Daniel Dvorkin

As an old #ColdWarrior, I still can't quite get my head around how quickly #Republicans went from "Russians are the enemy and we must oppose them at all costs!" to "Yessir, Mr. #Putin, right away sir!"

They used to call us #Democrats commies (and I caught a *lot* of shit in the #Army for my #Russian name) and now they're taking orders from a former #KGB officer who is quite open about his nostalgia for the #USSR. It's unreal.

We'll have none of that artificial plagiarism here. Just good old-fashioned hand-grown certified-organic artisanal plagiarism. ✍️ #writing

Just like Grandma used to make. OR DID SHE?

endpoints.newsFTC accuses Martin Shkreli of violating lifetime pharma banThe FTC and seven states ask a court to hold Martin Shkreli in contempt for allegedly violating his lifetime pharma industry ban.

Now there's a name I've not heard for a long time ... a long time. 🧪 ⚕️ #medsky Good to see the federal government can still occasionally enforce the law. Don't bet on that lasting if he makes the right "donation," though. endpoints.news/ftc-accuses-...

I guess I'd enjoy a Romanian vacation even as a living person, but otherwise, this seems accurate.

Today, a friend assured me that paleontologically plausible time travel is a viable science fiction market niche. "I hope you're right. I really do." 🚀 ✍️ 🦕 🦖

"... and that's how we finally cleaned up Sunnydale."

Yeah, it's been about a year and a half since my most recent story (Crossroads, BSQ 30) came out. I've been trying to avoid thinking too hard about that, but I'm really not okay with it. 🚀 🦖 🦕 ✍️

I expected to have the Silmarillisaurus done a year ago, and a novel manuscript ready to go no later than six months after that.

Maybe it's trivial compared to everything else that's been going on. Except nothing is trivial, to quote one of the great philosophers of my generation. This sure isn't, anyhow.

We've understood the physics of bumblebee flight for decades, and the idea that "science doesn't know how they fly" comes from a single flawed paper in the 1930s. So I am completely unsurprised that someone with a Tesla profile pic thinks "but bumblebees!" is a flex. 🧪

Good crunchy analysis here. The short version is that all but the earliest ceratopsians could and likely did use their heads and horns as weapons for mate competition, and in some cases predator defense. Don't make the horned walking tank angry. You wouldn't like it when it's angry. 🧪 🦖

peerj.compeerj.com

11 Sept

Conspiracy theorists of all types are irritating as hell, but 9/11 conspiracy theorists are fucking ghouls. 🧵

11 Sept

Yes, there was a conspiracy: Osama bin Laden conspired with 19 hijackers and a few other people to fly airliners into buildings. That's it. That's the whole thing.

11 Sept

Inventing fake conspiracies that would require *thousands* of people to keep their mouths shut for decades isn't just stupid, although it's certainly that. It's also taking some sick personal satisfaction in the deaths of thousands of victims. Let the dead rest.

30 Aug

A story in three parts.

I use #AI in my #bioinformatics work, and I have a somewhat better opinion of it than most people I know, because it's quite good at certain tasks. #Maps ... aren't among them. (via @mhboroson.bsky.social) 🧪 🖥️ 🧬 🧵

New rules could be added as users report inaccuracies and hallucinations.

Obviously they don't do that now, which says to me that the people selling them don't care. Unfortunately, a lot of the people making buying decisions don't either. The problem isn't the technology, it's the people. As usual.

So it seems to me that LLMs *could* be programmed from the start with #verification rules.

Any #citations must be checked by going to the site where the alleged paper is supposed to exist, and making sure that at least a document with that title is present at that #URL. Any #locations must be checked against the numerous publicly available maps. That kind of thing.

What I don't understand is why things like #geography are so hard for it. Of course there is a good bit of art in #map-making. But there is also a source of (so to speak) ground truth.

A #map may be very simple or it may be embellished in various ways, but named locations are absolute, measured these days down to centimeter-scale precision.

Programs are binary in purpose as well as substance: the result is either correct or it isn't. Ambiguity is poison, which I guess is why LLMs and related programs fail so miserably on any task requiring subjective judgement. #Art of any kind—verbal, visual, musical—is as ambiguous as it gets.

I'm not convinced #computers will *never* produce good #art, by whatever standard of "good" you prefer, but I am reasonably sure throwing more processing power at current algorithms isn't the way to get there.

Give it a clear description of what the code you want it to write is supposed to do, and the tests needed for acceptance of the final product, and it will generate something that does the job, much faster than any human programmer.

Since any programming project should start with a detailed spec anyhow (which I sometimes forget, and always regret it) this is genuinely useful.

My boss describes it #LLM based AI as being like an eager-to-please first-year computer science student, and that's pretty accurate. Anything tricky is best done by human brains and hands, but #Codex, #Claude Code, et al. handle big boring tasks very well.

20 Aug

Amateurs. In the Air Force, we resorted to cannibalism when the coffeemaker broke.

16 Aug

Recently I had cause to use the phrase "Branch Covidians". To be clear, BCs are the antimaskers / antivaxers who took the side of a virus over their fellow human beings. I'm not sure if I was the first person to start using the phrase or not, but that was always what it meant. 🧪 ⚕️ #medsky

16 Aug

A few months after I coined it (again, I may not have been the only one) some BC started trying to use it against sane people who wanted themselves and others to survive. I was there first. Original and best. Accept no substitutes.

This morning I woke up from a #dream about a long-dead friend. 🧵

I have to admit I hadn't thought about ___ in quite a while, and I want him to live for a while more.

Soon enough today my concerns will be purely those of the waking world. Another pot of coffee is brewing. I like to think ___ would approve.

This morning I woke up from a #dream about a long-dead friend. 🧵

Which can be very nice, except for the part where you wake up and realize you're back where those things are gone forever. People, places, situations, all carved in sand.

Pondering the dream after my first cup of coffee (so far only; I should fix that soon) I decided such dreams are our brains' attempt to keep those times alive. The closest we can get to immortality is living in other people's memories.

This morning I woke up from a #dream about a long-dead friend. 🧵

In the dream he was healthy and whole, and we ran into each other in some kind of waiting room. "Hey, ___! It's been a while. How you been, man?" Then we chatted until one of us was called in for whatever kind of appointment we were waiting for.

I've had other dreams like that about people long absent from my life, whether or not they're now absent from everyone's life including their own. Dreamland is filled with all kinds of dramatic and bizarre happenings, but it's also simply where things that used to be normal still are.

My previous Mastodon instance, qoto(dot)org, died a messy death. Now I'm @medigoth@mstdn.science for those who may be interested.

courthousenews.comUnder pressure from Trump, National Academy of Sciences pulls climate chapter from judicial manualThe nonprofit organization said it would conduct an independent review on the climate section of its scientific handbook made for federal judges, after criticism it unfairly targets fossil fuel compan...

13 Aug

Well, this is horrifying. If anything worthy of the name "United States of America" exists after the next few years, we'll need some changes to ensure continued survival. Ensuring the independence of Congressionally mandated agencies and chartered organizations will be an unsexy but vital step. 🧪 ⚖️

science.orgSenate votes to block rule giving White House more control over researchLanguage is part of bill to fund government until mid-December

11 Aug

Small victories are the only kind we have these days, so I'll take them where I can get them.

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.@arctomet.bsky.social

Senate votes to block rule giving White House more control over research | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

reuters.comUS Senate panel votes to hold Fauci in contempt of CongressA U.S. Senate committee voted on Thursday to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after the former top U.S. infectious disease official refused to answer questions about his handling of the...

6 Aug

Because of course they did. ⚕️🧪🧵

6 Aug

With the number of #Republicans already giving aid and comfort to the enemies of humanity, this isn't a surprise, and I guess it's fairly small potatoes compared to the mass murder #antimaskers / #antivaxers / anti-science loons in general have wrought. It's a useful symbol, though.

6 Aug

Some day there will be a reckoning. I would much prefer it come at human hands, rather than the mindless workings of biology at the lowest level. Not my choice, though, and it's happening either way.