The ads in this Nov 55 Popular Science are magical array of obvious work-from-home scams, for-profit correspondence schools, guides to hustle-maxxing in a variety of questionable fields …

What is great about using AI to manage critical tasks is that in the face of any ambiguity in data, direction and process, or if context bleeds over from another case, the LLM will roll the dice and confidently guess wrong.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 3d ago

“The AI assistant, which Kinney Drugs named Burt, after its founder, was built by a third-party AI pharmaceutical company, Synerio. In the pharmacy’s terms, Kinney Drugs states that ‘Burt may not be accurate, complete or up-to-date and may be misleading or contain errors and omissions.’”

Google has apparently now walked this back, apparently not having had any idea it would be abused, which makes me wonder if any company ever thinks about anything for even five seconds anymore before implementing some new AI feature

Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 5d ago

New from 404 Media: Google Earth has introduced an AI feature that lets anyone fabricate completely bullshit satellite images. In our own tests, we added a “bomb blast and crater” to an area of Los Angeles. This is a misinformation time bomb, will 100% be abused www.404media.co/google-earth...

Honestly I can't think of a non-abusive use case for fake satellite imagery. Yes, let's risk a global surge of disinformation so that somebody can put boobs on a Waffle House or something.

Like come on

The U.S. State department has taken "full responsibility" for presenting a map of Africa at a global AIDS conference that mislabeled every single country it highlighted. Every single one. The map had a watermark indicating it was made using AI from OpenAI.

🎙️ Check out Bruce Lawson’s interview with Alex Moore, executive director and co-founder of Open Web Advocacy. They explore OWA’s history, why it exists, and what it’s fighting for: a better, more competitive web 🌐✊ open-web-advocacy.org/blog/bruce-l...

Bruce Lawson Interviews OWA: For A Better Web - Open Web Advocacy

Check out Bruce Lawson’s interview with Alex Moore, executive director and co-founder of Open Web Advocacy. They run through the history of OWA, why OWA exists…

open-web-advocacy.org

just became aware of William Howard Taft’s 1908 campaign poster

NEW: A large trove of Claude-generated documents have been exposed to the web and indexed by Google. We reviewed what appear to be real medical records, the full names and phone numbers of school-aged children, and company documents marked for internal use only. futurism.com/artificial-i...

A Whole Bunch of People's Claude Chats Are Publicly Accessible Online, and There's Some Wildly Private Stuff in There

A trove of documents generated by Anthropic's Claude were indexed by Google. They included medical records and student information.

futurism.com

Now is a good reminder that machine learning is a rebranding of statistical learning. Reinforcement learning is something I first came across in control theory. Many ML formulations are from information theory, a much more theoretically grounded discipline that's been around for decades.

Casey Newton@caseynewton.bsky.social · last wk.

There's a reason why "these are just statistical predictions" hasn't caught on in the discourse, and it's not the tech press. It's that people see them reading and writing and reasoning and scheming and they realize that the stochastic-parrots framing is outdated and inadequate to the moment

This utter muppet of a conservative Canadian politician in New Brunswick forgot to remove the LLM text from his floor speech and read it out loud.

FFS 🤦‍♂️ The Pentagon removed the names of 4 servicemembers who died in Jordan from their official list of casualties. They explain that this is because "their deaths occurred after President Trump declared a cease-fire in the war in April." www.nytimes.com/2026/07/23/u...

Number of U.S. Troop Deaths in Iran War Appears Lower on Pentagon Website (Gift Article)

Three military officials and a Pentagon spokesman gave conflicting explanations for why the number of Americans killed in the Iran war had changed.

nytimes.com

New: Late last night, Taylor Farms quietly posted an official recall notice We now know that the parasite-linked iceberg lettuce was shipped to Walmart & food distributors in 27 (!) states It was for some reason still being sent out up until Thursday July 16 www.consumerreports.org/health/food-...

Parasite-Linked Lettuce Was Sent to Walmart Stores and Food Distributors in 27 States - Consumer Reports

Taylor Farms' recalled the parasite-linked lettuce it said was sent to Walmart stores, Sysco, and other food distributors in 27 states.

consumerreports.org

If you call Beira's Place, the rape shelter JK Rowling set up specifically so she could deny help to rape victims she suspects of being trans, your call is not confidential and may be listened to by JK Rowling, who may tweet to her audience of millions to ridicule you and express contempt for you.

The Newromancer@tehsamantha.bsky.social · 3w ago

This is the context of JK Rowling putting a survivor of rape or sexual assault on blast for having the gall to seek help

Thank you everyone who sent me horrible AI generated flyers from around the world at my request. I was fully overwhelmed with hundreds and hundreds of these. These are the worst I saw. The hall of shame. Please enjoy and/or numb your brain: www.404media.co/these-are-th...

These Are the Worst ChatGPT Flyers You've Sent Us

Welcome to the AI-generated poster hall of shame.

404media.co

There’s an increase in cyclosporiasis (a parasite that can cause watery, sometimes explosive, diarrhea) reported in multiple states. What to know ⬇️ 1/

We've reached the "find out" stage, folks.

Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 4w ago

CDC stopped monitoring parasite now causing explosive diarrhea across the country

By this metric, pretty much everyone in this woman's family including herself should get the fuckin' chair. The McMahons covered up sexual abuse for decades then decided to get in on it themselves in the last decade. Craven monsters.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 4w ago

Linda McMahon: "One stat that just astounded me was that one out of 10 school students across the country have some sort of sexual misconduct perpetrated on them by teachers or school staff. And what happens? No action is taken ... schools are going to be in jeopardy of losing their federal funding"

🙏

I feel the same way about genAI fanfic. If someone thought it was a respectable way to "produce content" (ugh) for fandom, they'd tag it. But no. They want the credit/accolades for WRITING, and they don't want people to filter out their work bc they feel entitled to readers.

Thomas Ha@thomasha.bsky.social · 4w ago

not saying anything new, but if these folks actually believed in genAI writing, they'd disclose it, tout it, and build their own audiences elsewhere and leave others be. hiding and sneaking it to markets who want no part of it doesn't prove you're good at writing. just proves you're good at fraud.

It's not because real marginalized authors aren't good. Many are excellent. (I rebuke the idea that a diverse slate requires lowering your standards.) And, after all, the AI story itself wasn't good. But it turns out that for a lot of editors, "quality" means "looks like stuff I've read before."

"As a Democrat, you're not even allowed to have that debate” are you fucking kidding me

Gravel Influencer@gravelinfluencer.bsky.social · 4w ago

I am so fucking sick of Seth Moulton. He claims he'll fight for and protect trans kids while in the same breath defending his transphobic comments. The absolute gall of this man.

John’s last greatest. Stephen King’s ballooning legacy ribbed into one of the few equals to Stuart Gordon’s Lovecraft absurdity (and easily surpassing it). Like Prince of Darkness, gallingly nasty to Christendom and the very idea of faith rotting inside of you as an ignorance, an infection.

Jayce@jayceb.bsky.social · 9mo ago

HUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUE

Taking something that was engendering loads of goodwill and turning it into a complete shit show that will stain our reputation for decades after he's dead seems like a pretty stock move for him.

Every lifelong football fan I've ever met is like "I think players are supposed to serve their suspension" and every adult convert is like "the Archon of Constantinople's epistle on the Pentacostine rites of the eucharist clearly states handballs are mandatory."

Anna Bower@annabower.bsky.social · last mo.

“Automatic” in the FIFA regs/code just means that there’s no need for additional process—i.e., an investigation or disciplinary proceeding—to determine the applicable sanction. It does not mean the sanction is unreviewable. It does not mean that Article 27 cannot be invoked to suspend the sanction.

Folks, if you're interested in taking my "biology and ecology of sharks" course through the Center for Wildlife Studies this fall, you can save $75 if you register before August 9th! You can take it for university transfer credit or just to learn something. I'm happy to answer any questions!

Shark Biology and Ecology Online Course — Center for Wildlife Studies

centerforwildlifestudies.org

Today's NYT jobs report coverage (left) compared to exactly 2 years ago under Biden (right). Notice the numbers.

"Democratic candidates should abandon 'woke' social policy talking points like 'racism is a thing there should be less of' and focus instead on kitchen-table economic issues like 'immigrants should not be allowed to go to the doctor.'”

Democrats Need to Win Back Voters by Becoming Republicans

“According to the principle of minimum differentiation, America wants two political parties that are virtually indistinguishable, and that’s exactly what we ...

buff.ly

i think there is now a narrow lane for AI optimism now where optimism is strictly defined as "the good use cases for AI/ML stick around, some of the hyperscalers go tits up and the survivors become normal SaaS companies, and the handful of billionaires who manipulated the entire economy go to jail"