Political Discussion

Norfolk Southern had another train derailment in Ohio over the weekend.

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No fire, but I do see tanker cars and who knows if they leaked.

One of the things I found interesting when talking about this latest train derailment is some people are like, big deal, on average 3 trains derail in the United States every day. You are only hearing about them now because of the spotlight on the recent toxic derailment. Most derailments aren't that bad.

This one sure does look pretty bad. I would imaging the goods shipped will be salvaged by the insurance company rather than delivered. How can the railroads be okay with 3 derailments a day? Is it still cheaper than regular maintenance and complying with safety regulations instead of lobbing against them and getting them repealed or indefinitely delayed. All things that could have prevented derailments like these.

How many of these 3 derailments a day could have been prevented? Could we get the number down to 3 a week or 3 a month? Even better, 3 a year.

While the cause of this latest derailment is not known yet, odds are good it was caused by an axel failing. Which could have been prevented with proper maintenance.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
apple.news

Tennessee Passed the Nation’s First Law Limiting Drag Shows. Here’s the Status of Anti-Drag Bills Across the U.S. — TIME

Tennessee became the first state to explicitly ban drag shows in public spaces
apple.news apple.news

Looking through all the bills, I see fines up to $25,000 and jail time of up to 5 years for public drag performances and a felony on your record. Some states are classing drag as sex work and are age restricting the performances. Nebraska for example, prohibits anyone under the age of 19 from attending a drag show, but if alcohol is served on the premises that age restriction is 21. Where they limit drag shows too essentially means that 99% of them would be age restricted to 21.

Texas' bill says drag is wearing any clothing not consistent with gender assigned at birth. Meaning trans people would be considered in drag.
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They define drag as when someone displays a gender identity different from the gender they were assigned at birth, and “sings, lip-syncs, dances or otherwise performs
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So that would include against me or kae tempest concerts or basically any Trans person doing karaoke.

Those states should take a look at Iran. They are really successful of promoting decency in public with their morality police. That could be a model for the future
 
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RenegadeMonster said:


Full episode on Ron DeSantis
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It's in this as well, but should be stated clearly what DeSantis' people define as woke that they are so eagerly fighting:
Asked what “woke” means more generally, [Desantis’ General Counsel Ryan] Newman said “it would be the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.”

Newman added that DeSantis doesn’t believe there are systemic injustices in the U.S.
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I really like this article. It's long but it outlines why AI models shouldn't be used in any public policy capacity--or really anywhere because these "advanced" algorithms really aren't that "advanced" and are built on a lot of BS assumptions and biased data.

By reconstructing the system and testing how it works, we found that it discriminates based on ethnicity and gender. It also revealed evidence of fundamental flaws that made the system both inaccurate and unfair.

Rotterdam’s algorithm is best thought of as a suspicion machine. It judges people on many characteristics they cannot control (like gender and ethnicity). What might appear to a caseworker to be a vulnerability, such as a person showing signs of low self-esteem, is treated by the machine as grounds for suspicion when the caseworker enters a comment into the system. The data fed into the algorithm ranges from invasive (the length of someone’s last romantic relationship) and subjective (someone’s ability to convince and influence others) to banal (how many times someone has emailed the city) and seemingly irrelevant (whether someone plays sports). Despite the scale of data used to calculate risk scores, it performs little better than random selection.

Machine learning algorithms like Rotterdam’s are being used to make more and more decisions about people’s lives, including what schools their children attend, who gets interviewed for jobs, and which family gets a loan. Millions of people are being scored and ranked as they go about their daily lives, with profound implications. The spread of risk-scoring models is presented as progress, promising mathematical objectivity and fairness. Yet citizens have no real way to understand or question the decisions such systems make.

www.wired.com

Inside the Suspicion Machine

Obscure government algorithms are making life-changing decisions about millions of people around the world. Here, for the first time, we reveal how one of these systems works.
www.wired.com www.wired.com
 
@nolalady How about when used in healthcare? Should AI exist in this space. My thoughts are yes, as I don't see this use judging people by systemic biases, but I do see insurance rates being increased should you be determined to be high risk.

In the video below, AI was able to catch an area in a mammogram that 4 years before it developed into breast cancer.

 
RenegadeMonster said:
@nolalady How about when used in healthcare? Should AI exist in this space. My thoughts are yes, as I don't see this use judging people by systemic biases, but I do see insurance rates being increased should you be determined to be high risk.

In the video below, AI was able to catch an area in a mammogram that 4 years before it developed into breast cancer.

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The problem with AI in health care is that it operates on some of the same logic flaws and biases. While I think the potential is there for certain targeted use, I think that it will be used mainly as a risk assessment rating and that’s going to be very biased.
 
So what's the deal with this so called "Cop City" in Atlanta that they want to build.

I have only heard bits and pieces. But from what I gather they want to build a police training complex, which opponents say will further militarize the police. The public has had little to no input on this project and oppose it.

Protesters have been camping out in the woods for weeks / months to prevent the site from being developed. I guess there was a clash with protesters, who resisted arrest when the police tried to clear them out last weekend and things got violent. The protesters who have been arrested have been charged with "domestic terrorism".

Domestic terrorism? Really? That seems like a wild overreach with charges to me.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
So what's the deal with this so called "Cop City" in Atlanta that they want to build.

I have only heard bits and pieces. But from what I gather they want to build a police training complex, which opponents say will further militarize the police. The public has had little to no input on this project and oppose it.

Protesters have been camping out in the woods for weeks / months to prevent the site from being developed. I guess there was a clash with protesters, who resisted arrest when the police tried to clear them out last weekend and things got violent. The protesters who have been arrested have been charged with "domestic terrorism".

Domestic terrorism? Really? That seems like a wild overreach with charges to me.
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They want to spend 90 million dollars to tear down part of a forest in an Urban area outside Atlanta to build an Urban warfare training simulation city to further militarize our police. This is partially being funded by Delta, Waffle House, the Home Depot, Georgia Pacific, Equifax, Carter, Accenture, Wells Fargo and UPS, among others. So corporately funded militarized police.

There had been protesters camping out there for a while, then the cops moved in one day, and shot one. They spun it like the protester shot at them and they returned fire with an officer even taking a bullet. Then body camera footage shows this was false and the and the only bullets that hit an officer were actually fired by another officer.

Fast forward to this past weekend when the protectors held a sit-in concert festival type thing. Very peaceful, there was even a bouncy house. People were chillin' camped out in tents, then a group of mostly white males all dressed in black and fully masked up (all the other protesters were just in plain clothes, no masks) walked through, claimed they were "Antifa" started throwing fireworks at the police that had surrounded the area, police did nothing but stay back, the masked men set construction equipment on fire, no one stopped them police stayed back, then the masked men all left... And then police moved in and began arresting the peaceful protesters.

I've seen the videos and heard the first hand accounts from people there. My friends drummers son was one of the protesters arrested a month or so ago the first time they did this and they're trying to label him a domestic terrorist. I believe him when he says he did nothing to warrant that treatment.

Fuck the police.
 
That whole masked men "Antifa" thing is just strange. Likely people from the right invading the protest to make it violent and give the protesters a bad look. But damn, the police did nothing to them, and let them just walk? Makes you wonder if the police were somehow in on it or knew what was going on.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
That whole masked men "Antifa" thing is just strange. Likely people from the right invading the protest to make it violent and give the protesters a bad look. But damn, the police did nothing to them, and let them just walk? Makes you wonder if the police were somehow in on it or knew what was going on.
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Not really wondering as much as assuming at this point.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
That whole masked men "Antifa" thing is just strange. Likely people from the right invading the protest to make it violent and give the protesters a bad look. But damn, the police did nothing to them, and let them just walk? Makes you wonder if the police were somehow in on it or knew what was going on.
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Almost definitely the police themselves. They've been busted doing the Agent Provocateur thing in Canada more than a few times.

All Cops Are Bastards
 
RenegadeMonster said:
@nolalady How about when used in healthcare? Should AI exist in this space. My thoughts are yes, as I don't see this use judging people by systemic biases, but I do see insurance rates being increased should you be determined to be high risk.

In the video below, AI was able to catch an area in a mammogram that 4 years before it developed into breast cancer.

Click to expand...


nolalady said:
The problem with AI in health care is that it operates on some of the same logic flaws and biases. While I think the potential is there for certain targeted use, I think that it will be used mainly as a risk assessment rating and that’s going to be very biased.
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I think there are different uses in ai. Pattern recognition ai used in mammogramms, cts, xray scans is probably a great tool to help identify illnesses with a manageable risk of bias.
If you do it for insurance quotes or employment or school choice there are many examples showing that these things basically mirror or increase human bias against races, sexes, age etc. Because the data sets they are learning from a from guman evaluaters, recruiters etc ( which will be biased) . Problem is machine learning from that biased data sets and reproduce that biases. But oftentimes it will be argued by companies that there cannot be biases because the algorithm decided and can't be biased
 
Interesting. Learned something new from being included at kickoffs of project verses only being involved in the tail end production work.

When it comes to launching a new prescription drug, while the drug may be FDA approved and now available it likely isn't covered by insurance yet and available to the masses until the following year. When doctors prescribe a prescription it needs to be coded against insurance companies code for said prescription. And in the case of a new drug, new codes aren't available until January.

So say if a Drug launches in April, most people's insurance are incapable of covering it January the following year. If you need that drug, you're paying out of pocket. Meany that it's likely only available to the wealthy initially. And those that depend on insurance very well have to wait for access because the insurance code does not exist yet and is hot built into the current years plan.

If I were to take a guess, the United States is probably the only country that has that issue due to our complicated for profit systems.

Some insurance plans may have a way to handle drugs that do not have a code, but most people's do not and have to wait. The focus of advertising and uptake of patients is not until January.

This sounds like something that is common sense to fix and uncomplicated. Why should people who can't afford to buy the drug without insurance be forced to wait. Especially if it's something they need now and the longer they wait the worse their condition gets. Just mind boggling how much things are tied to insurance
 
RenegadeMonster said:
When doctors prescribe a prescription it needs to be coded against insurance companies code for said prescription. And in the case of a new drug, new codes aren't available until January.
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Is there a specific reason it only occurs annually? Seems like with today’s tech centric world there should be at least a quarterly cadence to update these systems.
 
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