• 2 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 31st, 2023

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  • This drives me up the wall. Any time I point this out, the AI fanboys are so quick to say “well, that’s v3.x. If you try on 4.x it’s actually much better.” Like, sure it is. These things are really good at sounding like they know what they’re talking about, but they will just lie. Especially any time numbers or math are involved. I’ve had a chat bot tell me things like 10+3=15. And like you pointed out, if you call it out, it always says “oh my bad” and then just lies some more or doubles down. It would be cool if they could be used to teach things, but I’ve tried it for learning the rules to games, but it will just lie and fill in important numbers with other, similar numbers and present it as completely factual. So if I ever used it for something I truly didn’t know about, I wouldn’t be able to trust anything it said



  • Me: “Is this Big O?”

    It is.

    I always loved the mystery that this show managed to capture when I was a kid. Especially catching an episode here or there on cable TV. It often meant missing key plot points or not understanding how everything fit together. Watched it through as an adult and I still really like it. I won’t spoil the ending, but it’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve seen. Not that it’s over the top, but the absurdity of it is something I still reference to this day.

    Also the phone ringing to tell you the name of the next episode is burned into my brain






  • Well the returns he gets are the views on his videos. People love to watch people fight to survive. So he pits them against each other in order to draw eyes (and therefore advertisers) while positioning himself as a “humanitarian” making “donations” out of the goodness of his heart. Obviously it’s working because his wealth is growing, not shrinking. That’s part of what I think makes it “evil” in OP’s eyes. If you’re profiting off of it, is it really charitable?

    Edit: Oh wait, I can’t read. I see what you are saying. Disregard the above. I think you and I agree there. I don’t think it would be easy for him to just give all his money away for free because then it would be gone and people would still be poor

    I’m just trying to play devil’s advocate







  • I can kinda get you’re what you’re saying, but I don’t really get your point. Some people are bad pet owners. Some people are meat eaters. You said yourself there’s a spectrum, but then you said “blah blah” for some reason. You excused some meat eaters because at least they “do an awkward shuffle” when they do it around you.

    I have a cat, and I often feel really bad about keeping it indoors. I rescued the cat and I’m keeping it warm, keeping it from destroying the ecosystem around us, and it has a very safe, and seemingly happy life in my home, but I still wonder if it would have been better off if I never took it in. In that way, I can see what you might be saying. But do I think every pet owner is worse than every meat eater? No, not even close. Would you excuse a dog owner who works 10 hours a day as long as they did an awkward shuffle and apologized to you personally about it? Or is all pet ownership inexcusable to you?

    Yes, I get very frustrated with people who take poor care of their animals, but also when they neglect their environment, their friends/family, their personal space, or themselves. I’m not about to start advocating for abolishing pet ownership, specifically. Maybe you are.

    Your tone comes off as though you think all pet owners are equally evil (even though there’s a spectrum “blah blah”), but we can excuse other harmful practices out of necessity. Is it because no one “needs” to have a pet? I still think rescuing an animal and trying your best to give it a decent life is better than euthanasia, but maybe you disagree. Maybe your point is all animals should run free, and i can’t say I disagree with that, but I also think it’s ok to try and protect the creatures around us sometimes.

    I’m sure you don’t appreciate people who say things like “I eat more meat just to offset your veganism” or other such nonsense, and I don’t appreciate people who keep fish in tiny bowls, or people who breed dogs for profit. But because of the “spectrums” you mentioned, in general I can abide pet ownership more easily than wanton consumption

    Edit: reading again, maybe you are struggling with the use of the term “ownership”, so I apologize for wording it that way. I don’t mean to be “speciesist” and insinuate human superiority. I used the term out of habit. I do think people keeping their pets safe and out of trouble can be for the best, just like protecting a child who doesn’t know better. But I would recoil in disgust if someone said they “owned” their child, whereas “owning” a pet is the normal terminology. In that aspect, I can agree with you that people shouldn’t treat pets like possessions, but as fellow occupants of their home or even family members


  • In the US, the names vary a lot by location. Even which grades are included can change based on the local population and how they choose to organize it. My wife and I went to school in the same state, maybe 45 minutes apart, and we did not have the same names or grade delineations.

    For me, pre-school and kindergarten are each there own thing. Grades 1-3 were “elementary school”, 4-6 were “middle school”, 7-8 were “junior high”, and 9-12 were “high school”. We called them this based on the actual names of the school buildings. But even by the time I was in junior high, they started moving the 4th grade classes to the elementary school, so I’d assume kids in my own home town might say 1-4 is “elementary”. We didn’t have a “junior high” building. Grades 7 and 8 were still part of the “middle school”, but based on the changes in curriculum and the fact that they were held on a designated side of the building, it was colloquially referred to as “junior high”





  • I remember traveling through some random town on a job with a work buddy many years ago. He was always a bit of a goofball and I loved his zany humor and offbeat jokes. For example, he would say things like “wrong number” after hanging up a long phone call that was clearly with a client or family member.

    Anyway, we’re driving along and he points at someone walking down the street. He says to me, “you see that guy right there?” Sure, I say, what about him? And in a completely deadpan tone he answers, “you’re never going to see him again.”

    We sat in silence for a beat and then both laughed. What a card. But I think my brain actually changed that day. I started seeing strangers and passers-by as entire people with families and goals and problems instead of extras in the background of the scene. Every time I make an honest, simple mistake it made me realize that everyone is capable of the same thing. That not every idiot in traffic is just some idiot. Not every difficult customer is just some asshole. It seems obvious, but that moment really pulled that way of thinking into the front of my mind and I’ll never forget it.

    Anyway, it was after that that I learned sonder was a word, and it applies perfectly