Interesting Links for 19-02-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Can ChatGPT edit fiction? 4 professional editors asked AI to do their job - and it ruined their short story

(tags:ai editing fail viaMarrog )

2. Mercury: Council and Parliament strike a deal to completely phase out mercury in the EU

(tags:Europe dental mercury lighting )

3. There's a fascinating discussion in this article about who "the Celts" were

(tags:prehistory Europe language society )

4. 2023 Hugo winner announces that they no longer consider themselves to have won

(tags:Hugo awards china fraud )

5. All new NHS building projects in Scotland put on hold

(tags:Scotland NHS money building )

6. Rabbit Test - the short story that won* a Hugo

(tags:hugo abortion rights women scifi )

7. Fertility doctor uses own sperm to impregnate lots of women, leading to incest

(tags:usa fertility incest OhForFucksSake healthcare fraud )

8. The Fifteenth Doctor audition piece

(tags:tv drwho acting RusselTDavies )

Comments

[channelpenguin]

1. We had an(other) "AI-fail" story from one of our product teams today These tools will *probably* get to useful levels at some point, but right now, they seem to be nothing but a big time-suck. As the team backed up their thinking, it was a straight dev task with pretty simple logic (might require iteration to get a fit, but the rules were easy). More than it was content-generation (but thats also been problematic). But I guess at least now they know for the (near) future!

2. Fabulous! Now, persuade German Health Insurance firms to pay for "white" fillings... I never did work out why dental care is considered somehow seperate fom health care. maybe it is too hard to decide what is functional / health and what is purely cosmetic? [After all, if poor people had good teeth, how would you tell at glance :-) ]

5. I see the Tory plan is working perfectly and nearing its desired endgame.

[andrewducker]

I'm not sure why dental care is considered separately either. Except for "It's the money".

Item 2: Dental Care More Generally

[dewline]

Same has been the case in Canada up to now. Seems like we're in the process of catching up to the more sensible parts of the world in such matters, now, though, re: starting a nationwide, federally backed dental care programme.

Some of the latest news:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/dental-care-liberals-deadline-1.7102324

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/dental-care-plan-expansion-72-to-76-years-1.7100722

[armiphlage]

4 & 6. I appreciate the author's embrace of the "*", but I wholeheartedly believe the story merits winning.

[andrewducker]

Alas, without seeing the additional stories, we won't know which of them might have been better!

[danieldwilliam]

I think we know which stories were excluded from the ballot?

[andrewducker]

I don't think many of them are freely available, sadly.

Fertility doctor uses own sperm to impregnate lots of women, leading to incest

[dreamaastrid]

Watched an old 'Law & Order' episode just last week that was about a Fertility doctor using his own sperm to impregnate lots of women. It was a very disturbing episode because he was a carrier of a genetic disorder that was passed along to the offspring. But the fact that so many kids can be fathered by one man and that this is not disclosed and can lead to incest and birth defects is so wrong. And the fact that so many places have no laws against this is equally wrong.

Re: Fertility doctor uses own sperm to impregnate lots of women, leading to incest

[andrewducker]

Definitely more regulation needed

4

[danieldwilliam]

My mum had a friend from medical school who passed the Fellowship for whatever speciality she was specialising in but was so outraged at the membership fee that she refused to pay it. The relevanat Society told her she couldn't say she was a Fellow unless she paid the fee so for a while she styled herself Dr xxx, who has passed the exam for membership of the Royal College of xxxxxx.

So there's a Hugo winner or someone who has won the ballot for the Hugo.

Re: 4

[andrewducker]

That makes sense. I feel pretty bad for them that they've been caught up in this.

Re: 4

[danieldwilliam]

Me too. It's a poor situation all round.

4

[danieldwilliam]

The blog post seems to imply that the author believes that the reasons behind the exclusion of entries was a racist desire not to have non-American authors on the ballot and not because of fears of Chinese state censorship or reprisals. Have I misread that? Or missed something?

Re: 4

[andrewducker]

On top of the "we must censor the LGBT and China-related content" there was a "There's a slate! Those are forbidden!" reaction.

Which is just plain wrong, because slates are not forbidden, a change was made to the voting rules a few years ago to prevent slates from overwhelming other voters, and finally it *wasn't* an organised slate, it was a magazine saying "Here are some awesome things to consider" which a lot of places do.

So I really really don't understand why this particular set of suggestions was ruled out. It makes no sense within the rules or history of the awards.

(It really does only make sense in a "The locals are going to put local things on the ballot!" sense. Which happens every time the Worldcon is held outside the USA. Notably Iain Banks only got nominated the year that they were held in Glasgow.)

[movingfinger]

Someone decided that February 14 was the right day to post the fertility doctor stealthing story; kudos to that editor!

[calimac]

7) How can this not be illegal? The doctor made false statements to the clients about the service he was providing. That's simple fraud, regardless of what the nature of the service was.

[andrewducker]

You'd think, wouldn't you?

[jack]

7. I also thought that must be illegal. I think it can be assault if you do a medical procedure you know someone hasn't consented to. I was surprised there were so many!

But i guess there's a difference in what the patient was offered. If you substitute patient's partner's sperm with doctor's that's clearly terrible. If they picked a specific donor from a catalogue, less so but still unethical.

But it sounds like a lot of cases were "patient was offered someone of this general age, heritage, and characteristics" where it's still a problem to use a donor who's donated to a lot of previous children but not anywhere near as obvious, and I can see how it took time to set any regulations for "how many times you can be a sperm donor"