Favorite Rejects 2023-03-17
www.tugboattoday.com
there's a scene in the most recent ANDOR i watched in which a bunch of senators and other elites talk about emperor palpatine (a literal evil wizard with a melted face who goes around in a cloak) like he's a little hot-headed but basically normal, and i just now Got It
Note a 95% reduction of CO2 via Degrowth applying ONLY to Global North is impossible as Global South now emits most CO2 (& it's still impossible if you only consider consumption-based emissions). The Global North could fall dead tomorrow and it wouldn't be sufficient "degrowth."
Timothée Parrique @timparrique
The alignment part of OpenAI's GPT-4 whitepaper is full of some crazy things. Not yet resolved:
🤖It is "probably not capable" of autonomous replication
🧪When combined with other tools, it can develop novel chemicals & order them online
🌍The potential for a global AI arms race
Sen. Scott Wiener proposed legislation Wednesday to help bring a massive floating pool to the San Francisco Bay. Developers have been working on the project since 2020, and Wiener's bill brings it one step closer.
Remember this picture every single time you hear someone in your city say "we're not Amsterdam."
This was #Amsterdam in the 1970s, via @fietsprofessor.
The cities we admire made better choices regarding cars, and are still making them today.
Better choices instead of excuses.
How I learned to stop worrying and love the safe and peaceful use of nuclear fission to generate electricity.
slowboring.com/p/no-taxpayer-…
The multiple cantilevered AI overhangs:
1. Compute overhang. We have much more compute than we are using. Scale can go much further.
2. Idea overhang. There are many obvious research ideas and combinations of ideas that haven't been tried in earnest yet.
3. Capability… https://t.co/XkHlbKonRz
This is about them opposing a measure that would take a private golf course and turn it mostly into a public park, with 2,500 housing units allowed on a third of the land (26% permanently below-market, 74% market-rate), near a commuter rail line calendar.ucdenver.edu/event/panel_di…
DSA Housing Justice Commission 🌹🌆 @dsa_housing
Why is there so much car traffic in Walnut Creek?
Well, here are plans for a new beer garden right next to a bike trail, but there are no plans to make it easy for peds/bikers to get to and from the site. The current route adds a half mile to the trip walnutcreek.granicus.com/GeneratedAgend…
I would be interested to hear from Russianists on why the casualties in Afghanistan had, AFAIK, a considerable effect on Soviet public opinion but the Ukraine deaths don't yet seem to be having a serious impact.
