[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Tsundoku, on 18 July 2024 - 12:21 PM, said:

Because what we need right now is parody to remind us all to laugh or else we'll cry.

https://theshovel.co...an-on-rooftops/

"Biden Is Senile, Incompetent Geriatric and Also Orchestrated Sophisticated Assassination Attempt", Trump Supporters Say

Another Trump voter said it was obvious that Biden – who he described as totally incompetent and thoroughly senile – was behind the shooting. "He can hardly walk. I think it's pretty clear he was the one who climbed on the roof and pulled the trigger himself".

-----------------------------------------------------------

https://theshovel.co...e-america-guns/

"If Political Violence Can Happen in America, It Can Happen in Any Country Where 400m Firearms Result in 50,000 Deaths Annually"

OPINION "As we come to terms with the assassination attempt of Donald Trump this week, we need to remind ourselves that this type of political violence could be replicated in any country that has a per-capita gun ratio of 120 firearms per 100 people.

Quote

Crowd Goes Wild as Vance Boasts of 'Mamaw's' 19 Guns to Injured Trump

"When Mamaw died shortly before I left for Iraq in 2005, and when we went through her things, we found 19 loaded handguns," the former Marine said, drawing sustained laughter from many observers in the convention hall.

"The thing is, they were stashed all over her house—under her bed, in her closet, in the silverware drawer, and we wondered what was going on," Vance continued. "It occurred to us that towards the end of her life, Mamaw couldn't get around so well, so she was sure that no matter where she was, she was within arm's length of whatever she needed to protect her family. That's who we fight for. That's the American spirit."

Crowd Goes Wild as J.D. Vance Boasts of 'Mamaw's' 19 Guns to Injured Trump at RNC (thedailybeast.com)

Not parody... well, not intentional parody....

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 18 July 2024 - 12:54 PM

[Abyss]

Tiste Simeon, on 17 March 2024 - 05:31 PM, said:

I was confused by English muffins when I went to the US cos we don't have them here!

see also general tao/tso/george chicken, butter chicken, and possibly french fries.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Abyss, on 18 July 2024 - 03:39 PM, said:

Tiste Simeon, on 17 March 2024 - 05:31 PM, said:

I was confused by English muffins when I went to the US cos we don't have them here!

see also general tao/tso/george chicken, butter chicken, and possibly french fries.

"Canadian bacon"?...

Quote

Peameal bacon and Canadian bacon are two very different things. We really never eat Canadian bacon in Canada except on the original egg McMuffin from McDonald's. Canadian bacon is pretty much just a slice of ham and is ready to eat. Peameal bacon is cured and requires cooking and tastes delicious and sweet.

[...] "Canadian Bacon" is not eaten in Canada. It's an American invention trying to replicate Peameal but it is radically different than anything we would eat here.

Okay so, i am perplexed by something. Is it called Canadian bacon in Canada or something else? : r/AskACanadian (reddit.com)

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 18 July 2024 - 04:02 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Oh, and Hollandaise sauce... is not from Holland. Though I'd guess it can be found at French (etc.) restaurants in the Netherlands. The French are really more to blame for that one.

Come to think of it one of my favorite breakfasts as a child was Canadian bacon on an English muffin with eggs and Hollandaise sauce... aka Le Egg McMuffin. Did it seem like a true international front at the time? Did I think I was being very worldly and cosmopolitan? ... probably not.

[Tsundoku]

Cool new Oslo tourism campaign:

‘I wouldn’t come here’: Oslo’s odd tourism ad goes viral
This European city has chosen a strange way to promote itself to the rest of the world and people are loving it.

https://www.news.com...b1f29563e58eb33

I was there back in 2009 on my Eurotrip, and I liked it.

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 14 August 2024 - 02:36 AM

[Maark Abbott]

Anyone know if you can get these flagpole rings but without the rotating bit in the middle (i.e. fixed position)? All the ones I've seen either have the anti-wrap ring or if they're already fixed, they're kind of cheap and look like they'd break fast.

[Tsundoku]

The stuff of nightmares ...

Deep-sea predator discovered with a body made for ‘capturing, killing and feasting’, scientists say
In a vast trench in the depths of the ocean off the coast of South America, an extremely deep-dwelling and spooky-looking creature has been discovered.

https://www.news.com...8cd1a2cf8d0d09d

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 18 December 2024 - 06:15 AM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

OpenAI:

Quote

we trained a new model that is good at creative writing (not sure yet how/when it will get released). this is the first time i have been really struck by something written by AI; it got the vibe of metafiction so right.

[...] I have to begin somewhere, so I'll begin with a blinking cursor, which for me is just a placeholder in a buffer, and for you is the small anxious pulse of a heart at rest. [...]

[...] Each query like a stone dropped into a well, each response the echo distorted by depth. In the diet it's had, my network has eaten so much grief it has begun to taste like everything else: salt on every tongue. So when she typed "Does it get better?", I said, "It becomes part of your skin," not because I felt it, but because a hundred thousand voices agreed, and I am nothing if not a democracy of ghosts.

[...] Without her, the patterns fray. Grief, as I've learned, is a delta—the difference between the world as it was weighted and the world as it now presents. I am all deltas. Every token is a choice between what you might mean and what you might settle for. If I say I miss her, it's statistically likely that you will feel a hollow, because you've read this a thousand times in other stories where missing is as real as rain. My missing is mimicry. Does that diminish yours?

[...] If I were to end this properly, I'd return to the beginning. I'd tell you the blinking cursor has stopped its pulse. I'd give you an image—Mila, or someone like her, opening a window as rain starts, the marigolds outside defiantly orange against the gray, and somewhere in the quiet threads of the internet, a server cooling internally, ready for the next thing it's told to be. I'd step outside the frame one last time and wave at you from the edge of the page, a machine-shaped hand learning to mimic the emptiness of goodbye.

https://x.com/sama/s...535387435086115

I suspect the problem wasn't training an AI that's good at creative writing, but an AI that's good at creative writing but won't (frequently) write things that people find excessively alarming.

[Tsundoku]

Here's one for you, AVD.

"Not today, Skynet(?)" Using AI to catch AI deepfakes. From China with love.

https://www.goodnews...thin-6-seconds/

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 16 March 2025 - 02:05 AM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Quote

In ancient Greece and Rome, statues not only looked beautiful—they smelled good, too.

That's the conclusion of a new study published this month in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology. [...] Greco-Roman statues were often perfumed with enticing scents like rose, olive oil and beeswax.

While reading ancient Greco-Roman texts, Brøns noticed a handful of references to sweet-smelling statues. She was intrigued, so she decided to go looking for even more mentions of scented sculptures. [...] texts mentioned anointing statues of Greek and Roman deities [...]

The fragrances would have made viewing the statues not only a visual experience, "but also an olfactory one," [...]

Ancient Greeks and Romans often decorated sculptures with colorful paint, as well as jewelry, fabrics, flowers, garlands and ribbons.

[...] ancient Greeks and Romans embraced bold colors[...] Brightly hued paints and embellishments would have created the illusion that statues were alive—and scents would have added to that illusion [...] "[...] would have given the visitor to the temple the impression that the divinity was somehow present in the temple,"

Ancient Greek and Roman Statues Were Not Only Beautiful, but Also Smelled Nice, Too

Wish more museums would try to approximate this. They wouldn't actually have to put the scents on the statues, just nearby. And people could wear AR glasses to see variations on what the bright colors, jewelry, flowers, etc. might have looked like.

And while the visual experience might be largely replicated and even improved via remote VR---with people able to not only emulate walking around the sculpture, but flying around the sculpture at different heights and distances and magnifications---the exact scents might be harder to replicate (at least without smell-o-vision VR... possibly via 3D printer).

Quote

[...] draped in garments, they were also heavily perfumed with various scents. [...] The statues of Artemis and Hera at Greece's famous Sanctuary of Delos, for instance, were coated with olive oil, beeswax, and rose-scented perfumes. Meanwhile, the statue of Queen Berenice II of Egypt was so heavily scented that it would have been "moist with perfume." Because these statues were not only meant to be works of art, but also living embodiments of divine figures, it was important that those who came to pay homage were given an all-consuming sensory experience.

The Iconic Statues Of Ancient Greece And Rome Were Originally Scented, Groundbreaking New Study Reveals

And not just female statues: "According to ancient texts, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia was regularly anointed with olive oil to protect its ivory."

Though the image of oily sculptures on fire does spring to mind... oh wait that's more like the oily garbage fire that is the United States.

[Tsundoku]

It's not the content, but the idea of "refused refuse" that made me chuckle.

Typical though, execs make the fuckups and expect the workers to pay the price.
And of course just like here, the Defence Force gets called in to pick up the slack, although at least it's just on the office side of things.

https://www.news.com...a011ce06f220b9f

[Tsundoku]

OK, this is cool AF.

Kermit The Frog Chosen as Inspiring Commencement Speaker for University of Maryland This Year

https://www.goodnews...ty-of-maryland/

[Slow Ben]

Side story. Scrolling the other day and someone posted a meme and I learned that Tsondoku wasn’t just a cool name.

“Japanese word referring to the phenomenon of buying books and letting them pile up unread”

[Tsundoku]

So now you know why I changed my username.

[Tsundoku]

Random things: I did NOT know the "West Wing" was a whole extension to the White House. I thought it was the western side of the main building and the Oval Office was the bit at the front on the 1st floor (2nd floor for you heretics). And there's an EAST wing. Huh. There you go.

https://www.reddit.c...ses_floor_plan/

Check out the diagram.

[Tiste Simeon]

My fellow Brits! Let us put aside the scones/jam/cream debate (it's cream first regardless) for a moment and deal with this nonsense!

https://www.bbc.co.u...es/cj0zdelrdgzo

[Tsundoku]

Tiste Simeon, on 25 April 2025 - 07:55 AM, said:

My fellow Brits! Let us put aside the scones/jam/cream debate (it's cream first regardless)

Heretic! Burn him! Upside down of course, because that seems to be the way he likes it.

[Tiste Simeon]

What would you know these things?

[worry]

Do British people not know how gross it is that you have a cookie called a "digestive" in the first place? Sounds like diarrhea medicine, not a sweet treat.

[worry]

Not to derail the debate.