In this case, search engines return various kinds of hallucinated results. In the snow forecast example, we got deliberately fabricated results, one intended to drive ad revenue through shady ads on a fake forecast site, and another intended to trick the user into thinking that the forecast indicates a cold, snowy, winter (the opposite of the actual forecast), seemingly in order to get the user to sign up for unnecessary snow removal services. Other deliberately fabricated results include a site that’s intended to look like an objective review site that’s actually a fake site designed to funnel you into installing a specific ad blocker, where the ad blocker they funnel you to appears to be a scammy one that tries to get you to pay for ad blocking and doesn’t let you unsubscribe, a fake “organic” blog post trying to get you to install a chrome extension that exposes all of your shopping to some service (in many cases, it’s not possible to tell if a blog post is a fake or shill post, but in this case, they hosted the fake blog post on the domain for the product and, although it’s designed to look like there’s an entire blog on the topic, there isn’t — it’s just this one fake blog post), etc.
Multnomah County sees increase in Old Town shigella cases
Multnomah County is urging residents to practice good hygiene amid an uptick in shigella cases in Old Town Portland.
Shigella — a bacteria that is spread through fecal matter — can cause fever, stomach cramps, vomiting, and diarrhea, which can last three to 10 days, and can include blood, health officials warn.
“Shigella spreads when one person’s infected poop gets into another person’s mouth through food or water, from objects or surfaces with shigella bacteria on them, or during sex,” Multnomah County said. “Shigella spreads very easily. Even a very small amount is enough to make someone sick.”
Amid high crime and demoralized police, anxious urbanites turn to private security to keep them safe
Other neighborhoods across Baltimore had hired private security firms to patrol their streets. Why shouldn’t Federal Hill do the same? From there, Neuman, Anderson, and several others got to work. They consulted local government officials and police officers, who told Neuman they appreciated more eyes on the street. I called the Baltimore Police Department to verify their support, but they declined to comment.
Neuman and the others eventually set up a corporation, Federal Hill Neighborhood Patrol Inc. Next, they needed money. They hoped to raise $18,000 to fund the patrol for a three-month trial. But their neighbors nearly tripled that: About 90 households in Federal Hill contributed $50,000. In May 2021, the first patrol hit the streets.
More than 1 million people work as security guards in America, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and that number has doubled in the past 20 years. Since 2020, neighborhoods like Federal Hill have started hiring private security services. In Minnesota, for example, the number of licenses approved for new private security firms rose from 14 in 2019 to 27 in 2021, according to the state’s Board of Private Detective and Protective Agent Services. In Oregon, 1,635 private security guards had a license to carry a gun in September 2019. Today, that number has grown to 2,268.
Blame diversity-crats for turning humanities into decolonial, anti-racist ‘beards’
Humanities professors, under heavy pressure to prove their discipline is “useful,” have gone political, writes Tyler Austin Harper in The Atlantic. The pitch is that “studying the humanities promotes nebulous but nice-sounding values, such as empathy and critical thinking, that are allegedly vital to the cause of moral uplift in a multicultural democracy.” Someone’s got to bend that arc of justice.
