gru:Bz
Average millennial living life on the edge (of the Midwest). Probably too immature for Micro.blog but I like it here.
Link
Corn sweat: crop moisture amplifies humidity and heat in US midwest
One acre of corn, which is a little smaller than the size of an American football field, can can create 3,000 to 4,000 gallons of corn sweat, Clark said.
Can confirm. Source: am in Ohio
Former Alaska Airlines pilot who tried to shut down engines in-flight shares his story
On Friday night, the group took psychedelic mushrooms – a drug that can make you hallucinate and typically has effects that last a few hours.
“There was a feeling of being trapped, like, ‘Am I trapped in this airplane and now I’ll never go home?”
One time I ate weed brownies that were too strong and had to call off work the next day. This guy is just fucking crazy lol
Man Spills Blue Cheese in Car, Interior Becomes Covered in Mold Overnight
…the closed car doors and lack of ventilation effectively created a greenhouse for the mold to grow, causing it to spread throughout the entirety of the vehicle, coating it in what looks like white film.
This definitely does not make blue cheese any less repulsive to me 🤢
In ‘Fictional Nature,’ Fabian Knecht Encloses Live Trees and Craggy Stones in a White Cube Gallery
Walk into one of Fabian Knecht’s installations, and you’ll likely smell the dewy, herbal scent of moss and the sweet musk of wood, fragrant evidence of life growing amidst clinical, fluorescent lights and stark walls. Branches, grass, and water features appear as if they’ve been cut to fit the exact dimensions of the gallery and transported from their native habitats into the classic white cube.
What We Learned In Our First Year of 404 Media
A year ago today, we published a blog post called “Welcome to 404 Media.” In that post, we explained that the four of us quit our jobs to start something new, and set some goals for ourselves.
They grow up so fast 🥲🎂
Authors sue Anthropic for copyright infringement over AI training
The complaint, filed on Monday, opens new tab by writers and journalists Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson, said that Anthropic used pirated versions of their works and others to teach Claude to respond to human prompts.
It’s one thing to debate on whether or not it’s okay to train on publicly available data, or the ethics of ignoring Robots.txt but this is a company with billions of dollars in funding, literally pirating books to train AI
Your TV set has become a digital billboard. And it’s only getting worse.
Representatives for LG and Samsung declined to comment to Ars Technica about how much of their respective company’s business is ad sales. But the deals they’ve made with data-collection firms signal big interest in turning their products into lucrative smart TVs. In this case, “smart” isn’t about Internet connectivity but rather how well the TV understands its viewer.
We’re literally turning into an Idiocracy
Mozilla’s New Logo Brings Back the Dinosaur Mascot (Kinda)
It could be viewed as a flag on a pole. Sort of like Mozilla planting its values in the ground to say “we’re here, come join”.
But it’s more likely a nod to the original Mozilla mascot (inherited from its Netscape beginnings), which was a red dinosaur (an interesting logo of itself as it was designed by Shepard Fairey who created other seminal design works, and the skate brand OBEY).
I’m a sucker for throwback design language and ASCII doodles. Wonder if this will stick?
The Scent Of UX: The Unrealized Potential Of Olfactory Design
Odors may not replace textbooks and lectures, but their addition will make remembering and recalling things significantly easier. In fact, researchers from MIT built and tested a wearable scent-emitting device that can be used for targeted memory reactivation.
This makes me uncomfortable o_O
Let this tiny bean bag chair for your lap hold your heavy handhelds
Doomscrolling isn’t going away any time soon, but there’s no reason you can’t be comfortable while doing it. Mechanism’s $59 Gaming Pillow is designed to shift the weight of gadgets like handheld consoles, tablets, XL smartphones, and e-readers from your arms to your lap
Honestly this looks useful but I’m too proud to own something called a “gaming pillow” lol
When I deliberately try to think and move more slowly, things happen faster. That sounds like a contradiction, but not having to rewrite words or clean up spills makes everything move along at a more consistent pace. And I don’t swear as much.
I feel this so much! If I slow down and focus on one task at a time I make mistakes a lot less. When I start running short on time and try to rush through everything, I end up spending more time correcting stuff than if I would have just gone at a steady pace and let myself breathe. Slow and steady wins the race 🐢
Replika CEO Eugenia Kuyda says it’s okay if we end up marrying AI chatbots
For some people, it means marriage, it means romance, and that’s fine. That’s just the flavor that they like. But in reality, that’s the same thing as being a friend with an AI. It’s achieving the same goals for them: it’s helping them feel connected, they’re happier, they’re having conversations about things that are happening in their lives, about their emotions, about their feelings.
I can’t help it, this is the first thing that comes to mind:
Co-Founder of DDoSecrets Was Dark Web Drug Kingpin
A co-founder of transparency activism organization Distributed of Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) was a dark web drug kingpin who ran the successor to the infamous Silk Road marketplace and was later convicted of child abuse imagery crimes.
Whoa. I guess even transparency advocates can have their own gross secrets
Elon Musk Slammed for Filling Orbit With Space Junk
SpaceX has launched over 6,000 Starlink internet satellites into low-Earth orbit, and is planning to bring that total to as many as 42,000 in the upcoming years.
Regulation hasn’t caught up with commercial entities like SpaceX building out mega-constellations in an increasingly cluttered orbit, as Wired reports, making what happens to these satellites when they’re retired an unknown.
Maybe we’ll see the first Dyson sphere one day. Only instead of a megastructure around the sun, it’s just Elon’s trash enveloping the entire planet
Nova Launcher, savior of cruft-filled Android phones, is on life support
…when mobile app metrics firm Branch acquired the popular and well-regarded Nova Launcher for Android, the app’s site put up one of those self-directed FAQ posts about it. Under the question heading “What does Branch want with Nova?,” Nova founder and creator Kevin Barry started his response with, “Not to mess it up, don’t worry!”
This is pretty sad. When I still had an Android phone this was the only launcher I ever used. One of the first apps I ever paid for, all the way back on Android 4.0
The company has its roots in the very dirtiest kinds of Bitcoin mining. Its top execs (including CEO Paul Prager) were involved with Beowulf Energy LLC, a company that convinced struggling coal plant operators to keep operating in order to fuel Bitcoin mining rigs. There’s evidence that top execs at Terawulf, the “carbon neutral” Bitcoin mining op, are also running Beowulf, the coal Bitcoin mining op.
mining coal to burn for the sake of mining bitcoin is the dumbest thing I’ve heard all day
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman hinted at “new types of subreddits that can be built that may have exclusive content or private areas.”
We’ve had versions of premium community features in the past, like r/goldlounge, that users loved, so we’re exploring new ways to empower moderators and communities to try exclusive spaces and content"
I tried Reddit gold a few months ago and there was almost no activity in r/goldlounge lol but sure; adding more paywalled subreddits is probably a good idea 🥴
I don’t think OpenAI really cares about false positives with text watermarking lol they just don’t want to lose paying customers
99.9 percent accuracy sounds like a lot, but imagine that one among 1,000 college papers was falsely labeled as cheating. That could lead to some unfortunate consequences for innocent students.
A [WSJ] survey of ChatGPT users showed that as many as 30 percent said they would stop using ChatGPT if its output was watermarked.
“This landmark decision holds Google accountable,” DOJ antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter said in a statement. “It paves the path for innovation for generations to come and protects access to information for all Americans.”
As if Google will face any real consequences other than paying some fines and getting back to business as usual 🙄