Zvi Mowshowitz: AI #132 Part 1: Improved AI Detection. *One result of going on vacation was that I wasn’t able to spin events off into focused posts this week, so I’m going to fall back on splitting the weekly instead, plus some reserving a few subtopics for later posts, including AI craziness (the Tim Hua post on this is excellent), some new OpenAI largely policy-related shenanigans, and the continuing craziness of some people who should very much know better confidently saying that we are not going to hit AGI any time soon, plus some odds and ends including dead internet theory. (more)

Individualist Anarchist. (more)

The process whereby a trial jury can find someone innocent of a crime on the basis of the law being wrong (e.g. the behavior shouldn't be defined as a crime) (more)

aka Naturalistic Decision Making

Zeynep Tufekci: The C.D.C. Is Hoping You’ll Figure Covid-19 Out on Your Own. While Omicron’s mutations make it exceptionally good at causing breakthrough cases even in people who have been vaccinated or previously infected, they also render it less able to effectively infect the lower lungs... it’s just luck that this highly transmissible variant appears to be less dangerous than other variants to those with prior immunity. If it had been more deadly — as Delta has been — the U.S. government’s haphazard and disorganized response would have put the whole country much more at risk. (more)

UI originally designed for the OLPC (more)

Flash fiction is a brief fictional narrative[1] that still offers character and plot development. Identified varieties, many of them defined by word count, include the six-word story;[2] the 280-character story (also known as "twitterature");[3] the "dribble" (also known as the "minisaga", 50 words);[2] the "drabble" (also known as "microfiction", 100 words);[2] "sudden fiction" (up to 750 words);[4] "flash fiction" (up to 1,000 words); and "microstory". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_fiction (more)

Back in 2005, the AP noted that many people in Japan were reading books (Thin Book) on their Mobile-s. It takes some getting used to. Only a few lines pop up at a time because the phone screen is about half the size of a business card... In the latest versions, cell-phone novels are downloaded in short installments and run on handsets as Java-based applications... A recent marketing study by Bandai found that more than half the readers are female, and many are reading cell-phone books in their homes... A writer who goes by the single name Yoshi wrote Deep Love, a series of stories about a Tokyo teenage prostitute. He began by posting them on an obscure cell-phone site he started and made reader payment voluntary... It went on to become a movie, TV show and Manga, or Japanese-style Comic Book. It's even been turned into a real Printed Book, with some 2.6 million copies sold. (more)

Self Improvement via Stress Reduction? (more)

15 Ways To Stimulate the Vagus Nerve At Home. (more)

Interval training is a type of discontinuous physical training that involves a series of low- to high-intensity Exercise workouts interspersed with rest or relief periods.[1] The High Intensity (HIIT) periods are typically at or close to Anaerobic Exercise, while the recovery periods involve activity of lower intensity... Interval training can refer to the organization of any Cardiovascular workout (e.g., cycling, running, rowing). It is prominent in training routines for many sports, but is particularly employed by runners. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_training aka WindSprints, WalkBackSprinting (more)

The vagus nerve, also known as the tenth cranial nerve (CN X), plays a crucial role in the autonomic nervous system, which is responsible for regulating involuntary functions within the human body. This nerve carries both sensory and motor fibers and serves as a major pathway that connects the brain to various organs, including the heart, lungs, and digestive tract. As a key part of the parasympathetic nervous system, the vagus nerve helps regulate essential involuntary functions like heart rate, breathing, and digestion. By controlling these processes, the vagus nerve contributes to the body's "rest and digest" response, helping to calm the body after stress, lower heart rate, improve digestion, and maintain homeostasis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagus_nerve

using sunlight or specialized electric light to assist with SAD and maybe other chronic issues

aka Seasonal Affect Disorder; try Light Therapy (more)

Sunlight Might Hold the Key to Treating Autoimmune Diseases. Every morning Kathy Reagan Young steps out of the shower in her Virginia Beach home, towels off, dons a pair of protective goggles and stands nine inches from a light box the size of a small space heater. Young presses a button, and the box’s bulbs begin to glow a ghostly purple. She briefly bathes her torso in the ultraviolet rays coming from the bulbs, four minutes per side. Then she goes about her day. (more)

Understanding the Most Effective Breathwork Techniques with Dr. Andrew Huberman. Even though cyclic sighing proved to be the most effective breathwork (breathing) technique, all three breathing exercises (others were box breathing and [[]Cyclic hyperventilation]) were more effective at improving mood and reducing respiratory rates than mindful meditation. This is thought to be caused by the enhanced sense of control over one’s breath that’s involved with breathwork. (more)

The Vagus Nerve’s Mysterious Role in Mental Health Untangled. Wellness influencers claim we can ice, tone or zap the vagus nerve to fix almost anything—long COVID, headaches, poor memory, extra pounds, the blues. Much of that hype is unfounded. Still, some research on the vagus nerve is intriguing enough—and promising enough—to draw serious scientific attention. (more)

AI ‘chain of thought’ is still just a ‘brittle mirage’. *AI vendors now insist their chatbots do reasoning. They even list their reasoning steps! (more)

Dan Hon: s20e04: A Software Strategy. This one is about the cycle of starting by building something you need, and then having it be replaced by a commodity. (more)

Default Friend: I LIKE Labubus and Dubai Chocolate and Matcha and Lana and Brandy Melville and TikTok Aesthetics and and and. Today, in his newsletter, W. David Marx (who, as an aside, is a must-read) wrote about an Amanda Mull piece on the disorienting nature of contemporary trends: Labubus and Dubai chocolates and matcha and chamoy and Swedish candy, all things that seem to emerge from nowhere, mean nothing, and disappear just as quickly. (2025-08-14-MarxOnlyFadsACultureandEconomyOfLabubu) (more)