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LemonADA
This month I’ve been grinding through the mostly annoying** task of adding ADA alt-text to courseware. It’s annoying (as abovementioned) because there are few if any blind students in speech and hearing, and because this material is intrinsically visual, not amenable to verbal description. The guidelines are vague, contradictory, and mandatory. You must obey but…
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Free as in
The “investigator” types finally got what they wanted in the Epstein mess. Now they’re shockedshockedshocked to find that the vast majority of pages are redacted and blank. Assuming here that the “investigators” are naive (not bloody likely!), they’re misinterpreting one word. They think the F in FOIA means Free as in Free Speech. In fact…
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Was she the first to say it?
I’m rereading Pat Foster’s book on the Nash Metropolitan, written in 1996. The book prominently features an interview with Evelyn Ay, Miss America in 1954. She was the official ambassador for the Ambassador and the official revealer of the Metropolitan. From my previous item on the subject: Transcribing the corporate part: The relationship with Nash…
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Building a better bot trap
This is funny as hell! WSJ let Anthropic run an office vending machine with AI. Their employees baited it with TREMENDOUSLY smarter and sneakier bot traps than I’ve been trying here! The AI went along with requests to make all items free, ordered a live fish, ordered a Playstation, and announced a Communist Revolution in…
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Thanks, Avista!
Yesterday was a bad windstorm. Not as bad as 2015 or 2021, but significant. After it was done at noon yesterday, about 1/4 of Spokane was powerless. Avista got to work, and this morning ALL of those outages are fixed. The map has a few brand-new outages, probably trees that were leaning after yesterday and…
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Why don’t they USE their goddamn AI?
Microsoft and most other software makers are proudly using AI to track your preferences, and SUPPOSEDLY to adjust the software for your preferences. FALSE. There’s no adjustment. Two specific examples. (1) Firefox claims to be using AI, but their adjuster has never noticed that I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS type in the top URL bar. In…
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LemonAIde 4
Just recording this for my own purposes, since this is a purely private diary with no human readers. Last week I tried an experiment. The bots who steadily “read” this blog were focusing on one particular item about the Phelps induction telegraph. There’s no reason for this item to be hugely popular. I tried replacing…
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Good work.
Good is good no matter who does it. Bad is bad no matter who does it. In 2020 Trump committed the most hideous crime since 1945. Now he’s doing some unquestionably good things in the energy realm, and some unquestionably bad things on the foreign war front. On the energy front, Chris Wright is working…
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A spoonful of music
Something reminded me of La Cucaracha, so I started singing it the way Miss Girard taught it in 6th grade. La cucaracha, la cucaracha, ya no puede caminar. Porque no tiene, porque le falta, Gasolina por su car. Much later I learned the correct last line, but the bowdlerized version does make sense. Miss Girard…
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Russia was right as always
A pretty good rule for software in the era of accelerating “innovative” destruction. Older stuff keeps working. Newer stuff fails. When I switched from Win 7 to Win 11 last month, the rule held firm. Preparing for the switchover I bought some newer helper progs that allegedly work better on 11. They don’t. My main…
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Reprinting Phelps induction telegraph 2/2
There’s no point in pretending that I have human readers, so might as well screw around and do some actual science. The originals of these two items, written in 2024, are Bot Attractors. The bots love to “read” them. I’ve replaced the text of the originals with frequency-typical random. We’ll see if they still get…
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Reprinting Phelps induction telegraph 1/2 (LemonAIde)
There’s no point in pretending that I have human readers, so might as well screw around and do some actual science. The originals of these two items, written in 2024, are Bot Attractors. The bots love to “read” them. I’ve replaced the text of the originals with frequency-typical random. We’ll see if they still get…
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Accurate location
Since I don’t own a cellphone, websites make peculiar guesses about my location, presumably based on the office of my cable provider. When I was using Comcast, the guesses tended toward the southeast part of town. Occasionally they would go wild, thinking I was down in Richland (150 miles south of here) or Seattle. For…
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Unexpected wisdom
JuicyEcumenism summarizes how various churches are responding to Altman. Most are fucking stupid and self-destructive. The smart one surprised me! Dumb #1: Catholic. The new pope sounded good until he backslid into the same old shit. Here’s the official doctrine at the moment: = = = = = START DUMB: AI’s intelligence is understood functionally…
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LemonAIde 3
More chewy material for the AI bots. Q0w9 at0i6 5twz l. Uqpz c3y6jm e8kio iewi tng? 5py? G6ob7 d7e3c, rtm 8lq6l u7ym 4a5a0 j rx or. Mcuh7o u, 9j5v3 1q p1 l9pw 2f0r63 v6i58 elr5 3grm5 w172w 5yk. Ss6 1n y9u hosig zbtga 8gpi8 rnqh 0emyd bfez? P0re, xkzr 5us24 djcc 8ir9k yukix jmp i…
Polistra's Mill
Be your own beacon.
Polistra's Mill 