Week of October 23, 2023
Last week, my older son and I took a brief trip to see U2 at the Sphere. Vegas makes me weirdly philosophical. It is a "Schrödinger's Cat" of Cities - simultaneously, Vegas embodies all that is amazing and horrific about capitalism and varies depending on the observer. While I am confident our Founding Fathers envisioned Las Vegas when writing the Constitution, I can't imagine they presupposed the glitz. The concert was fantastic, though, at some moments, it felt like we went to the Sphere, and U2 happened to be there.
(See my vision of our Founding Fathers in Vegas in my A.I. art below.)
and
https://chat.openai.com/share/d39aff10-6509-4063-8b8b-53655db807c6
and
https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/07/30/what-did-schrodingers-cat-experiment-prove/
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Hospitalization rates are trending down at the national level. Wastwater RNA concentrations are falling in all regions except the Midwest. Overall, RNA concentrations in wastewater are lower than during many previous peaks in cases.
The N.Y. Times COVID Tracker reflects only CDC-gathered hospital data. Hospitalization data are a (lagging) indicator.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/covid-cases.html
Wastewater monitoring is more of a LEADING indicator.
The Inside Medicine COVID dashboard
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COVID articles
Scientific American published a detailed story about the controversial (and flawed) February 2023 Cochrane database meta-analysis on the value of masks in protecting from coronavirus. The meta-analysis had several methodologic issues and spawned a considerable backlash.
Some comments from February:
https://twitter.com/trishgreenhalgh/status/1629827703330287618
and
https://twitter.com/tomaspueyo/status/1630000803141255169
Unlike the masking article, microbiologists and epidemiologists from Boston University School of Medicine published data demonstrating the impact of trace and isolate protocols on the campus of Boston University in 2021. Using genomic analysis, they showed the protocols minimized student-to-student coronavirus transmission. The authors published the journal article in 2022, but the Boston Herald published a write-up about the research last week.
and
Original article (which is not as accessible as the Herald)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36246573/
A few people have sent me this N.Y. Times article on the linkage between long COVID symptoms, the persistence of coronavirus protein particles, and decreased serotonin levels. The NYT does an excellent job discussing the researcher's hypothesis, study limitations, and next steps - like trying serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) such as Prozac.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/health/long-covid-serotonin.html
Medical Trends and Technology
The U2 concert marked yet another indication I am getting old. I brought earplugs and subjectively compared foam earplugs, silicone earplugs, and my AirPod Pros. I am not the only one doing this - the New York Times conducted a rigorous analysis in March using a GRAS RA0402 ear simulator and, various noise-canceling in-ear devices and traditional ear plugs. The Air Pods did not beat the foam earplugs from Kroger.
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/can-airpods-pro-protect-your-hearing/
A few weeks back, 23 and Me announced they had had a data breach. The implications of having personal data and familial linkages publicly disclosed are concerning.
and
Infographics
The music format revenue timeline. I have lived through the tail-end of vinyl and 8-track eras, and one day, my children will have to sort through my hundreds of compact discs.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-revenues-by-format/
Things I learned this week
Our older son was home from college for a fall break. A family game night of Trivial Pursuit yielded several random facts of note:
It is illegal to pawn dentures in Las Vegas. George Washington (see A.I. Image of the Week below) better be winning.
Item #7 in this list - https://vegas411.com/lists/9-weird-laws-found-in-las-vegas-nevada/
All sturgeons, porpoises, whales, and dolphins captured or found within five kilometers of the U.K. coast are the legal property of England's King (or Queen). The "fishes royal" law is from the 1300s during the reign of Edward II.
The British also have a history of using different names for large numbers. A British billion was a U.S. trillion. And a U.S. billion was a U.K. billard. I will let you read to learn about the milliard.
Living with A.I.
Nature compiled survey data and interviewed several academic researchers about how they use LLMs like Bard and ChatGPT in their work. The narrative comments capture a good sense of how these tools rapidly became useful (generating code, writing routine text like cover letters) and the gaps they cannot yet fill.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03235-8
Two other A.I. research articles of note:
MIT and Stanford researchers published this article on using LLMs to ask questions to help users generate more specific or valuable prompts. They call it "Generative Active Task Elicitation (GATE)."
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.11589.pdf
Combining GATE (from the above article) with an A.I. engine monitoring your writing and conversations could be powerful and scary. Swiss researchers demonstrate how well ChatGPT 4 can deduce demographic data based on online comments or questions. (Imagine what ChatGPT could know about you if it had your 23 and Me data, too. Oh wait, it might - see the data breach articles above.)
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.07298v1.pdf
and
https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1715379513008242791
A.I. art of the week thanks to a ChatGPT 4 generated DALL-E 3 prompt
Photo of a scene reminiscent of John Trumbull's iconic painting, but with a twist. Benjamin Franklin stands tall, wearing flashy sequined attire, shimmering under the casino lights. George Washington sports a poker visor, looking both presidential and ready to play. With a confident smirk, Thomas Jefferson holds a deck of cards, preparing for the next game. Other founding fathers are present, each engaged in casino activities, laughing and placing bets. The room is alive with the sounds of slot machines, the spin of roulette wheels, and the clinking of chips. Vibrant casino decor adorns the walls. The Sphere, a significant landmark, can be seen prominently in the background. Showgirls in glittering costumes strike poses on both sides of the scene, adding to the Las Vegas ambiance.
[We still can't share DALL-E 3 images generated in ChatGPT, so here is a saved version on my Google Drive.]
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KtTCDLgEEcXR7qvkRG24nxpVvrdrB92B/view?usp=sharing
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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