from the guy's twitter thread:

OpenAI went beyond just subpoenaing Encode about Elon. OpenAI could (and did!) send a subpoena to Encode’s corporate address asking about our funders or communications with Elon (which don’t exist).

If OpenAI had stopped there, maybe you could argue it was in good faith.

But they didn’t stop there.

They also sent a sheriff’s deputy to my home and asked for me to turn over private texts and emails with CA legislators, college students, and former OAI employees.

This is not normal. OpenAI used an unrelated lawsuit to intimidate advocates of a bill trying to regulate them. While the bill was still being debated.

in context, the subpoena and the way in which it was served sure smells like an attempt at intimidation.

from another AP article:

This would be the third ceasefire reached since the start of the war. The first, in November 2023, saw more than 100 hostages, mainly women and children, freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners before it broke down. In the second, in January and February of this year, Palestinian militants released 25 Israeli hostages and the bodies of eight more in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. Israel ended that ceasefire in March with a surprise bombardment.

maybe I'm cynical (OK, I'm definitely cynical) but I very much doubt this ceasefire is going to last.

there are two things in the world that Trump wants more than anything else. one is to fuck his daughter. the other is a Nobel Peace Prize.

I suspect the timing of this agreement comes from Netanyahu trying to manufacture a justification for Trump to get the Nobel. after the prize is announced (whether Trump receives it or not) they'll kick the genocide back into high gear again.

Tony Davis explains the crisis in High Country News

...

FULL STORY: The dried-out subdivisions of Phoenix

if anyone wants to read the actual full article instead of this 3-paragraph summary: https://www.hcn.org/issues/57-10/the-dried-out-subdivisions-of-phoenix/

I'm well aware of the lesser-of-two-evils / voting-as-harm-reduction argument. I even accept it in some cases (eg, I'd be willing to vote for Pritzker, even though he's a billionaire nepo baby who used inherited wealth to buy his way into politics)

I'm not willing to extend it to Newsom. he is not "harm reduction". he is promoting harm against trans people.

Newsom said in an interview that he thought trans people should maybe be forced to wait until 25 years old before they're allowed to medically transition

that's rooted in bullshit science about "your brain keeps developing until you're 25"

but Newsom agrees with the Oklahoma Republican Party on that subject

here is the record of the bill Newsom just vetoed. it passed the state assembly with 78% of the vote, and the state senate with 75% of the vote.

he's supposedly a Democrat...and yet he's in opposition to something that other Democrats in California overwhelmingly supported. and meanwhile he's in agreement with the fucking Oklahoma Republican Party?

to quote Black Panther - is this your king? is this your "harm reduction"?

also, separate from my personal dislike of him, if Newsom is the nominee in 2028 he will lose. I don't like making political predictions but I feel pretty confident in that one. so even if you believe that political principles are for suckers and the only thing that matters is having a warm body in the office with a (D) next to their name...you should still oppose Newsom.

Newsom's consent factory has been in full swing, trying to position him as the frontrunner for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.

he has a D next to his name, but he's not a Democrat. he's a Diet Republican, and this is the most recent example.

if he's the nominee in 2028, I'm not voting for him. piss and moan and scold me all you want, it will not change my mind. I have a "purity test" that I will only vote for Democrats who actually believe in human rights.

this link has a live feed of the ATC chatter: https://www.liveatc.net/hlisten.php?mount=kbur3_gnd_twr&icao=kbur

and you can follow the planes on https://globe.adsb.fi/ or similar sites

for anyone unfamiliar with the Los Angeles area, Burbank is one of the many airports in the region, nowhere near as large as LAX, but still sees quite a bit of airline traffic, mostly shorter domestic flights because LAX is such an international hub.

edit: here's a news helicopter hovering nearby and probably shooting B-roll, while a United 737 comes in to land and a Southwest 737 taxis for departure: https://i.imgur.com/5pK6zEv.png