Although this surely does not completely explain the situation, I also have a feeling these sorts of hires surely account for a substantial number of layoffs.
Siri, show me pictures of fragile masculinity!
Well well well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions!
Hamas has banned the digging of wells since 2021. I don't see how they would permit the harvesting of rainwater, even if there weren't Israeli legal regulations in place (which seem to be on par with many other countries' laws). That plus their systematic dismantling of working water infrastructure for rocket parts has had it's effects.
This hits way too close to home.
Wow I gotta stop hanging out exclusively in Rust communities. When I read the headline I was expecting much more drama.
We bought a couple of plants that have a smell that allegedly repels cats and other animals and had good results planting them around our patches. But we also left the dog in the garden more often which might have helped even more. The plants are called plectranthus ornatus ... but there are others which might also work: https://horticulture.co.uk/cat-deterrent-plants/
I do not understand the amount of uninformed objections to the presented results in a number of comments here ... you can't just discount the results of a peer-reviewed study with some generic knee-jerk interjection off the top of your head. Read the original article here. It details which covariates were considered and how they were taken into account. Income bracket, educational background, gender, .... all this shit is not new to researchers.
Don't get me wrong: JAMA Pediatrics being a reputable journal shouldn't lull you into complacency, but JFC, just because you don't agree with the findings of a study doesn't mean you have to dismiss it completely on first glance.
Regarding your last sentence: Are you suggesting insincere motives behind this study?
There is an argument to be made about how studies like this underpin technology averse boomers trying to vilify modern social life. OTOH, studies like this, correctly implemented, are utterly important. It wouldn't be the first time science has proven something very popular (e.g. smoking) is actually also very harmful.
The article is a bit too nostalgic for my tastes, and hyping 4chan or Web 1.0 surrogates is not going to put the Internet back into users' hands.
Everybody should rather take a look at what Ari Balkan is doing with the Small Web concept over at his blog. He's also on Mastodon and generally seems like a great guy.
I think AI in this case is doing exactly what it's best at: Automating unbelievably boring chores on the basis of past "experiences". In this case the boring chore was "Draw me [insert character name] just how I know him/her".
Too many people mistakenly assume generative AI is originative or imaginative. It's not. It certainly can seem that way because it can transform human ideas and words into a picture that has ideally never before existed and that notion is very powerful. But we have to accept that, until now, human creativity is unique to us, the humans. As far as I can tell, the authors were not trying to prove generative AI is unimaginative, they were showing just how blatant copyright infringement in the context of generative AI is happening. No more, no less.