> Internal docs: Meta earned $18B+ in annual ad sales from China in 2024, making up 10%+ of its global revenue, with $3B+ linked to fraudulent ads, like for scams
If you believe really hard and really try you can transmutate lead into manganese. Of course, eating all that lead will probably kill you first. At least your Lyme won't be a problem any more.
And all those years alchemists were wasting their time trying to change lead into gold when they could have been going for manganese to eliminate Lyme disease! Greed has no bounds
> In its metallic state it appears to be inert when swallowed, unless it meets with much acidity in the alimentary canal, or is in a state of minute division ; its compounds are, however, all of them more or less poisonous.
> Mercury has been employed in one or other of its forms in almost all diseases ; but each of its numerous preparations is supposed to have some peculiarity of action of its own, combined with that common to all the compounds of this metal. The mercurials form, indeed, one of the most important classes of the materia medica.
He goes on to explain that mercuric acetate is the basis of Keyser's antivenereal pills (according to Robiquet), that mercuric chloride (which is probably what you meant by "mercuric chlorine") is "employed as an alterative, diaphoretic, and resolvent, in the chronic forms of secondary syphilis, rheumatism, scrofula, cancer, old dropsies, numerous skin diseases, &c." He also devotes a lot of space to emphasizing how important it is to be careful of it, describing the symptoms of poisoning with it, and explaining how to analyze "animal tissue" to detect mercury salts in it. He also discusses the use of mercuric nitrate in syphilis.
But never in all the pages he devotes to the uses of mercury and its compounds does he suggest that anyone ever used metallic mercury for syphilis.
I've also never seen a suggestion that mercuric chloride was ineffective against syphilis. Wikipedia says, "Once used as a first line treatment for syphilis, it has been replaced by the more effective and less toxic procaine penicillin since at least 1948."
Less academic of course. And mercuric chlorine was an autocorrect mistake from chloride.
If mercuric chloride was actually effective (without killing the patient) seems like total luck, and generally the first actual effective treatment was considered Salvarsan [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsphenamine] - which was arsenic based yes?
Until antibiotics came around.
But people tried all sorts of things, including liquid mercury, as your source notes.
The WebMD page is about calomel, mercuric chloride, and perchloride of mercury, not metallic mercury; the body text is clear about this, but the title is wrong. It describes all kinds of poisoning symptoms that don't occur with metallic mercury. So too for the mercury section of the Science Museum web page, except for a brief mention of attempts to treat with mercury vapors. And neither of them seems very credible.
My source did not note that people tried liquid mercury.
“Mercury has been employed in one or other of its forms in almost all diseases”
Are you really saying that in that time, no one tried the most obvious form?
You’re right though that I was wrong it was the primary one - I’m truly horrified at the various things people tried. But I guess untreated syphilis is one of the worst possible ways to die, and I’d try pretty much anything too.
I hypothesize that the appetite-suppressing effect of GLP-1 agonists contributes to the normalization of dopamine signaling in the brain. By mitigating the exaggerated dopamine fluctuations seen in food and sugar addiction, GLP-1 may promote a return to dopamine homeostasis, thereby reducing compulsive or addiction-like reward-seeking behaviors.
> “Rather than disturbing my poor engineers and product people with what is half good ideas and half bad ideas, now I test it myself. I come say, ‘Look, I’ve actually made this work, this is how it works, what do you think, could we do it this way?’” he said.
If "this is how it works" is about testing the functionality or user experience of a proposed feature idea with a prototype, this is actually a good thing. If it's about "see, you can implement this feature I want and it only takes 20 minutes" that's a very different conversation.
If you were a professional writer or driver, it might make sense to be able to do those things. You could still do without them, but they might make you better in your trade. For example, I sometimes drive with GPS on in areas I know very well, and the computer provided guidance is not the best.
> I can't remember the last time I write something meaningfully long with an actual pen/pencil. My handwriting is beyond horrible.
That's a skill that depends on motor functions of your hands, so it makes sense that it degrades with lack of practice.
> I can't no longer find my way driving without a GPS. Reading a map? lol
Pretty sure what that actually means in most cases is "I can go from A to B without GPS, but the route will be suboptimal, and I will have to keep more attention to street names"
If you ever had a joy of printing map quest or using a paper map, I'm sure you still these people skill can do, maybe it will take them longer. I'm good at reading mall maps tho.
Mental skills (just like motor skills) also degrade with time. I can’t remember how to do an integral by hand anymore. Although re-learning would probably be faster if I looked it up.
Please don't think of this as moving the goal post, but back to maps and GPS: you're still doing the navigation (i.e. actual change in direction), just doing it with different tools.
The last time I dealt with integrals by hand or not was before node.js was announced (just a point in time).
Sure, you can probably forget a mental skill from lack of practicing it, but in my personal experience it takes A LOT longer than for a motor skill.
Again, you're still writing code, but with a different tool.
On 2) I've combatted this since long before AI by playing a game of "get home without using GPS" whenever I drive somewhere. I've definitely maintained a very good directional sense by doing this - it forces you to think about main roads, landmarks, and cardinal directions.
I don't like having location turned on on my phone, so it's a big motivator to see if I can look at the map and determine where I need to go in relation to familiar streets and landmarks. It's definitely not "figure out a road trip with just a paper map" level wayfinding, but it helps for learning local stuff.
I couldn't imagine operating without a paper and pen. I've used just about every note taking app available, but nothing commits anything to memory like writing it down. Of course, important writings go into the note app, but I save time inputting now and searching later if I've written things down first.
> find my way driving without a GPS. Reading a map? lol
Most people would still be able to. But we fantasize about the usefulness of maps. I remember myself on the Paris circular highway (at the time 110km/h, not 50km/h like today), the map on the driving wheel, super dangerous. You say you’d miss GPS features on a paper map, but back then we had the same problems: It didn’t speak, didn’t have the blinking position, didn’t tell you which lane to take, it simplified details to the point of losing you…
You won’t become less clever with AI: You already have Youtube for that. You’ll just become augmented.
Nobody is debating the usefulness of GPS versus a paper map. Obviously the paper map was worse. The point is precisely that because GPS is so much better than maps, we delegate all direction-finding to the GPS and completely lose our ability to navigate without it.
A 1990s driver without a map is probably a lot more capable of muddling their way to the destination than a 2020s driver without their GPS.
That's the right analogy. Whether you think it matters how well people can navigate without GPS in a world of ubiquitous phones (and, to bring the analogy back, how well people will be able to program without an LLM after a generation or two of ubiquitous AI) is, of course, a judgment call.
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