So I made the world’s worst soup today. I used the leftover prime rib, made stock from scratch, cut up all the veg, seasoned and cooked the soup, and it was horrible. I had a 1/3 of a bowl and couldn’t finish it. I can’t describe why it was bad, exactly, but it felt oily and under-seasoned and no amount of seasoning fixed it.
I asked Joelle to taste it, and she went into the kitchen, a couple minutes later walked into the room and sat down and said “I think you should throw it out.” So it was a unanimous decision.
These fucking people need to be stopped:
Meta, the company founded by Mark Zuckerberg, is once again generating debate for an announced measure that will drastically influence both the use of Facebook and Instagram and how we understand these two social networks. As revealed by the Financial Times, this technology company is committed to bringing to these two platforms thousands of “characters” generated by artificial intelligence in order to increase interactions with its 3 billion users.
The Silicon Valley-based group has launched a series of AI products, including a tool for creating artificial intelligence characters on Instagram and Facebook. Personalities such as MrBeast have lent their image to the creation and characterization of these virtual entities. According to Connor Hayes, vice president of product for generative AI at Meta, the long-term goal is for these AI users to exist on the platforms in a similar way to accounts managed by flesh-and-blood people. These AI accounts will have “bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform…that’s where we see all of this going,” he commented.
Hayes also revealed that a priority for Meta over the next two years is to increase the “entertaining and engaging” potential of its applications, which is one of the main reasons for its strong commitment to AI.
Sweet mother of god these fucking lunatics want to buy their own private coal burning power plants and use up all the fresh water to power AI created facebook users to increase their “interactions.” What they mean by interactions is they can inflate the amount of engagement and eyeballs viewing things and further fleece advertisers. The side benefits will include fleecing actual human users in various schemes because you know god damned well they are not going to be creating any “ugly” ai avatars, they will all be perfect himbos or big boobed “women.”
Fuck you Mike Judge.
Some fun news:
A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a jury’s finding in a civil case that Donald Trump sexually abused a columnist in an upscale department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a written opinion upholding the $5 million award that the Manhattan jury granted to E. Jean Carroll for defamation and sexual abuse.
In the big scheme of things, nothing. But still something.
Off to watch some more Game of Thrones. Joelle is hooked. Behave.
War for Ukraine Day 1,041: 189 Ukrainian POWs Have Been Returned!
different-church-lady
I think Zuck’s ideal world is one where there are no real people at all.
planetjanet
I think FB has found a way to make me finally download all my data and delete my account. I will miss having a way to chat with friends and acquaintances, keep up with distant relatives. No way I want to argue with bots.
Old School
I assume the standard front-pager contract allows you to create AI versions of them, doesn’t it?
different-church-lady
I mean, you can get really lost thinking about what Douglas Adams would have to say about all this.
thruppence
If you despair at this world, and who doesn’t, GoT lets you see another world where things are also terrible but more entertaining. Also, Happy Bo Diddley birthday!
dnfree
@different-church-lady: Maybe Scott Adams could have done some Dilbert cartoons about it, if he hadn’t lost his mind.
Kayla Rudbek
@different-church-lady: it’s also bringing back the warnings about how you can tell the faerie folk from a human (counting the fingers, don’t make bargains with them, etc etc; I think the original posts were over on Tumblr but it made it to Facebook)
FDRLincoln
Over the last two weeks there has been a big upsurge on my FB feed of obvious pro-Russian, pro-Trump, and conservative fake AI pages pushed in my face, to the detriment of real people I try to follow.
I keep blocking them and they keep reappearing.
Oh well. I don’t miss Twitter much. I’ll live without FB too.
rikyrah
Sorry about your soup, Cole.😞
rikyrah
Zuckerberg is just yuck.
An awful human being 😡
Melancholy Jaques
@planetjanet:
I dropped it in 2016 when I discovered everyone I went to high school with was a raging racist asshole. For a while, I missed the easy connections with extended family, but went back to making periodic phone calls and occasional emails. I’m old, so the younger ones tolerate it.
Melancholy Jaques
Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t work.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Is Mark Zuckerberg a real person? His congressional testimony left me with doubts. /s
John S.
@different-church-lady:
Yup. He’s the opposite of the character in Ready Player One who after building his utopian virtual paradise opines:
different-church-lady
@Mr. Bemused Senior: He probably started out as a real person, but the One Ring can really fuck a guy up.
evodevo
I had to give up making veggie soup when they quit selling round steak with the bone in (marrow fat!!) and a fat rim around it. It made the BEST stock. I don’t know why, but prime rib fat doesn’t taste the same. I used to make lentils the same way. Ah, well…
Mr. Bemused Senior
I made soup with a duck carcass. Probably I should have reduced the stock, but add some shredded parmesan and it’s not bad. A bit watery.
FNWA
Jay Kuo has posted some screenshots of Trumpers not understanding that DJT was still on the hook.
Percysowner
My Christmas/December curse continues. I listed all the things that have gone wrong around this time of year on a post a couple of weeks back. I was having unstopping diarrhea and my PCP had me go in for an emergency colonoscopy on Christmas Eve, which had me an emotional mess. That turned out fine, no polyps, a little inflammation in my colon, but not a big deal. They took several samples to try and figure out what caused the inflammation and then everything seemed to clear up. Bullet dodged!
Except, I noticed that one of my foster cats, Shadow the oldest around 11, suddenly wasn’t coming to sit on my lap, which he did every night. He was hiding in one of the two bedrooms, didn’t seem to eat much. Then he didn’t come out at all when I put out the canned food. Then when I brought him the canned food he didn’t touch it. So I called the rescue. They got him in today. He went from 15.2 lbs when I got him down to 9 lbs. They are very worried and thinking pancreatitis, which can be cured if it isn’t too far along with mortality rates of 20-40% if acute and severe or it could be intestinal lymphoma which, even with treatment has an expected lifespan of 6-9 months.
The thing is I was planning to foster fail once I paid off my Christmas bill, because all 3 are mine in my heart. I feel selfish, but I’m glad I waited because now, whatever happens, I don’t have to make the hard decisions, because they still belong to the rescue, which is run by a vet, so he can get care.
Honestly, can someone put me in stasis starting late November-early December and leave me there until MLK day?
HinTN
@planetjanet: I’m with you. It’s already a mess bordering on disaster. How do I download my data?
H.E.Wolf
I first read this 40-odd years ago, and I loved it then and I love it now. I think of it when I make Bad Soup.
Trying to scrape the burned soup from my only pot
with a spoon after midnight by oil lamp
because if I don’t cook the mackerel
this hot night it will kill me tomorrow
in the daily vegetable stew. Which on a budget
of three dollars a day for everything is twice
wasteful. Though it would be another way of
cutting down I’m thinking as I go out to get
more water from the well and happen to look up
through the big stars. Yes, yes, I say,
and go on pulling at the long rope.
“The Lives of Famous Men” by Jack Gilbert
Scout211
This seems to very not-good.
Percysowner
@planetjanet: I’m not sure I have any FaceBook data. I never post. I use it to check the local doughnut shop to see what flavors they have every day, since they switch out daily. I also check the foster group for a couple of local shelters to see if they have any dogs I can take. I have to be a member of FaceBook to access the foster groups, so I’ll stay on it, but otherwise, I don’t even look at the thing.
HinTN
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
Beurre Manié
narya
@Melancholy Jaques: I discovered that, yes, but also that the friend I attended my senior prom with is LOUD in pushing back on racism, sexism, etc., and the other friend at our table figured out he was gay later in life, so it’s a mixed bag with some genuinely good stuff. Also: local needlework group, local buy nothing group, and lots of queer folk from my last job. I’d regret losing those connections, tbh.
Poe Larity.
@Melancholy Jaques: I’m surprised the HS classmates I wrote off in the Bush years are anti-Trump.
Maybe they got rid of fluoridation, idk what else could explain it?
mvr
@HinTN:
I stopped posting there in 2020 and it made me happier, though as you all said one does miss out on knowing how one’s friends are doing.
I went to twitter where no one knew me and that was better. At least I didn’t know the assholes on there personally and I met some nice folks. But that went to hell and I have not posted there. Did the download but not yet the delete of account.
Everyone says Bluesky is good but most of my follows look like AI generated catfishing and crypto cons even while everyone else is talking about how wonderful it is to be there and not on twitter. I keep deleting and the pattern continues. Not sure if I have made it onto some sucker list or if I just look like one.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@HinTN: thanks, I’ll know for next time.
opiejeanne
@FNWA: On what platform?
dnfree
According to my family back when the kids were young, the worst soup in the world is borscht. I made it once decades ago and it still gets mentioned occasionally. It was the only time my husband backed the kids up on rejecting something I had made. I believe we went out for fast food that night.
Timill
@Percysowner: MLK Day next year is so not the day for coming out of stasis. For going back in, maybe…
HeleninEire
Hi. Since this is an open thread. I’ve had a bit of wine. Question:
Is there a place where I can purchase the last 20 years?? not sure of the time frame, of the Kennedy Centers Honors?I love watching it on YouTube. Whoever puts those show together is fantastic.
I see Obama and Michelle and they make me so happy. Also see George B. Yeah he’s an asshole but at least he gets the jokes.
Can I buy it anywhere?
YY_Sima Qian
@Scout211: At least the hackers only obtained unclassified documents. However, much of the USG is focused on imagined threat vectors (TikTok, Temu, Huawei, HikVision), rather than demonstrated ones (vulnerabilities w/in the networks due to out of date equipment & piss poor practices).
different-church-lady
@dnfree: Bad enough to start a revolution over?
Geoduck
Cyril Kornbluth’s “The Marching Morons” predicted it all a lot sooner than Mike Judge.
Old Man Shadow
I’d have to hear how you made the stock and what vegetables you used. For most beef based soups, i use the Better than Boullion stuff. Usually works very well.
I honestly would have thought social media would have turned AI into an Afterlife product. Use your posts and profiles and likes to build a you that can keep interacting with friends and relatives like a digital zombie.
eemom
k, this is where my “separate the art from the artist” thesis of several threads ago comes in handy. FB is actually the only social media platform I’ve ever used, and I just can’t quit it.
Twitter alienated me in its infancy, long before PAF was a gleam in its eye, by its 17 character (or whatever) limit. I don’t get that idiocy, with all the endless ++ posts, to this day.
different-church-lady
@Old Man Shadow: Are they really your friends if you don’t want to interact with them?
Chetan Murthy
@dnfree: Dunno, maybe try a different borscht recipe? I’m a -massive- borscht fan, but admit that it’s tough to make good borscht. I’m only partway there, tbh.
eemom
@Melancholy Jaques:
Actually, young ‘uns in general have nothing to do with FB anymore. As far as I can tell it is only (some of) us olds who still tolerate it.
Poe Larity.
@HeleninEire: https://www.kennedy-center.org/whats-on/honors/honors-digital/
says 46 years worth
Ksmiami
@Old Man Shadow: in pro kitchens we roast meaty bones rubbed with tomato paste before adding to liquid. The acidity helps reduce that oily, greasy texture and of course we skim and skim and skim to get a more pure stock. Anyhow, next time…
narya
I bought my place in 2010 and lost my job in December 2011 (and was re-employed quickly, but I didn’t know that would happen). At the time, you couldn’t adjust the CSA box contents, and I had SO MUCH lettuce. I made soup with it, after consulting the internet, and froze it in portions. It was…edible. When I got the new job, I threw it out, in the only time I’ve ever done something like that.
HeleninEire
@Poe Larity.: Thank you.
Steve LaBonne
Sounds the mistake I made when I attempted to make oxtail stew- I didn’t understand the importance of skimming off the fat. The result was… problematic.
Steve LaBonne
@Old Man Shadow: Better than Bouillon is the bomb. Chicken as well as beef. Discovering it changed my life.
Poe Larity.
@HeleninEire: Can’t tell if digital+ membership has all of them or some.
HeleninEire
@Poe Larity.: I’ll figure it out tomorrow. When I’m awake. Again, thank you
prostratedragon
@thruppence:
The one who’s crazy?
Quinerly
@Steve LaBonne:
And the large Costco jars at the really good price.
Gloria DryGarden
@H.E.Wolf: this part moved me to tears. I have a thing about the stars. And yes, I’ve burned my food, and cleaned the pot..
Gloria DryGarden
@Quinerly: what? No, I don’t shop at Costco, but a bigger jar of better than bullion sounds amazing.
kalakal
Zucks plan is truly stupid. He’s expecting companies to pay for advertizing to bots. Hmmm.
FB is already ruined and Instagram is the only Social Network I know that blocks you if you like, follow and comment ‘too much’ to ‘protect our community’. Engage too much and it will block, soon you will have the chance of being blocked for engaging with a bot. Sounds like a plan!
Princess
I use Better than Bouillon for beef but for chicken I use Mexican Knorr Caldo de Pollo powder. I swear by it.
Planetjanet
@HinTN: I have so many photos and memories, the comments from my friends that I don’t want to lose. Some people are no longer with us. Here is what I am looking at to download. https://m.facebook.com/help/212802592074644/?helpref=uf_share
prostratedragon
@evodevo: Now that you mention it, it’s been years since I’ve seen that cut bone-in. Used to be frequent at home growing up, but now one just finds top and bottom sold separately. Have you tried beef shank with the bone for soup? Get it young enough and you can make osso bucco.
NotMax
We’re ba-a-a-ack.
After a 1½ hour power outage.
Repeating for the late nighters.
Media note.
Once again, TCM will be airing all six Thin Man movies in succession on New Year’s Eve. Near as I can tell (their site redesign is wonky on my system) starting at 12:15 p.m. Eastern time 12/31.
mvr
@NotMax: A friend of mine once went to *just one Thin Man movie* and played a drinking game where they drank whenever William Powell did. She told me she kept having to get off the bus on her way to work the next morning to throw up. So don’t play that game while watching six of them.
NotMax
@Steve LaBonne
Also there’s mushroom, vegetable, lobster and a bunch of others. Amazon page.
Quinerly
@Gloria DryGarden:
So great to see you on this thread! Hope you are doing well.
21 oz jars. Maybe they are in the grocery stores & I just missed them. I stock up when I go to Costco in Albuquerque.
Redshift
It’s useful to remember how bad Zuckerberg is at predicting “the next big thing. Remember how everyone was going to love “the Metaverse” and what to spend lots of time in it, and then he couldn’t even get his own employees to use it?
At least now he’s openly admitting that Meta’s business model is trying to grab attention by putting random crap in front of you, not giving you something you want or providing anything that could be considered an actual service.
Redshift
@mvr: Who are you following on Bluesky? That’s the key – it has no algorithm, so it won’t supply you with anything by itself, you have to find people and lists to follow taking about stuff you’re interested in.
NotMax
@Redshift
You slay that like it’s a bat thong.
//
Ramalama
I’m somewhat of a soup queen. My wife started a soup base for family that was about to arrive in hours and she used some beef on bone thing. I wasn’t present for the dinner the night before but she had such a great dinner, wanted to extend the awesome.
Pot of water, beef and bone, and a bunch of everything. It had the weirdest taste that I think may have been a loop de loop of nutmeg. I spent two hours on it and turned it around but it was touch and go. Would the patient make it? It’s possible I added…Water. Garlic. Fresh ginger. Two tangerines. Some olive oil. Chopped bok Choi. Rosemary. Thyme. Red pepper flakes. Lemon. Salt.
Yes. But boy what a weird evening. I couldn’t focus when the guests came.
probably shoulda tossed it out and started over.
.
Melancholy Jaques
@eemom:
Well, I’m almost 70, so younger ones means my nieces & nephews who are in their 40s.
Ruckus
@planetjanet:
I was an early user and an early no longer user.
There was so much that just didn’t make sense that they would go that way if there wasn’t an alterer motive. And it turned out there was.
mvr
@Redshift: I started with the Jackals list and then some folks I recognized. Almost immediately I started getting odd follows. I’ve been blocking heavily and not following back right away and being pretty careful with that. I feel like there must be one or two duds in there somewhere that lead the ones that look sketchy to my profile. But it isn’t obvious who.
Ruckus
@planetjanet:
I left FB a while ago because it just seemed not worth it in any way.
Citizen Alan
@rikyrah: In retrospect, it is astonishing how much The Social Network underplayed what an absolute piece of shit Zuck really is.
frosty
@Steve LaBonne: Better than Bouillon is really good but it passes the expiration date way before I’ve used even a quarter of it so I’ve thrown most of it out. We use boxes of stock mostly but otherwise I’ve gone back to bouillon cubes because they last forever.
Ruckus
@FDRLincoln:
I was an early user of both, a while back no longer a user of either. Now some of that is I’m an old fart and many of the old farts that I used to contact are gone. But I would have left anyway, because they both seemed to be trying to screw you in one way or another.
NotMax
@YMMV
So long as it’s stayed refrigerated and tightly shut I’ve used it with no ill results six months or more beyond the date printed on the jar.
NotMax
Whoops. Fix.
@frosty
So long as it’s stayed refrigerated and tightly shut I’ve used it with no ill results six months or more beyond the date printed on the jar.
Another Scott
Good, good.
Best wishes,
Scott.
H.E.Wolf
@Gloria DryGarden:
Same here. Both the stars, and the burnt soup pot.
I ran across it when I was just out of college and living on a shoestring, and there was something about the combination of humor and resignation and transcendence….
NotMax
End of year tasks for the 31st:
1) Empty ice cube trays, lightly wipe down with cooking spray, rinse and let them air dry before refilling.
2) Write 2025 in the appropriate space on the first several checks in the checkbook.
;)
Fair Economist
Given how aggressively Facebook haa defrauded advertisers in the past with fake metrics, I wonder if part of the reason is to have these AI entities log fake impressions to charge advertisers for.
Fair Economist
@frosty: Better Than Bouillon is not going to go bad in the fridge in less than years. It’s far too salty for most germs to grow, plus it’s refrigerated.
frosty
@NotMax: Six months is a lot shorter than it’s been sitting in my fridge.
Pete Downunder
@NotMax: A check, how quaint. Our bank in Oz told us a year ago that we could no longer write checks (or cheques as we spell them) and that as of Feb 25 they would no longer process ones other people gave us. Everything is EFT. There are so few snail mail bills that AusPost only delivers letters three times a week. Package delivery is 5 days a week.
frosty
@Fair Economist: So it’s one of those situations where they put an expiration date on it so you throw it out and buy more before you really have to?
We usually throw out half of the 32 oz boxes of stock, too. I like the little 8 oz ones, because that’s typically what the recipes call for, but they’re not always in our usual grocery store.
Timill
@NotMax: What is this ‘checkbook’ of which you speak?
Pete Downunder
@Timill: I wrote my last check in 2015
NotMax
@Timill
Which reminds me. Should bop on over to the bank on Tuesday to write a check to myself in order to transfer some funds from checking account into savings account.
sab
I inherited my grandmother’s meat grinder, so our prime rib leftovers get ground up with an onion and potatoes for roast beef hash. My husband hates it but it’s one of everyone else’s favorites. He blames the Coast Guard for his aversion to hash, but I bet that was corned beef hash not roast beef hash.
Pete Downunder
@NotMax: Actual bricks and mortar banks are fast disappearing. Good luck finding a branch in a rural area and they are rare on the ground in the cities. Older people who are not on line are finding it very hard.
Randal Sexton
My last day of crab fishing up here on my little PNW island: fishing with my nephew who needed a bit of company, over the last 2 days, 3 crabs, 2 rock and one Dungeness. Today, last possible day, and pulled the pots after a long cold wet bumpy ride to the grounds and EVERY pot STUFFED with LARGE Dungeness crabs! A lovely way for Crab Gods to end this season. Plus saw a buch of Orcas doing their thing in the distance- spouting and splashing a bit. ( Did not see if they were wearing salmon hats, but now Im always looking ). Lets hope this next year or 4 that we acquit ourselves well.
sab
@Scout211: But her e-mails. Hillary back in the day had her own service because Colin Powell told her that State’s security couldn’t be relied on. Then he lied to the press about telling her that.
eemom
@Citizen Alan:
To be fair though, that film portrayed him in his very earliest of piece of shit days, when he was merely a social reject at Harvard stealing ideas from other, richer, Harvard pieces of shit.
Gary K
Do you sometimes wonder if Cole is an AI character?
NotMax
@sab
Red flannel hash is da bomb. Can use any cut of cooked beef, not necessarily limited to the more traditional corned.
sab
@NotMax: I dunno. I really hate beets.
WTFGhost
Prime rib is hard to include – it’s supposed to be really juicy=fatty.
You’d probably want to add either ingredients that soak up fat, and are better for it, or, add something to allow the soup to emulsify (or both, naturally). It might work better in something like a cassoulet than a soup.
Me, my favorite way to reheat prime rib (“horrible trouble, isn’t it, having to figure out how to make it amazing again?”) is simply frying it to a crispy Maillard reaction. It crisped so well, I was about to think of warming it, floofing it in flour (just once, mind you), then seeing how they fry with something like flour to crisp it up.
I suck at cooking, so there’s probably a better way to do it. But the frying – that’s why prime rib can form such a wonderful crust, there’s so much fat to crisp things up.
Redshift
@mvr: Weird. I get the occasional crypto freak or “dating” follow, but nothing with any regularity. I agree that not following without checking them out, and blocking anything that looks questionable is the way to go.
Honestly, other than checking follows to and finding it’s someone I know, I rarely even consider following them back. I follow new people from this they post, not based on whether they follow me.
JGreen
@NotMax: Right on, brother. I did that today so that I would have enough in the account to pay my rent which is payable by Zelle only. I hated having to do that when my building owners changed.
I’m sticking with my checkbooks as long as I can, so there! Get a horse!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I think he would have found humanity creating AIs just to argue with them hilariously predicable.
sentient ai from the future
@planetjanet: here, we’re going to use this marginal increase in the sophistication of the bot technology that exists to increase the traffic you have to navigate to stay connected to the people you didnt really care THAT much about staying connected to. (because if you did, theyd have your number or your email address)
we think we will make money off of this.
sentient ai from the future
@Fair Economist: OMG OMG OMG PENZEYS HAS SOUP BASES HAVE YOU TRIED THESE THEY ARE FUCKING PHENOMENAL though not as available as better-than-boullion, sadly….
sentient ai from the future
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: no he wouldnt
TS
@NotMax: last check I wrote was in 2014. Pay everything online
Jay
Good beet based borsch, requires good beets. Good beets require a high Sulphur soil. Commercial are bland, and usually stored way to long before sale, so a bunch of the sugars, turn to carbs.
A cheat, with store bought beets is to partially roast them, (turns some of the starches back into sugars) before shredding them
ETA, when we lived at the place, beets, were a staple in our root cellar and grown in volcanic soil.
Rose Judson
Soup: I have always struggled to make soup from beef bones and bits; it seems like the stock needs an unlimited number of egg whites to cut the grease down during the clarification process. With chicken, I never need more than four of them, even for my biggest pot. I really only use beef bones for slow-cooked or Instant Pot-cooked stews now, because thickening agents mop up some of that grease.
Meta: Christ, I wish I could nuke my accounts, but I’m tied in to having them for work, since I manage ad accounts for clients. I did a data request yesterday and plan to remove most of my posts.
Also, from the annals of AI: OpenAI says its newest, most powerful ChatGPT model works so much better and only uses, uh, $1,000 worth of computing power per query. Or just $20 per query at its lowest setting! I’m sure users currently paying $25/month for ChatGPT premium will be happy to pay much, much more for better “reasoning”.
sentient ai from the future
@Rose Judson: it’s the re-convergence of the casino and the statistical models they enabled.
pay us $20 and we will return a product that, on average, represents $19.98 of power over the long term, but might in your particular instance represent $1000 worth of power, according to these distribution charts. why no, we aren’t regulated by the gaming commission, why do you ask?
mrmoshpotato
Never signed up for that asshole’s prev site. Hopefully there’s a a mass exodus from there too.
mrmoshpotato
@Gary K: I wonder how the soup got oily.
YY_Sima Qian
@Rose Judson: DeepSeek based in the PRC has just launched its DeepSeek V3 LLM. It is competitive w/ the most advanced models in the US (including closed source ones) on multiple benchmarks, was trained at ~ 10% of the cost of latest US models, is currently priced extremely cheaply to run queries on. Early feedback from users have been very positive. Best of all, it is an open source model, so people can run it on their own rigs if they so choose. The DeepSeek team has also detailed their methodologies & designs in a published paper so others can try to replicate their results & build on them.
BigTech in the US, which these days includes “Open”AI, have been far too focused on hoarding the fastest & most expensive Nvidia GPUs, brute forcing their way forward w/ ever larger models at exponentially increasing cost & power consumption, so much so that power supply in the US has been envisioned as a constraining factor & AI firms looking to build their own nuclear power plants. In the process, they have pump up this enormous asset price bubble around anything firm associated with/ AI. They have also overlooked huge opportunities for optimization in architectural design & coding. Chinese AI firms operating under the constraint of US export controls of semiconductors, & it has been constraining, have been forced to innovate & wring out every possible efficiency gain. Necessity being the mother of all invention.
Open source LLMs such as Meta’s Llama & DeepSeek, as well as numerous much more competitively priced (if slightly less advanced) models from China (many of which are open source), might ultimately crimp the business models of “Open”Ai, Alphabets & others.
The US export controls & stratospheric valuations of US BigTech have been justified on the supposition that AGI is right around the corner & whichever country/company that gets there 1st will have an insurmountable advantage over everyone else. Eric Schmidt has been one of the foremost proponents of this supposition. Personally, I am very skeptical that humanity is anywhere close to developing AGI, but the global dynamic has been that the leading LLMs only has a few months of advantage before being caught up by rivals, including those from the PRC. In fact, Chinese AI firms are not that focused achieving AGI (though DeepSeek is an important exception), both because they believe AGI is still far away, & because they believe if “Open”AI really develops it they can quickly follow w/in a few months. 12 mo. ago Eric Schmidt though the Chinese players were at least 2 years behind the leading US players, now he concedes that the Chinese players are <= 6 mo. behind despite the export controls. Furthermore, while US BigTech are all trying to build huge general LLMs of to date questionable utility (due to the relative unreliability of the output), a lot of Chinese AI firms are building smaller bespoke LLMs at much lower cost for specific applications (industrial, commercial, consumer, etc.).
The US (not just USG) has bet the farm in terms of geopolitics, international trade, industrial policy, & market valuation on the Chinese players being wrong.
Greg Ferguson
So sorry about the soup. Sometimes it just goes sideways, in spite of our experience and skill.
Clearly, Joelle is a charter member of Camp Realist. A toast to her!
————-
Before the adaptations and stagings and everything, I had read the saga in the Coffee Room at Powell’s Books in Portland. Staff (bless them all!) recommendation.
Hope you enjoy them together, all over again.
p.a.
FBook was the cool university kid outpost long ago when MySpace was for schlub proles. Times change, and the meme that FBook is currently for Grammies & Grampies to interact with their grandkids is, I guess, correct.
As someone barely into double digits w “friends” I’m on it to keep up w a few interest groups & local businesses; restaurants especially.
As my cousin said long ago, “I get these people from high school asking to be my friend. You weren’t my friend then, why should I want you to be my friend now?”
Also too, on Instagram it only takes a second to report an ad- even if it’s just annoying, say it’s inappropriate, offensive etc. They then waste time/$ investigating & reporting back to you.
Ramalama
@sab: a metal doohickey you grind by hand?
Ramalama
@Rose Judson: egg whites is something I’ve never used! Gonna try soon.
also have you mentioned Ed Zitron’s numerous take downs of how AI has peaked even with the ridiculous sums of cash burned to make it seem like it has so much potential? You probably have.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/godot-isnt-making-it/
TBone
I can’t face looking at the bird flu & Covid post yet, after reading today’s Heather Cox Richardson. I’m going to have to buck up first.
https://bsky.app/profile/fancysplace.bsky.social/post/3lelakbvs2k2o
TBone
I need about eleventy hundred more good belly laughs and more coffee. Starting out with laugh #1
https://bsky.app/profile/fancysplace.bsky.social/post/3lel4fauj3227
TBone
Mood
https://bsky.app/profile/fancysplace.bsky.social/post/3lekpfnlo3k2i
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: I think I have this evenings ensemble on now. Might be different socks. The fancy ones.
Kay
These protests are all over TikTok.
Brooks was Black, but three of the officers are prior offenders – they beat a white inmate so badly he is permanently disabled. In the prior incident they cooked up a story claiming the inmate attacked them, but there were cameras in the prison medical clinic. The inmate sued and NY paid a hefty settlement.
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: ha! I might, maybe, actually change out of my nightshirt today. Oversized, pink, bell bottom sweatpants that feel like you’re wearing nothing but a cloud. Even bigger fuzzy hoodie, the kind that swims on ya.
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: Damn, whoever it is has me blocked.
Oh well.
narya
JC, can you cool the soup and skim the hardened fat? That might help.
TBone
I would share my beef barley soup recipe, but it seems like it’s too late now anyway and that would be unnecessarily food snobbish. My advice: buy a whole roasting bird, make chicken soup with lotsa garlic, and fuggeddaboudit the beef.
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: You’re a wee bit more colorful than I, as you might guess by my nym ;-)
it’s raining in chicago-land and as I am a worker bee, its slosh to work I go.
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: I got a “Dogg Supply by Snoop Dogg” blanket hoodie that’s like that– I pull it on and [aaaahhhhhhh].
Our forecast highs for next week are in the 15-20 degree F range, so that hoodie’s gonna be getting worn a lot.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: I dunno how to fix that gah! I don’t have an account, I just read there.
Professor Bigfoot
@narya: I suspect it’s already gone down the disposal.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: I got the awesome visual! Ahhhhhhhhhh
TBone
@MagdaInBlack:
“Don’t forget your rubbers!” my granny would always call out 😆😎
Yes, we had those things that go over your
SHOES
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: Aha! Since I’m using Safari to do Bluesky, I realized I could see it in a “private” window, and *voila.*
No idea why they’ve blocked me, but such is the downside of the nuclear block function… I suspect I’ve blocked one or two good’uns too.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: you are resourceful. Come sit by me any time!
Kosh III
E Jean Carroll appeal was $5 million? I thought it was hundreds of millions or is this yet another lawsuit the Felon lost to her?
Kosh III
FB: I keep it to stay in touch with distant kin and old friends.
When the Birthdays come up each day I check the person(who is not onebvof the above) and often unfriend them.
prostratedragon
@Kosh III: This was about defamation suit no. 1. The big judgement was for the second one, bonded but still in the appeal process far as I know.
Princess
@Professor Bigfoot: You’re not missing anything. It’s a follower-farming resist bot. I blocked it (and if you subscribed to a block list of similar accounts, you may have blocked it and not it, you) The text was harmless. Something like “I haven’t decided what to wear on NYE in my living room. I might not even go.”
evodevo
@prostratedragon: I thought the Carroll suit involved $90 mil somehow. Where did that go?
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: I just had a glance at heathers letter. I am trying to breathe. Oh my word!
Kay
More great ProPublica work on the disaster that is school vouchers
I’ve followed them since they started and they get better every year.
We really can have better media and we can do it w/in existing markets and without pretending unsourced grifter crap on social media is a replacement for journalism. If one outlet is doing it, it can be done.
Quinerly
@TBone:
I became obsessed this summer with these well made for the price draw string tie dye pajama bottoms on Amazon. They are thin but not ridiculously thin. After the first pair came, I had to buy all the colors and some back ups. I wore them all summer around the house, in the yard. Plus, they are also my patio sitting, wine drinking, cheese eating, sunset watching , walking down my driveway to the mailbox attire. Topped off with “vintage” t shirts from festivals. Then I got a couple of new gal pals out here hooked on them. When they come over to hang out, they wear theirs. Which reminds me….I might grab another 2 pairs to have in reserve.
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: it’s not for the faint of heart!
Yet, we carry on. Like Maya Angelou says
Still I Rise
TBone
@Quinerly: I have those too! But only in pink. I got them really extra large so must use the drawstring to keep from mooning hubby, although he wouldn’t much mind that if it happened!
TBone
Self care day at Casa TBone is about to commence. While my fancy, new electronic pedicure sloughing tool charges, I will take a hot jacuzzi while wearing a facial, attend to moisturizer and fingernails…
Quinerly
@TBone:
I’m 5’5″, 130lbs. Bought the extra large. No dryer. They dry in less than 10 mins out here. I am not a pajama bottom chick. Only ones I have ever owned. Just checked. Amazon has raised its prices on them. Damn.
MomSense
@Quinerly:
I miss my 1990s era jazz pants. I think they were made by danskin before all the dance wear became plastic. They were soft and flattering and you could run to the store in them without embarrassing yourself. I wore those things until they finally disintegrated.
I’ve been gradually converting my wardrobe to only natural fabrics. Not so easy to do these days. I want clothes I can compost when they are at the end of their usable life.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: ProPublica is awesome, but it relies on the largesse of civic-minded rich people. I don’t think it brings in nearly enough to operate with small-dollar donors.
I’m not sure what the solution is for journalism writ large. It’s similar to the problem we have with money in politics.
If I ran the zoo, I’d explore setting up a sovereign wealth fund to bankroll independent journalism and fund all federal political campaigns, perhaps making ALL monetary donations to campaigns (or at least those above a certain LOW threshold) illegal.
But you’d have to find a way to make such a system transparent and accountable or you’d be right back to oligarchs gaming the system. Maybe the answer is to abolish oligarchs! ;-)
Quinerly
@MomSense:
I had those pants! Danskin!!! I bet we are the same “vintage.”
Laugh if you will…I am seriously addicted to these cotton tie dye ones. I just checked in with them and did a count. They are eagerly waiting for Spring and my roses.
TheyKilledKenny
Left over prime rib and mashed potatoes lend themselves nicely to a fancy shepherds pie. My 2 cents.
TBone
@Quinerly: damn is right! And I’ll add
GAH!
mvr
@Redshift: Thanks!
I find this all very mysterious. On Twitter I didn’t have this problem and I was pretty good at sorting when I had to. I know I didn’t block every sketchy follow but I didn’t follow back and that was enough. It doesn’t seem to be enough on Bluesky and a lot of the images look AI generated.
WTFGhost
@sentient ai from the future: Oh, go tell it to the (electric) monk!
@TBone: Heh. What’s round, hard, and sticks so far out of a man’s pajamas you can hang a hat on it?
His head.
WTFGhost
@evodevo: the remainder came from a different trial, hence, a different judge.
evodevo
@WTFGhost: Ohh…OK THX
brantl
@Mr. Bemused Senior: I’m thinking you put the Snark tag in there by accident