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10 posts total
Clive Thompson
Clive Thompson

Navy SEALs have disproportionately been dying by suicide …

.. with a similar pattern: Each seemed healthy until their early 40s, when — abruptly — a host of severe mental health issues arose

One wife suspected brain damage, and had her husband’s brain quickly frozen

She unlocked it all

It’s a new form of brain damage

You can read about her story in this superb investigation by Dave Phillips in the New York Times;
gift link here: nytimes.com/2024/06/30/us/navy

Navy SEALs have disproportionately been dying by suicide …

.. with a similar pattern: Each seemed healthy until their early 40s, when — abruptly — a host of severe mental health issues arose

One wife suspected brain damage, and had her husband’s brain quickly frozen

She unlocked it all

It’s a new form of brain damage
30 June at 15:39 | Open on saturation.social
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cobalt

@clive Knowledge about brain damage is limited at this time. My son has congenital brain damage, but over the years had a semi-normal life and far more abilities than expected. Then over time, many neurosurgeries. Over decades more than a few falls with concussion. Now at almost 45, he has ALSO acquired early-onset Alzheimer's and an unknown mixed dementia. Yet he continues to function with support. Now whatever happens, who knows the cause. Go research!

30 June at 22:30 | Open on awscommunity.social
Julie R

@clive thank you for sharing this.

30 June at 22:41 | Open on wandering.shop
ShinyBlueThing

@clive It's worth noting that the VA is deeply, *deeply,* resistant to diagnosing anyone with service-connected TBI if they ever had any other risk factors. Ever played a sport in school? not their problem, even with documented service-connected blast exposure or head injury.

I know this because of people I know. One did get medically retired, another didn't, and should have.

1 July at 14:27 | Open on dice.camp
Clive Thompson

A terrific investigation at @WIRED finds that Perplexity scrapes and (sometimes with bullshit added) summarizes web sites that it has been explicitly told, by those web site owners, not to visit

wired.com/story/perplexity-is-

Excellent work by @dmehro and @timmarchman

19 June at 15:57 | Open on saturation.social
Clive Thompson
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Clive Thompson

Excellent investigation by the New York Times into all the ways major AI companies are frantically grabbing, copying, and stealing text to feed their AI models: nytimes.com/2024/04/06/technol

(Gift link there)

apparently Meta considered buying Simon & Schuster

6 April at 14:51 | Open on saturation.social
Nazani

@clive
What AI really needs is 1 copy of Strunk & White.

6 April at 14:58 | Open on universeodon.com
Steve Williams

@clive
I was wondering about #Apple’s automagic Podcast Transcription feature. I bet they are scraping all those podcasts for #AI juice.

No doubt as a condition of playing in their walled garden.

6 April at 15:12 | Open on toot.community
Clive Thompson

“The Literary Style of Alt-Text”

For years, I didn’t add alt-text to my online images

But I’ve started doing it all the time now — being on Mastodon is what showed me how important it is!

Along the way, I’ve started noticing …

…. what an oddly *literary* activity it is

Here’s an image I wrote alt-text for when I blogged a few weeks ago, below

My essay on alt-texting: clivethompson.medium.com/the-l

A free “friend” link in case you don’t subscribe to Medium: clivethompson.medium.com/the-l

“The Literary Style of Alt-Text”

For years, I didn’t add alt-text to my online images

But I’ve started doing it all the time now — being on Mastodon is what showed me how important it is!

Along the way, I’ve started noticing …

…. what an oddly *literary* activity it is

Here’s an image I wrote alt-text for when I blogged a few weeks ago, below
2 Nov 2023 at 16:14 | Open on saturation.social
Clive Thompson
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BruceBear 🐻🌟💙🏳️‍🌈

@clive okay old guy here, what is this thing?

13 Jan 2023 at 7:16 | Open on mstdn.social
Patrick O'Doherty

@clive nice work! I my N-Gage was not lost to the sands of time

14 Jan 2023 at 2:26 | Open on infosec.exchange
Григорий Клюшников

Is it only for N-Gage, or can I install it on my Nokia 5800?

14 Jan 2023 at 19:20
Clive Thompson

A battery filled with algae is somehow managing to power this computer for months: newscientist.com/article/23195

No-one's quite sure what's going on. Possibly the algae is serving as the medium catalyzing the interaction between the anode and cathode in the battery.

Except research shows the anode isn't degrading, which suggests ...

... the *algae* is producing the electrons.

Some thoughts on this in my blog post here, item 6: clivethompson.medium.com/lavaf

A battery filled with algae is somehow managing to power this computer for months: newscientist.com/article/23195

No-one's quite sure what's going on. Possibly the algae is serving as the medium catalyzing the interaction between the anode and cathode in the battery.
21 Nov 2022 at 3:15 | Open on saturation.social
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tech himbo
Charles U. Farley

The first thing one should think upon seeing something like this is that it's either a mistake or outright fraud, until it's independently reproduced.

21 Nov 2022 at 15:06 | Open on retro.social
Britt Elizondo

@clive I live on a floating Algea lake. This could be a wonderful source of energy… maybe… very exciting!

21 Nov 2022 at 15:28 | Open on mastodon.sdf.org
Clive Thompson
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Clive Thompson

I built this tool a year ago but I feel like Mastodon folks would like it

The "Weird Old Book Finder"

Type in a search query, and it'll find one randomly-chosen public-domain book that matches the query -- and present it for immediate reading: weird-old-book-finder.glitch.m

Why only one book? To prevent the paradox of choice! Just *start readin'*

Can't promise every book will be weird, but most are

A longer essay on how/why I developed it: debugger.medium.com/a-search-e

This was a search for "mastodon"

I built this tool a year ago but I feel like Mastodon folks would like it

The "Weird Old Book Finder"

Type in a search query, and it'll find one randomly-chosen public-domain book that matches the query -- and present it for immediate reading: weird-old-book-finder.glitch.m

Why only one book? To prevent the paradox of choice! Just *start readin'*
9 Nov 2022 at 17:57 | Open on saturation.social
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pandion (formerly toorsdenote)

@clive omg I cannot wait to read this book and/or get a tattoo of the illustrations.

"a Shakespeare may be but an oyster raised to the one-thousandth power, or even a Darwin the cube root of a ring-tailed monkey."
9 Nov 2022 at 20:01 | Open on kolektiva.social
Peter Butler

@clive This is awesome. Thank you!

Look how all the Englishmen used to hold their ping-pong paddles. Nary a penhold grip amongst them. (I went for "table tennis.")
9 Nov 2022 at 20:05 | Open on mas.to
Sascha Freudenheim

@clive Ok, this is great! And thanks to @anildash for boosting it!

9 Nov 2022 at 20:07 | Open on mas.to
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