Tag Archives: IFTTT

“A series of studies published in Science in February 2025 provides the best evidence yet that birds and mammals did not inherit the neural pathways that generate intelligence from a common ancestor, but rather evolved them independently.”

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https://www.wired.com/story/intelligence-evolved-at-least-twice-in-vertebrate-animals/

Stephen Baxter’s SF novel “Evolution” does a very good job of portraying a velociraptor like dinosaur with hunter-gather tech and intelligence — doomed by inability to domesticate animals or cooperate. It was a small part of the novel but a fascinating bit of prescience.

“Rather than neat layers, birds have “unspecified balls of neurons without landmarks or distinctions” but the neural networks resemble ours. And resemble LLMs.

“By training AIs to fight and defeat other AIs we can perhaps preserve a healthy balance in the new ecosystem … building AIs whose sole purpose was to predate upon existing AI models”

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https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/remarks-on-ai-from-nz

The mammals scurry about while T-Rex fights Triceratops. I like that Stephenson remembers McLuhan. His “optimistic take” is, inevitably, pretty dark. If AGI works there are no good futures left …

“preserving and advancing our own intelligence by holding at arms length seductive augmentations in order to avoid suffering the amputations that are their price”

Uh-no. Not happening.

WaPo confusing reporting on FDA vs CDC “approval” of COVID vaccine for low risk

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/05/20/covid-vaccine-elderly-high-risk-fda/

The reporting is confusing because it doesn’t describe what is meant by “approval”. I suspect it’s about whether “insurance companies are required to cover the cost of the shots with no out-of-pocket charges to consumers.”

There is limited benefit to current COVID vaccines for lower-risk people so this would be a cost consideration even if the CDC/FDA were not being run by lunatics.

Schedule F and making the civil service serve Trump: “If judges will consistently accept facially absurd factual claims or facially absurd interpretations of statutes then there is no law”

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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-novel-concept-will-judges-start-enforcing-the-law-with-doge

Roe v Wade never made legal sense to me. The judicial interpretation of the 2nd amendment is absurd.

Now it’s going to new extremes. The GOP SCOTUS corruption has old roots.

“boys have always lagged girls in certain areas, yet there has been little focus on their issues, perhaps because men have dominated in so many spheres.”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/upshot/boys-falling-behind-data.html

Girls are better at school work and better at modern employment settings. And women do not “marry down” (might change).

We will need boy-oriented school options (open to all), which implies charter schools.

“putting historical knowledge back into the bottle after decades of reckoning with the nation’s racist history will be more difficult than the administration believes”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/06/us/politics/trump-censorship-black-history.html

The people who teach these topics are unlikely to obey.

“the Smithsonian issued a statement saying it would do no such thing.”

There is Streisand Effect potential here.

Kickbacks to promote Medicare Advantage scams: “Aetna; Elevance Health, formerly known as Anthem; and Humana”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/health/medicare-kickbacks-private-plans-trump.html

“steer older people and those with disabilities toward coverage that might not offer the best medical care….

… efforts to drive beneficiaries away specifically because their disabilities might make them less profitable”

Anthropology: “People start to tell the tourists – and I found that most Shipibo people did not distinguish tourists from researchers – the stories they think are interesting for them and not what they really live with.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/may/01/the-ancient-psychedelics-myth-people-tell-tourists-the-stories-they-think-are-interesting-for-them

This is a universal human trait. It is why we had to develop science and falsifiability.

Also, if MAGA somehow revives anthro that will be a silver lining.