Cool for the UK. They can focus on other things now.

Don’t we all?

I guess that would be something we all agree with Trump on.

Stable Release men assemble!

Interesting article.

I would share this with my colleagues on our ‘AI Discussions’ channel. But I know what the result will be. “Those people just aren’t using the agents correctly”, “they need to provide the agents with moar context!!1!”, “this article is bad because I don’t like what it says”, “those respondents are just lazy or stupid”.

Personally, I’ve noticed this kind of mental exhaustion myself. I’ve tried leaning more heavily into AI usage because my employer encourages it. But it’s usually so damn frustrating.

I’ve found even the better/cutting edge LLMs struggle with basic troubleshooting, even when you provide them with solid context and try to keep the scope limited. Half the time they do great, but the other half they fail pretty spectacularly, and I end up wasting time trying to police/hand-hold them.

And I can’t even rely on these LLMs to reliably perform more menial tasks like formatting CSV data into JSON. They usually just stop the conversion after some arbitrary point, or they fuck up the structure of the output. Again, no matter how much context it detail I provide them.

These are all things some of my colleagues have found as well. Meanwhile, I’m also seeing other people become overly reliant on LLMs/agents, and accept whatever slop they produce as gospel while claiming it as their own work.

And that’s not even covering the knowledge/skill atrophy that I’ve witnessed. A lot of people learn and hone skills through repetition. But overuse of AI kills that opportunity, while offering unreliable immediate results.

Senator from the Great State of Oklahoma, Markwayne Mullin, will become the United States Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS)

What in the banjo-plucking sibling-fucking hee-hawing fuck is that appointment?! May as just appoint Cletus the slack-jawed yokel to the role and be done with it.

Fair point.

I mean, she’d be better than Trump. But that’s such a ridiculously low bar.

Surely the Dems can come up with a better candidate that her, Gavin Newsom, or some similarly uninspiring/greasy candidate. Right? Right???

Thanks.

Archived paywall-free link.

Partial extract:

A respiratory virus that doesn’t have a vaccine or a specific treatment regimen is spreading in some parts of California — but there’s no need to sound the alarm just yet, public health officials say.

A majority of Northern California communities have seen high concentrations of human metapneumovirus, or HMPV, detected in their wastewater, according to data from the WastewaterScan Dashboard, a public database that monitors sewage to track the presence of infectious diseases.

HMPV was first detected in 2001, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s transmitted by close contact with someone who is infected or by touching a contaminated surface, said Dr. Neha Nanda, chief of infectious diseases and hospital epidemiologist for Keck Medicine of USC.

Like other respiratory illnesses, such as influenza, HMPV spreads and is more durable in colder temperatures, infectious-disease experts say.

Before the pandemic hit in 2020, Americans were regularly exposed to seasonal viruses like HMPV and developed a degree of natural immunity, Dr. Jessica August said.

That protection waned during the pandemic, as people stayed home or kept their distance from others. So when people resumed normal activities, they were more vulnerable to the virus. Unlike other viruses, there isn’t a vaccine for human metapneumovirus.

Most people won’t go to the doctor if they have HMPV because it typically causes mild, cold-like symptoms that include cough, fever, nasal congestion and sore throat. HMPV infection can progress to:

• An asthma attack and reactive airway disease (wheezing and difficulty breathing)
• Middle ear infections behind the ear drum
• Croup, also known as “barking” cough — an infection of the vocal cords, windpipe and sometimes the larger airways in the lungs
• Bronchitis
• Fever

Personal note:

So this is the bastard that’s caused respiratory problems for me and my family over the last month! Throat, ear, and eye infections, usually on just one side. And a hacking/barking cough and low-grade but persistent fever. We’re all getting better now. But it has sucked. Not as bad as early covid. But definitely different from covid or the seasonal fly or strep (all of which we tested negative for).

In that context, it would have been kind of funny if they’d called the band The New Lou Who, and done a few covers of songs by The Who.

They don’t even believe in Supply Side Jesus at this point. They believe in White Supremacist Jesus.

How long before they retcon the story that his name was actually Jesse and he had a mullet and was born in Kentucky? Maybe they could take the Mormon belief that Jesus skipped over to North America after he was resurrected and build on that. Trump Bible second edition?

Hey, maybe whoever created this map just has a really thick London accent. Although that wouldn’t explain all the other mistakes.

China = “Asia”

Interesting (but not surprising) that aside from during the pandemic and this year, Dem opinions have been relatively consistent regardless of the president. While Rep opinions have swung so wildly - up to the low 80s when ‘their guy’ was in office, and down to about 10 when ‘the other guy’ was in.

Yes. This album was released posthumously.

From Wikipedia:

It was recorded from July to October 2000 in New York City and featured re-recordings of songs Bowie recorded between 1964 and 1971, along with a couple of new tracks.

Yup. Black Sabbath is right again.

Politicians hide themselves away

They only started the war

Why should they go out to fight?

They leave that role to the poor

He’s literally paraphrasing Farquaad at this point.

“Some of you may die, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make!”

Weren’t a bunch of analysis predicting this? The trump administration had apparently requested that Israel strike first to provide a flimsy excuse for firing their own missiles at Iran when the Ayatollah and his gang inevitably retaliates against Israel.

Congrats Cuba on joining the huge and ever-growing list of ‘countries Trump is threatening to invade’. Please have a seat between Canada and (checks notes)… Greenland?!

(The whole Greenland things is still and will forever be so ridiculous that it beggars belief.)

“And all it cost was handing over all your sensitive data, firing our entire ethics team, removing the last few flimsy guardrails we still had in place, and a promise that I personally would do ten Nazi sales every day. But the joke’s on the Pentagon - we were already wanting to do all that stuff regardless!” -Sam Altman