February 4, 2023

At the Saturday Night Café...

IMG_0007 2

... you can talk about whatever you want.

It finally warmed up today — to 30° — so I emerged from the house at long last. The indoor painting project did not progress, but I got to try out my new iPhone, albeit on a rather dull scene. 

17 comments:

Narr said...

Althouse Day, when the prof emerges and snaps a photo.

We had ice here that brought down a lot of things but not so many power lines as we had become used to in the last few years. Our one tall Crepe Myrtle between us and the neighbor on the west, which we transplanted to give some summer shade to our a/c pad, and which had grown very well, was pulled past 45* in that direction and almost uprooted.

It's a bundle of four or five small trunks that together are pretty heavy, and it won't straighten up without a lot of muscle, if then.

Skies clearing at last, anyway.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

I was looking for a short video by Russian/Brit satirist Konstantin Kisin to link to "The American Medical Association 54-page guide on language as a way to address social problems" post.

I couldn't find it until now. - Woke victimhood is dangerous

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

Video: Biden says he ordered the Chinese spy balloon be shot down the instant he was briefed of it but was overruled?

#NotAllInsurrections

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

Fox News Video: CDC To Begin Tracking People Who Refuse To Get A COVID Vaccine

Meanwhile, the vax continues to do it's "safe and effective" thing.

Walter said...

There are no dull scenes, only dull observers.

Jaq said...

I think that in 10 years, novels written without the substantial assistance of AI will be as rare as novels written on typewriters are today. People won't care. Writing programs evolved from machine language to programming languages that handled low level stuff, to languages that hid the machine from the programmer, to languages that performed large parts of the logic hidden from the programmer, and so on. AI probably won't choose the subjects, or be in control of the plot, but it will exist as a kind of "writers' room," and maybe the human artist will provide a kind of libretto, and direct the production of the novel in the same way a movie director directs a film. I just went to the movies and sat through a bunch of trailers, and AI could do just as well, I think, as those offerings.

On the story I produced today, AI actually guessed a couple of times where I was planning to take the story and it wrote in a plot twist that I didn't see coming, but I kept because I liked it a lot. Maybe that's what an AI "writer" should be called, a "producer," it's more honest, writers will be as obsolete as human welders at an auto factory.

I can also see AI writing complete movie scripts and novels, soup to nuts, but I am thinking that that is a couple of generations away.

We are all going to be "useless eaters" soon enough.

Ralph L said...

I finally figured out how to send photos from my flip phone to my email. Instructions were not included or online. Now I think my gmail is also going to the phone, which may not be ideal. I assume gmail will let me stop that if it's stolen or lost. I should have set up an exclusive email account for the phone.

I need to take some photos for my dad's house's property tax valuation appeal. The number they came up with might be accurate if the house were updated and in good condition, but aside from the new roof, it's largely as his parents built it in 1940 & '52, with mostly 1976 interior paint and a 1990 oil furnace & non-working A/C. The 1940 ducts might be sealed with asbestos tape, but I'm too afraid to find out for sure.

HistoryDoc said...

Memphis has The Scorpions, Oakland had The Riders. Around the year 2000, a group of rogue cops called themselves The Riders, and delivered street justice in an "extra-legal" fashion to crooks and bad guys in the community. They were eventually busted and broken up, and the OPD has been under federal oversight for 20 years since then.

The number of murders in Oakland were cut in half during their time, and immediately ticked back up once they were disbanded.

Never been clear to me if the bad outweighed the good.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

Can China please send up another balloon up our way; so my timeline is not flooded with AOC over the north pole comments. 🙄

AOC: “It’s uncomfortable serving with people who engage in…stochastic terrorism."

Jaq said...

Stochasticism, wasn't that the evil menace that pervaded the novel Gravity's Rainbow? Pynchon was really onto something with that prescient book.

Humperdink said...

To calm fears in the US, Chairman XI has reported the weather balloon was erroneously launched from the wet bat market in Wuhan. Fifty-one US intelligence officials have agreed it has all the characteristics of a bat market.

Jaq said...

https://twitter.com/ArmandDoma/status/1621971518086602753

Taliban fighter complains that he used to live freely in the mountains, riding horses in the sunshine, fighting the war when the mood struck, enjoying the camaraderie of his fellow fighters, and now he is stuck behind a desk in an artificially lit office, in front of a computer screen all day.

Who can't relate?

Humperdink said...

Two ultrasound clinics have popped up in our small rural community. Hmm.

Jaq said...

Converting the existing U.S. car fleet to electric vehicles would require more lithium than the world currently produces, showing the need to move away from private cars as a primary means of travel. - Scientific American

https://twitter.com/sciam/status/1620186119563362307

Electric cars are impractical, therefore you must give up your cars. Oh, and BTW, it is forbidden to question any of the science behind the AGW scare, because the stakes are too high, not because the "science" is on any firm foundation in terms of evidence and logic.

Old and slow said...

It has always been obvious that the true end point of electrified transportation is that YOU will not have a car. That is the only way that it can "work", such as it is. They just aren't saying that part out loud most of the time. You'll eat bugs and live in an apartment that you rent, and thank God (or more likely, thank your betters) for it!

To be fair, there are many advantages to be had from this arrangement. Personal autonomy wouldn't be among them though.

gilbar said...

tim in vermont said...
I think that in 10 years, novels written without the substantial assistance of AI will be as rare as novels written on typewriters are today

If you include things like Grammarly, it's probably true NOW.
This is MOSTLY, because.. People today, are illiterate

DINKY DAU 45 said...

That thing will never fly, man will never go to the moon,they'll never break 4 minute mile,the earth is flat,priests will never marry,and on and on as often seems many of the descendants have found a place to opine.The new world 8th Beatitude "The meek shall inherit the earth, and the rest will leave for space" ask ELON if that can't be done either.Oh ye of little faith.The nay sayers still won't believe it, and so be it!