This. It always baffled me why the BBC legitimises it by including it in the newspaper summaries. Might as well have included the Daily Sport.

High adventure that’s beyond compare?

You could just buy the book second-hand. Authors don’t get any of that money, and you’ll be able to get it for much cheaper than new.

In the UK, certainly. It’s not the library’s job to censor what the borrowers want to read, even if it’s David Icke.

Skullface Bookseller Honda-san is very respectable, though completely bonkers.

One thing that’s overlooked is the catalyst for all these changes is the same thing. Massive massive sleep deprivation.

Honestly, to start with, some days you’ll be surviving on two hours of sleep. And it takes years to get back to feeling ‘normal’.

This, very much. You are an adult for a long, long time - there’s no need to do everything while you are still a kid.

Also this about being friends with at least one person who already knows what they’re doing.

If you’re planning to go to uni, just wait until then, you’ll have your own room, meet new people, and be more physically capable to handle it.

I’m guessing it’s to break down the fat / grease in the poop.

The hot water will speed up the reaction, with the added benefit of possibly expanding the pipe just enough to make a difference.

Just a guess, though!

Yikes. What are you flushing down your toilet that you need a auger to unclog it?

My wife still has a book from when she studied Archaeology at uni called “From Savagery to Civilization” by Grahame Clark.

Civilization is what we make it to be, and is usually measured by the norms and standards of the country doing the judging.

The book is from the 40s. By the standards of the day, a lot of what we do now would probably be considered uncivilised. We work from home, eat meals on our own, and rely on a court of opinion more than a court of law. Homelessness is endemic and many people are working around the clock for subsistence wages. Classical definitions of civilisations - community, care for the vulnerable, improved quality of life - are all being stripped away.

I don’t think the term “uncivilised” can really be taken as a slur, at least no more than the word “bad” can be, because it’s just a reflection of what the speaker values.

Yep, no more reaching the airport at the last second and being hurried onto a plane.

“Sorry, you didn’t show up two hours early - there’s no way we’re letting you on”.

It’s just like any big technological breakthrough. Some people will lose their jobs, jobs that don’t currently exist will be created, and while it’ll create acute problems for some people, the average quality of life will go up. Some people will use it for good things, some people will use it for bad things.

I’m a tech guy, I like it a lot. Before COVID, I used to teach software dev, including neural networks, so seeing this stuff gradually reach the point it has now has been incredible.

That said, at the moment, it’s being put into all kinds of use-cases that don’t need it. I think that’s more harmful than not. There’s no need for Copilot in Notepad.

We have numerous AI tools where I work, but it hasn’t cost anyone their job - they just make life easier for the people who use them. I think too many companies see it as a way to reduce overheads instead of increasing output capability, and all this does is create a negative sentiment towards AI.

Hey, maybe you do.

But I’m not arguing anything contentious here. Everything I’ve said is easily testable and verifiable.

Give it a try.

The key is in the different prompts. I don’t think I should really have to explain this, but different prompts produce different results.

Ask it to create something, it creates something.

Ask it to check something, it checks something.

Is it flawless? No. But it’s pretty reliable.

It’s literally free to try it now, using ChatGPT.

That’s true, but they’re also pretty good at verifying stuff as an independent task too.

You can give them a “fact” and say “is this true, misleading or false” and it’ll do a good job. ChatGPT 4.0 in particular is excellent at this.

Basically whenever I use it to generate anything factual, I then put the output back into a separate chat instance and ask it to verify each sentence (I ask it to put <span> tags around each sentence so the misleading and false ones are coloured orange and red).

It’s a two-pass solution, but it makes it a lot more reliable.

Even more shockingly, Mississippi only officially ratified the amendment to abolish slavery in… 1995.

And only officially submitted the paperwork concerning said ratification to the US Archives in… 2013.

No rush, guys. No rush.

“Not being cool enough to say where you are from” is a weird way for them to phrase it. If they’re British, they might be saying it ironically (I use the phrase “well, if you’re not cool enough…” as a reference to the old peer-pressure educational videos myself). Otherwise, they might be young, and clumsily trying to peer-pressure you, or old and out-of-touch enough to think that’s an effective way to get a young person to give up information.

So, three options. They’re either being ironic, clumsy, or creepy. No harm in playing safe and blocking them.

I was about to sign it, and then I remembered…

Stupid Brexit 😠

New Zealand literally doesn’t exist on about half the world maps. It’s like the map-makers get to the bottom right corner and go “ah, that’s good enough”.

Edit: I didn’t realise, but there’s even a Wikipedia page about the phenomenon:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omission_of_New_Zealand_from_maps

Pro life tip.

1. Buy a printer that accepts off-brand cartridges.
2. Buy off-brand cartridges in bulk for further discounts (I buy 12-packs of ‘Hicorch’ cartridges for my Epson Stylus)
3. Relax never having to worry about running out of ink.