Sounds like a ripping good way to keep corporate data (and government secrets) from the public radar.

That way we won’t find out whose hands public taxdollars (or public-owned structures rented to corporations) wind up in.

“might have been set in motion by a volcanic eruption, a new study suggests” … sounds pretty vague.

So let’s look at the actual paper; https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02964-0

It says that “trans-Mediterranean famine [caused by the volcanos]… forced the Italian maritime republics … [to] import grain from the Mongols of the Golden Horde … [That] not only prevented large parts of Italy from starvation but also introduced the plague bacterium to Mediterranean harbours…”

In short, the disease was caused by bacteria, imported along with the disease, because of crop failures. NOT by the volcanos. ‘Set in motion’ = weasel-words

To quote ChatGPT:

“Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT cannot accurately cite sources because they do not have access to the internet and often generate fabricated references. This limitation is common across many LLMs, making them unreliable for tasks that require precise source citation.”

It also mentions Claude. Without a cite, of course.

Reliable information must be provided by a source with a reputation for accuracy … trustworthy. Else it’s little more than a rumor. Of course, to reveal a source is to reveal having read that source … which might leave the provider open to a copyright lawsuit.

Finding inconsistencies is not so hard. Pointing them out might be a -little- useful. But resolving them based on trustworthy sources can be a -lot- harder. Most science papers require privileged access. Many news stories may have been grounded in old, mistaken histories … if not on outright guesses, distortions or even lies. (The older the history, the worse.)

And, since LLMs are usually incapable of citing sources for their own (often batshit) claims any – where will ‘the right answers’ come from? I’ve seen LLMs, when questioned again, apologize that their previous answers were wrong.

deleted by creator

Maybe they should release these “28 hours of microphone recordings” I can imagine that wind continually blowing across dry desert sand could generate differing charges on insulated surfaces that make little pops when they’re ‘grounded’. Hardly lightning.

Crackles

By any chance could this be the crackle of little rock chips picked up by dust devils hitting the rover?

deepl.com (text translation) has been useful to me