We set speed limits, we put them on signs, and we expect people to follow them. But in reality, it plays out a little differently. People don’t really drive based on what a sign tells them. So if signs don’t work, what does?
Justine Underhill
Why speed limits don’t matter (Justine Underhill – YouTube)
A new song from Kate Nash that I think is worth a listen.
Girl listen up,
You’re not radical
Exclusionary, regressive, misogynist
Germ! Germ
Nah you’re not rad at all
Kate Nash
The music video is age-restricted due to nudity, so I can’t embed it here. You can watch on YouTube: Kate Nash – GERM (Official Lyric Video) (Kate Nash – YouTube)
In the Who Cares Era, the most radical thing you can do is care.
Dan Sinker
The Who Cares Era (Dan Sinker /blog)
A whole lot of people – including computer scientists who should know better and academics who are usually thoughtful – are caught up in fanciful, magical beliefs about chatbots. Any sufficiently advanced technology and all that. But why chatbots specifically?
Jeffrey Lockhart
it’s the interface (scatterplot)
This article from University of Michigan’s LSA Magazine was an interesting read.
Brown finds that when we look closely at the historic foodways that brought us popular dishes, we are “forced to consider that cuisines and cultures can’t be reduced to a single ethnic group.” Dumplings, for example, can be mapped all over the world, and she believes the first dumplings were likely made in Central Asia, or somewhere along the Silk Road, and not in the Chinese heartland.
Gina Balibrera
What Can the Dumpling Tell Us About the History of the World? (LSA Magazine)
I spent last week in Michigan and had a chance to visit the zoo of my childhood. The Detroit Zoo has changed a fair bit since I last visited it a couple of decades ago. I enjoyed the few hours that I spent walking around and visiting the animals.
Carolina Forward takes a look at potential changes to North Carolina’s Constitution that could help reduce some of the dysfunction seen in the state’s government:
Does North Carolina’s constitution need a re-write? (Carolina Forward)
Using any means to put words into the mouth of a dead person feels grotesque, especially for the purposes of a legal case. Generative AI unfortunately makes it easy to accomplish in a rather compelling way.
An AI avatar made to look and sound like the likeness of a man who was killed in a road rage incident addressed the court and the man who killed him: “To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me, it is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances,” the AI avatar of Christopher Pelkey said. “In another life we probably could have been friends. I believe in forgiveness and a God who forgives. I still do.”
It was the first time the AI avatar of a victim—in this case, a dead man—has ever addressed a court, and it raises many questions about the use of this type of technology in future court proceedings.
Matthew Gault, Jason Koebler
‘I Loved That AI:’ Judge Moved by AI-Generated Avatar of Man Killed in Road Rage Incident (404 Media)
This was an interesting video from Sarah Taber. I had never heard of screwworm before or how they were eradicated within the United States and the rest of North America.
Screwworm: MAGA is bringing back flesh-eating maggots 😦 (Farm to Taber – YouTube)
Cochliomyia hominivorax (Wikipedia)
This video from Adam Conover covers something that I’ve been thinking about myself – online review systems and ratings are pretty horrible. You shouldn’t care what anonymous people rating things on websites think. If you need a recommendation, get it from a trusted person instead.
5 Star Reviews Are Ruining Your Life (Adam Conover – YouTube)
Scott Boehmer 