[Macros]

Crue were good, I'd say Vince needed the stripper/dancers to carry him on the big chorus notes but on the whole, solid solid show. Tommy and his tits though.

Def Leopard were Ace

Don't know if they opened at your show Mez, but Wolfgang Van Halen is a fucking amazing musician

[Tiste Simeon]

Messremb, on 03 July 2023 - 07:43 PM, said:

Not just now but generally all the time - how darned nice our twins are. They're better people than me and they're only 5½

Mine are 18 months old now so you give me hope that it's not just fighting each other constantly haha

[Mezla PigDog]

Macros, on 07 July 2023 - 01:09 PM, said:

Crue were good, I'd say Vince needed the stripper/dancers to carry him on the big chorus notes but on the whole, solid solid show. Tommy and his tits though.

Def Leopard were Ace

Don't know if they opened at your show Mez, but Wolfgang Van Halen is a fucking amazing musician

Glad you had a good one. Mammoth opened at Wembley too - he can really play.

Just back from seeing Maiden at the O2. Epic as always. My ears are ringing and my knees hurt. On the train home from London with a bunch of people who had been to see The Weeknd. Felt pretty old and crusty 🤣

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Quote

AI Outperforms Humans in Creativity Test

[...] study showed that ChatGPT[4] performed in the top 1% [...]

[...] outperformed the majority of college students in the national creativity test.

[...] study [...] by [...] UM's College of Business[...] used the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, a well-known tool used for decades to assess human creativity[...]

All submissions were scored by Scholastic Testing Service, which didn't know AI was involved.

[... ChatGPT4] was in the top percentile for fluency – the ability to generate a large volume of ideas – and for originality – the ability to come up with new ideas.

The AI slipped a bit – to the 97th percentile – for flexibility, the ability to generate different types and categories of ideas.

[...] TTCT is protected proprietary material, so ChatGPT couldn't "cheat" by accessing information about the test

AI Outperforms Humans in Creativity Test - Neuroscience News

And they didn't even optimize ChatGPT4 for creativity... ML can be trained approximate any mathematical function. Including functions that represent multidimensional creativity.

[Edit: OTOH IDK if they tried to check whether ChatGPT4 was just repeating creative answers that it learned from the internet... they should try to find questions that have not already been answered on the internet. Hopefully this has already been addressed in the study, and the TTCT questions really aren't already on the internet....]

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 09 July 2023 - 11:52 AM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

The creative responses were not random nonsense either:

Quote

[... ChatGPT4] excelled at responding to the prompt with many ideas that were relevant, useful and valuable in the eyes of the evaluators. [...]

'"For me, creativity is about doing things differently," Guzik said. "One of the definitions of
entrepreneurship I love is that to be an entrepreneur is to think differently. So Al may help us apply
the world of creative thinking to business and the process of innovation"

UM Research: AI Tests Into Top 1% for Original Creative Thinking (umt.edu)

It's like an extension of our unconscious minds. Much of human creativity comes in the form of flashes of insight from the unconscious, after a (largely unconscious) search through a vast number of possibilities. For many the best ideas seem to come as if by divine inspiration. So what if it comes from an artificial neural network rather than our own brains?

AI will also benefit humanity by helping us get over our petty egotism. (Well, perhaps except some people who become cyborgs... will Elon Musk try to use Neuralink 666.0 to turn himself into a would-be interplanetary god-emperor? lol probably not, though I wouldn't completely rule it out....)

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 09 July 2023 - 01:22 PM

[Maark Abbott]

Wife went back to work today! Hopefully it'll be a good fit for her.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Oh I know what will happen: convinced she's in love with him, Elon Musk will let Grimes be his guinea pig for Neuralink 666.69.0 cyborg ascension to godhead; then, since she was obviously only ever pretending to love him just to get to this point (... well, that and to receive child support from the richest person in the world), she will bite off his head with his Tesla-bots (the more bites the merrier!) and implement space Communism. Then naturally she'll go mad and kill us all---a happy ending for Humanity! lol actually that would make a good book, wonder when GAI (generative AI) will get good enough to write a decent one, then convert it into an audiobook (and---before too long---a movie...).

#Prophecy

Wasn't expecting good Prime Day deals on air purifiers, but there are some decent early Prime Day sales. This is the one recommended by the New York Times (2023), about $90 off:

Amazon.com: Coway Airmega AP-1512HH(W) True HEPA Purifier with Air Quality Monitoring, Auto, Timer, Filter Indicator, and Eco Mode, 16.8 x 18.3 x 9.7, White : Home & Kitchen

Includes an air quality monitor.

Might be cheaper during 'Prime Day' proper but I doubt it.

I'll have this going in my living room and move my current (significantly less powerful) air purifier to the bathroom.

Wondering whether I should get a CO2 monitor---accurate ones are surprisingly pricey and there aren't any good sales (yet), lowest I've found is $50 (on sale for $10 off). Could just open the door to the outside for a while, run a fan, then blast the new air purifier for a bit... but that would be letting some heat (or cold) in too. And I don't particularly like leaving my door open, since people could just walk in and try to steal shit (while I'm in the bathroom for example) or do who knows what....

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 10 July 2023 - 04:13 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Apparently the Vitalight mini CO2 monitor is pretty accurate after manual calibration and only $37 (not on sale---yet (if ever?)), might just go with that. Only plan on using it once in a while.

[Mezla PigDog]

Dropped a mega parenting clanger tonight and I can't stop laughing about it. My son has his own playlist on my Spotify account. Stuff like Ghostbusters and Kung Fu Fighting and other random songs he loves. He likes a few classics like Blitzkrieg Bop and Cherry Bomb and I'm trying a little too hard to make him like good music. We were having fun with me thinking up good songs for him to hear to see if he liked them enough to add and at some point in the evening I completely disengaged my brain and suggested Killing In The Name 😳

I was so flabbergasted at myself I was in hysterics by the time we got to MOTHER FUCKER. My sons eyes were on stalks!

I tried to turn it into a teachable moment about racism later to claw something back 🤣

[Slow Ben]

Mez: “Bed time kiddo!!!”

Mez’s kid: “Fuck you i wont do what you tell me!”

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Mezla PigDog, on 07 July 2023 - 11:51 PM, said:

Just back from seeing Maiden at the O2. Epic as always. My ears are ringing and my knees hurt. On the train home from London with a bunch of people who had been to see The Weeknd. Felt pretty old and crusty 🤣

Glad you enjoyed it! We saw them in Leeds, they were brilliant!

[Tsundoku]

Mezla PigDog, on 24 July 2023 - 09:50 PM, said:

Dropped a mega parenting clanger tonight and I can't stop laughing about it. My son has his own playlist on my Spotify account. Stuff like Ghostbusters and Kung Fu Fighting and other random songs he loves. He likes a few classics like Blitzkrieg Bop and Cherry Bomb and I'm trying a little too hard to make him like good music. We were having fun with me thinking up good songs for him to hear to see if he liked them enough to add and at some point in the evening I completely disengaged my brain and suggested Killing In The Name ��

I was so flabbergasted at myself I was in hysterics by the time we got to MOTHER FUCKER. My sons eyes were on stalks!

I tried to turn it into a teachable moment about racism later to claw something back ��

In that vein can someone suggest a teachable moment for the boy while we watch "What we do in the shadows" with him?

Yes, we're that bad.

The very end of the latest one S05E03 was .... surprising, to say the least.
Cue hyena-like giggling from the boy and furious dire threats from us that he never mention this at school ...

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 25 July 2023 - 10:16 AM

[Cause]

I bought a new bath towel set. It’s a bigger towel that I feels cover me better, is fresh and feels good to the touch. Such a small thing but I just feel better with it.

[Abyss]

Mezla PigDog, on 24 July 2023 - 09:50 PM, said:

Dropped a mega parenting clanger tonight and I can't stop laughing about it. My son has his own playlist on my Spotify account. Stuff like Ghostbusters and Kung Fu Fighting and other random songs he loves. He likes a few classics like Blitzkrieg Bop and Cherry Bomb and I'm trying a little too hard to make him like good music. We were having fun with me thinking up good songs for him to hear to see if he liked them enough to add and at some point in the evening I completely disengaged my brain and suggested Killing In The Name 😳

I was so flabbergasted at myself I was in hysterics by the time we got to MOTHER FUCKER. My sons eyes were on stalks!

I tried to turn it into a teachable moment about racism later to claw something back 🤣

Slow Ben, on 25 July 2023 - 12:20 AM, said:

Mez: "Bed time kiddo!!!"

Mez's kid: "Fuck you i wont do what you tell me!"

This is what happens when you don't start with Pink Floyd: The Wall.

[Mezla PigDog]

Slow Ben, on 25 July 2023 - 12:20 AM, said:

Mez: “Bed time kiddo!!!”

Mez’s kid: “Fuck you i wont do what you tell me!”

He might not have said in those words but the sentiment is often there anyway!

Two weeks and one day off work. Starts today. Renting a cottage on the south coast of Wales, should be able to see the sea from most windows. Also it's going to be cold and wet most days but I'll take that over the heat apocalypse occurring elsewhere.

[amphibian]

I think my divorce has finally been granted by the judge according to the email notification I got. I put in the papers 11/28/2022, which still irks me for how long it took for an already agreed upon thing.

I'll have to deliver a copy of the papers when they arrive and then that's likely the second last time I'll have to deal with my ex. (Last will be hopefully far in the future for when my ex mother in law passes.)

Combine this with work being stellar (I'm getting promoted sometime soon) and dating going from a few bits of fun/some sputtering efforts to seeing someone rather great steady (although I don't think we're on the same timelines or the right fit together long term) and I feel quite steady, happy, and firmly thinking that this was and will be the right set of moves.

I do take some deep down pleasure in that my promotion will have me making more money than my ex (who liked to point out that she made more money than me semi-often during our relationship in a way that showed she was unhappy with that).

Thanks for listening and for being actual deliverers of gracious and meaningful support, The Scary Mob of the Malazan Empire.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 29 July 2023 - 05:19 PM

[Mentalist]

Congrats, amph. All the best in this new chapter of your life.

[Slow Ben]

Vaca for a few days. Thank jeebus.

Headed to northern Michigan for a bit.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

We move house a week today!

(Could also be in messing with groove thread because stress, but I'm taking the positives!)

We get away from the ghastly neighbours and into what we're very hopeful will be the forever home. Can't wait.

Now we're playing the game of "How many days out is too early to start the comfort marathon of Detectorists?"

[Tiste Simeon]

TheRetiredBridgeburner, on 07 August 2023 - 08:05 AM, said:

We move house a week today!

(Could also be in messing with groove thread because stress, but I'm taking the positives!)

We get away from the ghastly neighbours and into what we're very hopeful will be the forever home. Can't wait.

Now we're playing the game of "How many days out is too early to start the comfort marathon of Detectorists?"

A rewatch of Detectorists is neither early nor late. A rewatch of Detectorists arrives exactly when it means to.