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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 14th, 2023

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  • Firearms play a critical role in suicide deaths, being used in over 50% of all suicides in 2022. The availability and lethality of firearms contribute significantly to the high suicide rates, particularly among men. Recent data shows that increases in firearm suicides are driving the overall rise in suicide deaths, with 2022 recording the highest number of gun-related suicides on record. This underscores the importance of addressing firearm access as part of suicide prevention strategies.

    Reminder that most suicide attempts are in response to an acute crisis, like an argument with a loved one, and go from initial idea to action in less than 30 minutes.

    Survivors report perceived lethality of firearms being a primary factor in their decision.

    Access to lethal means can make all the difference between a bad day and a last day.

    https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter


  • Daily reminder that copyright isn’t the only conceivable weapon we can wield against AI.

    Anticompetitive business practices, labor law, privacy, likeness rights. There are plenty of angles to attack from.

    Most importantly, we need strong unions. However we model AI regulation, we will still want some ability to grant training rights. But it can’t be a boilerplate part of an employment/contracting agreement. That’s the kind of thing unions are made to handle.














  • There’s this podcast I used to enjoy (I still enjoy it, but they stopped making new episodes) called Build For Tomorrow (previously known as The Pessimists Archive).

    It’s all about times in the past where people have freaked out about stuff changing but it all turned out okay.

    After having listened to every single episode — some multiple times — I’ve got this sinking feeling that just mocking the worries of the past misses a few important things.

    1. The paradox of risk management. If you have a valid concern, and we collectively do something to respond to it and prevent the damage, it ends up looking as if you were worried over nothing.
    2. Even for inventions that are, overall, beneficial, they can still bring new bad things with them. You can acknowledge both parts at once. When you invent trains, you also invent train crashes. When you invent electricity, you also invent electrocution. That doesn’t mean you need to reject the whole idea, but you need to respond to the new problems.
    3. There are plenty of cases where we have unleashed horrors onto the world while mocking the objections of the pessimists. Lead, PFAS, CFCs, radium paint, etc.

    I’m not so sure that the concerns about AI “killing culture” actually are as overblown as the worry about cursive, or record players, or whatever. The closest comparison we have is probably the printing press. And things got so weird with that so quickly that the government claimed a monopoly on it. This could actually be a problem.