Friday Ephemera (809)
And then, quite suddenly, the drugs kicked in. || Discourse was attempted. || Wakawakawaka. || He kept it well hidden. || For when you have to leave quickly. || Free-love nest. || At last, a Bob Ross diorama. || Confidence in wrongdoing. || Boat fence. || “Why would they make the box shinier if it’s not better?” || He’s going to have to start wearing a bra. || How broken bones heal. || His is bigger. || Black hole simulator. || Blessing of note. || For the birthday girl. || With bonus meatiness. || Message not received. || And exactly how many negroes do you employ? || The unspanked seek likes. || The progressive retail experience, parts 708, 709 and 710. || Overseas. || Oh, those Himalayas. || To and fro. || Fire, seen from underneath. || And finally, Hostile Volume, a game about terrible controls.
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Magic rabbit encounter.
Only fresh ingredients.
Funny how 710 is oblivious to how 708 and 709 is how she got there.
“Why would they make the box shinier if it’s not better?”
He has a point, the plethora of choice can be overwhelming. Still better that than the alternative…
Less than 20 seconds and she’s screaming and stealing his stuff.
Morning, all.
Quite. As someone says in reply,
Firm, but not, I think, unfair.
Our own progressive ladies are no better, of course.
Niche instrument.
“Ask your psychiatrist for sizing suggestions”
Knockers.
Going to need towels.
AGPs are so boring.
Yes, it’s all a little tiresome. There’s a dreary uniformity to their fantasies. It suggests an insufferable level of self-involvement and a profound lack of imagination.
These are the tyres with Artificial Intelligence.
Previously and related.
Pink on a stick.
Or, pleasure, mass produced.
Would play.
Whoops
They seem to be worried that the technology is working as one might hope, with false positives “extremely rare” – “one mistaken intervention” – and with those detected being identified “correctly.” Resulting in the arrests of 1,300 thugs and rapists.
So far as I can see, the problem, if it is a problem, seems to be that the system “identified more black people than other ethnic groups.” Which is hardly surprising, given criminal demographics. (And presumably, the real-world data sets with which it was ‘trained’ and which will, necessarily, show the kinds of alleged disproportion that so upset them.)
Perhaps I’m missing something, but it’s not clear to me how “fairness” and “proportionality” have much bearing on the situation, unless Essex police feel that crime ought to be committed in some perfect accordance with racial demographics, as if there could be no embarrassing concentrations of criminal behaviour.
Sounds like those supposedly “racist” traffic cameras all over again.
I am certain that is the reason that the City of Chicago got rid of their shot spotter system.
I mean, if the argument – and it’s not entirely clear from the piece – is that the system is better at recognising black criminals than criminals of other races, and that this is somehow unfair – presumably to black criminals with extensive records – then, again, this may well be a result of training the system with real-world mugshots, a very large proportion of which will be of black people.
1-in-48 doesn’t seem “extremely rare” to me.
Well, Shot Spotter is merely a network of microphones which detect and triangulate on gunshots. The only racial aspect is that there are so few shootings in white neighborhoods that there is no point in spending the money to extend the network to those neighborhoods. And that’s raacist. Now, with the system removed, shootings are going undetected and the bodies are being found days later, eliminating any possibility of saving the victims and finding the shooters. But it’s hard to feel sorry for the Chicagoans who are suffering the consequences: They elected a black, racist, criminal-loving mayor and they are getting what they voted for.
Not so long ago they were complaining that facial recognition detected white faces better, but that was when the technology was going to be used for good things that made life easier (like unlocking your phone): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/28/joy-buolamwini-when-algorithms-are-racist-facial-recognition-bias
So they put a lot of work on improving the detection rate for black faces (which was only a problem due to issues like contrast). But of course now that it’s being used to detect criminals, the fact that it’s so good is a problem. It’s just endless Schrodinger’s whining for personal advantage.
But “intervention” must merely mean “stopped and questioned” and maybe “brought into the station for further questioning”.
This is no different from police officers recognizing faces in a book of wanted criminals.
I fail to see the problem.
Well, we don’t have stats telling us the rate that police officers mis-recognise faces, so it’s hard to compare.
Either way, I still wouldn’t call 1-in-48 “extremely rare”.
Was it “far-right” software or “far-right” cameras?
There are of course broader concerns about the use of facial recognition systems, but the linked Sky News article – and, I think, the police – aren’t being entirely clear on what the issue is.
There’s no mention – even in the Guardian‘s coverage of the story – of racial disparities in the number of false positives, of wrongly detained people, so presumably we’re talking about disparities in the number of correct identifications of wanted criminals. Which is to say, the system is better at recognising known black criminals.
As one criminologist puts it in the Guardian,
But again, no mention of racial bias in false identifications. Which the Guardian would most likely have jumped on with great enthusiasm.
TBF, they can be pretty horrible.
The game everyone has been eagerly awaiting.
An entrepreneur sees his opportunity.
According to this Met study, over the period of a year – from 11 September 2024 to 10 September 2025 – the system was deployed across the Metropolitan Police District, resulting in the scanning of over 3,000,000 faces, and 2,077 known offender alerts – all but 10 of which were valid. “An annual false alert rate of just 0.0003% of estimated faces seen.”
“Of the 10 false alerts,” says the report, “only 6 were spoken to. None of these engagements resulted in an arrest.”
962 wanted criminals were apprehended. The kinds of criminal activity range from stabbings and burglary to murder and the sexual assault of minors.
“Schrodinger’s whining” oooohhh I’m going to use that one. Thanks.
So what happens when you get a truly Islamic country with Sharia and mullahs in control? In Afganistan, they have kicked the girls out of school, reinstituted slavery. In Iran, the gov there has been trying to destroy Israel for 47 years, sending tens of thousands of rockets into it, as well as killing 1000+ US troops and holding our diplomats hostage. And don’t forget probably 30,000 executed in the early days of the revolution (according to an expert on genocide) and another 30,000 in the past month or so.
[ Titivates store-bought pizza, checks stores of rhubarb and ginger gin. ]
Meanwhile, down at the fire station.
By intention.
And finally, Hostile Volume, a game about terrible controls.
I quite enjoyed that. Infuriating, but fun. Task 22 drove me mad until I tried an unobvious solution, and then I wanted to kick myself for not getting it sooner.
I’m raising quality of life wherever I go.
The inverse relationship between ‘woke’ and ‘works’ is daily more apparent.
I’ve seen the bar snacks.
[ Slides familiar plate of dehydrated sandwiches to Aelf. ]
Thing that never happens…
Ooh. New user registrations. How exciting.
This may not have turned out quite as expected.
Notable observation.
Q: How good are the upgraded bar snacks for registered users?
A: There are no words to describe them.
Titivation has its limits.
“Okay, the people who were supposedly killed, they didn’t die. Nobody died. Obviously, right?”
And yet, the legal mummery will be played out and professional obfuscators indulged.
This is heartbreaking.
“Astoundingly, the Trousdale Department of Corrections released him from custody without notifying ICE.”
Seems nice.
The enrichment seems a bit one-sided.
Shot.
Chaser.
Priorities.
But again, no mention of racial bias in false identifications. Which the Guardian would most likely have jumped on with great enthusiasm.
They simply refuse to believe that their pets commit crimes in much greater numbers proportionate to their percentage in the population. And they further exacerbate the problem by letting their pets walk free every time they’re up in the justice system for committing crimes, some of them quite heinous. So as long as there are no negative consequences for their pets’ crimes, there will be a continuously-reinforced positive feedback loop of criminal behavior, and likely some recruitment from within the community of their pets.
It’s racism all right – the belief that one race is incapable of committing a crime and so letting criminal members of that race off repeatedly.
And yet if their pets develop inconvenient beliefs, it’s amazing how fast they can end up behind bars and the key thrown away. See, for example, Bill Cosby.