#“science”

[cinamun]

*reads story while giggling and kicking feet*...AND THEN...

*spills water & chokes on ice* Hold up! Ayo ALEXAAAAAAA.....you know what to do...

i'm pissed because SPOTIFY, who TF is this on the cover art...but anyway

🤣 I ship it! Sorry Jaylen...

Circling back, Alexa and Spotify are fired because I really wanna know who is this man on the cover art...and WHY is he there. 😒

LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO i'm mad at the cover art man, specifically! Nah but fr, Wayne said he need to know for science...

[yhancik]

The authors are arguing that generative AI is more green than humans writing or creating visual art.

They reached that conclusion by comparing dubious estimates of the carbon footprint of tools like ChatGPT... ... WITH THE CARBON FOOTPRINT OF A HUMAN JUST EXISTING.

For instance, the emission footprint of a US resident is approximately 15 metric tons CO2e per year, which translates to roughly 1.7 kg CO2e per hour. Assuming that a person’s emissions while writing are consistent with their overall annual impact, we estimate that the carbon footprint for a US resident producing a page of text (250 words) is approximately 1400 g CO2e.

These four - supposedly sane - individuals thought it up, spent time researching all kind of data and calculations, wrote this down, proofread it a hundred times, published it, without questioning at one point whether this was any kind of meaningful comparison.

Found via a very good thread by L. Rhodes to whom I leave the conclusion because he words it better than I ever could:

it's dangerous on multiple levels. Dangerous first of all because they'll use it to greenwash a practice that, by any truthful measure, is increasing the amount of carbon emissions. Those 300 million monthly queries don't displace the carbon emissions of the people making them—they add to them. And I suspect they add significantly more than is reflected by the calculations of that paper. But the comparison is also dangerous because it implies that we would be better off, environmentally speaking, if you COULD replace artists—not just their work, which the paper doesn't meaningfully distinguish from their actuarial carbon footprint, but the people themselves—with generative AI. And from what we've seen and heard of their ideological commitments, that's a conclusion some AI enthusiasts would readily embrace.

[53v3nfrn5]

Tree roots following the pattern of concrete footpaths

[ur-daily-inspiration]

[catchymemes]

[myjetpack]

my latest cartoon for New Scientist.

[prokopetz]

I've seen posts going around claiming that petting animals is basically tricking them into thinking they're being groomed, and it's bugging me because, like, there's no trickery afoot. Petting and scritching are grooming activities. They help to dislodge loose fur and foreign objects and more evenly distribute protective oils, among other things. Primates are social groomers, and the human impulse to scritch is the legacy of our primate ancestors. We see an animal we like, even a dangerous one, and the monkey brain says "groom that thing".

[analytically]

Astrology doesn't seem to work.

[nando161mando]

[toadbreath]

forgor his pants. how embarrassing

[mushroom-through-the-stargate]

Mythbusters have 3 categories of myths

the general public doesnt know how physics works

the general public doesnt know how lying works

oh crap this ones real

[deafeningcreationearthquake]

[toddchavezwatchescartoons]

"Pluto isn't a planet" Fine.

"Dinosaurs had feathers" Fine!

"Neptune isn't a beautiful oceanic blue, it's actually the same washed-out disappointing color as Uranus" I will kill you with my bare hands

Look how they massacred my boy

[53v3nfrn5]

Warped medullary rays found on pieces of wood that resemble animals

[mostly-funnytwittertweets]

[catchymemes]

Ohio Total Solar Eclipse