Not going to go into details due to confidentiality, but I recently was involved in an initiative to utilize AI to scan education databases and identify students who may be at risk of dropping out, with the goal of having an early safety net for these folks. And also raising the schools retention rates, thus better outcomes overall.
So yes, AI can absolutely be used for good.
Right? I get that some of middle America feels slighted, and I’m all for preventing the hollowing out of small town America, but I don’t see lying xenophobic scapegoating being the answer here. That’s how you get nationalist parties and paramilitary “cultural enforcement” groups.
Instead, I see a need to foster and fund community organizations and civil engagement. Improved infrastructure and green spaces. More affordable housing - bring people back into the towns rather than the outskirts of it. But unfortunately, oddly, for some reason, that’s not as easy of a sell as the “people be eating your pets” trope.
TIL, thanks. Makes a bit more sense now why the band chose the name.
I visited Panama for an agricultural trip about a decade ago where we focused on coffee agriculture and production. Coincidentally, there are some coffees that blend in beans or peanuts to mellow the flavor. This is usually done for cheaper coffees that use robusto beans instead of arabica. It’s also to relieve some of the acrid taste that can develop during the drying out process if the beans are dried around animal droppings.
If you’re interested in what a mellowed coffee would taste like, I think chock full of nuts is a brand you can try in the states.
Edit: ok so I did some more research and it appears that chock full o nuts likely no longer does this, they just have typical coffee nowadays. I’ll leave it to you other internet sleuths to find a brand that does.
I’d donate a few dollars a month. Newgrounds is a great content creation space. I still play games there from time to time. The Mario 63 game is off the wall. Dead Estate is also a fantastic retro style shooter like the ones I remember from my childhood. I think places like this need to survive.
Looks like a country that could use some Freedom™.
Starting a daily productivity log. It started as a google form but has morphed into a larger spreadsheet. It contains:
Each row is a day. It also includes a section for bucket list and yearly goals and whether I achieved them.
I don’t fill it out every day and I don’t fill out every field each day either, but I do try to not get more than 10 days behind.
It gives me a sense of purpose. It helps me remember what I’ve done, so days don’t just slip through my fingers. It also, I think, shows how I’ve grown a bit as a person.
It became really special when I was able to bring it out during my wedding vows. I wrote down on paper many of the things my SO and I did on our adventures and got to share them with our friends and family.
I have a tab for each of the last 15 years.
We elect people to make decisions, that’s the whole concept behind representative government. We vote people in at the federal level who are supposed to protect us - it is one of their key responsibilities according to the constitution.
I understand that the concept of representative governance may be lost on people who have little say on those who govern them.
And just to be clear, no, ours is not a perfect system either. I’d prefer ranked choice to FPP voting, but even that has flaws.
Yep, trimming down the alcohol certainly helps as well. Also helps keep the beetus at bay.
There are some alternatives to cheese that are pretty good. I’m an omnivore but my wife has convinced me that there are some good vegetarian options out there. Might be worth exploring if the low-fat cheese isn’t palatable.
With this, and trimming down my meat consumption to just a few times a week, as well as a little exercise, I’ve kept my LDL numbers below my late 20s highs, which were borderline - I’m nearing two decades older now.
A lot of us migrated months ago when the writing was on the wall.
Kbin became my home when I decided to move to a smaller foreign county, and I’m glad it was, because the land of Mastodon was a bit too distant for me. When the Kbin house was burning down, fortunately the next door neighbor, Fedia, was there to take me in and make things feel familiar.
I suppose that’s the whole advantage of the Fediverse. One head of the hydra may get chopped down, but many others can spring out from it.
Don’t forget to support your admins y’all.
I think it’s that PayPal was one of the firsts to provide a method for collecting credit card transactions electronically.
Before PayPal, you’d often have to visit a website, then call the phone number for the seller to collect payment.
eBay needed paypal because their sellers were often not businesses, just people yardsaling stuff online.
Coincidentally, I interned at a PayPal competitor in 1998 that went under during the bust. We had an electronic interface through MS access, but it was a still a human entering in the CC number into one of those dial pads on our side and then confirming the transaction. I’m sure with all of the concerns around security nowadays that you can understand why that was a terrible long term business model.
True that, I just took a look at the FAQ and it still references kbin.
Question, how do we donate to this project?
Ultimate power ultimately corrupts. It doesn’t matter whether it comes from capital or community.
We must have a way to audit, it’s a tool that helps keep power in check. How do you audit handshakes and wink/nods?
I literally thought it was for militant, because that’s how they come off over there if you’re not 100% in lockstep with them.
Like they were fighting the man or something.
Jungle Bird if they have Campari. I recently went to Miami and had the best one I’ve ever had. It’s the perfect balance of sweet and bitter, I highly recommend.
If no Campari then I’ll usually do an old fashioned or manhattan.
How does this square with the whole libertarian bend?