Flutterby™!

So, yes, I'm using the ChatGPT API for work, and I'm trying to simulate a conversation, so I search for best practices and, sure enough, one of the top results starts out: "Maintaining conversation continuity with the ChatGPT API involves managing the context of the conversation effectively. Here are some strategies to consider..."

Fucking LLMs, man.

More new socks evidence of my dark gothy mood.

New socks! If you convert my age from Fahrenheit to Celsius, it's a bit over 13, so it makes sense that I'm entering my goth phase.

With picture

New socks! If you convert my age from Fahrenheit to Celsius, it's a bit over 13, so it makes sense that I'm entering my goth phase.

IIHS: Vehicle height compounds dangers of speed for pedestrians

Particularly amusing for those of us who like to dunk on (and have been) BMW drivers, the chart of injuries by speed of median pickup, median car, and "German vehicles".

While we're thinking how UnitedHealth lobbied and contributed hard against California's single-payer healthcare, a look at the other side: ProPublica tells the horrifying story of Dr Thomas Weiner at Helena Montana's St Peter's Health.

However you imagined a bad doctor story being, this one is worse.

Via MeFi.

RT Toilet full of bugs @ephemeromorph@topspicy.social

Me: May I have one of those stripy aquatic snakes?
Someone: No, they're all mine.
Me: Alright, keep your sea kraits.

About time... New York police release surveillance video and photos released of 3 wanted in stabbing death of Yeremi Colino

Contribution of childhood lead exposure to psychopathology in the US population over the past 75 years

Assuming that published lead-psychopathology associations are causal and not purely correlational: We estimate that by 2015, the US population had gained 602-million General Psychopathology factor points because of exposure arising from leaded gasoline, reflecting a 0.13-standard-deviation increase in overall liability to mental illness in the population and an estimated 151 million excess mental disorders attributable to lead exposure. Investigation of specific disorder-domain symptoms identified a 0.64-standard-deviation increase in population-level Internalizing symptoms and a 0.42-standard-deviation increase in AD/HD symptoms. Population-level Neuroticism increased by 0.14 standard deviations and Conscientiousness decreased by 0.20 standard deviations. Lead-associated mental health and personality differences were most pronounced for cohorts born from 1966 through 1986 (Generation X).

https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.14072

USA Today: Leaded gas created a mental health crisis for this generation

Today in "I'm not sure how I feel about 'earns' in this context": Teen creates memecoin, dumps it, earns $50,000 — Unsurprisingly, he and his family were doxed by angry traders.

The reason I'm unsure is: It's gotta be pretty hard to find new crypto marks in this environment, right?

Via

Someone trying to get me to install Telegram. I observed that I really don't need more potentially hostile apps on my devices, sending telemetry back to who knows who.

His response indicated that he thought my concern was about what information was being fed to me, rather than being concerned about the integrity of my own systems and information outflow.

Charlene is on the other end of the couch giggling heartily about a Nextdoor thread on the proposal to put housing on the site of the mall in Terra Linda.

She's already read me bits about making the housing look like the Frank Lloyd Wright designed civic center across the highway. If the NIMBYots weren't real, we'd have to invent them for satirical purposes.

Though having condos that can serve as the set for a gazillion SciFi movies does have some appeal.

Wonderful afternoon at the Computer History Museum with square dancing friend Kim Harris (of Forth fame) as guide.

And now Oren's Hummus in downtown Mountain View for a late lunch before heading to Martinez to dance this evening.

Please tell me that the finale of Finding Mr Christmas involves dropping the three remaining guys into a small town with green grass and "snow" that's remarkably walkable despite all the detached single family suburbia homes, and seeing which one can woo the bookstore owner.

My new hobby is browsing marketing LinkedIn profiles and ranking which AI "enhanced" profile pictures are best paired up with singing "The Future Belongs To Me".

Today I learned about pump(dot)fun and crashout(dot)fun, and if there was any doubt at all that crypto was one big ol' giant scam, this really really puts it to rest.

Police in Adair, Iowa, reselling guns, apparently including an M134 Gatling-style minigun

"If I'm guilty of this, every cop in the nation's going to jail," Wendt told CBS News just days before a federal judge sentenced him to a 5-year prison term. Wendt's crimes appear to be part of a nationwide pattern.

Oh hell yeah! Let's do this!

RT John Comninel ‪@jcom93.bsky.social‬

The reward for Brian Thompson's killer is $10,000, which is less than 3% of one of Brian Thompson's biweekly paychecks.

I... uh... suspect that the reward for Brian Thompson's killer is largely emotional, and that any monetary gain was secon... oh, wait, what?

I have been using the EDITOR environment variable. Several days ago a Julia Evans conversation introduced me to VISUAL. I'm not sure that in 2024, with XTerm everywhere, that the difference is significant now, but if you really care about history and all environments you probably wanna use the latter...

Oh look, the FBI is back on the "use encryption" side of the swing, rather than the "we should be able to backdoor everything" side, because their backdoor got pwned: U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack — FBI and CISA officials said it was impossible to predict when the telecommunications companies would be fully safe from interlopers.

(Via, but a number of other places too)

Not United Healthcare, but... make sure your state's Insurance Commissioner is paying attention: Big Insurer Sets Time Limits On Anesthesia Coverage During Surgeries — A surprise medical bill could be waiting for you when you wake up in the recovery room.

The new policy published last month by Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield means patients will not know whether they’re going to be stuck with the massive bill until they wake up from surgery. The policy change will affect more than eight million people covered by Anthem’s commercial and Medicaid insurance plans in Connecticut, New York, and Missouri.

Via

Edit: Anthem backtracks in Connecticut.

Apropos of ... uhh ...

Cory Doctorow: The reason you can't buy a car is the same reason that your health insurer let hackers dox you: When monopoly meets infosec, hilarity ensues.

How did we end up with Change Healthcare as the linchpin of the entire American prescription system? Well, first Unitedhealthcare became the largest health insurer in America by buying all its competitors in a series of mergers that comatose antitrust regulators failed to block. Then it combined all those other companies' IT systems into a cosmic-scale dog's breakfast that barely ran. Then it bought Change and used its monopoly power to ensure that every Rx ran through Change's servers, which were part of that asbestos-filled, termite-infested, crack-foundationed, sag-joisted teardown. Then, it got hacked.

Via

ProPublica: How UnitedHealth’s Playbook for Limiting Mental Health Coverage Puts Countless Americans’ Treatment at Risk

So when a California regulator cited United for its algorithm-driven practice in 2018, its corrective plan applied only to market plans based in California.

When Massachusetts’ attorney general forced it to restrict the system in 2020 for one of the largest health plans there, the prosecutor’s power ended at the state line.

And when New York’s attorney general teamed up with the U.S. Department of Labor on one of the most expansive investigations in history of an insurer’s efforts to limit mental health care coverage — one in which they scored a landmark, multimillion-dollar victory against United — none of it made an ounce of difference to the millions whose plans fell outside their purview.

Reddit user Mountain_Fig_9253 on the United Healthcare CEO shooting

Oh hell yeah! Crosswalks going in at 5th and Mountain View Ave!

Now with picture.

Oh hell yeah! Crosswalks going in at 5th and Mountain View Ave!

Amused at the distinction between "chin beard" and "beard" to disambiguate facial hair from someone of the appropriate gender to bring to social events to convince people that one is heterosexual.

My Mastodon feed right now is about 1/3 people talking about various healthcare struggles (like stretching drugs that have hit healthcare plan limits through the year, other struggles with coverage), 1/3 shitposting, and 1/3 discussion of the United Healthcare CEO assassination.

Can't help but think the first and last there are linked.

Thinking about how the various "describe this picture" large models are showing just how much more we need better photo organization software: They're describing what's in the picture, sure, but they're not describing the context that shows why that picture is important to me.

RT mixed berry social anxiety disorder 🍓 @monorail@glaceon.social

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

1. You MUST NOT have any gods before me

Dear XCode: If "Project->Clean Build Folder..." and then a build doesn't rebuild your database for finding the call hierarchy, WTF does?

I'm a huge fan of speed enforcement through passive infrastructure: No fine or enforcement works nearly as well as destroying your car if you deviate from the lane into the bollards, or attempt to speed through a traffic circle. But it turns out technology has its place too, traffic cameras work to reduce carnage when they're widely deployed enough.

How São Paulo Cut Traffic Deaths Overnight by a Third

The São Paulo data contradicts at scale the argument that speed cameras “don’t work” — and it’s a comparative case involving not compact pedestrianized European cities but a sprawling, car-oriented, new-world city.

Via

Interesting thread on Chinese terms and how they do and don't translate to English.

Tree trimming at scale. A crane and the Petaluma Center Park redwoods...