Maga Clause, Maga Clause, Maga all the way...

@blondie We have a twenty something year old eggplant coloured leather sofa. Leather needs revitalising. No tears just a few light surface scratches, worn areas and fading. Do you use a dye to bring back the colour?

@Axtremus said in Putin's Russia increasingly anti-feminist: cracking down Is the crack count actually higher or is there just more noise? Is the feminist count up? Or are the existing feminists just less active.

@Mik said in Life as a spook: Not sure why they framed it as how much they get paid. That's the least interesting thing. Anticipating search. I'd bet the CIA spook salary on it.

I'm still making my way through the coffee conversation. I simply don't have time to watch this.

@Horace said in Nick Cave on ChatGPT: The struggle to create what would have surely been terrible lyrics, might have been educational for that songwriter, to someday write some decent lyrics of their own. Now they don't undergo that process, and that's a loss to them. That's a big one, and something I haven't really thought much about because of the following. One hopes that even if ChatGPT does some heavy creative lifting, human creators don't offload all creative aspects, and rather redirect their energies to whatever part of the artistic process that ChatGPT doesn't do. About 10 to 15 years ago, the question put to us at the time was, "do we care enough about being properly informed that we're willing to pay for it? Or is it simply enough that we be emotionally triggered and entertained?" Well, we made our choice. I didn't work for the AP or anything but I did write and edit news articles for a living. I saw what was in my estimation some pretty sad shit happen. And now look where we are. Tribalism over being informed. Unbelievably, here we are again. And there's a freaking war on out there in every industry that's playing around with this technology. What's amazing to me is that your outline of what we should do is so obviously the better choice. Not in any wooey moralistic sense about human creativity. In real, actual return on investment. Putting this technology into the hands of those who have trained themselves in commercial creativity beats the shit out of giving this technology to those who don't know how to use it. And everywhere I look, creative professionals are scrambling to justify themselves. It's as if we all decided that collapsed bridges were okay and believe structural engineers are all a bunch of prima donnas. It's incredible. Of course, this is all just fun and games until we get to AGI, which OpenAI seems to have initially cracked, but not yet developed. For the sake of my own sanity I'm trying to double down on @Mik 's "Mr. Natural" approach.

[image: 1701195445201-138b97a0-cc60-4e4f-a2c0-4dd82f14ed2c-image.png]

The EPA's tailpipe regulations, which were unveiled in a joint announcement with the White House in April, will impact car model years 2027 through 2032 and are designed to improve air quality and reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. What's the hurry? [image: 1701193626164-e2c64c4e-c2bd-43f6-aac6-56c14d6b97da-image.png] https://www.epa.gov/air-trends/air-quality-national-summary#

Next up? PETB. (Bugs). By the way, in N'awlins, mudbugs are not really bugs.

@Mik said in Extrapolate to Christmas: @Jolly said in Extrapolate to Christmas: BTW, the Lions lost. Get outa here.... Packers, 29-22.

True story... My daughter taught at inner city schools for fourteen years. If you can get one of those kids through high school, doing high school level work, it's a minor miracle. The teachers remember those kids. Dontavious (not his real name) was not the smartest kid in the class, but he was a unicorn...He came from a two-parent family. They might have been poor, but they cared. So Dontavious worked hard to overcome his deficiencies. He never made an A, and very few B's ever appeared on his report card. And my daughter tutored him in math for many years in an after school program. But Dontavious was going to make it. No, he'd never go to college, but he'd get an honest high school diploma. One where he could read and write. Maybe work his way into a decent job. He was walking home from school in the fall of his senior year, waiting at the curb, waiting for the light to change. A group of young blacks in a car drove by and shot at another group of young blacks on the street corner. All the potential that was Dontavious, died in a bloody pool, killed by a bullet not meant for him. His teachers cried.

I'm not sure I'd read it for free. Well, maybe for free...

What amazed me is the similarities from 0-100. It’s the 100-150 times that tell the tale…

Or at least a more sane approach to mass migration.

@Doctor-Phibes said in Stabbings in Dublin: The story I read is that they guy who did the stabbing was described as a recent immigrant, but he'd actually been in Ireland for 20 years and was an Irish citizen. https://x.com/Mick_O_Keeffe/status/1728814204344525210?s=20 https://x.com/ChaoticGood42_/status/1728866687611703492?s=20

Damn.

@Doctor-Phibes said in Bread & Circuses: I suspect that PJ Media could listen to Winston Churchill's 'We will fight on the beaches' speech and come away with the conclusion that January 6th was a hoax Worse than that. It would claim Churchill stole that speech from Donald Trump.