Th3 Core

Scrolling Into Bias: Social Media’s Effect on AI Art

Results when AI is prompted to show ideal female and male body as determined by social media and by the web in general.

https://bulimia.com/examine/scrolling-into-bias/

This is not that surprising in general, but the cartoonish exaggeration of muscles and breasts (both male and female) and proportions in general is strange. Then worst ones don’t look human at all. The best ones do look like they would be very successful IG models. Humans need not apply.

This is old, but cool though - Barbie as re-envisioned using the proportions of an average 19yo American female as reported by the CDC in 2013. This still light result in poor body image for those who are far from the average in one direction or the other, but it’s a step in the right direction

Thank you all for your knowledge, wisdom and tolerance!

The word "community" has been utterly hijacked. Malcolm Gladwell invites me to join "the Pushkin community" for just $10/month. This is the one place that feels like an actual online community to me and I thank you all for that!

https://boingboing.net/2023/11/10/astronaut-accidentally-dropped-a-tool-bag-into-orbit-and-you-can-see-it-with-binoculars-video.html

Moghbeli dropped a bag of tools. The bag is now in orbit and, incredibly, you may be able to see it with a pair of good binoculars.

https://www.futurity.org/cancer-protein-blood-test-2994152

Most cancers become deadly by keeping a low profile, causing no symptoms until they’re too advanced to treat. Ovarian and gastroesophageal cancers are among the most notorious for this sly disease progression, often leading to late-stage diagnoses.

Unlike many cancer tests that are limited in scope, expensive, or rely on invasive tissue sampling, the new method is a low-cost, multi-cancer detector that can pick up the presence of the telltale protein, known as LINE-1-ORF1p, in a tiny amount of blood in less than two hours.

…. but Warns It’s Not Enough

America’s electric grids may need to expand by two-thirds by 2035 to handle future growth in clean energy, the agency said. The nation isn’t on track.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/30/climate/energy-department-electric-grid.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/01/realestate/nasa-homes-moon-3-d-printing.html

The U.S. space agency will blast a 3-D printer up to the moon and then build structures, layer by additive layer, out of a specialized lunar concrete created from the rock chips, mineral fragments and dust that sits on the top layer of the moon’s cratered surface and billows in poisonous clouds whenever disturbed

Episode #19304834

Synonym matching or LSI or Semantic Topic Clustering or whatever people call it these days has a side effect I just noticed.

I sometimes do a search for people and narrow by city or state. When I do a search for Firstname Lastname Maryland, I get a lot of hits for physicians, most of whom do not live in Maryland :-)

BTW... Roger's article about how LSI has never been the right term to describe what Google does
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/latent-semantic-indexing-wont-help-seo/240705/

Apparently the state sets the rules, and it is looking like they will give Waymo and Cruise authority to operate 24/7 anywhere in the city, even though SF officials are trying to stop it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/01/san-francisco-self-driving-taxi-waymo-cruise