bratgpttamer

In the medical world, this is typically quantified by the Therapeutic Index[1], which is basically how much margin there is between an effective (therapeutic) dose and a lethal dose. (Fentanyl and heroin have notoriously thin margins, while cannabis is famously wide.)

It's a big consideration in what's OTC vs Rx, and what guardrails (inpatient only, regular blood draws, etc) are needed.

There was a good "magic quadrant"-style plot of this against addictive potential, but I can't seem to find it just yet. (This [2] is close.)

It doesn't consider externalities, so it's not great for the "do drugs and you'll end up unemployed, and if you're unemployed you'll end up homeless, and homeless people are a cost on the community" class of arguments.

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeutic_index

  [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_%28mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence%29.svg

It's not on shelves because it's a precursor chemical to actual meth manufacturing, not because it's a dangerous drug (otherwise it'd be Rx-only, like the other meth-like drugs).

https://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/meth/cma2005.htm

I wonder how much fuel a white hard hat, safety vest, and clipboard could net one with a service truck/van.

This is SOP among most chain stores' loss prevention policies.

Sub out "not worth an employees' life" with "not worth an expensive assault/false imprisonment lawsuit" if you're extra cynical.

Another key problem is that the subject of Scientific investigation (The Truth) is only of secondary concern to our j̶u̶s̶t̶i̶c̶e̶ legal system.

I think the 5s (SE?) is an exception to the rule

This may be true in some situations, but in others, it can result in automatic suspension of your license, and/or they can just get a warrant for a blood test.

I've also seen people convicted because, despite several hours' delay in obtaining a BAC, they were able to extrapolate back to the time of the accident. (There is apparently some dispute among forensic professionals on the validity of this, which implies the extrapolated value could be higher than actual)

To speak only culturally (and not legally), the rationale is roughly parallel to the Federal-State relationship set out by the 10th Amendment ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.")

I've spent most of my life in "commonwealth" states (PA, MA, VA), which (legend has it) are founded on a similar principle: the local governments can do what they want unless the state explicitly decides it's a state-level responsibility.

It's supposed to be a bottom-up structure, where middle tiers (Counties) are more a pooling of resources for the towns than a middle-manager for the State. There's often lots of "regional councils" or associations rather than "branch offices" of state agencies you'd see in a top-down structure. There may also be a County-level government with more or less power, depending on the state and specific topic.

They often have jurisdictional lines that reflect their pooling of grant-writing resources rather than simple geographic regions (like FEMAs) [1,2]. In the absence of statewide guidelines, these organizations often set the standards (often because the state can't or won't).

That is, the intermediate jurisdiction is often a voluntary collaboration - usually among the more progressive/better-funded townships/departments - and it's often the small-town departments that don't participate in these councils that have this "leave us alone" attitude and especially lax standards.

  [1] https://www.shacog.com/SystemImages/SHACOGCommunities.png

  [2] http://www.nemlec.com/img/NEMLEC-mapcompress.png

How many Bitcoin networks' worth of energy are required to train the models that generate these silly JPEGs?

Reminds me of an interview I sat in on in Cambridge a few years back.

Manager: "So, why should we hire you?"

Guy: "I have a Masters in CS from [University next door]"

Manager: "You and everyone else in this town. So, why should we hire you?"

Well, at least we're not physicists, amirite?

https://xkcd.com/793/

This has been my experience, too, as well as people who understood The Science perfectly and that the authorities were just taking a best guess early on, which set them further against any kind of mandate. (Mostly older, conservative physicians with an "it'll be fine" attitude)

The Science didn't change that much (viz: masks in healthcare since forever), but the flip-flopping with messages ("don't horde masks; they won't save you!", "wait, no - everyone needs a mask!"), which was really less about The Science than about different concerns (mask effectiveness, availability) were just the "I told you so" they were looking for.

> We find a nonlinear relationship between knowledge and confidence, with overconfidence (the confidence gap) peaking at intermediate levels of actual scientific knowledge.

Dunning-Kruger isn't real.

Dunning-Kruger isn't real.

Dunning-Kruger isn't real.

It retains that meaning in 99.98% of political discourse: "[topic] is something I dislike and/or reminds me of something/someone I dislike, and it's the only way for me to express that my enemy is subhuman without sounding like a psycho fascist myself"

My cynicism encourages me to agree with you; however, I think it's worth considering how much political capital is created or conserved by 1) protecting the five-member police force and some random local magistrate vs. 2) taking a hardline stance against Corruption by sending the feds in and prosecuting everybody involved (even/especially if charges are dropped in a couple months)

"Cops raided a smalltown newspaper so no-one would ever find out about police chief Gideon Cody's alleged sexual misconduct or Kari Newell's DUI conviction"

https://boingboing.net/2023/08/14/cops-raided-a-smalltown-ne...

It looks like Newell was using Tammy Ensey's liquor license, which is non-transferrable and expires later this month.

[1] https://peabodykansas.com/direct/restaurateur_accuses_paper_...

I also read that the source who sent the information about Newell bragged about retaining "connections" in law enforcement, a hint that it might have been non-public information. There's also "dozens" of anonymous tips about the police chief's sexual harassment issues.

However, I'm not sure "verifying a rumor via public records" is what the various "using a computer to do crimes" laws are about, especially because my understanding of various public records and registry searches are precisely to allow the public to verify these kinds of rumors.

Reading between the lines, it seems that they were most interested in unmasking the identities of these anonymous sources and sending a message to the newspaper.

The warrant[1] doesn't seem to provide much information and the affidavit used to secure the warrant has yet to be produced.[2]

[1] https://kansasreflector.com/2023/08/11/police-stage-chilling...

[2] https://kiowacountypress.net/content/opinion-powerful-voices...

Also, the classic "doing crimes with a computer" (performing a query on the DMV website)

This seems to be getting a lot of national attention (good), and regardless of whatever comes of that (or the sexual harassment developments), I feel like at least they'll always be known in that town as the dirtbags who killed Mrs. Meyer and stole her Alexis.

TIL: Being a computer is hard and I don't ever want to be a computer.

Can we just settle this once and for all: a fetus is whatever is most profitable (or least expensive) in the given context.

I think he's referring to children, not infants.

In Texas, it's legal to kill anyone over the age of 13 - according to my cousin's neighbor's friend's girlfriend's friend who went to college with a guy who's now a lawyer in Texas, anyway.

There are volumes written on these topics (many of them a long time ago), but they bring up a lot of existential questions about - in this case in particular - free will, which quickly spreads to the more philosophical theologians and lawyers.

Scientists of the simpler sort (or who have a position to lose) tend to dismiss the implications of these big, controversial questions and put their heads down in the equations.

This is peak small-town politics.

Also,

> After the council meeting, Newell acknowledged the accuracy of the information and said she understood that coming forward with allegations about it might expose the information rather than preserve its confidentiality.

> The state suspended her license because of a drunken-driving conviction in 2008 and a series of other driving convictions. [...]

lol

Until someone introduces a bidding mechanism, anyway.

"Man, we had no power for DAYS and I only got $14.75 from that stupid electric grid thing"

> An entire industry has sprung up around hoarding: psychologists, researchers, social workers, public health workers, professional organizers, fire marshals, biohazard cleanup companies, haulers.

There's probably some kind of connection there, but I'm not a hoardingologist.

I wonder what they'll call "shadowbanning" once Uber starts doing it in Seattle.

A fraction of a datacenter. Maybe a rack. Maybe two. Maybe ten. I dunno.

Like my original point, "training a model" does not inherently involve a GPT-tier amount of electricity, because most AI models aren't eleventy-billion parameter behemoths that require thousands of GPU-aeons to train.

My original point was that "burning energy" and "using electricity" are not inherently carbon-producing Bad Things (otherwise nobody would care about renewables). Electricity Good. Combustion Bad. See also: vehicles.

The second point I was making was that, regardless of the energy required to train this particular model in question, it almost certainly pales in comparison to the literal tons of jet fuel burned per hour in the 70 test flights the article mentions.

Considering that they don't do one thing at a time (like Google Cloud, and not running at capacity because scaling, etc, etc, etc) - I'd also bet selling ads doesn't use a whole DC, either.

Expanding on my other comment (Ctrl+F "IEA"), this seems like knocking out some common-sense, low-hanging fruit: if 35% of aviation's contribution to climate change is because of contrails and we can reduce the number of contrails simply by flying at a different altitude, then we can solve a big portion of a major category of contributor.

Unless we use up entire oilfields of energy "using electricity" to "train models", of course.