"Ask my Dad what time it is and he'll tell you how to build a clock"
tipicaldik
joined 2 years ago
I want to be a flâneur when I grow up...
One day a couple of years ago, we had some meatloaf and some baked mac&cheese leftovers that my wife had made. The next day I got a loaf of homemade sourdough from the farmers market that pops up every Saturday. I sliced off about a half-inch thick slice of the meatloaf and the baked mac&cheese with that fresh sourdough and grilled a sandwich that I really hope to be able to replicate at least once more before I die...
IMO, becoming a bible salesman is like the most stereotypical con-man gig...
sitting under Schrödingers window...
I'm thinking he better get on it!
Fuck homeowners insurance. I live in Florida. I've had State Farm for several years now, and it always felt like I was paying them extortion payments. Last year, we got a letter from them informing us that they had sent an inspector by our property, and listed off several things that we needed to do, and show them proof that we did them, within the next year or they were dropping our coverage. Some of these things were understandable, but others just seemed ridiculous. Like re-roofing or tearing down my shop in the back, when there is absolutely nothing wrong with it (I just built it seven years ago). It's already pretty well-known that SF is no longer writing new policies in Florida, so I could see the writing on the wall. Even if we complied and got all that done, their premiums were going to go way up, and switching to another company would certainly cost us even more. The wife and I discussed it and said fuck it and fuck them and took the money out of my 401k and paid the place off. State Farm will not renew us here in about a month and a half when it expires, and we'll carry on without. This house has been through every hurricane that's hit the NW corner of Florida since 1958 and has so-far only lost some shingles. We're on high enough ground that flooding isn't a worry either, so fuck it... off we go, fingers crossed! I feel really fortunate that we were able to do that, because this place is so much more than just a house, and I'll be DAMNED if we're losing it because some bureaucratic requirement that I can no longer afford allows it to be repossessed.
I drove a taxi and dispatched for a couple of years back in the mid '80s. For ease of use, Street Guides were a drivers best friend, because they just gave you concise directions from the closest main road. For instance, if I wanted Elm street, I would find it quickly alphabetically, and it would tell me something like "Runs south from Main St, two blocks east of First Ave." The driver would mainly just need a decent understanding of the main roads and how the numbering system for addresses worked, and they could just flip through it pretty quick without having to spread out a big map. The whole city fit into a neat little paperback book.
back in the early-mid '80s I worked as a tire changer for a chain of tire retailers. We had a mechanic who did all the front-end alignments and brake jobs etc, and he had an apprentice/helper who worked with him. When cars with drum brakes came in, they liked to each take a side and race to see who could get them done faster. I remember timing them once, and they both could remove and replace the shoes and the spring kits in less than 45 seconds.
it seems to me, and I could be wrong, that they don't accent syllables the same way, if at all. Years ago I had a database teacher in community college who was from India and it took me a couple of classes to tune in to her, but after that it wasn't hard to follow her at all. I'm often in Zoom meetings with a software engineer who immigrated from Vietnam and he was a bit of a challenge to understand at first, too.
Oh yeah... and my cancer doc is from Sri Lanka. That was doubly fun. His heavy accent pronouncing four-dollar medical terms took some serious getting used to. Listening to him dictate into his little recorder for the transcriptionists at the end of our visits is an added treat I always enjoy...
Sure, AI can whip up fantastical imagery and low-effort dialog — but if audiences call BS, the blowback can be extraordinarily embarrassing.
I see AI generated bullshit on youtube all the time these days. To the point where I can tell by the thumbnail before I even watch it. I've gotten in the habit of checking out new-to-me channels in a private window first, before deciding whether I want to subscribe or even keep watching. The instant I detect any AI... either in the voice or the nonsensical writing, I'm outa there. I do e-learning multimedia for a living, and we use a lot of stock images, and those sites are being loaded up with AI generated garbage. It's getting harder to find stuff that isn't AI, and using it to generate your own is a total crapshoot as far as results go...
Shut the fuck up, Donny!