WHAT HAPPENED TO MY MOTHER SCHRODINGER!?

Well, two legs, and attached to the left leg is part of its tail hoop, which it uses to strangle its prey. What looks like a foot is actually used to gather the excess length of tail and tighten the hoop, and also assists in gripping the prey.

Yes you can get dial-up, DSL, cell network data, or even satellite! These services are clearly equivalent to cable or fiber in the ISP marketplace.

It’s precisely because this is my field (public built environments) that I’m so skeptical of claims based on dubious statistical relationships. I’m willing to be convinced, of course, but if you had to go into a meeting with public officials and make suggestions, these are the sorts of questions you should be expecting. I am not convinced by the public health angle, so far, anyway.

Using AI to conjure correlations out of data seems more like speculating about miasma and dust parasites to me. I suppose if we can drill down from the wealth of correlations we generate to find something actually useful, that’s potential, but good lord the examples in the article are not inspiring. I think if anything, the potential here is identifying problem areas and targeting solutions at them, something that actual people have to do currently, rather than establishing any link between built environment and heart disease that we don’t already understand, because, you know, it’s not 1256 anymore.

I mean, fair enough, but there’s an actual connection between stinking pools of human waste and disease that was not understood due to a lack of adequate scientific equipment at the time.

In this case, we already know that poor communities have higher rates of pollution due to prior and ongoing industrial activity and traffic, and we can link specific pollutants to specific diseases. We know these places have poorer access to nutrition and higher rates of obesity related to the consumption of prepared and preserved foods. We know there are higher rates of substance abuse.

The environmental justice movement has existed for 40 years. We know what the problems are. We’ve had the data and technology to identify problem areas for decades.

I appreciate a novel approach, but I can’t help thinking about the energy demands of using AI to analyze Street View imagery, and where that energy comes from (still probably a fossil fuel power plant), and what kind of neighborhood that power plant might be located near.

The pictures sure make it look like bullshit.

Here’s a depressed, post-industrial area where heart disease is more common.

Here’s a suburb full of McMansions where heart disease is less common.

Gutter downspouts, masonry, bars on windows, and cracked pavement are positively correlated with heart disease and tree-lined sidewalks, big lawns and wraparound porches are negatively correlated with heart disease… go figure.