TheVat

Dear "Mr President," Just trying to keep track of your principled and unwavering position on Iran: 2012: “Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in tailspin — watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.” 2013: “Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly — not skilled!” 2016: “We’re going to stop the reckless and costly policy of regime change.” 2024: “I’m not going to start wars. I’m going to stop wars.” 2026: "...the United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests." Wait...what?

Emily has written a will, which expresses her wish for cremation. Sniff o' crematoria fair, o tamer coffins.

Won't I, mad dog, laminate pet animal? Goddamit now!

The hypothetical nuclear attack that escalated the Pentagon’s showdown with AnthropicStart-up Anthropic and the U.S. military are careening toward a clash over government use of artificial intelligence — and whether it should be allowed to kill..... https://wapo.st/3OCZdqY (Free link) ...But that still leaves room for AI to influence decisions on targets and speed of response. In a recent nuclear war game at King’s College London, many leading language models including versions of ChatGPT, Claude and Google’s Gemini all quickly favored launching warheads. That could influence a human’s decision to fire, said Paul Dean, vice president of the global nuclear program at the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative. “It’s not simply ensuring that there’s a human being in the decision-making loop,” Dean said. “The question is, to what extent will AI impact that human decision-making?”

Just this morning, I had an AI search try to "please" me by misquoting HL Mencken (famous American journalist). The AI had somehow linked all the times that our president has been called a moron and a narcissist, and so the Mencken letter in which he says someday America will elect a complete moron (written in 1920, his remarks primarily aimed at Warren Harding who was then running for president) is misquoted as "narcissistic moron." So the AI invents a quote which sounds even more prescient than it already was. (The whole letter is worth reading, and seems very relevant to now, but that's OT for this thread)

Yes I remember younger days when cycling was my primary transport, as well as recreation. It takes a lot of fuel. I would eat like a farmhand and stay rail-thin; I remember getting asked things like "Do you have a hollow leg?" Thanks. Will investigate further. The also S American quinoa has become popular here, too. This is interesting, re pão de queijo. With the discovery of mines near Ouro Preto in around 1700, some 20% of the Brazilian population at that time, mainly slaves, occupied a vast territory in southeast Brazil. Since wheat was not available, local cooks created a kind of bread from starch derived from the cassava tubers shown to them by Tupiniquins indigenous groups. In the late 19th century, grated hard cheese was added.[3]

After reading recently that AIs, when engaged in practice war scenarios, choose a full thermonuclear attack 95% of the the time, I was not thrilled about the DoD pressuring Anthropic to remove all restrictions from its AI capabilities in their contract... AP NewsAnthropic CEO says AI company 'cannot in good conscience...Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the artificial intelligence company “cannot in good conscience accede” to the Pentagon’s demands to allow wider use of its technology.

If that's your idea of a snack then your meals must be wondrous, epic events! 😄 You and my son. I am more likely to seek a structural carb to spread on. My moistener, to prevent mouth-sticking, is slices of cucumber atop the PB. That's not weird, right? Those are wonderful, but when I eat one it resides in my stomach for about three weeks. I wonder if adding some psyllium husk would be a defilement? Probably. Regarding cassava, chips made from cassava are popular here - there's a large Indigenous community here and gluten intolerance is very common in that group, so stores have a lot of GF options. Many incorporate cassava.

Sometimes the guacamole is. Ditto the sourdough. Grocery sourdough is usually a travesty here. A local artisan bakery has some good sourdough. The yorkie parkin recipe sounds delicious - I'm partial to oats and molasses. The only dish I've had from that region is pease porridge, which was tasty and deeply filling. It was the variant which involves mixing in oats and plenty of butter, so more at the porridge end of the spectrum than the pudding end. I can't imagine it ever lasting long enough to be nine days old.

Hummus, on anything structurally suitable to support a gob of it. Chopped olives on top sometimes. Tortilla chips with a mild salsa (once did spicy, then plus-60 yr bladder vetoed). Leftover baked potato reheated with a vinaigrette and olive oil butter. Almond butter on GF toast or crackers or apple slices. Guacamole, as above. Strawberries, organic, no sugar added, but sometimes chop up some bananas with it. Peanuts. (And they should be hard to reach for, because I don't easily tire of them) Brazil nuts (4, or less, due to massive selenium content) - whole, or crushed onto the hummus or nut butter Sweet potato (bravo @geordief ) Sourdough bread (rare treat, as wheat makes me logy) Dark chocolate (who really needs to explain that one?) Do you have parkin meters there? (Corrected quote, by clipping from original poster)

I've heard a linguist speculate that modern media would tend to slow change and make for a more homogeneous language. E.g. we don't expect a resident of 1850 would ever hear someone in 1700 speaking. But, in 2026, we can hear early voice recordings from 1876.

Wow, five species and an exotic menu in one palindrome! I tip my hat. Or, hmm... Luf, I tip'n my hat, a hymn pitiful.

DimR makes unusual connections between concepts which sometimes most of us don't follow. I've gotten better over time, but this one escaped me as well. Over to you, Dim. I luk forwerd to klarifikashen.

So... the thread has concluded Andrew is neurotypical, and just another entitled C4H5As? I guess flawed moral character doesn't really get a diagnostic condition in the DSM-IV.

Interesting that knecht means servant. I wonder if the English derivation was based on the idea that a knight serves a lord or king. Germans, OTOH, went with Ritter, which carries the connotation of being a mounted fighter.

Hmm, I feel oddly peckish now. Perhaps for a lemon roll. Or perhaps... Wet, start lemonade sedan; O melt, rat stew! Meanwhile, Ms Lime is amused to see how the local veterinary clinic promotes nonprescription drugs and unusual treatments. "Snort! A vet steps up OTC, octopus pets, Tevatrons." Meanwhile physicists continue their incomprehensible jargon at the original Tevatron site in Illinois. "Dental floss or cadet car, Fermilab? A cabal? I'm refracted across ol' flat Ned. "

I spent some time in my youth at a billiard table, where that understanding is key to making a lot of shots. (And also: the angle of incidence rule applied to bank shots...unless you put any spin on the cue ball)

I heard some Chaucer scholar in college reading Chaucer as he said it would be done in its time period, and it was somewhat intelligible, though it took some help from accompanying text. If you were listening to someone actually speak that way at normal speed of conversation would you catch that "drooocht" was drought if you missed any context earlier? My guess is basic communication you could manage, but you would fall behind fast in more sophisticated chats. As a time traveler you would have to tell people you were from some remote country, to account for your accent and difficulties. (Full disclosure: I've always had trouble with hearing certain speech sounds - there were characters in "Trainspotting" that I needed subtitles for.)

Will the pothu see the kettle as highly light absorbing?

Though the blonde rider in that hoverbike video has some potential to disrupt pants.

I think this has been said many times in these forums (often by you)(🙂), and repetition doesn't hurt. My own experience, at work, with younger relatives and acquaintances, is very much that the loss is spending hours with one book or other source, reflecting carefully on its meanings and so on. A lot of real knowledge can't be found in a web soundbite or wiki entry or AI summary, and cannot be absorbed in some intuitive augenblick. The other problem arising from so much information, a virtual firehose pointed at us, is not having the techniques for filtering out what's important - filtering is such an important aspect of comprehension. (If one reads a long novel, for example, there comes a point where you realize how to focus on who the characters really are and have less need to recall every setting description or minor plot point)

As someone observing from across a large puddle, I wonder how much of the Andrewvian ferment reflects a general fatigue with royals. But maybe that's an American bias, which tends to see royalty as irrelevant to a modern world. Or as some wit once described celebrity, "famous for being famous."

Usually not a problem, given it's nonfriable asbestos, but black mastic in old houses would be applied to floorboards and then get dry and brittle over the decades. When renovators pry up the tiles and find mastic, they are tempted to try scraping or even sanding the boards (if they they want to restore a wood floor). This sort of action can break up the now brittle matrix and release some fibers. So remodeling experts advise either putting on a sealant (then painting), or adding a new layer of flooring. Or, as I did once when the exposed boards proved to be in wretched condition, pull up the whole floor and nail down a new one. Which sounds more fun than it actually is.

The goal of a corporate capitalist system is shareholder profits. That's it. It's up to government to counter this with ethical and moral guardrails, so any society where government is primarily answering to corporate donors and lobbying will suffer erosion of human values. AI is a textbook case of this. The main driver of economic growth in the US is now digital tech, software and AI, so You Know Who will do anything he can to favor those sectors and take personal credit for rosy GDP figures, etc. Students won't return to that deep, long-attention-span learning that is so vital to knowledge and competence unless forced to do so by what will likely be seen as Draconian measures. Maybe some crisis will bring that kind of change, e.g. vast numbers of employees who can't think critically, solve problems, or innovate, confronted by some disaster where those are sorely needed. Companies will maybe enter choppy waters where they discover AI is as likely to bring paperclipmageddon as to do any nuanced problem solving. MIT Technology ReviewOur Fear of Artificial IntelligenceA true AI might ruin the world—but that assumes it’s possible at all.

Veritasium has provided me some TIL moments, too. Will look for that vid, as I am interested in building materials, and what to watch out for. I recall finding some black mastic under some old floor tiles while doing a reno, and learning that stuff sometimes had asbestos. (I couldn't be sure if it did, but I handled the sealing process as if it could)