AI can be a force multiplier for humans, but often can’t replace them. The current usage is often idiotic at best.

E.g. excluding the issue of data misuse, an AI system could be extremely helpful to doctors. It could flag possible issues, complications and unusual conditions in a way that would otherwise require a deep dive by a specialist doctor. A doctor or nurse could then parse the results for useful points, while filtering out hallucinations.

2 reasons, remembered from a lawyers lecture on the subject at uni, years ago, in the UK.

1. Some people produce small amounts of alcohol in their gut. It’s generally not much (more becomes auto brewery syndrome) but not zero. This can blip the test up slightly, even when they haven’t drunk.

2. The awkward fact that a small amount of alcohol actually improves driving. It’s somewhere between 1/4 and 3/4 pint of beer. It’s also the reason alcohol is considered a performance enhancing drug in some olympic sports.

The limit is set high enough that there is no arguing these points in a court. It also covers the residual alcohol in people’s systems the morning after. It’s well into the point where all but the heaviest alcoholic will definitely be impaired. That lets them use blood alcohol as a proxy for impaired driving due to alcohol.

On a side note. I know someone who blew red on the breathalyser. He knew something was wrong, since he has been teetotal for 20 years. He got arrested, only for the blood test to show 0.0. The police were quite confused, but let him go. It turned out, he had (unthinkingly) eaten a liqueur chocolate before being pulled over. It was enough to mess up the breathalyser.

Our mind is dependent on the exact wiring and firing potentials of the neurons. This is what stores everything (skills, memories, autonomic functions etc).

When the neurons die, this information is rapidly lost. Connections break, and triggering potentials collapse.

Reversing brain death involves reversing that process. It would almost be easier to digitise the brain and simulate it at that point.

What might be possible is localised repairs. Strokes can take out small, but critical areas of the brain. Rebuilding a speech center is a lot easier. The brain can distribute a lot of functions, if required. Putting new material in and letting it both learn to use it, and teach it to function is within the realms of medicine. It’s the difference however between a skin graft and rebuilding a limb that’s been through a wood chipper from the bucket of parts.

Yourself, along with some martial arts training.

You won’t be doing any Bruce Lee moves with basic training, but even basic training can make a big difference.

One of the first things you learnt in most martial arts is how to balance and move. This, combined with some basic blocks, is often enough to disengage and retreat quickly. It also helps train your brain to drop into defence/combat mode when required. This stops you freezing up for a critical few seconds.

Any weapon is mostly useless without the training to use it in the heat of an encounter. If you’re going to train with something, it might as well be a weapon you will always have available.

My preference is Tae Kwon Do, but any general martial art will be hugely beneficial.

Oh, and as a side effect, martial arts often help train a mindset change. You know you can defend yourself, and so subconsciously project confidence. It makes you less of a target to begin with.

It can alert to problems like a tree needing trimming, a dirty panel, or a panel going bad. All of which are actionable.

Initially. It’s a link aggregator and discussion site, like reddit, but far more independent.

If they query it. It runs on a system a bit like how email works. Rather than 1 big monolithic system, it’s a bunch of small ones linked together. A federation of small services all acting as 1 whole. In practice it’s fairly transparent, just like you don’t care who’s hosting an email address, you can just email it.

It also makes it a lot more resistant to takeover and manipulation by big business. It can resist the Nazis bar problem better, like what happened to twitter. (Optional depending on the person involved).

The first gives them the basic idea. The second gives them a basic understanding of the structure, without overwhelming them, or panicking them with complexity.

Everyone now knows that email just works, but has lots of different companies involved. It makes a good comparison for how federation can work well online.

Ironically, it actually did its job pre WWII.

Chamberlain realised he had fucked up. Britain didn’t have the forces to actually resist the Nazis. Appeasement was to buy them time to rearm. When the war actually started, Chamberlain fell on his proverbial sword, to give Churchill a clean slate and a functional military to work with.

AI can be a force multiplier for doctors. The catch is it needs to be doctor led. It’s quite trivial for a doctor to dismiss the obvious hallucinations. If it also points them towards more subtle signs they would potentially miss, then that’s a net win.

It’s a very British style protest. Farage tried to turn an investigation/resignation/bielection into a media circus. The larger parties instead stepped aside to let the clown in to deal with him.

Mexico had a wrestler run (and win!).

I think it was in relation to having private tutors.

The rich had a private education, with a few years at “public school” to make contacts and learn to socialise with their peers.

It predated universal education systems.

Didn’t Mexico have a similar issue a year or so ago?

Someone ran and was elected under his mexican wrestling persona. He attended parliament with his mask on. He insisted, since he was elected under his masked persona, he would attend parliament under it.

He originally did it because cartels had targeted MPs, and he ran on an anti cartel manifesto.

The free masons originally grew as a support and trust network.

It used to be that traveling was FAR less common. Consequently, travellers were seen as suspect. One of the major exceptions was masons. They would have to relocate to big projects e.g. a castle. They would stay long enough that the lack of trust was a problem, but not long enough to properly overcome it.

End result, they started vouching for each other. A local groups would vouch for the newcomers. They would introduce them and stop them getting ripped off.

Furthermore, stonemasonry was a dangerous trade. It was easy for a mason to be killed far from home. They clubbed together to support the families of members, as well as the disabled.

Wrap this up in Christianity based traditions and you have the masonic free masons. An early cooperative support and social networking group.

Generation on demand is still a better. Batteries are still quite an expensive option, at the scale required.

It also ignores the other benefits. The main one is allowing a combination of agriculture and power generation.

As someone who also makes weird shit. The media have their weird obsession with everything being practical.

Most of the time, the people making these are doing it purely for the amusement/challenge of it. Think of it as art, not product development.

I have an internal mindscape. It’s closer to a layered interactive data stream than anything else.

One of the ‘nodes’ on that is my speech center. Unless I block it, it tries to turn the data stream into a word stream. They then loops into the auditory ‘node’. That then tries to process it the same as someone else talking to me. It lets me use all the filters and processing tools I built up as a child. It is excellent at finding holes in my ideas, the same way I would mentally pull apart what I was being told by someone else. It also lets me crystallise ideas into a form that can be passed to someone else.

I can suppress my inner monologue (unless I actively require it, e.g. for writing this message) but generally I don’t. It’s useful when I need to deep dive a problem. My brain can outrun my word stream, and dropping it can let me attack problems without the limitations of language caging me.

Given that they are scrabbling around like drug addicts looking for anything they’ve split, including checking the cracks in the floorboards…

For some models, it’s obvious they’ve long scrapped the erotic fan fic sites!

Vertical solar panels are looking to be quite economical. While there power per panel surface is lower, the timing of peak outputs is an excellent complement to standard solar. It has maximum output in the morning and evenings, when people want to run home appliances etc, rather than at midday when they are all at work.

It also uses less land. Rather than giving up 100% of a field to solar, A farmer can give up 20%, leaving the rest for crops or livestock. Apparently sheep do particularly well in this setup. The panels provide shade, and more diversity in plant types to eat. They actually do better than those in an empty field of the same size.

I’ve found an ebike was a good investment. I personally use it to keep up with my over energetic minion.

The key advantage is that you can tailor your exercise easily. No running into a mental wall, and still having 2 miles uphill to get home. The power assist means you can back off to a comfortable level whenever you want.

It also gets you outside and moving, which helps with mental health a lot, independently.

I personally found these guys remarkably good for the price.

Aairsk

It’s definitely a cheap bike, but does all the basics fine.

I’m in 2 minds on this. It reads (and looks) like the police were dealing with deliberate civil disobedience, against a legal event. (Yes I feel dirty describing it like that, but it’s true).

Looking at the video, it looks like a twitch response that they reigned in immediately. The police officer had protestors all around him and was likely feeling defensive. It shouldn’t have happened, but it was a quick human/training failure.

As for the police stopping them at all. The best we can hope for now, is for the police being neutral. I would hope that the police would step in, if it was a bunch of right wingers trying to invade a gay pride event. It’s hard to argue the reverse, when the shoe is on the other foot.

And just to clarify, I’m well on the side of the protestors here. It’s just one of the things you need to accept if you’re pushing the law. I’ve played run-around with the police at protests myself before (years back now, unfortunately). I knew the police had to oppose us, and accepted that fact.