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laurenleffer.bsky.social
Former Bug Scientist / Current Science Journalist/ Bylines at SciAm, PopSci, NatGeo, Gizmodo, etc.../ All views my own
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We are increasingly setting ourselves up for old school bank runs.

Okay what is going on here. Are the accounts at a private banking entity? Does the federal government have direct debit permission set up? So many questions as to how Treasury instructed this payment. (Via NY Post’s Craig McCarthy)

What do we think Elon Musk believes the purpose of government is?

If we are going to lose access to all federal benefits, all federally amassed science and data, all federal services, all federal infrastructure funds, and all federal communications. Then why on Earth are any of us paying federal taxes?

EXTREME TW: suicide I mean it!!!! A patient at a VA hospital in Syracuse, NY died by suicide jumping off the facility’s garage and hanging themselves whilst wrapped in a trans pride flag www.syracuse.com/news/2025/01...

we now have it confirmed: hospitals across the country are shutting off treatment for all trans people under 19 years of age some hospitals are still continuing care, but make no mistake: this will kill countless children and teens www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcn...

*sigh* breaking my break from bluesky to say THIS COULD MAKE A LOT OF PEOPLE MISS RENT AND YOU SHOULD SPREAD THE WORD especially if this is widespread beyond EPA www.eenews.net/articles/epa...

Amy Maxmen's important story in KFF Health News: 150 cow veterinarians were blood-tested for signs of H5N1, study's author was going to publish results in MMWR & give a webinar; CDC canceled both. Your current govt wants you kept blind about infectious disease. kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

National Science Foundation suspends salary payments, leaving researchers unable to pay their bills www.statnews.com/2025/01/30/t... Story by @ericboodman.bsky.social

When measles vaccine rates plummeted in Samoa, health experts saw a looming crisis. But RFK Jr. saw an opportunity to study the health of unvaccinated children. “I can’t imagine anything less ethical or more cruel,” one expert said. More from @brandyzadrozny.bsky.social:

No food, device, or drug recall announcements. No bird flu updates. No information, despite the fact that public tax dollars fund these agencies for expressly the purpose of informing.

Several of the Trump Admin's new executive orders feature bizarre errors, formatting oddities, and stilted language -- familiar artifacts that have led to speculation that AI was used in the drafting process. futurism.com/trump-admin-...

As the new administration makes every effort to reverse our meager climate progress, we are passing tipping points. Entire ecosystems are slipping away. If you haven't felt the effects already, you inevitably will soon. www.popsci.com/environment/...

I spoke to a HS history teacher-friend about a very similar program that his school's IT department had recommended to all the teachers. Among the options for "conversation": Andrew Jackson, "the victims of the Armenian genocide", and the IMF (???).

scoop: will oklahoma be the first state to ban renewable energy? its becoming increasingly likely. as investments from the inflation reduction act flow into red states, we're seeing backlash. republicans are disliking renewables *more* than before. cc @heatmap.news heatmap.news/plus/the-fig...

Squirrel-sicles, space travel, brain surgery, and scenes from an in-person reporting trip (unheard of in this economy)! www.popsci.com/science/hibe...

"As I read this avalanche of moralistic responses I kept saying to myself, What the fuck are these people talking about? Where is this safe and civilized world—now potentially shattered—where life is precious and humanity is respected?" TY @zeets.bsky.social

“Writing a single email with ChatGPT can use as much energy as driving a two-ton electric vehicle half a mile,” @laurenleffer.bsky.social reports. www.audubon.org/magazine/how...

There's been discussion for quite some time about using microgrids to help insulate communities from weather disasters (I particularly recall it after Sandy and Maria). Now we're seeing that they can indeed deliver (by @laurenleffer.bsky.social)

This point can't be hammered home enough. Large language models are not encyclopedias, they're fabrication engines. All of these tools just spit out probable chains of text. In our laziness, we're going to let the information ecosystem completely unravel.

www.statnews.com/2023/11/14/u...

This story is uh, insane www.cbsnews.com/news/police-...

www.codastory.com/stayonthesto... This interview confirms all the things I have been going on about for the last year.

Fun fun FUN a new video technique shows how the world looks to birds & bees & other species that can see different wavelengths of light 🧪 www.scientificamerican.com/article/anim... by @laurenleffer.bsky.social

Two researchers developing new techniques to map building damage in conflict zones have done incredible work charting the destruction in Gaza. I spoke with them about it: www.scientificamerican.com/article/insi...

Virtual meetings and video calls don’t quite stack up to in-person interaction—and a new study proves it - by @laurenleffer.bsky.social for Scientific American

What's in Biden's new 20,000-word executive order on AI? You don't have to read the whole thing— @laurenleffer.bsky.social asked the experts to break it down for us instead.

People may learn from and replicate the skewed perspective of an artificial intelligence algorithm—and they carry this bias beyond their interactions with the AI - by @laurenleffer.bsky.social for Scientific American

"The key to developing flexible machine-learning models that are capable of reasoning like people do may not be feeding them oodles of training data. Instead, a new study suggests, it might come down to how they are trained." — by @laurenleffer.bsky.social for Scientific American

New “multimodal” AI programs can do much more than respond to text—they also analyze images and chat aloud. 🧪 SciAm story by @laurenleffer.bsky.social

AI can generate clear, concise text that gets grades as good as human students' work. But people still need to learn how to write! by @laurenleffer.bsky.social

How does each neuron influence behavior? Researchers mapped worm brains to find out. "A new brain 'atlas' and computer model...lays out the connections between the actions of the nematode species Caenorhabditis elegans and this model organism’s individual brain cells." by @laurenleffer.bsky.social