(i’m going to make an imposter account of myself so that people think i’m important enough to have an imposter!)
(oh, wait.)
(i guess my account would be an imposter imposter?)
suppose when you write your Congressperson, the mail is read and responded by an AI with, in almost all cases, no human staffer (nor the representative themself) reading the mail. would that be okay?
suppose the AI produces (accurately, let’s stipulate) a summary of the issues on which mail has been received, the positions taken, and their frequencies among constituents.
would that affect your view?
Thank God we have somebody standing firm against all the snowflakes and the cancel culture.
From @w7voa via @chargrille https://journa.host/@w7voa/110266946177745015
I had an actual question, so I thought I'd Leverage The Power Of AI. It gave a clear answer (not the one I'd guess!), referring to a study. I asked for a citation, it duly gave me one.
Of course, the citation was bogus. I point that out, it apologizes and gives me the "correct" one. Nope! And we go 'round again!
It's stunningly shameless in the specificity of its frauds. And it goes for plausibility! The issue numbers, page numbers, dates are consistent. The articles just do not exist there.
How does antidepressant use compare between nordic and anglo countries? There is some evidence to suggest that antidepressant use varies between Nordic and Anglo countries. Nordic countries, which include Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, tend to have higher rates of antidepressant use than Anglo countries such as the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. For example, a 2016 study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders found that the prevalence of antidepressant use in Nordic countries ranged from 6.2% to 12.0%, compared to a range of 3.3% to 7.1% in Anglo countries. The study also found that Nordic countries had a higher rate of long-term antidepressant use than Anglo countries. However, it is important to note that there may be cultural and societal differences that contribute to differences in antidepressant use between countries, and that these differences may not necessarily reflect differences in the prevalence of depression or other mental health disorders. Additionally, variations in healthcare systems, prescribing practices, and access to mental health services may also play a role in the differences observed.
Can you please give me the full citation for the 2016 study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders you refer to? S Sure, here is the full citation for the study I referred to: Sundbom LT, Bingefors K. (2016). The use of antidepressants among 0-17 year olds in five Nordic countries from 2005 to 2012. Journal of Affective Disorders, 189, 187-93. DOl: 10.1016/jjad.2015.09.025. I hope that helps! SW Hi. The article you refer to seems not to exist! Here is the table of contents for Journal of Affective Disorders Volume 189: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-affective-disorders/vol/189/suppl/C Can you please recheck that citation for me? G I apologize for the mistake in my previous response. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. After double-checking, I found that the study I referred to was actually published in the Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, not the Journal of Affective Disorders. Here is the correct citation: Sundbom, L. T., & Bingefors, K. (2016). Antidepressant utilization patterns and determinants of short-term and non-psychiatric use in the Nordic countries. Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, 70(3), 192-199. do: 10.3109/08039488.2015.1118673 I apologize for any confusion my previous response may have caused.
I am having a hard time finding that article as well. Here is the relevant table of contents of the Nordic Journal of Psychiatry https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ipsc20/70/3?nav=tocList I apologize for the continued confusion. It appears that I made another mistake in my previous response. The correct citation for the study is: Sundbom LT, Helgesson M, Jing S, et al. (2015). Antidepressant utilisation patterns and determinants of short-term and non-psychiatric use in the Nordic countries. Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, 69(3), 218-225. DOl: 10.3109/08039488.2014.961964 I hope that helps clarify things.
#KrisAbdelmessih who writes one of the deepest finance substacks puts an older, but i think one of my best, posts on inequality in the excellent company of #ByrneHobart and #MaiaMindel. https://moontower.substack.com/p/house-rugged
are you a media personality?
i pass every turing test because it is obvious i am a shallow fake.
i've made myself a very overtly #scala means of specifying static sites, which is the opposite of slick or friendly, except maybe to people who find writing scala and interacting with scala libs a natural and precise way of specifying things. today i wrote a "Getting Started" README, on the unlikely theory i might not be alone. https://github.com/swaldman/unstatic/blob/main/README.md
what name shall we give this condition, when you depend upon what you hate?
Amazon's "main 'advertising' business isn't advertising at all – it's payola… In other words, Amazon isn't making $31b/year selling ads – it's extracting $31b/year from its merchants to make its shoppers' experience worse. The results at the top of your search aren't the best products – they're often the *worst* products, because sellers who waste money making *good* products don't have anything left over to pay danegeld to Amazon" @pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/
It's pretty clear the the US Supreme Court is sincere and has taken to heart its standard that only quid-pro-quo exchanges count as corruption, and any form of influence peddling or purchase beneath that standard is just democracy in action!
Unsurprisingly, @jeffspross gets to the pith of Ezra Klein's "everything bagel liberalism" complaint. It would be better if we didn't disadvantage critical public projects by attaching civilized labor conditions only to them, while private projects "efficiently" mistreat people. But the way to do that is to level up the playing field, by making civilized labor conditions universal. https://theworkbench.substack.com/p/the-fix-for-everything-bagel-liberalism
it's funny how in journalism about politicians and political skills, a capacity for ingratiation gets described as "empathy".
the humble comma as a very simple namespace for UNIX scripts and custom commands.
"Start all of your commands with a comma" by @brandon_rhodes https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2009/commands-with-comma/
Great piece by @ddayen calling attention to the lobbying by firms that extract fees from socially useless products to game the FDIC's deposit insurance limit. They want to ensure that limit stays intact.
At stake is more than their rents. Removing the deposit limit dissolves the pretense that banks are private firms bearing their own risk, and invites more fundamental banking reform. https://prospect.org/power/2023-04-25-intrafi-deposit-insurance-caps-lobbying/ ht #JoeWeisenthal 1/
@ddayen ( i wrote something recently about what a reformed banking system might look like here https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/03/26/banks-should-fail-much-more-often/index.html ) /fin
We have to end the silent gerrymandering that occurs within legislative procedure.
The procedural aspects of running a deliberative body are obviously of public interest. Who is recognized when, how committees are formed, how legislation is introduced and amended, most famously "cloture" to end debate, these are not "internal matters for the chamber to decide". These choices can and do disenfranchise us as surely as crazy district lines. Bring forth the floodlights.
"I'm sure a very nice book with obvious conclusions could be written about which laws are just ignored and which ones are enforced mercilessly." @Atrios https://www.eschatonblog.com/2023/04/how-does-that-work.html #ViaRSS
“Those who suggest that low taxes in the US mean that people there have more money to spend are being disingenuous, because US citizens need to pay, either directly or indirectly, for social goods that are provided free in other countries.” @sjwrenlewis https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2023/04/which-oecd-country-is-highest-social.html
"most of the discrete objects humans have manufactured in our history are transistors" #ByrneHobart https://www.thediff.co/archive/why-the-answer-is-so-often-ads/
a useful precis of not-so-nice things tucker carlson has said. the PDF includes entries through March 14, 2023. https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlsons-descent-white-supremacy-timeline via @Atrios