Taoskie
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taoskie.bsky.social
Taoskie
@taoskie.bsky.social
580 followers 840 following 460 posts
* The human mind is a wondrous and treacherous thing.
* Old activist (anti-war and imperialism, civil rights, women's movement, unìons, environment, etc.), nature lover, and cat grandma.
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taoskie.bsky.social
www.bbc.com/news/article...
Last week, Jamie Dimon, the boss of US banking giant JPMorgan Chase, warned the failure of the two US firms could be a sign of more to come. "My antenna goes up when things like that happen," he told analysts. "I probably shouldn't say this, but when you see one cockroach, there are probably more."
October 22, 2025 at 5:21 AM
taoskie.bsky.social
Analyst says the AI bubble is 17 times bigger than the dot-com bust

edition.cnn.com/2025/10/18/b...
"Just this week, the Financial Times wrote that 10 AI startups - not a dollar in profit among them - have gained nearly $1 trillion in market value over the past 12 months. (That is, to use a technical term, bananas.)"
October 19, 2025 at 9:13 AM
taoskie.bsky.social
"Across the United States, harmful algal blooms (HABs) have quietly become one of the most persistent environmental threats of the past decade. ... The blooms release cyanotoxins, potent neurotoxins produced by cyanobacteria that pose serious risks to both wildlife and human health."
In 2025, headlines broke out of Florida's Indian River Lagoon: stranded dolphins were found with brain damage eerily similar to human Alzheimer's. Researchers identified amyloid plaques and tau tangles, the same markers used to diagnose neurodegeneration in people. The culprit? Cyanotoxins, with concentrations measured at 2,900 times higher during algal bloom season.
October 16, 2025 at 4:14 AM
taoskie.bsky.social
I get that she's not Trump and that's great, but the fact that she's a big fan of Margaret Thatcher mostly leaves me feeling like I just found a mouse paw in my birthday cake.
She has said that the politician she most admires is Margaret Thatcher, the conservative icon known for her stubbornness and fealty to the free market. And Ms. Machado has long supported privatizing PDVSA, the state oil company, a move other opposition leaders say would put Venezuela's most valuable resource in the hands of a few.
October 10, 2025 at 1:06 PM
taoskie.bsky.social
Old person here, this 1950 photo shows what polio looked like before polio vaccines. Polio can paralyze chest muscles making it impossible for the patient to breathe without mechanical assistance. (Read alt text for more detail.) This is what the anti-vaccine folks want to bring back.
Old black and white photo from 1950 of a very large hospital ward with 4 long rows of over 25 large iron lung machines holding polio patients whose chest muscles had become paralyzed from the disease, making them unable to breathe on their own. The patients lie on their backs in the large iron tubes with only their heads outside. Seven nurses are visible attending to the patients. Iron lung machines worked by first sucking all of the air out of the iron tube, thereby expanding the chest and pulling air into it. Then air was pumped back into the tube to compress the chest so that air was then exhaled. There are also three small portholes on each side of the iron tubes that allow the nurses to place bedpans, clean the patient's body, maintain IVs, etc.
October 7, 2025 at 2:07 AM
taoskie.bsky.social
Haaretz article, 9/17/2025 (archive link)

archive.is/202509180930...
Haaretz article, 9/17/2025 - 'Real Estate Bonanza': Smotrich Says Israel in Talks With U.S. on Dividing Gaza's Land According to the far-right minister, Israel has taken care of the 'demolition phase' for rebuilding Gaza, and negotiations are now underway with the U.S. regarding a business plan for Gaza.
September 18, 2025 at 1:47 PM
taoskie.bsky.social
Maybe he was trying to type "Bella Ciao" but his dementia thwarted him?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bella_c...
Trump "truth social" post with just the word, "Bela."
August 17, 2025 at 4:28 PM
taoskie.bsky.social
"No boat in lake"
roflmao
Photo of a large white swan paddle boat floating in water, captioned MACARTHUR PARK, Los Angeles.
July 8, 2025 at 5:07 AM
taoskie.bsky.social
When the Justice Department lifted a school desegregation order in Louisiana this week, officials called its continued existence a "historical wrong" and suggested that others dating to the Civil Rights Movement should be reconsidered. The end of the 1966 legal agreement with Plaquemines Parish schools announced Tuesday shows the Trump administration is "getting America refocused on our bright future," Assistant Attorney general Harmeet Dhillon said.
May 1, 2025 at 10:29 PM
taoskie.bsky.social
Superb article by Mike Masnick on the similarities in the response generation algorithms that lead to AI hallucinations and Trump's rambling, nonsensical responses to questions during interviews.

www.techdirt.com/2025/04/29/t...
But over the last few months, it has occurred to me that, for all the hype about generative Al systems "hallucinating,"' we pay much less attention to the fact that the current President does the same thing, nearly every day. The more you look at the way Donald Trump spews utter nonsense answers to questions, the more you begin to recognize a clear pattern - he answers questions in a manner quite similar to early versions of ChatGPT. The facts don't matter, the language choices are a mess, but they are all designed to present a plausible-sounding answer to the question, based on no actual knowledge, nor any concern for whether or not the underlying facts are accurate
April 30, 2025 at 1:51 AM
taoskie.bsky.social
(Somewhat more readable version of image #2 with ALT text.)

Bottom line - fighting disinformation is now an abridgement of free speech. Sit with that and contemplate for a moment what it means for life under a "free speech for me but not thee" regime.
13. Are you still funding research on misinformation/disinformation? Per the Presidential Action announced January 20, 2025, NSF will not prioritize research proposals that engage in or facilitate any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen. NSF will not support research with the goal of combating "misinformation," "disinformation, and "malinformation" that could be used to infringe on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advances a preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate.
April 22, 2025 at 10:54 AM
taoskie.bsky.social
Added this screenshot because the link in Scott's post didn't embed the article as it should have.
Screenshot of a The Hill article with "New York Post says Musk is ‘way out of his lane’ in calling for impeachment of Judge Boasberg" as the headline. (Added because the article didn't embed in the post.)
March 18, 2025 at 8:26 AM
taoskie.bsky.social
Someone else has also quoted Napoleon recently - Donald Trump.
Trump tweet - "He who saves his country does not violate any law." Trump tweet - "He who saves his country does not violate any law."
March 10, 2025 at 1:19 AM