My interests vary wildly from politics to poetry and philosophy. I'm a born contrarian but my bark is worse than my bite, and I appreciate detailed posts, sharp commentary, verbal repartee and quirky habits. Some of my quirks are #FountainPens, #birding, and all manners of idealist thought. Committed to fairness, democracy, and environmental stewardship. Proud lifelong #Dem
I was on another server but it was closing down, so I switched to this instance. I'll say in advance, "Happy to meet you."
RFK jr cancels $500million in funding for mRNA vaccines.
Come on EU leaders, spend an additional €500million on new mRNA vaccine research right now! Welcome US researchers!
Have some vision, this will be worth zillions when the next pandemic hits
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rfk-vaccine-funding-mrna_n_68928569e4b0d3424bc41392
#RFKjr #Trump #USPol #Medicine #Vaccines #mRNA #Health #EUPol #Science
📢 A federal appeals court ruled that private individuals and organizations cannot bring lawsuits under Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, which allows voters who are blind, have disabilities, or cannot read to receive assistance in the voting booth. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that only the government, specifically the Justice Department, can initiate legal actions for alleged violations of this section. This means it’s much harder for disabled voters and advocates to protect their rights through the courts. The ruling affects states in the Eighth Circuit including Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and others, potentially impacting a large number of voters with disabilities. The decision overturns decades of precedent and is likely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court for review.
I hope I don't have to explain to anyone, no matter your political affiliation, how devastating this precedent will be if it is not overturned. Also, i feel it is very unlikely that the Trump Justice Department will initiate any type of action in the case of violations, so I wouldn't count on federal intervention or relief here.
Fantastic article about Democrats getting things done, and lefty pundits pretending otherwise. @TonyStark
A day after RTing an Axios ragebait post seeming to suggest that Hakeem Jeffries was opposed to messaging on Jeffrey Epstein but instead laying out the many ways Jeffries is encouraging it, David Atkins falsely claimed that Dem "leadership isnt backing [] up" laudable Democratic efforts to message on Jeffrey Epstein.
A few days ago I came across this amazing bug report against Whisper, the LLM-based transcription tool: 'Complete silence is always hallucinated as "ترجمة نانسي قنقر" in Arabic which translates as "Translation by Nancy Qunqar"'
https://github.com/openai/whisper/discussions/2608
More about the problem in this thread https://xcancel.com/SheriefFYI/status/1756694564109423035
Thanks for the pointer, @itamarst (in https://hachyderm.io/@itamarst/114874924215640058 )
If you generate complete silence in a wav file and run whisper on it, it will always hallucinate the same thing ffmpeg -f lavfi -i anullsrc=r=44100:cl=stereo -t 30 silence.wav whisper ./silence.wav...
@tobie1 More power to her!
I like talking on the phone too. If only I could persuade my wife to restore the landline, my preferred form of telephony, I would be on the phone all the time!
Yikes! Why in the US do we continue to subsidize "rural small business" while the metro areas that generate the nation's GDP languish? Rural America loves to think of itself as sel-reliant but it in fact lives off subsidies.
In the final hour of the session, it became official: There would be no 287(g) ban this year in Maryland.
https://boltsmag.org/maryland-287g-contracts-with-ice-growing/
Akshay
Lynn I 🗽 💙
SouprMatt
Sumana Harihareswara
Jonathan Emmesedi
Peter Gleick
DC Deejay 🇨🇦🇪🇺🇺🇦
Heidi Li Feldman
BoltsMag.org