Sandra

@lilysch.bsky.social

Biochemist. Former Science Editor. Working on a degree in Political Science. „Ein Leben ohne Mops ist möglich aber sinnlos.“ 🐾 Currently in Michigan. She/her. Anti-fascist.

Published estimates of AI energy use per prompt (~0.3 watt-hours) appear reassuring small. But they are increasingly disconnected from how we actually use AI. Modern agentic tools use around 600 times more energy per prompt, as I discuss in my latest over at The Climate Brink www.theclimatebrink....

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El-Sayed: "My commitment to Jewish safety is the same commitment that I have to the safety of my own daughters. Because if there is one question of political philosophy that ought to animate us all, it's what would we do if we treated all our kids like they were all of our kids?"

">900 people in Washtenaw County, MI, have been sickened with cyclosporiasis since mid-June. Linda Kim, a public health nurse, has called >100 of them. Almost everyone has said the same thing: It’s excruciating, and one of the worst illnesses they’ve experienced." kffhealthnews.org/public-healt...

Nurses Chase Cyclospora, Aided by Interviews, Fast-Food Receipts — And the Messy Details - KFF Health News

Yes, they’ve heard all the poop jokes. Public health staffers are painstakingly tracing the sources of this massive outbreak, combing through fast-food orders and lettuce purchases as they listen to p...

kffhealthnews.org

There’s no way to spin this. “Big yech”—actually a nice typo (slip?) in the article—was able to buy off the leadership of the nation’s second largest teacher’s union for a paltry $12.5 million.

Teaching educators about AI is a “moral imperative”, said Randi Weingarten, the AFT president. She argues that AI training empowers teachers to make informed decisions about how, when or whether to use AI in their instruction. And without outside funding, it was a choice between taking big yech’s money or doing nothing, she said.
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 7h ago

“Teaching educators about AI is a ‘moral imperative’, said Randi Weingarten, the AFT president.” “And without outside funding, it was a choice between taking big tech’s money or doing nothing, she said.”

I know someone who works for the State Dept, highly educated, speaks several languages, and they have this person scanning social media for insulting things said about Marco.

The entire Republican Party, and a chunk of the Democratic Party, have a direct interest in convincing you that conservative wins are a mandate and anything else is not.

Activist and grassroots organizer Will Lawrence has won the Democratic primary election in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, with a campaign focused on data centers’ regulation and demanding accountability for big tech and AI companies. www.wired.com/story/anti-d...

The Anti-Data-Center Movement Is Reshaping Michigan Politics

Climate activist Will Lawrence cofounded the Sunrise Movement. Now, he has shifted his focus in his attempt to compete for a swing-district seat by calling for a data center moratorium.

wired.com

IMHO, It's safe to say that NIAID's standing as a global infectious disease research center and funding agency will be essentially nullified with someone as ill-qualified as Dr. Quay at its helm.

In a college sociology class in the late 1980s I was assigned a Marxist analysis of education that argued that the US education system is designed primarily to produce efficient workers for the labor market. And now Trump’s Department of Education is just tweeting it out.

U.S. Department of Ed...
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60%
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WORK THIS YEAR

The craziest fallout of the Cyclospora situation for me personally is I used to work in a microbiology lab as the one (1) parasitologist. That lab didn't even have the right gear for many of the tests they wanted me to do. Couldn't train me to run the tests right, bc nobody in the lab knew how!

The burden is always on us lefties to welcome them, debate them, compromise with them, find middle ground, and generally make them comfortable. It’s totally one directional. No one is calling for Truth Social to make any room for us.

That's what taxes are, man. That's the definition of taxes. "You are subsidizing things you might never use" man shut the fuck up. My taxes currently subsidize like oil company exec private jets, you think I'm upset at low-income people eating inexpensive bananas?

USA TODAY Opinion@usatodayopinion.usatoday.com · 2d ago

Opinion: Mamdani's idea may sound appealing, but it's NYC taxpayers who will take the hit, subsidizing discounts they may never even use.

America’s concentration camps must be shut down now They are sites of horror: torture, rampant spread of infectious diseases, inadequate sanitation, hygiene, & medical care, & a mounting death toll Just as “better training of guards” wasn’t the answer to Auschwitz, you can’t “reform” these camps

Shawn Connery @shawnconnery.bsky.social · 2d ago

Immigrant Held at Delaney Detention Center Has Died, Officials Say The mayor of Newark identified the dead man as Edwin Lopez-Cornejo. The federal New Jersey center has been the focus of intense scrutiny for its treatment of detainees. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/n...

LLMs have reached the point that they can be useful as proof assistants. Increasingly, they appear capable even of generating entire proofs that are correct. But in my experience, their best proofs are just correct. They aren't explanatory the way a good human proof is. Here's Cris Moore:

All this puzzling is very similar to what we do in mathematics. I think of a puzzle—especially a puzzle with a beautiful logical path—as an elegant proof of its own solution. It may be presented in cryptic form, or as a series of subtle signposts, but it provides just enough information to let the solver find, or build, its solution.
To continue the analogy, the best proofs are not just a series of logical steps arriving at a conclusion. Such a proof might establish that the conclusion is true, but that is all it does. It provides mere knowledge, and knowledge only of that one thing.
In contrast, a good proof gives us a sense of why something is true. It helps us learn, not just about that one problem, but about the larger web of mathematics: what analogies it has with other problems and other truths, how far these analogies can be stretched and where they break down. It teaches us something new about how truth works. It gives us insight and understanding.

Exclusive: We obtained a leaked playbook that Flock gives to cops to coach them on "how to speak to city council" to avoid getting their contracts canceled. Includes strategies like "own the narrative" by talking to mayor "before public comment periods" www.404media.co/own-the-narr...

‘Own the Narrative’: Leaked Flock Guide Shows How It Teaches Cops to Promote Its Tech

"This document shows a coordinated effort from Flock Safety to compel law enforcement agencies to convince our elected leaders to represent their interests as a company rather than the interests of co...

404media.co

One of the more frustrating legacies of 2020 is the idea that reporting risk factors for mortality is somehow always a slight against disabled and chronically ill people, as opposed to an essential piece of information for people in that category to assess their risk before *or after* they get sick

The New York Times@nytimes.com · 2d ago

Breaking News: Two deaths in Michigan have been linked to cyclospora. Both people who had the parasite also had underlying health issues.