sethoflagos

From a Nigerian perspective, the site is currently responding unusually rapidly. What to do with all that extra spare time on my hands?

Isn't memory strange. Never read any Sturgeon, and only one Heinlein - the rambling 'Time Enough For Love'. Fifty years on I remember it as being in the book. Turns out it was in Sturgeon's review of the book which must have been requoted in the softback edition. Am I forgiven my data retrieval error? PS - if you're going to start name-dropping, not so long ago one of Ghislaine Maxwell's brothers - the UK's biggest bankrupt - holed out for a year or so in my local watering hole in Lagos. Wanna see the Maxwell files?

I don't see the 'understanding'. What comes across is an endless stream of glib, out of context aphorisms from Nietzsche's early, pessimistic Schopenhauer phase parading as insights. Equating my opinions with those of Musk and referring to them as 'illusions' is hardly likely to make me more sympathetic. No resource is free of bias. Grok's is homogenous, suppressing the alternate perspectives that might facilitate critical thinking. The 'bots', (I note the dismissive tone), present inconsistent biases, often multiple contradictory biases within the same document. This IMHO is preferable for the enquiring mind that can pick up on the inconsistencies and be prompted to research further. Whether the bias problem is 'unrecognised' is down to the individual. "95% of everything is crap" - Robert Heinlein.

Perhaps a universe capable of engineering itself in such a way as to allow for the development of life on a very few isolated celestial bodies, is equally capable of ensuring that a population on any one of those bodies is incapable of adversely impacting life on any other. The Second Law is very fond of diversity.

Situation Normal for some of us.

And the problem with this sort of absolutist nihilism is that you lose the ability to make quality distinctions between any real world objects that fail to meet your unicorn purity threshold. There is no nuance. The glass is always empty.

Which fundamental problem (affecting both cases) are you referring to? I see them as diametrically opposed (one entirely wrong, the other less wrong) and therefore subject to their own distinct issues. Perhaps to clarify this - Grok seeks to suppress diversity: ChatGPT (AFAICT) doesn't. Also, inside my few remaining grey cells, diversity is moreorless synonymous with entropy. But that's just me.

Rabbit holes, rabbit holes... Lady knits as time loop's secret sac node - Doncaster cesspool - emits a stinky dal.

No. I accepted your metaphor as a stand in for all other aspects of developing into a responsible adult. To be clear, I was more focused here on the self-discipline, self-restraint aspects of personality which for my generation in the UK were inculcated early and unfashionably forcefully.

I was thinking of something a little more random than purposed prompts. There are a few pearls that just seem to slip in by accident now and then. eg. A prompt ''Reflections on the Gulf Crisis" might 'accidentally slip' in something about maritime optics. Daft example, I know, but I hope you get the picture. I'm going to be a little controversial here perhaps, and say that IMHO the core damage in such areas happened before the child was seven, and has little to nothing to do with computer use.

The primary input power is low tariff rate grid electricity, isn't it? Significant superheat even at this modest pressure makes water quality critically important and mandates a materials upgrade from carbon steel to chrome-moly alloy. Not to mention, 'ot fog carries a serious safety burden.

Emily Lime's synopsis for new Keanu Reeves sci-fi blockbuster: Straw rat sniper pots top rep in Star Warts

Sparing them the hellfire of gas mark Nigeria in my oven is cruel?

On the one hand, we could have manifestations of Newspeak, groupthink, and orthogloxy such as the above example, where diversity of thought is diminished by suppression of alternate interpretations and nuance is replaced by jargon without understanding. This is clearly the Grok model, as was the branded version of 19th century history I was taught in an English boarding school in my teens. But on the other hand, less curated products such as ChatGPT, seem significantly leakier. The same dumb orthodoxy is certainly there, but can be intermixed (depending on the exact wording of the prompt) with a variety unexpected, even obscure and eclectic references that could help guide the more curious user towards knowledge areas they may not have encountered otherwise. Such would increase the diversity of thought within the population, and conceivably be a good thing?

A bit moot for me as I only use the one grade of flour (whole-wheat atta) for everything from rotis to sourdough. What I do have are a couple of tall circular 4 litre plastic containers that I use for mess-free dough and hand kneading. If I were to use several types of flour, I think I'd just pour them into the container (plus salt if required), put on the clip-fit lid and give it all a good shake. Then mix in the yeast if required. I suppose that if I were really concerned about it, a couple of passes through a well-shaken sieve would make sure. Plus, it would help intercept any weevils...

Cat thinks:: He's drawing mousetails again! How many does the greedy sod need from me FFS!?

Interesting link. I remember the fuss at the time, and when I eventually caved in and bought my first calculator, I still continued to do at least rough approximations in my head in parallel, if only to guard against typing errors. Still do. Served me well one way or another. Admittedly, the calculator was quicker and more accurate than my once treasured hardback Chambers 7-figure mathematical tables, for logarithms and trig functions. But now and then, there's some satisfaction to be gained by working out the first few terms of a Maclaurin expansion in ones head, and estimating a function value to a couple of significant digits. Just to prove you can still do it.

I wonder if there are any significant studies out there charting the general population's ability to perform mental arithmetic over the fifty years or so that pocket calculators have been widely available.

Their target round-trip efficiency is stated as 30-35%. We've discussed Round-trip Efficiency quite a bit recently in regard to pumped storage etc. Please explain where you think thermal storage presents a competitive advantage? ... or in what sense serious steam cycle power generation is 'simple', come to that.

For some reason, I got booted into a UK secondary school while I was still 10, the youngest by more than a month of a yearly intake of 360 pupils. The school had a good sports record, and being the youngest and among the smallest, I found the first year tough. But year two, I still qualified for the under-12s among whom I was one of the biggest, and had had an extra year of training against stronger opponents. This advantage was nothing to do with me being a Libra as such; it was simply down to the school year beginning in September.

This works well for social housing schemes with, say, several hundred family apartments serviced by a communal centralised utilities facility. Lots of leverage here from economy of scale. Great for those who relish the thought of living in a scaled up termite mound. (Not knocking the idea as such. Just saying...)

Just for comparison, a primary steam power station will typically produce main steam at 165 barg and 570oC. This implies 230o of superheat. The intermediate cycle would be superheated to the same temperature, but at ~60 barg. Bear in mind that energy content is almost independent of pressure: it's all about the temperature. But that's dry saturated steam at 200oC which just happens to be industry standard for the drying sections of pulp and paper mills, a vital cog in the wheels of the Finnish economy. No one serious generates power from this quality of steam.

Duly duplicitously duplicated on the basis that 'too good' is synonymous with 'so consistently poor it almost works'.

Another artless, atrophied appendage to our awful anthology. A sonnet created by ChatGPT, written in the style of William McGonagall lamenting the appropriation of his own unique style by LLMs such as ChatGPT. A kind of recursive parody. How about Gordon Ramsay has a go at Haiku after an unfortunate Eggs Benedict

O Muse, thou’s fled, like mist o’er Tay’s cauld stream, And left me here wi’ rage that gars me greet; For iron brains, wi’ neither soul nor dream, Do grind out verse mair swift than mortal feet. O cruel age! O time o’ doom and dread! When clatterin’ gears outsing the poet’s cry; And I, puir wretch, by hunger near struck dead, Must watch yon soulless scribblers multiply. Their lines, though neat, are cauld as winter’s breath, Nae spark o’ heart, nae trembling human pain; Yet publishers proclaim my art is death, And cast me oot like midden in the rain. O William McGonagall, thy shade I loudly invoke, For I, like thee, am scorned—yet forced tae croak!