Aaron A. Davis

Physician • Educator • Photographer • Writer • Family Medicine & Obstetrics • Global Health • Expedition Medicine • Technology

[Arthur MacWaters @ArthurMacwaters]

It’s kinda crazy to me that we melt sand down, clean it to 99.99999% purity, literal wizards have to draw it slowly into an ingot, we cut it, inscribe a hundred billion little on/off switches on it, and when you run electric current through it you can do basic arithmetic, which when you do enough of it can do any math on the planet, and which describes reality well enough that we can teach it the ontological meaning of words and their distance from each other on a high-dimensional space, and if you ask, it can tell you what word comes next and that apparently is powerful enough that if you do it a hundred billion times it’s the smartest thing to ever exist

oh yeah and we use this primarily for email

[apple files @applefiles_]

Apple really put a fully functional iPod emulator on its 404 page to celebrate the iPod’s 25th anniversary 👀

https://t.co/IBvKxOhU6D

[Ama @ama_underated]

PROTECT THE REAL DATA CENTERS

[kar @bustitopen420]

check on your friends from San Diego. It’s 102 degrees outside, the padres are 1 loss away from their season ending, gas is $6.75, and the president just put a hit out on them

[Sterling Snow @sterlingmsnow]

I reread this every year.

I cry like a baby every year.

Todd Beamer died a father, husband, and hero.

Todd: Hello… Operator… listen to me. I can’t speak very loud. This is an emergency. I’m a passenger on a United flight to San Francisco. Our plane has been hijacked.

Lisa: I understand. Can they see you?

Todd: No. There are three that we know of. They have knives — razor knives, like box cutters. Someone announced from the cockpit there was a bomb. It sounded fake.

Lisa: Your name?Todd: Todd Beamer. United Flight 93.Todd: They killed one passenger in first class. They forced most of us back. Fourteen of us here. Five flight attendants. The guy with the bomb ordered us to sit on the floor.

Lisa: Are you okay?

Todd: We’re going down… wait. No. We’re leveling off. We changed directions. We’re flying east again.

Todd: A guy named Jeremy called his wife. She told him two planes hit the World Trade Center. Lisa, is that true?

Lisa: I have to tell you the truth. It’s very bad. Both towers are gone. A third plane hit the Pentagon. Our country is under attack. I’m afraid your plane may be part of their plan.

Todd: Oh God. Lisa, will you do something for me? Call my wife and my kids. Promise me you’ll call.

Lisa: I promise.

Todd: Our home number is… You have the same name as my wife. Lisa. We’ve been married ten years. She’s pregnant with our third child. Tell her I love her. I’ll always love her. We have two boys — David, he’s 3, and Andrew, he’s 1. Tell them their daddy loves them and he is so proud of them. The baby is due January 12th. I saw an ultrasound. We still don’t know if it’s a girl or a boy.

Lisa: I’ll tell them. I promise, Todd.(Lisa patches in the FBI.)

Agent: Todd, your plane is on a course for Washington. Best guess is the White House or the Capitol.

Todd: I understand. I’ll be back.

Todd: Everyone knows this isn’t a normal hijacking. We have decided we will not be pawns in their plot.

Lisa: What are you going to do?

Todd: Four of us are going to rush the one with the bomb. Then the cockpit. A stewardess is getting boiling water. We’ll take them out.

Todd: Would you pray with me?They pray the Lord’s Prayer. Then: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.

Todd: God help me. Jesus help me.Are you guys ready? Let’s Roll.

[Internet Archive @internetarchive]

We've been getting a lot of questions lately about how the Internet Archive digitizes books.

The short answer: page by page, by hand.

You may remember our viral 2021 video of Eliza Zhang scanning a book. That's still how we do it.

Meet Eliza, and learn how we scan books: https://t.co/gt9s5lbPE4

[The Hollywood Reporter @THR]

Peter Cullen, Voice of Optimus Prime in ‘Transformers,’ Dies at 85 https://t.co/ES8Cul9d4u

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

In 1988 Dolly Parton pulled every 7th and 8th grader in Sevier County into a room and told them to pick a buddy.

She made them sign a contract.. if BOTH graduate, she hands you both $500. One fails, nobody gets paid.

The county dropout rate went from 35% to 6%.

She handed out the checks herself.

In 1989 she offered $500 to every kid in the county who wanted to go to the local college.

When Gatlinburg burned in 2016, she sent 900 families $1,000 a month for six months.

You've probably heard that part.

Here's the part you haven't:

The fund raised more than expected, so she showed up in May and handed every one of those families another $5,000 on top.

Then she quietly put $3 million into the recovery group that handles the years after the news trucks leave.

She built her county an entire hospital.

She played a benefit concert in 2007, Dollywood and the Stampede matched it, and LeConte Medical Center opened in 2010 with a birthing unit and a women's center in it.

In 2022 she started covering 100% of tuition, books, and fees for Dollywood employees.

Full-time, part-time, AND seasonal.

In 1991 she paid for a bald eagle sanctuary because the birds couldn't be released back into the wild, no press release.

And when Hurricane Helene came through here in Western North Carolina, she wrote a personal check for $1 million and her companies matched it.

She didn't owe North Carolina anything, but she helped us anyway.

She started the Imagination Library because her daddy couldn't read or write. Before he passed, he told her it was the most important thing she ever did.

Rest in Peace, Dolly 🇺🇸

[𝟐𝐬𝐦𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐲𝐲 @nomodeath]

I work the front desk at a small doctor’s office, and I wish people could see what happens on the other side of the phone. Every day, older patients call us confused.

They are told to use the patient portal, upload documents, check lab results online, fill out forms before the visit, and confirm everything through a link. Some of them do not know what a portal is.

Some do not have a smartphone.
Some have one, but they are afraid to click the wrong thing.
Last week, a man in his late 80s called about his test results.

He said, “Ma’am, I don’t mean to bother you, but the computer says I have a message and I don’t know how to open it.”
He sounded ashamed.
That broke my heart.

He should not have to feel ashamed for needing a human being.
Technology can be helpful. I understand that.

But when people who built this country are made to feel helpless because everything became a login and a password, we have gone too far.
Not everything needs to be an app.
Not every answer should be hidden behind a screen.

Sometimes people need a voice.
A patient person.
A real human who says, “Don’t worry, I can help you.”
Progress should not leave seniors behind.

Because one day, the world will move faster than us too.
And I hope someone is kind enough to slow down.

[Arnav Mehta @arnavmehta3]

As a pancreatic cancer doc, cannot understate the gravity of this moment. I get chills at the prospect that we will imminently have something else to offer our patients with real clinical impact. @AACR #AACR26 @RevMedicines

[𝑭𝒓𝒆𝒚𝒚 @Freyy_is]

dear apple, the iPod needs to come back. not for nostalgia. for the parents who want their kids to love music and audiobooks without a browser, social media, and the whole internet attached to it

[Saganism @Saganismm]

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years.”

— Carl Sagan

[Alif Munim (d/acc) @alifmunim]

We trained a foundation model on 18 million heart ultrasound videos to predict structure instead of pixels.

Introducing EchoJEPA, the first foundation-scale JEPA for medical video.

Paper: https://t.co/iN7MBfSBFW
Code: https://t.co/n4svDzRM7Q

🧵 1/n

[Aaron A. Davis @divinitynine]

@SerpentorsLairX Ironhide

[Encyclopaedia Britannica @Britannica]

If it helps, today is the second shortest day in history.

This is because the Earth is expected to complete its rotation approximately 1.34 milliseconds faster today than the average 24 hours.

[Aaron A. Davis @divinitynine]

@SerpentorsLairX Ratchet!

[Zeek Arkham 🇺🇸 @ZeekArkham]

About twelve years ago, I arrested a kid for shoplifting. There was a mall in the area that had a heavy shoplifting problem, so my precinct had a no tolerance policy towards it.

As I was sitting with him to fill out the juvenile arrest packet, he and I started talking. He wasn’t a bad kid; just made a dumb decision. We started talking about cologne and he said he always wanted a good cologne. I told him I had a few used bottles and to see me in a week. I told him if he went a month without getting into trouble, I’d give him another one of my old bottles.

He went a month without getting into anything and we talked some more and I gave him a bottle.

I’d see him from time to time while patrolling and we’d talk more. I wound up giving him my personal cell number and told him to call me when he needed to talk.

He called every now and again and after I left that particular precinct, we’d check in with each other.

Eventually, we stopped talking. Happens…

I got a random text a few days ago from him, letting me know he’d moved to Virginia, had a family, and was continuing to stay out of trouble. He’s a mechanic now. It’s been heavy on my mind ever since, especially since I struggle with wondering if I’m making an impact to anyone.

For my cops out there, not every person you arrest is a horrible person. Sometimes, they just need someone to talk to.

For my cops haters out there, not every cop is one of the “bad ones” you see on tv. We’re people, too.

We all have more in common than we think. Don’t let the ruling class divide us.

[Aaron A. Davis @divinitynine]

@SerpentorsLairX Grunt

[Aaron A. Davis @divinitynine]

@SerpentorsLairX Rodimus!