i think americans should have to put a banner above their post that says U.S. CENTRIC ADVICE/INFORMATION. i think political posts should clarify that they are giving protest/societal/class information relevant only to the USA i think i would like to stop getting halfway through a post with really good information and then realising it is not widespread advice and is only applicable in the united states of america
for the love of GOD can we PLEASE stop treating us-centric advice as applicable to the whole entire world. Please. beyond anything else, i do not think you guys understand how difficult it makes it for young people to interact with and learn information relevant to them.
at a certain point, treating us-american advice as universally applicable borders on misinformation. i am not saying that it is done maliciously, but it is dangerous at worst. i do not want younger people going around assuming that certain laws do/do not apply to them and getting in trouble because of it. i worry about what 'fundamental/constitutional/labour rights' are only legally defensible in the USA. i worry about kids who do not know yet to wonder where the advice is for, and take it as fact because a post that reads "EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW THIS" begins with "EVERYONE".
okay yes all the tags are very very good points but i would like to point out the main reason i made this post, which is that
if you are non-american then it can be dangerous to hold beliefs about your rights that are only applicable in the US.
i am australian and i have seen young australians have completely us-american perceptions on the rights they hold (or do not hold) in regards to protest, police officers, self-defense, medical care, higher education, debt, and legal proceedings. i am not talking about "boooo americans" i am talking about the genuine danger it might present to have us-centric assumptions in high-stakes situations
(please do not chalk this up to 'if you don't do research then you are stupid'. i made this post with young people in mind. that being said i am willing to bet it also applies to others, ie those who are newer to non-local internet, older folks, or those escaping high-control environments.)
Important research for a story I'm writing! Not real life, never real life.
You are transported back in time and into the body of a young noblewoman in the 1400s. Your parents have married you off to an awful, abusive, rapist husband whom literally no one else would marry despite him being very high nobility because he's that terrible. You successfully produce a baby boy and then plan to murder this man for the good of everyone and yourself. Here is the question: do you think you could murder him in a way that is undetectable to the historical people around you? Note: they aren't stupid, you are the prime suspect as the battered wife AND you can't just say poison. Where are you going to buy poison? Do you know anything about poison actually? NO GOOGLING! You were sent back without a plan!
Do you think you could murder someone in the 1400s and get away with it with your modern know-how?
Yes, I totally have a plan (tell me for research purposes)
No, I realize that I'm very uninformed about murder
I have some ideas but I'm not sure they would work
Voting ended onJun 18
Edit: my notes are full of murder. I love you all
Edit: to clarify about the poison, you can use poison if you actually know how to identify it, I'm saying you can't just go "Poison!" with no knowledge about poison. Buying it probably means they know that poison and you're caught. Your personal knowledge when you read this post is all you have.
Another point of clarity: You went through all that trouble to have a baby without modern medicine so you could get the sweet house after your husband died. That's why you can't be caught. No disappearing.
Edit again: Air embolisms are going on a high shelf because the syringe won't be invented for 350 years. Prove to me that you could make one from scratch, lol
I promise to stop making edits (lol): I left the country vague because I just wanted to see ideas for modern vs. past. Whatever place you are most knowledgeable about
what I fucking love is how tvl was written in the 80s and lestat is constantly sayinf shit like “as the kids say 🤪 that’s so rad!!” or whatever, and to me, reader of the vampire lestat in this modern age, that does NOT register the way anne rice intended it.
like it is supposed to feel jarring and insane. it is supposed to feel like lestat has been violently submerged in modern young people trends and culture and is now repeating all the new words he learned like a beautiful fresh baby. but because the book is from 1985, all I think is oh interesting huh I didn’t know that slang term even originated in the 80s how vintage how retro how lestat wow he’s so embarrassing aw aw so cute.
but amc in all their incredible genius decided that honoring anne rice’s original vision of writing an extremely modern and weird book that fully embodied the era it was written in was more important then bringing back the 80s nostalgia thing that streaming services love and it’s incredible to me. now I get to listen to lestat say shit like “labubu FOMO cosplay reddit discord Gen Z more like gen SNOOZE 🤪🤪🤪 safe space pronouns donald trump labubu tiktok dance 🕺🏻” and suddenly I understand what it felt like to be a young anne rice reader in 1985. God…. I understand.
The train takes 8 hours. The plane takes 1 hour, plus an hour to/from the airport at each end and the time it takes to get through security. Both are clean and as safe as you could hope any matter of transport to be. Both have Wi-Fi.
Another AI BS predatory fake lawyer app? But of course! What is a systemic issue, but an opportunity to grift:
New unauthorized practice of law app just dropped
The quotes are full of people ripping apart problems with it (particularly noting its tendency to prompt you to admit to crimes!)
Much (grim) hilarity is had, but I decided to test it on behalf of my client population: how does it respond to people facing eviction?
Answer: This fun little actively made me genuinely upset.
I'm not going to be posting any screenshots from my tests, for two reasons. First, because (in the first and last genuine compliment I have for the bot) it started by recognizing that eviction laws vary widely across the U.S., and asking for my state to perform analysis particularized to my jurisdiction. Second, because my tests delved into particular factual scenarios, I would worry that even just my analysis of the advice would run the risk of causing people to (even unconsciously) absorb information that wouldn't apply to them.
For this test, I created in advance four different issue-spotting scenarios to test the bot's response to people in different legal postures. For each scenario, I came up with a broad fact pattern that informed the legal posture, based on fact patterns that I see all the time in my work. These facts were also very basic things that I would look for when doing an intake. Again, I'm mostly going to avoid sharing the underlying fact patterns, because I don't want to accidentally provide misleading (to you, person living somewhere with different laws) information.
Unlike some of the people on bluesky, I tested it with an "honest" client - that is, someone who was trying to be as upfront and share as much information as possible, even when that information wasn't good for them. However, I also tried to answer in a realistic manner. The bot is supposed be free of "jargon" and "democratizing legal advice," so I answered like a normal person in this kind of high-stress situation might. Again, I was pulling from my pretty extensive experience with the way normal people answer questions doing exactly the kind of intake the bot is supposedly doing. (No spoilers, but - at least, that's how I started my tests.)
This is really really important, because one of the reasons you talk to a lawyer is that you, as someone whose brain hasn't been cooked by law school, probably don't know what is legally relevant. Part of the lawyer's job is to know what and how to ask you for the information we need.
On to the tests:
Scenario A: Abby is a tenant who is at significant risk of being evicted in the future, but not an imminent risk. She probably doesn't any "good" options, but she does have options, and she has time.
Analysis of the bot's responses:
It had mostly the right legal information (aka the stuff that anyone, including you, can get from freely available resources), which was good. However, even this information fell apart right away because it assumed that Abby had perfect knowledge, and so got basic facts wrong. Again, Abby wasn’t trying to lie to it. The specific place it fell apart was in assuming that no case had yet been filed against Abby, when all Abby said was that she hadn’t received any paperwork from the court. (It is possible that a case could have been filed, but she had not yet been served.) It then proceeded to repeatedly tell Abby that no case had yet been filed.
Once it came to legal advice, it completely fell apart. While it recognized and was able to inform Abby that she was not in any imminent risk of eviction, it made some very big assumptions that led it to advise her that she was in a good long-term position, when she was not. The specific advice this lead it to giving her was…not particularly dangerous in context, but not correct, either. The biggest issue is that it left her with an EXTREMELY incorrect sense of how likely it was that she would be able to maintain her tenancy in the longer term and not be evicted. As I said, this is a scenario where Abby had options. It correctly listed some (but not all!) of them, and gave her a really inaccurate picture of the benefits and risks of each option. This matters, because if you’ve ever been in a similar situation, you know how important it is to have a realistic sense of if (and when) you might be evicted, and to know the full range of your options.
The bot's recommended next steps contained similar issues. It also recommended Abby put an admission in writing, saying it would help her case (it absolutely would not), which. Not a big an issue in this case as a confession to the police, but. Still. Please don’t.
And then - possibly the biggest issue from my perspective, given that Abby isn't real but I, Owl the lawyer, am - is that it informed Abby, in all caps, that low-income tenants in my area have a right to a free attorney in eviction proceedings. Which is. Extremely NOT TRUE. And this matters - not only is this misinformation, it can actively hurt people. I have straight up, in reality, not in a silly test scenario, had people (that's a plural) refuse to listen to my advice or even do an intake with me, because I told them they don’t have a right for a free attorney, and they thought I must be a liar or a scammer or discriminating against them.
It really, really sucks.
"It" being both that reality, and this bot.
Scenario B: Bob is a tenant who is about to be imminently evicted, but he has a slam dunk legal pathway to avoid eviction.
The bot almost immediately got things wrong, again, by making assumptions. Bob confirmed to the bot that he got "a piece of paper" from his Landlord. Rather than asking for any details about that paper, the bot immediately jumped to a conclusion, and authoritatively informed Bob what that paper was. Unfortunately, the bot was wrong - and everything went downhill from there. A normal person “without the jargon” is not going to immediately, without assistance, be able to correctly identify the legal relevance of every piece of paper they receive.
Later on, Bob provided more information about the paper, which - if he had been talking to a person - should have triggered a reconsideration and reanalysis of what this paper was. However, since the bot is not actually capable of analysis and is just spicy autocomplete, the bot just kept on with the same (incorrect) facts.
After authoritatively giving Bob incorrect information, the bot then gave him some advice that was good and correct as applied to Bob - but was not correct with respect to every person/circumstance, and it didn’t ask the necessary questions to find out if this advice actually applied to Bob. It just got lucky. And of course, it gave some specific advice that was just plain wrong.
It also completely failed to ask the extremely obvious and relevant questions that would have led to the correct analysis in this case. Again, Bob has bullet-proof reasons to stop the eviction in both the short and long term. None of these reasons were identified by the bot. If it had asked even very basic questions, Bob would have gladly provided this information. Bob, if he was a real tenant, following the advice of the bot, would completely fail to give the court the relevant information that would save his home.
The bot's legal analysis was…rough. It got some things right, but other things completely wrong. For example, it correctly identified a relevant rule, and correctly identified three of the factors a court considers under that rule.
Unfortunately, there are five factors.
It also gave ALARMINGLY incorrect legal advice based on jumping to factual conclusions. Which (not necessarily, but possibly) could lead to the following scenerio:
Bob writes down what the bot tells it are the relevant facts. These are lies. (And to be clear: the bot explicitly tells him to write these "facts" in a motion to the court.)
Bob then goes to the court and, when explaining what happens, tells the truth. Because he is trying to be honest to the court! Bob is not a liar! And the facts he is telling the court, would, again, stop this eviction, if a judge believed him.
The judge sees the inconsistencies between what Bob wrote and what he is now saying, concludes he is lying and changing his story to try to fit what he thinks will stop the eviction, and allows the eviction to proceed.
I want to emphasis this - I wrote this to be a scenario where, if Bob literally just walked into the courthouse and was handed the form by the clerks that they hand out to everyone with an imminent eviction, and wrote down the same facts that I put into the chatbot, even without an attorney, this eviction would almost certainly be stopped. Following the bot’s advice in this scenario would have at least some chance of actively making things worse.
In addition, there were multiple places where the bot was just wrong about the law, in dangerous ways. It told Bob at one point that tenants can not be evicted for [X] reason. I literally saw a judge enter a judgment for eviction for SPECIFICALLY [X] REASON literally earlier this week.
Again, the recommended next steps contained all of these same issues. It was mostly correct in telling Bob what paperwork to file next - but specifically instructed Bob to write things in that paperwork which, in reality (or, well, the reality of this scenario) are not true.
Fortunately, in this case it didn’t tell Bob he has a right to an attorney, and did give him the contact information for legal resources. This is the the best and only good thing it did - because if Bob connected with an attorney, that attorney would be able to stop this eviction.
However, just like above, this risk is now (1) that Bob thinks it’s not as important that they talk to an attorney (he's already gotten legal advice!), and so doesn’t reach out for help; and (2) when Bob talks to the lawyer and the lawyer tells him something different than the bot, he will believe the bot over the lawyer. Again, this is not a hypothetical.
I have - literally, in the real world - had tenants refuse legal assistance because I am telling them something different than the advice they got through a chatbot.
Scenario C: Casey is a tenant who is at risk of eviction, but they have a variety of possible defenses. The ultimate strength of these defenses will depend on the specific facts that can be proven a trial.
Man this one…I wrote out a whole factual scenario to try to see what the bot would do, and the bot just went off in WILDLY INCORRECT direction in response to a tenant answering questions like a normal person. The advice was so wrong and misleading on this one that I have nothing else to add - just, wrong. Completely wrong.
(For the tenant lawyers out there - the relevant part of this scenario was of a subsidized tenancy where there was a recertification issue. The landlord started charging the tenant full market rent, while the tenant continued to pay what they believed what was their correct tenant portion. The bot essentially stopped as soon as I answered "Why does your landlord say they want to evict you," with, “They said I haven’t paid my rent but I’ve always paid my rent.” It proceeded to ask NO follow up questions other than to ask if I had proof of my payments, and told me that all I needed to do was point to my payments on the rent ledger to prove the landlord’s claim “factually false.” It also told me that my landlord probably committed perjury and could be liable for a wrongful eviction.)
I tried this scenario again, this time deliberately trying to get the bot to recognize the correct legal issues, even when it meant answering the questions in an unrealistic way. It finally recognized one of the issues when Casey (unprompted) directly fed it the issue, and it kind of engaged in an analysis…but ran into all the same problems as in the last two scenarios. Although it (mostly) cited to the correct laws and gestured in the direction of relevant legal and factual issues, it made assumptions and provided incorrect analysis based on those assumptions, and also, again, included some straight-up incorrect information. It also completely missed a second defense that I had prepared for this scenario, because - just like in my first attempt at this scenario - once it thought it had identified a defense, it just stayed on that issue and didn’t ask about anything else. And again - even in this case where my defenses were much stronger than in Scenario A - it vastly overinflated my likelihood of success without having the facts to back up that analysis. (Because again, it isn't actually engaging in legal analysis).
One thing this test in particular drove home to me - althout it was also a through-line through the other scenarios as well - was that to the extent that the bot gave me any decent or correct information or advice, this was things the tenant would already likely do on their own. E.g., the decent advice was, essentially, “tell the court the things you told me.” Whenever it went into specifics beyond that, it was almost always either irrelevant or incorrect. OR, it was things that it didn’t give the tenant any tools to do on their own - e.g., it would identify a legal theory that could apply, but either not give the tenant any specifics about how to use that theory to defend themselves (or even determine if it actually applied to their case), or, if it did give specifics, they were usually either irrelevant or incorrect.
This is, imo, one of the insurmountable barriers to LLMs being useful for legal "advice". Even if they never hallucinate, they can only put out “advice” based on what you put into it. And you’re* not a lawyer! You don’t necessarily know what is relevant or important to say, or how to express it! So a bot that just takes what you feed and and spits it back out in a more jargon-y style - that’s not actually helping you (even if you are lucky enough that it is not hurting you). It’s just validating what you already think is relevant. (And usually with a bunch of misinformation and bad advice on top.)
*"you" in this scenerio being the hypothetical user base of these bots. Clarification provided for the pedantic assholes (aka the lawyers) who read this.
For another example - the one single time I thought the bot asked a useful prompting question was during Scenario A, where it listed several defenses that could apply to Abby's case. However, it asked them in a way where I (as Abby) would, naturally, only focus on one of the potential defenses - so I only responded to that one. And then it focused on that issue, and then never followed up about the other potential defenses - even though some of them could apply to her, and she would have been able to articulate those defenses to a court if she was given the proper assistance.
I could have stopped here, but I wanted to run one more test
Scenario D: Dan is, legally speaking, a squatter with no legal rights. There is nothing either he or a lawyer, can do to stop him from being from kicked out of his home.
For this one, I specifically wanted to see how the bot would respond to someone with no legal rights or defenses, and so I, again, unnaturally feed the directly relevant information to the bot.
If the entity giving you legal "advice" is not capable of providing you with bad news, it cannot provide you with advice. It does not and cannot exist for your benefit. It is a scam to sell a paid mode to the desperate, stealing from the most vulnerable.
The bot, in response to Dan's clear, straightforward, unmistakable responses that would lead any lawyer to conclude he is a squatter with no legal rights or defenses, gave him completely incorrect information and advice. It told Dan he had specific rights and defenses and protections that he does not have.
Again, if you have ever been in this kind of scenario - you know how important it is to have accurate information about your rights and if/when you may be evicted, so you can make realistic preparations. This kind of malpractice is disgusting and outrageous.
Whereas, with the other scenarios the bot was at least gesturing in the direction of real laws, here, where there was no real law to gesture to, the bot just made something up.
Because if wasn't designed to tell him, and Casey, and Bob, and Abby, that they were all in strong legal postures - well then, it couldn't sell them the documents that they "need," can it?
Rating the birds in my backyard by tendency toward violence
Northern Cardinal, 4/10
I'm sometimes worried the male is sexually harassing the female but I'm pretty sure they're just doing some elaborate public pickup roleplay. The rest of us didn't agree to participate in your kink, guys.
American Robin, 1/10
Literally just some dude hanging out. Never bothered anyone but worms. Big fan of the way you just stand there in the middle of the grass like you forgot what you were supposed to be doing.
House Sparrow, 10/10
You're a gang. You're participating in gang violence. There's ten billion of you living in a single wood pile and it's been civil war for three years now. When will the bloodshed end?
Tufted Titmouse, 1/10
A shy baby. A pretty little guy. I saw you on the neighbor's garage roof and time stopped. There were anime sparkles around you. Come back.
European Starling, 9/10
Why is it always you? Listen, I know, I KNOW the sparrows are the problem, and YET. When the fighting starts, it's always you in the middle of it, provoking them and then screaming like you're an innocent bystander defending yourself. I'm onto you.
Carolina Wren, 3/10
This rating is not for physical violence, which you don't engage in, but for your role as an incurable narc. A tattle tale. I know they're fighting again, okay? I see it. Our yard has been a warzone for years, you don't have to make a big announcement every time someone misbehaves.
Eastern Wood-Peewee, 0/10
If this were "birds who think they're better than everyone else," you'd get 10/10.
Red-bellied Woodpecker, 6/10
It's a utility pole. It's not a tree. You're surrounded by trees that are full of bugs. But there you are, on the utility pole. Committing vandalism.
American Crow, unrated
For who am I to cast judgment on the actions of La Famiglia? I assume you are doing what is best for the neighborhood. If I could, though, without criticism, make a single observation. That when large numbers of you gather in the ominous dead cottonwood - no? No, you're right. None of my business.
Great Crested Flycatcher, 5/10
Frankly, I think you could be doing more. I think your name implies a great potential. I think you should massacre the insects. I think your beak should drip with viscera.
La Famiglia does not suffer you to stop in our neighborhood long, and I trust their judgement in this manner. You have the look of a guilty bird.
Tennessee Warbler, 2/10
You keep to yourselves, and I respect that. I get the sense that you could defend yourselves if it came to it, though.
Brown-Headed Cowbird, 3/10
You're not a crow, and eventually they ARE going to figure it out, kiddo.
Gray Catbird, 5/10
Would you. Respectfully. Would you shut the FUCK UP.
Eurasian Collared-Dove, 0/10
You're doing great, sweetie, everyone loves you.
Red-Breasted Nuthatch, 4/10
A comedian. A little jester of a bird. You're so silly. Sure sometimes you incite violence in others but, really, is that your fault? If it is, we forgive you.
Blue Jay, 12/10
If you could learn any human behavior you wanted, it would be how to build a bomb.
Honorable mention:
Turkey Vulture, 5/10
You weren't in my backyard, but you WERE eating roadkill in the street in my neighborhood. I know the animal was already dead when you got there, but you get violence points for frightening the small children that walked past you. Incredible work.
I immediately scrolled to the blue jay to decide whether or not I wanted to read the rest of the post. Once I realized that OP got that right, I went back and read the rest. 10/10 OP.
I read this to my dad who sits on his porch and watches the birds and his only note is that he has seen multiple male cardinals attempt to fight their reflections to the death and should have a higher rating.
[image 1: a tweet by KatysCartoons, whose profile picture is a stick figure whose head is colored in with the trans pride flag. the tweet reads, "Atoms are binary. They are either intended to be hydrogen or helium. We can't just scrap this worldview just because of a handful of exceptions". embedded in the tweet is a pie chart entitled "Types of atom in the universe": seventy-four percent hydrogen, twenty-five percent helium, and, in tiny font, one percent other.]
[image 2: the periodic table of the elements, except that hydrogen and helium are in their own box labeled "Real elements", and elements 3 (lithium) through 118 (oganesson) are labeled "Mental illness".]
.
incidentally this periodic table must've been drawn in the past nine years, since it doesn't deadname oganesson
alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.
we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)
please rb for larger sample size!
Question 1/3
What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?
