#“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.

[serial-unaliver]

me: lmaoo my mom really thinks a few salty crackers and ginger ale will cure my nausea

me 2 minutes after ginger ale and crackers, no longer nauseous:

[analytically]

Astrology doesn't seem to work.

[thecrankyprofessor]

An excellent example of why I don't take medical advice as "science" all the time.

[labdynastes]

"OK" SO IT SEEMS AS THOUGH MY GENETICALLY MODIFIED KILLER BEETLES HAVE ESCAPED. HAS ANYONE SEEN MY FUCKI🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲OH G🪲OD🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲 SHI🪲🪲T🪲🪲🪲🪲🪲🧪AAAHHHHHHHHOOOHhh Hey. That One Learned thge basics of Chemistry . #Proud

[ur-daily-inspiration]

[protectoursharks]

The shape of a fish's caudal tail can tell you a lot about how fast the fish moves! A rounded tail is the slowest and a lunate tail is the fastest! The lunate tail has the most optimal ratio of high thrust and low draw, making it the fastest.

Ichthyology Notes 2/?

[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".

[clonerightsagenda]

I was rambling on the issue of museums and human remains and how certain populations are more likely to have their bodies put on display to be gawked at and then went "well I guess the Pompeii casts were of Europeans. there are bones in there right?" and Googled it to make sure, at which point I confirmed that yes there are bones in there, but more interestingly DNA testing revealed that a cast of an adult holding a child everyone assumed was a mother and child were, in fact, a man and a kid entirely unrelated to him. Honestly that's more moving to me. Maybe they were connected in a way other than blood, but maybe a stranger saw a child when the world was ending and thought the one thing he could do was hold them.

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

Honestly bizarre that tomatoes get all the flack for “not being a vegetable” because they're technically a fruit when:

A) There are a ton of fruits that get categorised as vegetables. Like this also applies to pumpkins, squashes and cucumbers.

B) The fucking mushrooms are standing there at the back of the crowd in this witch trial, trying to look inconspicuous because they somehow got into the vegetable club with no fucking controversy despite the fact that they're not even plants.

[tinagodiva]

Fall in New England 🍁

[mostly-funnytwittertweets]