"Archivists Recreate Pre-Trump #CDC Website, Are Hosting It in Europe."
https://www.404media.co/archivists-recreate-pre-trump-cdc-website-are-hosting-it-in-europe/
"A team of volunteer archivists has recreated the Centers for Disease Control website exactly as it was the day Donald Trump was inaugurated. The site, called RestoredCDC.org, went live Tuesday and is currently being hosted in Europe…Restored CDC isn’t going to have continuous updates on this type of healthcare and disease guidance, but it has brought back all of the critical data that was purged in an easy to use, easy to navigate, and fast website."
Here's the site itself.
https://aboutus.restoredcdc.org/
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Medicine #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics
Kudos to #StephenCurry (nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpquwkxpm9aezwmygej2aechc8uzhx72937cj85q7792n3twq5c26zq9rzxue) for his open letter to the #RoyalSociety, arguing that Elon #Musk has violated the society's code of conduct and asking it to revoke the Fellowship it awarded him in 2018.
https://occamstypewriter.org/scurry/2025/02/11/open-letter-president-royal-society-stand-up-values/
(Curry calls for signatures from "all members of the UK or international scientific community" and I just signed.)
Kudos to #DorothyBishop (nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqsy99m3u2u8ufcz44lzapgl28jykfu4mxet8ran4rlndzsg3x872qfpxsjt) as well, who made the same call in her Nov 2024 letter of resignation from the society.
https://deevybee.blogspot.com/2024/11/why-i-have-resigned-from-royal-society.html
"The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627324008080
Very interesting paper. "This article is about the neural conundrum behind the slowness of human behavior. The information throughput of a human being is about 10 bits/s. In comparison, our sensory systems gather data at bits/s. The stark contrast between these numbers remains unexplained and touches on fundamental aspects of brain function."
PS: About 25 years ago I wrote an article asking whether #mind or #consciousness might depend on the speed of neural processing. I didn't propose that it does. I just asked lots of questions about the possibility. Still very curious about that.
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4747485/suber_baudrate.htm
#philosophy
Americans: The next time your #Health Unsurance company denies one of your claims, use the #ProPublica (nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpq6nxgzeq466nun42zslat4cgrj0r6dt4u0tdspyj7q85lpjpz8urslnj3rp) tool to demand a written explanation, including "internal correspondence, recordings of phone calls, case notes, medical records and other relevant information."
Watching with interest: "[nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqnjff0npd5eqjqrk6h5ec23jtuaj8ptn4h6j0s7ke9fmqqlgr7fsqq72rax] is…developing a…plan for a public-interest #book training commons for #AI…[Books are] ideal training data sources for AI. [They] should be made available under ethical & fair rules…AI [now] development is dominated by…companies that, in their rush to beat other competitors, have paid insufficient attention to the diversity of…inputs, questions of truth & bias in their outputs, & questions about social good & access."
https://www.authorsalliance.org/2024/12/05/developing-a-public-interest-training-commons-of-books/
Even after #publishers sign deals allowing #ChatGPT to train on their content, ChatGPT does a miserable job citing that content accurately.
This was a study of #journalism but the results almost certainly carry over to other categories like #science and #scholarship.
* summary
https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/29/study-of-chatgpt-citations-makes-dismal-reading-for-publishers/
* primary source
https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/how-chatgpt-misrepresents-publisher-content.php
#AI #LLMs #Attribution #Citations
Nice #AI test. Researchers put real #neuroscience abstracts up against copies that described the same question and methods but (deliberately) different results. Then asked 15 #LLMs and 171 human neuroscientists to tell which was which. "All of the LLMs outperformed the neuroscientists, with the LLMs averaging 81% accuracy and the humans averaging 63% accuracy."
* summary
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-11-ai-neuroscience-results-human-experts.html
* primary source
Good overview of the difficulty of creating "standardized tests" to asses #AI quality.
* summary
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/11/26/1107346/the-way-we-measure-progress-in-ai-is-terrible/
* primary source
This is what passes for "disrupting publishing" in some quarters:
New publisher Spines aims to 'disrupt' industry by using #AI to publish 8,000 #books in 2025 alone
If a school requires parental consent before #students can borrow #books on certain sexual topics from the #library, this is the next step: "If a student does receive parental consent, the policy requires the student to sign an agreement that they will not share the content with other students. If they do, they will be subject to disciplinary action."
#Arizona #Censorship #Libraries #Samizdat
"Following the controlled demolition of Al-Israa University, Israeli army footage of which was widely shared on social media, every single higher education institution in #Gaza is believed to have either been destroyed or severely damaged since the invasion began."
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/academia-gaza-has-been-destroyed-israeli-educide
(#paywalled)
#Academia #Universities
nostr:npub1t7d7ntv9jy6dllzeugx6wr3su9350mg2s24qfueyy3zzy7d8m6esqnh3ud
Fascinating story of a right-wing campaign to harass 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 for the views it published, and refused to publish, on the #COVID virus.
Two #OpenSource algorithms to improve the anonymization of #data on human subjects.
https://osf.io/preprints/metaarxiv/5m3cx/
PS: This is important. The better we can anonymize data on human subjects, the better we can answer #privacy concerns and open up the data.
#OpenData
To share with friends who moved from #Twitter to #Threads:
"#Meta acknowledged…to The Washington Post that Threads is intentionally blocking the search terms ["covid" and "long covid"] and said that other terms are being blocked, but the company declined to provide a list of them. A search by The Post discovered that the words…“coronavirus,” “vaccines” and “vaccination” are also among blocked words."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/09/11/threads-covid-coronavirus-searches-blocked/
(#paywalled)
#Covid #Pandemic #Vaccines
Data from the nostr:npub1qhfqqjcngr7puf9w8seq2hzrrz90jy03qukyskxj3at77glvhj2s4xaqam: "Nearly 80% of [Americans] with a #college degree said the cost was worth it…[But] the positive attitudes…tend to follow salaries. About 88% of higher earners — those with a household income greater than $100,000 — said their degree benefits outweighed the cost…Only 63% of graduates in households with incomes less than $50,000 said their degree benefits outweighed the cost."
https://www.chronicle.com/newsletter/weekly-briefing/2023-09-09
(#paywalled)
#Academia #Universities
nostr:npub1t7d7ntv9jy6dllzeugx6wr3su9350mg2s24qfueyy3zzy7d8m6esqnh3ud
Good line from Jamie Caridi, president of Bethany College: “There are so many orthodoxies at [colleges and universities]; some are load-bearing and important, and some honestly just weigh down the institution. You don’t know which is which until you start taking a hard look at things.”
He was talking about admissions. But I'd extend the same thought to #AcademicPublishing and #ScholarlyCommunication.
#Academia #ScholComm
nostr:npub1t7d7ntv9jy6dllzeugx6wr3su9350mg2s24qfueyy3zzy7d8m6esqnh3ud
Kudos to the #OpenScience Working Group at #ConcordiaUniversity for its strong recommendations, including a #RightsRetention #OpenAccess policy.
At p. 5: "Concordia should…further the development of copyright support through an institutionally supported rights retention strategy, which can support green open access and diversify how research can be made openly accessible."
#Canada #GreenOA #IR #Repositories
New study: "Excess mortality was significantly higher for #Republican voters than #Democratic voters after #COVID19 #vaccines were available to all adults, but not before."
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2807617
#USPolitics #LifeAndDeath #JAMA
A US company just received a #patent on a room-temperature #superconductor (𝘯𝘰𝘵 the Korean LK-99 superconductor).
https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/room-temperature-superconductor-sees-key-patent/
“We are in an odd position holding a patent to a technology that could prove revolutionary in many fields. The last thing we want to do is gatekeep access to further scientific developments. We are working with our attorneys to…#OpenSource our tech for universities and nonprofits while retaining rights associated with monetizing derivative technologies.”