Black cats with a white tuft of fur on the chest are often thought to be cat sidhe in the British Isles. There’s a famous story about one such cat - “One evening an old man was travelling home and he saw a group of six black cats walking on their hind legs bearing a coffin and announcing “The King of Cats is dead, the King of Cats is dead”. Then another cat came up to the old man and said “Tell Tom Tildrum that Tim Toldrum is dead.” The man went home to tell his wife about the strange occurance, but no sooner than he had relayed the final words, his cat, Tom, jumped up and announced “Tim Toldrum is dead? Why, then I’m the King of Cats!” And he leapt up the chimney and was never seen again.”

The whole internet is scraped and they’ll never properly paid us for the words they stole.

But you could try make your own website, and including some kind of “I’m not a bot” tick thingo and then just link from here instead?

Was für 'ne schöne Mieze!

Brother I have never once been “with it”, as the kids say, and the rock I live under gets comfier every year so I probably won’t try to change that.

Mm, I meant the experience of being a driver on the road is that people tend to be driving about the speed limit. I remember when I was in Canada most everyone would instead drive 10-15 over. Which I guess isn’t really a problem if they set the limits lower to account for it… I’m just a fan of clear instructions so this is my preference.

It is true that it is a revenue generation system. I honestly don’t feel bad about it though. Speeding is dangerous.

Honestly, yes. Building shared community also means forming bonds with people who we don’t like or don’t understand. People don’t learn to change their views when they are shunned by others, they actually get worse. It is better for everyone if we keep things cordial, and attempt to understand each other. Perhaps the lightness with which they take these topics is a coping mechanism or attempt to protect the mind from painful things. I think we can all understand why someone might feel that way, even if it is the wrong thing to do.

You don’t have to be friends, obviously, but I think being friendly is good, if you can at all manage it. Don’t hurt yourself doing it though.

In Australia we have automated ticket cameras and it’s really not as bad as you seem to think. You literally just do the speed limit and then you have no problems. And doing the speed limit is as simple as looking at your speedometer and doing what it says. You’d be doing that anyway to make sure you weren’t more than 10-15mph over, right?

Most cars have slightly different speedometers so the cameras aren’t so sensitive, you can go a couple of km over with no issues.

We use automated speed cameras here in Australia, and mostly everyone adheres exactly to the speed limit. Just knowing that there could be a speed camera keeps certain people law abiding.

If you do get a fine erroneously you can contest it in traffic court.

Well, not really. For example, my favourite Nickelback song, Sister Sin, is rather different from This Afternoon, or For the River, or Just to Get High, or many others. But they definitely do have a number which are rather similar to others of theirs - but then, I honestly have never listened to a band which didn’t have some that sounded a bit similar to others? Like, most Ed Sheeran songs are Ed Sheeran songs, most Sleep Token songs are Sleep Token songs…

That said, Chad Kroegar’s voice is so distinctive that it makes everything they do sound instantly Nickelback.

Oh! Haha. Then you’d be wrong ;)

Well, if you are a counter cracker you might use too much force if you switch to bowl edge. The bowl edge is pointier, the counter is flat. But it’s just a calibration thing.

Fun fact, in India vegetarians specifically don’t eat eggs (they do have dairy). People who are that sort of vegetarian and also eat eggs are referred to as eggetarian instead. I was told that this is because the eggs might be fertilised? Not sure how they farm eggs in India. In the country I live in laying hens live in a completely separate facility from any males so there is 0 chance of an egg being fertilised. That’s possibly why eggs are always considered vego here.

In Melbourne, where coffee is our way of life and you can’t throw a stone in the CBD without hitting a barista, it’s completely normal to order a chai latte or hot choccy at a cafe. You’re probably overthinking people’s reactions.

My guy. That was the precise thing most of our ancestors struggled their whole lives to get out of.

True… but then, like with obesity, these problems always come back to affect everyone anyway.

I never thought much about cognitive laziness and associated decline before AI came onto the scene, but now I’ve actually been trying to do more thinking on purpose (e.g. doing maths in my head instead of relying on my phone). So I am a bit grateful that AI threw this whole thing into clarity.

For a point against AI, I think you should consider the way in which LLMs reduce cognition in people.

Arguably it’s not necessary for people to do all of their cognition themselves, but that definitely does make people’s thinking ability weaker. I suppose you could look at it like how when we automated physical labour away from most people - and now most people do not do nearly enough exercise. If we automate thinking away from most people, I feel like that will lead to worse health outcomes as well

Well, they did that on purpose, no? To defect criticism.

To distinguish them I would call the other stuff machine learning, which is what we already called it before, and the LLMs as AI, since that’s what the common people think of when they say that word.

I can see that there is some value in using AI in the workplace, but I am hestitant to use it myself until someone can show that it is not damaging the environment, we have a plan for how to ensure people can use it in a healthy way, and that the content which was used to train it was ethically sourced and/or those content makers were appropriately compensated.

Because I just can’t shake the sense that the tool is fundamentally unethical to use currently.

Yeah. It’s like any other religion, I guess.

Fun fact, tarot cards were invented in the late Middle Ages (from other similar cards which were popular around then, I think imported from the East?) and were used to play a game called Trumps. That’s why the major arcana cards are also known as trump cards. The magical ot esoteric aspect was added later. This means that technically, using tarot to “read the future” has as much inherent validity as any other deck of cards… I wanna see someone try with Pokemon or Uno cards 😂😂

No idea what that is but I’d love an explanation!