“international network of online groups that have targeted thousands of children with a sadistic form of social media terror”

Link. “seek out children with mental health issues and blackmail them into hurting themselves on camera,”

If 1/100,000 of humanity is this broken that’s 80,000 people worldwide. They have always been with us, but enabling technologies give global reach and relative impunity. The same enabling technologies provide a rich pool of vulnerable people.

Childhood trauma and adult psychiatric illness in identical twins.

Link. ” …. those who reported one or more trauma in childhood — physical or emotional neglect or abuse, rape, sexual abuse, hate crimes or witnessing domestic violence — were 2.4 times as likely to be diagnosed with a psychiatric illness as those who did not…

… 52 percent [risk increase] for each additional adverse experience.”

I would have bet the effect would be far smaller. This is mind boggling.

COVID-specific guidelines gone, CDC guidance for ALL respiratory diseases.

Link. I approve.

“People with respiratory illnesses may resume daily activities if they have been fever-free for at least 24 hours without the aid of medications and if their symptoms are improving …. guidelines apply to Covid, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, among other respiratory ailments …”

5 days mask etc for ALL respiratory viruses. No testing.

“If I asked a researcher to read through all my papers and summarize major themes, including illustrative quotes, it would take days. The AI did it in less than a minute.”

Link. Gemini 1.4 can hold about 750,000 words in memory at once.

“Researchers gave the five hundred or so available pages of reference material on a language with 200 speakers (and so with no real online presence) to Gemini and to a human translator. They found that the AI was able to learn the language about as well as the human could, from the same documentation”