small oaf
New York, NY
Joined June 2014
- Tweets25K
- Following838
- Followers1.6K
- Likes927K
James Pitt retweeted
Our hypothesis: LLMs have a pressure for information density, leading to compressed language, novel ngrams, and a preference for short alternatives in linguistic alternations, even when this is not humanlike - humans have a pressure for successful communication with other humans
James Pitt retweeted
Everyone knows that hunting in chimpanzees is mostly by males. But in bonobos, much of the hunting is by females!! Large implications for thinking about the origins of hunting in humans. cell.com/current-biology/ful…
James Pitt retweeted
When every second counts, New Yorkers are waiting longer for emergency medical care. 🚨
As medical emergencies increase, low pay and high turnover among @FDNY EMTs and paramedics are putting additional strain on NYC’s EMS system, contributing to longer response times. 🚑
Our latest report calls for competitive pay for these essential first responders and a comprehensive plan to reduce response times and ensure New Yorkers get the care they need, when they need it most. Read the full report: comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/…
James Pitt retweeted
Today I'm making public my data pipeline for the 2026 Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak in DRC. It extracts clean, health-zone-level case, death, and other series from INSP's daily French PDF situation reports.
vsbuffalo.github.io/ebola-bd…
James Pitt retweeted
don't want to downplay progress, but a world with perfect molecular design and today's target selection + disease models would still result in most drugs failing in Phase II. if you want to move the needle, improving the predictive validity of disease models is a better target
James Pitt retweeted
Homicide is the leading cause of death among pregnant people. New research shows women’s risk of being murdered in states w/ abortion bans increased after Dobbs. This builds on a growing, devastating catalog of data showing bans’ impact on domestic violence. Link below:
James Pitt retweeted
Quest Diagnostics has been hacked. Patient data was exposed. They serve roughly half of U.S. hospitals and physicians. Investigation ongoing.
James Pitt retweeted
Your MRI report isn't a diagnosis.
Take 100 fifty-year-olds with zero back pain and scan them. Around 80% will show disc degeneration, and more than half will have a disc bulge (Brinjiki et al 2015).
Those findings are mostly normal ageing akin to grey hair.
What tends to matter more is how your spine can tolerate load and your thoughts and approach if/when it gets sore.
Both of those are trainable. Structure doesn't tell the whole picture.
James Pitt retweeted
really hate the diluted marketing use of "RSI" and "superintelligence", was at a talk in SG not so long ago where someone put up Bostrom's definition on a slide and was like "that's what we're trying to build" thankfully they have no realistic shot at doing it
[1/7] China’s AI labs are also talking about “recursive self-improvement” (RSI). A big question here is: Is Beijing coordinating a race to achieve RSI?
@ZilanQian and I looked at Chinese AI companies, investors, and policy docs.
We found a more bottom-up, commercial story.
James Pitt retweeted
"U.S. inspectors documented egregious conditions at two Chinese factories making key components for compounded GLP-1 drugs popular in America, including black mold on equipment and gross contamination on floors at one plant."
latimes.com/science/story/20…
James Pitt retweeted
if you're actually worried about ai taking your math/tech job, why are you not in construction school? why are you not becoming a General Contractor?
I don't normally do paid work in my neighborhood but a few years ago I conditioned my neighbors attic and crawl space with spray foam. They were pretty blown away by the comfort improvement, but they moved out. I just met the new owner, and they've already vented assemblies on the advice of their GC
James Pitt retweeted
Type of thing referenced in a 7th century manuscript by a guy named Theobald of Cremona that later scholars conclude is obviously made up
Priest gave sermon on spontaneity of death just before falling crucifix killed him during livestreamed mass trib.al/z1QhWvA
James Pitt retweeted
On the train yesterday, table of middle aged women next to me talking about AI. All ChatGPT, pronounced "chat GBT", no idea why lol
One of them was disappointed because she asked it to make a small crossword and it couldn't
I thought surely not. I use these models every day, they do things in minutes that'd take me hours. So I got the app out and asked for one myself
Every down clue is a copy of an across clue. "You ___ here" is apparently EST. The down answers are CET, ASE and TTN. Then it tells me its own puzzle isn't a proper crossword
No wonder people outside tech think it's a fad. The stuff that blows my mind at work they'll never see, and the first thing they try falls over
James Pitt retweeted
i’ve seen them breach a couple of times and it is kinda crazy
James Pitt retweeted
One of Bismarck’s trademark habits was to openly weep and wail and threaten to resign, harm or kill himself when he was not getting his way with the Kaiser. He would genuinely throw tantrums and cry and on one such occasion walked up to an open window and threatened to jump.
James Pitt retweeted
Home decorating isn’t unique to Homo sapiens.
More than 40,000 years ago, bands of Neanderthals turned a spacious rock shelter in the mountains of Spain into a cozy home, fashioning wood into tools and windbreaks and burning it for heat and light.
That picture comes from a first-of-its-kind trove of Neanderthal wooden artifacts from a domestic space, found at a cliffside site called Abric Romaní, 50 kilometers west of Barcelona.
Learn more: scim.ag/4hO4R4l
ALT Neanderthals were skilled woodworkers, first-of-its-kind tool trove reveals Find in Spanish cave provides rare window into the domestic lives of our closest relatives
James Pitt retweeted
As a subterranean base appreciator I am eternally grateful to the Nordic countries for being the enduring holdouts in Europe.
James Pitt retweeted
Occupational exposure to specific solvents is linked to increased odds of Parkinson’s disease (PD), with the risk increasing as the number of solvent types rise.
In a cross-sectional analysis of more than 31,000 participants, several solvents used in industrial cleaning and manufacturing were associated with higher odds of PD. The strongest associations involved trichloroethylene (TCE), kerosene, and carbon tetrachloride. Read more: mdsc.pe/4e9IvJt
