Got my free 12 months of Gemini Pro for being a student for which I'm being reimbursed by my company. Nice. Liking Gemini so far. But Mandarin tones remain the final boss of natural language for AIs. Neither ChatGPT nor Gemini can do them when they try to give examples in mixed english and chinese.
But when they speak totally in Mandarin without trying to mix in English, it seems they can do the tones. I'm still trying to work out a good way to use them as a study partner.
In three years we really, REALLY have to consider the repercussions of the mess we've gotten ourselves into with these monsters and idiots we keep electing to high office. These people need to go back to the caves and slime pits they came from and we have to elect decent people into public office again.
The problem is that Donald J. Trump is exactly the person we deserve to represent us. We need to be be better people in order to get petter people to lead us. I don't quite know if that could ever happen.
@Renauda said in The musical venue formerly known as the Kennedy Center:
And still some would deny there being any semblance of a cult of personality around the person.
There's certainly a niff of something beginning with c about him. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to ascribe a personality to it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/business/trump-media-tae-technologies-fusion-power-deal.html
First it was Twitter-wannabe, then crypto, now on to nuclear fusion!
Truth Social Parent to Merge With Nuclear Fusion Firm in $6 Billion Deal
@Horace
Good post. I am sure that both you and I along with 99.8% of the participants on this TNCR forum can all humbly agree that we are simply less wrong than the common tribal rabble out there in the current dystopia of exaggerated unpleasantness.
Website isn't loading at the moment (for me) but still I've heard of that place...not sure where, I think a local news service I follow. They should have a slogan "If you don't like our food, sioux me!"
Windy here, nothing out of the ordinary although we did get weather alerts for the next 24 hours which is usually pretty valid when you get an alert. Basically tomorrow it'll be windy with bands of rain/mixed/snow blowing in at times... so avoid going out on the ice to fish or driving an 18 wheeler broadside of the wind direction.
said in Interesting re MAGA for the post Trump era:
@jon-nyc said in Interesting re MAGA for the post Trump era:
Vivek chimes in.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/opinion/republican-identity-divide.html?unlocked_article_code=1.9U8.AV4v.kVMldQaLG0T2&smid=url-share
Good for him. More people need to say this stuff very clearly, and stop this growing trend toward the Fuentes-brigade.
Now tonight's delivery info (two items incoming) on the Amazon page has my driver's name and face on it.
Also seeing multiple reports on the neighborhood Facebook page of exactly what happened to me. Marked as delivered, no photo, no item.
@89th said in Proposals for cutting future retirees Social Security:
If SS is substantially reduced by the time I get there,
The current estimate for when the trust fund zeroes out is 2033. The very year I turn 65.
