@glipari @GustavinoBevilacqua

Awesome, thanks, that helps me learn!

@GustavinoBevilacqua

Different social motivation for using the platform perhaps? I perceive the people I interact with as friends and possibly collaborators and I enjoy the differences as much or more than the similarities! I think that some people use social media to identify groups with borders around them and others use social media to identify with the whole world simultaneously.
Something like that?

@GustavinoBevilacqua

We traveled to Umbria to visit my daughter who is studying in Perugia. I listened to #CoffeeBreakItalian in the car for hours in preparation and when we returned to the US the news was so goddamn annoying that I just repeated the whole series! I will never be good at the language but I really like trying and failing because every once in a while I get some small thing correct! La pratica rende perfetti*!

*Spelling corrected by the internets, I thought it was "la practical render perfecti"!

@GustavinoBevilacqua

I recognize the infinitive form of Wrong*!! Yay!! Thank you!!!
Is "to do wrong" the same as "to be wrong"?

* Copied to my special Notepad document titled "Italian".

@GustavinoBevilacqua

"Obviously I'm doing something wrong but I don't know what."

Could you help me understand how this sentence works in Italian? Sbaglio and qualcosa in particular.

Qualcosa must be 'wrong' but is sbaglio 'something'?

Grazie!

“All we want is voter ID. You go to a grocery store, you have to give ID. You go to a gas station, you give ID," he continued, falsely, unless he's talking about buying alcohol.

#25th
#NazisRaus

Today I'm recording my Injury lecture for my public health freshmen. It's interesting to point to the third leading cause of death in the US (2023) and tell them that this year the federal department responsible for protecting us, the CDC National Center for Injury Prevention (among others), lost more than half it's staff through layoffs and 2/3 when you consider all of the cuts.

I'm recording this lecture through clenched teeth, luckily the feedback from the students indicates that my fury at this idiocy is clearly reflected in their outrage.

@sflorg

Interesting; in Colorado we've used that waste product as food for bacteria in our #sewage treatment plants. Bacterial colonies fluctuate hourly and the less poop, the less bacteria. When people wake up at 6 for work a huge wave of #poop gets flushed into the treatment plant and it pushes pathogenic bacteria further into the system than they like. If they inject waste from the brewery into the upstream bacterial pool before the (predictable) poop-wave arrives then the colony grows large enough to handle the influx and the pathogenic bacteria get chomped up early.

Sewage treatment is pretty neat!

I would like to ask the Mastodon hive- mind a question about #StainedGlass. The background story is that I went to a giant yard sale/antique sale in Frankfurt West #Germany in 1986 or so and bought these two pieces. They went in to storage, they took some damage but now I want to know more about them and possibly have at least one of them repaired. I was told that they were pulled from a small church that was being demolished years before and they'd been in a basement for a couple of generations before this person sold them to me.

So does anyone have any idea what I have here? How old are they and should I cannibalize one of them to make the other into a better piece? I'd love to build one of them into the wall of a sunny room in my house or stabilize it, frame it and backlight it as an art piece.
These are three pictures of the same piece, the other one is missing the M shape center piece (broken) but is otherwise in tact.

I look forward to your insights and any comments you choose to make and thank you for your time!

#Art #Artstodon

Today in grading undergraduate writing assignments;

"the journal name is real, the title is the real name of an article, the DOI is real, the authors are real… but nothing matches. For example, the DOI is not from the same article as the journal name, or title, or authors. Same with all other elements of the citation.

I think this is likely a Claude hallucination (rather than Chat GPT); Claude is known for doing a better job at pulling real citations or pulling real information to create a fake citation. "

So we assigned students a straightforward writing assignment; pick one of five proposed policy changes and write 500 words in support or in opposition to it. Two or three citations were required. No ChatGPT without sharing your original 500 words, your AI prompt , the resulting AI output and your final revision. 90% awesome, reasonable arguments for and against and then 10% that were essentially perfect.

We went into the citations via PubMed and other sources and found the above. So, obviously 10 points for that section and we indicated that we'd carefully evaluate all future work from the students with hallucinations, any further indication of AI use outside the syllabus will be zero on the assignment and a referral to student affairs for cheating.

So does anyone have any idea why these citations are f-ed up in this reproducibly awful way? Like, what is Claude doing wrong, exactly? It's like Claude is ALMOST identifying relevant work but it can't quite produce actual citations, just things that look like citations. It's like they missed the step where you actually have to READ THE DAMN PAPER YOU WANT TO CITE. Which it could do of course, it could ingest the whole paper, summarize it, simply pattern match versus the students writing and insert a valid doi link. Why is it making this specific error? Anyone?

#Enshittification
#Science #AI #Citations #Hallucination

Things from Uffizi!
#Fiorenze
#Italy

Hell of an art gallery that!
#Fiorenza
#Italy

@sundogplanets

also isn't this equivalent to letting a private corporation have a solar powered energy weapon that can be used against any target.on the planet? Didn't Heinlein warn us about something similar in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress when he said "don't put your prisoners at the top of the gravity well armed with a kinetic weapon powered by the sun and an entire moon full of ammunition?"

If you go to #Volterra #Italy I recommend that you consider staying at #AlbergoEtruria and accept any food recommendations they offer you, you will not be sad afterwards! Also if you go in fall you should know that the #truffle tours can fill up, especially the ones from the shop like 50 meters up (sinestro) the road from this hotel. Seriously, it's a truffle shop and the owner will take you truffle hunting with her truffle dog if you pay her enough!

The #Etruscan archeological museum is amazing as well.

I have rarely ever felt this comfortable and happy in a place where I don't speak the language!

#Travel #Vacation

Love me some 1200's eight sided church action! #Volterra #Italy

Diner last night, in #Volterra (since there was interest) started with Tartare con Ouovo a' Tarturio, Fantasii de Prosciutto (doesn't tell you much but four prosciuttos and a few fermented onions in oil), then Filetto de Maiaie con fanduta de Pecorino e Aceto Balsamico and Lisa had something made of pork. Chianti DOSG and caffe corretto e grappa because we're in Italy.

The Tartare was amazing, served on a slate, various spices sprinkled around, truffle shavings on the top.........wow.

#Italy #Travel #Foodstodon

@bobthetraveler

Hi Bob, I'm in #Volterra in #Tuscany, are there any #Etruscan toilets I need to visit?
ThanK you for your expertise and any advice you can offer!

Gonna have us an #Etruscan day!!
Continuing to take a break from the insane orange madman we're going to spend the day immersed in Etruscan history!
I wonder whether I can carry #truffles home in my bag or are they somehow insulting to this administration. We shall find out!

Currently doing 280 kph away from Napoli on Frecciarossa, couldn't be happier!

#Italia #NonNapoli

" these roads suck, they're all rutted, why doesn't someone fix them?"*

*Everybody at every time in history

#Pompeii #History