This doesn't mention the one brassica that I hate more than any. Bastard cabbage. Like the other brassicas it is edible from flower/fruit to the root. Goes good in salads, etc. Unfortunately it is an invasive species here in Texas that quickly overwhelms native wildflowers. It appears along roads where work has been completed and rights-of-way reseeded using non-native grass mixes.
It is native to Africa and southern Europe I think but is invasive here in the US.
I first found some in my yard a couple of years after I bought a load of "topsoil" from a local materials provider. Not only was the product not a topsoil (it was river channel fine silt that is mostly clay-like particles with zero permeability and zero organic content) but the first thing to sprout on the pile of left-over soil was a tall plant with yellow flowers. There was a single plant that year. I had no idea what it was and asked one of my kids to ID it after it had already dried. Since it wasn't flowering stage when I asked they couldn't get a clear ID so i left it in place. That was a huge mistake. It produced uncounted quantities of small seeds that fell all around it and evidently birds loved it.
The second year saw it sprout up in a 10m radius around the original plant with isolated outliers. Again, I did not know what it was so I let it grow until summer (it is a late winter/early spring plant, one of the first to sprout) by which time it was obvious that this thing was gonna take over if I didn't do something. I sent a few more photos to my kid and this time I got the bad news - bastard cabbage.
With that info in hand I began implementing my eradication plan. I watered in all the plants that I could locate. It was summer and the ground is very dry and soil is hard here at home. With the soil nice and wet I pulled or dug every one of those bastards that I could find knowing that I would be doing the same thing again next year.
So far it has been several years of walking the property, pulling these bastard cabbages as I find them. So far this year I have less than a dozen plants but the season is young. I have found about half of those plants growing where previously I had never seen any and the others were growing in the original affected area.
Just like my years-long battle against St Augustine grass, stickers, goatheads, and Johnson grass I will win. I have eradicated those plants from my property though it took more than a decade to completely eliminate the Johnson grass.
Once I can identify the plant at each growth stage its days are numbered, sometimes with three or four digits, but I will win in the end.
Interesting. I think there are other services doing the same thing including one linked by another commenter.
When checking the Evidence tab for data that supports the conclusion that there could be a fire in progress I found that it could be improved by excluding the evidence posts for all the mapped fire locations except the one that the user clicked. Presently, if you click that Evidence tab you get a roll of links to posts or mentions or whatever for every fire. I believe that a user would most appreciate data that pertains to the fire they are trying to monitor.
I am not a fan of grey text. It does not improve site navigability or usability and it can get lost in screen glare unless bold grey text is used. It would still be grey text though and I am still not a fan. Perhaps shades of blue or yellow to contrast with the black bar.
Example in case you are thinking of modifying the page - Your top frame has the ap name "SIGNET" in white capitals. Right next to that is an orange dot, probably to signify that something is happening or that the site is "LIVE". Notice that "LIVE" is not only in grey text, beside an orange dot which will be the eyeball magnet, but it is also a smaller font than the ap name "SIGNET".
From my perspective, the site would be improved by changing grey text to a more contrasting color and asking the question - "What information should be the most important topic on this page?" In that way you can optimize it for your users.
Before posting this comment I went back to check that the points I hoped to make were valid points. It turns out that not all "Evidence" links have evidence for every fire on the map. I randomly chose the Custer County Incident when I checked that and found all sorts of stuff pertaining to Texas fires. Perhaps this is not a huge problem for you to solve. I checked the Rapides Parish Incident in Lousyana and it only has data about that event.
Fair points, I leaned a little hard into the ops aesthetic. Grey text might not be doing anyone any favors.
On the Evidence tab, I agree that it should be incident-specific to be useful on its own. Right now the model scopes what evidence gets attached, so probably a case where that should be deterministic instead.
But you get more followers and that's the goal today isn't it? You have to take the good with the bad. No one is categorizing the follower ranks by "good guys" versus "bad guys" so you never know when one of your "admirers" is only there to monitor you in case you get out of line.
I was gonna be a smartass about how in my native language it would count as three words; but then I went and consulted Wikipedia and it was so dense with linguistics jargon I realized I actually have no idea what a "word" is.
But the consensus seems to be that in English that would indeed count as four words ;P
The best way for AI companies to fight this would be to remind those who request this capability that the AI knows exactly where they live, where they hang out, and that any one of them can also be targeted by a rogue AI system with no human in the loop. Capabilities that they are requesting could jeopardize them, their personal assets, and their families if something goes haywire or, in the much more common case, where the AI is used as an attack tool by an outside adversary who has gained unauthorized access.
All of this should remain a bridge too far, forever.
EDIT: It is one level of bad when someone hacks a database containing personal healthcare data on most Americans as happened not long ago. A few years back, the OPM hack gave them all they needed to know about then-current and former government employees and service members and their families. Wait until a state-sponsored actor finds their way into the surveillance and targeting software and uses that back door to eliminate key adversarial personnel or to hold them hostage with threats against the things they value most so that the adversary builds a collection of moles who sell out everything in a vain attempt to keep themselves safe.
Of course we already know what happens when an adversary employs these techniques and that is why we are where we are right now.
The best way for government to fight that would be to remind those who refuse to comply with their demands that the government already knows exactly where they live, where they hang out, and that any one of them can also be targeted by a three letter agency or thrown into Guantánamo Bay. The government has been building and maintaining massive dossiers on everyone. They already have the ability to plant or fabricate whatever incriminating evidence they want. They already have the capability to jeopardize anyone, their personal assets, and their families and all of that could be turned against them if something goes haywire or where an outside adversary gains unauthorized access. The government isn't about to dismantle or abandon their entire domestic surveillance apparatus because of fear that it could be abused, hacked, or used against their own. Those are well known and accepted risks. AI is just one more risk they can't resist taking.
> with their demands that the government already knows exactly where they live, where they hang out…
You’d think this, and then you hear about how long it took the FBI to locate aaronsw (rip), who lived life online, and left lots of clues to his general location, but somehow the only place the FBI ever looked was 1,000 miles away? I guess you could say that was 15 years ago, but we had domestic spy programs 15 years ago, too.
And so we have the other side of the coin. Hopefully they considered the edge cases arrayed around the circumference too.
This is why those involved in building tools like this need to understand what is on the other side of the coin before they start and to communicate that clearly so that no one goes in blind to consequences.
Yes, but this is the same government, where the ministry of war chief Hegseth added random people to a secret chat on signal. If leadership messes up with 0 consequence, you can guess what happens at the lower ranks. In other words, they ain't so competent as you make it sound they are.
Instead of Epsteins blackmailing disgustful human nature, it'll be rogue AIs sending selective blackmail, 24/7, to the spiteful among us (e.g. to motivate targeted killings, either by human or machine).
>All of this should remain a bridge too far, forever.
Hopefully Singularity will be graceful, killing-off everybody simultaneously
The list of the spiteful most likely already exists and is being used today. All these mass media have been weaponized by various bad actors.
Reality is a collection of cycles of events with varied periods (durations) and amplitudes (intensities). Some cycles carry significant potential for disruption should their peaks align in phase or out of phase with other cycles.
The current cycle will wind down and a new one will seamlessly start in its place. Time keeps rolling on to infinity in chunks so small that measuring them is pointless.
There is no singularity. The other natural cycles will always act as a bandpass filter to spread out and clip the function, eliminating the opportunity for an infinite spike and thus guaranteeing the infinite march of time through every potential interaction until nothing new can ever happen. Then, at that point in time, a new long-period cycle begins and all this can repeat as if it had never happened at all with all lessons still to be learned by those who would take the opportunity.
Epstein did not need to be the blackmail man. His function in the machine was as a Hoover, vacuuming up as much about as many as possible in case some of it turned out to be useful to the machine operators at some later date.
Both topics cover using blackmail to control people/nations.
Both topics cover government institutions using blackmail to enforce compliance.
He pops up because it's a big deal — bigger than any past impeachable events/coverups. The horrific sexuality cast upon these victims... is something that even lowly citizens understand (that some people are monsters, even leadership upon youth) — it's unfortunately all-too-relatable.
We would not be doing anything in Iran right now if the Epstein problem did not exist for Trump and his cohorts.
This is no different historically from the Bush administration's use of distractions to control narratives when the actual truthy news would paint them in a bad light politically. Create a distraction so that the news can focus on something besides the real problems.
Another cycle in the process. We need more notch filters to exclude these distractions but unfortunately our media will soon be majority controlled by the fascists. Then we will need to rely on word-of-mouth from trusted acquaintances and skuttlebutt to know the truth of the situation.
My landlord is a highly-decorated E-6 (drafted sargeant) Vietnam vet — a good friend of many years. I helped copyedit his memoirs, we have shared backbreaking-work together (his home maintenance).
It's incredible to me that he'll probably still be alive when young adults start getting drafted again — is this how "they"re going to deal with excess NEETs?
I was their age back when Iraq/WMDs were all-the-news... and remember when Mother cried worried tears of her own draft-age sons (some decades ago).
My friend and I are very worried, now both old enough as to become unfit for service.
It is native to Africa and southern Europe I think but is invasive here in the US.
I first found some in my yard a couple of years after I bought a load of "topsoil" from a local materials provider. Not only was the product not a topsoil (it was river channel fine silt that is mostly clay-like particles with zero permeability and zero organic content) but the first thing to sprout on the pile of left-over soil was a tall plant with yellow flowers. There was a single plant that year. I had no idea what it was and asked one of my kids to ID it after it had already dried. Since it wasn't flowering stage when I asked they couldn't get a clear ID so i left it in place. That was a huge mistake. It produced uncounted quantities of small seeds that fell all around it and evidently birds loved it.
The second year saw it sprout up in a 10m radius around the original plant with isolated outliers. Again, I did not know what it was so I let it grow until summer (it is a late winter/early spring plant, one of the first to sprout) by which time it was obvious that this thing was gonna take over if I didn't do something. I sent a few more photos to my kid and this time I got the bad news - bastard cabbage.
With that info in hand I began implementing my eradication plan. I watered in all the plants that I could locate. It was summer and the ground is very dry and soil is hard here at home. With the soil nice and wet I pulled or dug every one of those bastards that I could find knowing that I would be doing the same thing again next year.
So far it has been several years of walking the property, pulling these bastard cabbages as I find them. So far this year I have less than a dozen plants but the season is young. I have found about half of those plants growing where previously I had never seen any and the others were growing in the original affected area.
Just like my years-long battle against St Augustine grass, stickers, goatheads, and Johnson grass I will win. I have eradicated those plants from my property though it took more than a decade to completely eliminate the Johnson grass.
Once I can identify the plant at each growth stage its days are numbered, sometimes with three or four digits, but I will win in the end.