Rokits

Askhole (n.): Someone who asks for advice and either 1) refuses to take it, or 2) does the complete opposite of what you suggest, and/or [perhaps now] 3) keeps asking questions to the point that they sound like a toddler unable to think for themselves.

For one example form Alisha Brown of Honi Soit,

“Let’s say you have a friend, Rachel. Rachel messages you with a conundrum. She just matched with someone really cute on Bumble who is keen to meet up but she has ‘literally, like, no free time’ between juggling two jobs, a full-time study load, a sick dog, and an online shopping problem. You suggest that it might be best to postpone the date until next week, when she has a little more space in her clusterfuck of a life. ‘Yeah, you’re probably right,’ she replies with the sulky-sad emoji. ‘Thanks babe xx.’ She sends you mirror selfies the next day from someone else’s bedroom.”

“it’s remarkably invalidating to be asked for expert advice and immediately have your expertise challenged. No one has to take every nugget of wisdom dispensed like Pez when I partially detach my head and rain my experience onto the world. But, explaining why your accountant’s son-in-law’s friend is perhaps wrong is scope creep from advice to a longer discussion. And if you aren’t going to take advice, don’t ask for it.” said Mason Pelt in an article about not being an askhole.

Another video by Louis Rossmann addresses when people simply do not bother to look anything up for themselves. Asking the person they are seeking help from to more of less do it for them.

If you want to learn. It’s time to stop being an askhole and become investable.

A viral video initially posted to Instagram showing San Francisco police officers pulling over a self-driving taxi, looks like something out of a sci-fi stoner comedy. The police officers are visibly confused as they circle the car. And onlookers can be heard laughing.

The car is made by GM subsidiary Cruise. Ond according to CNBC only started to offer nighttime driverless rides to the public earlier this year in San Francisco.

“Our AV yielded to the police vehicle, then pulled over to the nearest safe location, as intended. An officer contacted Cruise personnel and no citation was issued,” Cruise said on its corporate Twitter account.

H/t Futurism

Around the Web:
BVLOS recommendations could clear path for autonomous drones

NASA’s Record-Breaking Mars Rover Is Way Better At Self-Driving Than Earth Cars

Working With Climate Entrepreneur Sunil Paul

OpenAI has released its latest product, dubbed DALL-E2, an impressive piece of machine learning tech that can turn simple text descriptions into photorealistic images, say, of bandana-wearing pandas riding motorcycles or an astronaut riding a giant turtle in space.

But the company has wisely anticipated the potential misuse of its advanced AI as well, given there’s plenty of precedent for AI projects going awry.

OpenAI ensured that DALL-E2 has a limited ability “to generate violent, hate, or adult images,” according to its website. “By removing the most explicit content from the training data, we minimized DALL-E 2’s exposure to these concepts.”

Full Story Futurism

Related Stories:

Why Online Bots Aren’t So Simple To Spot

Google Says AI Generated Content Is Against Guidelines

People trust AI fake faces more than real ones, study finds

Originally published at https://masonpelt.com on March 15, 2022 by Mason Pelt.

The full story about working with Sunil Paul is on Push ROI. But the highlights:

• Spring Free EV approached my company Push ROI about providing marketing services.
• Spring Free EV negotiated a contract, resulting in both written clarification of the terms and changes to the terms
• Spring Free EV signed the contract, and I countersigned.
• After signing Spring Free EV informed me they wouldn’t honor the contract until I signed an adhesion contract containing terms that altered our current agreement.
• I said no.
• Spring Free EV breached the contract.
• Spring Free EV refused to pay the termination fees outlined in the contract.
• Spring Free refused to negotiate a settlement.

Feel free to read the full story including screenshots and much more detail about the Spring Free EV contract breach.

Originally published at https://masonpelt.com on March 15, 2022 by Mason Pelt.

The Metaverse is starting to seem like it’s just the internet. In some cases, particularly innovative uses of the internet; in others, not so much. Some say the Metaverse is just a modern-day utopia, but honestly, it’s just the internet with a new graphical interface.

Grifts, scams, and schemes like the 500 million of worth(less) real estate was sold on the top four metaverse platforms in 2021. But video games, chat apps, and virtual group activities that share a physical space will be the internet as they always have been.

We no longer use the command line to access the web, thanks to Mosaic. And we use search engines and web directories, for the most part, these days. Maybe someday we will use a Minecraft-like interface to browse articles and watch videos in virtual theaters. Who can say?

Covid-19 has raged, lulled and raged again for the better part of the last two years. The way we have all coped has been varied. Where we go, who we see, and how we make money have all changed. Here are five outstanding articles about how different people have adjusted in the pandemic. 

From Travel to Virtual: How We Pivoted in The Pandemic Era

Devon Hauth’s story tells how her company Moniker pivoted from planning corporate retreats to virtual events. The company that once planned events in Cancun, now offers team-building games like an online murder mystery.

3 Innovative Ways Restaurants Responded to the pandemic That are Here to Stay

Ron Blum an Associate Professor at JWU, wrote about three major changes in the pandemic forced on restaurants. Robotics, QR Codes, and delivery. A lot has changed, and some of those changes may be here forever. 

How COVID has transformed the death care industry for ‘last responders’

Reporter Kat Eschner explains how the pandemic increased cremations and lowered the number, size, and scope of funerals. 2020 had 20% more deaths than in 2019 funeral homes earned 20% to 30% less money.

6 ways the pandemic has changed businesses

In an article Victoria Masterson of Formative Content explained how the pandemic has amplified existing challenges in education for lower-income students and how remote and online learning are here to stay.

Researchers have studied Deinococcus radiodurans — a species of bacterium first found in a can of meat — for some time. These microbes were left on a special platform outside the Pressurised module of the ISS for one year. The Bacterium amazingly survived in space’s evacuee with UV radiation and huge temperature fluctuations.

So, after the year outside, the researchers got the bacterium back on Earth, to compare it with both a control that spent a year on Earth and one that spend 3565 days in Low Earth Orbit.

According to ScienceAlert

“This kind of study helps us understand whether bacteria could survive other worlds, and maybe even the journey between them, which will become more and more important as we humans and the germs we bring with us begin to travel farther than our Moon into the Solar System, and one day maybe even beyond.”

COVID-19 has hit travel and hospitality harder than most industries, and that is saying something. In the U.S. we’re now nearly nine months into the pandemic, without an end imminently in sight. And in a touch less world, some fairly gimmicky tech now has a use.

“Venture outside and you’ll soon see them. Printed on posters and signs, pasted on pub walls and hotel lobbies, sellotaped to picnic tables in beer gardens: QR codes.” So says Wired UK.

It seems true, for the first time QR codes are useful, QR codes are finally good user experience. The Quick Response Codes, previously where mostly a gimmick, for something the “Wikipedia town“, the main use for the codes are to track parts, to be a bar code. But now along with masks, and hand sanitizer they let us resume some level of normal life.

Being able to sit down at a restaurant is moral boosting to say the least. And people sitting down at restaurants is needed to save the struggling hospitality industry. Don’t believe me listen to this Market Watch interview.

Well, Scientists have discovered a human new organ, in the form of a set of salivary glands. These glands found in the back of upper throat. 

According to The journal Radiotherapy and Oncology.

This nasopharynx region — behind the nose — was not thought to host anything but microscopic, diffuse, salivary glands; but the newly discovered set are about 1.5 inches (3.9 centimeters) in length on average. Because of their location over a piece of cartilage called the torus tubarius, the discoverers of these new glands have dubbed them the tubarial salivary glands. The glands probably lubricate and moisten the upper throat behind the nose and mouth.

The accidental discovery happened when Researchers at the Netherlands Cancer Institute used the combination of CT scans + positron emission tomography (PET) scans to study prostate cancer.

According to Live Science

 In PSMA PET-CT scanning, doctors inject a radioactive “tracer” into the patient. This tracer binds well to the protein PSMA, which is elevated in prostate cancer cells. Clinical trials have found that PSMA PET-CT scanning is better than conventional imaging at detecting metastasized prostate cancer.

This discovery may mean fewer side effects for cancer patients. Because no one knew these tubarial salivary glands existed, no one avoided them in radiation treatments. An analysis of 700 cancer patients treated at the University Medical Center Groningen found the more radiation patients received to the unknown glands, the more side effects they reported.

“Our next step is to find out how we can best spare these new glands and in which patients” say the research team.

This could also be a longevity breakthrough, as these previously unknown organs may mean better medical care. A better understanding of inflation, and how therapies like IV nutrition could help treat even common ailments.

Until now, there were only three known large salivary glands in humans. Under the tongue. Under the jaw. And at the back of the jaw, near the cheeks. Thousand microscopic salivary glands found in the mucosal tissue of the human mouth, and through, but they are all microscopic. The newly discovered set are about 1.5 inches long.