It never works that way. People who shop around are shown the same fares as usual and the business are shown new higher fares… Then the businesses raise their costs for everything, since their expenses are higher. Eventually, it feels okay to raise the base level fares too.

The hype does kind of die out since it’s a bit inconvenient to get it going vs just sitting on your couch. I have not played my quest 2 in a while, but when I was I would add to your list: 11 table tennis (great ping pong. Still prefer the real thing but it scratches the itch if you just want to play and no one to play with)

Demeo (board game. It’s a bit limited in levels but it was great to keep in touch with my brothers who both live in different states.)

Thrill of the Fight (look up boxing videos first to know how to correctly throw a punch, then try to apply that here. Surprisingly good workout shadow boxing a virtual opponent. You are just like “okay maybe I will play one round, not get too into it” and the next thing you know you are pouring sweat trying to win)

Real VR fishing (just nice backgrounds while doing essentially nothing with probably a bit too much action of fishing)

3D or 360 videos (however you can get them to play): it’s kind of cool that I had a (really low quality) video feed at my wedding. Someone set up a small 360 camera and I can drop back in and feel like a mouse at the table at the reception. I also wanted to rewatch Avatar in it too but I never got around to it.

It’s a rundown of the programs you need to run to make an Alexa replacement with Home Assistant connected to these smart speakers. You speak the wake word, and these speakers listen, then what? The speakers then send your audio file to your PC running Home Assistant, and that file gets sent to a program called Whisper, which parses your audio into text. Then you can have it either verbatim do commands (eg, “turn on the kitchen lights”), or run that text through an LLM, which you can run locally on a program called Ollama (it runs a few different flavors of local LLMs from Google, etc). Once the LLM generates a response, you send that text to a program called Piper, which turns the text into an audio file to play back through the smart speakers.

My experience is that the local LLMs are too hard to run unless you have a PC made for them. My Mini PC, which I use to run Home Assistant, had to run such a low quality model the hallucinations made it unusable. I gave it it hour by hour weather data for the day and it for some reason hallucinated temperatures that did not exist and told me to wear a jacket for my 95°F day. They do make LLM ready PCs though.

The AC situation in Europe is a little rough. I stayed in Paris in a niceish hotel and the AC could not keep up with the heat when I was there. It was maybe a 10 degree difference inside vs out, and the humidity did not drop much. This was 10 years ago so maybe more places have better ac now, but I don’t think every place had AC then.

Won’t this be related to the humidity/wet bulb temp?

Did he lose a fight to her or something?

I think the hunting part is kind of fun. Going camping, learning the habits of the animals nearby, finding a place to take advantage of those habits, etc.

It’s the actual killing part I wouldn’t be able to do. But since I do eat meat I can’t fault hunters. In fact, I suspect a lot of hunters who do eat the animal actually have a lot of respect and sadness for the actual kill, and try hard to make it as humane as possible.

Because UV rays make vitamin D, and that’s probably as far as he thought about it. Anything else is big scary science man talk with risks about something as “healthy” as unlimited concentrated artificial sunlight.

Next up: let’s outlaw soap so that we can all have really good, well practiced immune systems.

Actually maybe I shouldn’t give them ideas. They might try that.

You keep running into the stereotypical “date”, which is a dinner and sometimes includes a movie. You actually can do better with just like “hey I’ve been wanting to try bouldering at this rock climbing gym, want to check it out together?” Or similar. Don’t think in terms of dinner dates. Think in terms of activities you would like to do with your significant other long term. My wife and I currently take adult gymnastics classes and almost never go out to dinner.

Is it deceitful? Left. Otherwise: right

There really should be a certification course for using AI safely. I’m slop coding a hobby app and I’m shocked at how much it FEELS like it can do, because it can do amazing things, yet fails in the strangest ways. When it feels like it can get away with it, it forgets earlier discussions and moves on without it. So you can spend time hammering out a whole section of code, then move on, and AI will rip out everything that references that code and think of a different way in the moment and code that in instead. It won’t be the same. It probably won’t work, or at least won’t pass all test cases. But if you aren’t paying attention and keep coding, your original part of the project is no longer functioning and you won’t understand why. But every step of the way it’s confident in its answers and you won’t suspect that it fundamentally no longer understands the project.

They took out cursive from the curriculum for a while, but they are supposedly putting it back now. I think they are suggesting the brain learns a little differently with cursive so it’s still useful in that manner.

Also I think you’d enjoy the podcast I listen to, American History Tellers. I hated history for the same reasons you describe but this podcast really made me enjoy it. Usually they open a topic with something like “Imagine it’s in the late 1800s, and you are opening up shop. Times have been hard since [backstory], but you are getting by okay. You do worry about [current topic], and feel worse when you read today’s paper.” Even that small little setup kind of ropes you in to feel like it’s relatable.

Agree that it weakens certain things, but I don’t see how we can overcome that. It’s great to have a knowledgeable GP as your doctor, but their breadth of knowledge causes them to fail at a deep knowledge of specific disease states. So he might be able to determine you have cancer, which then causes him to send you to an oncologist who specializes in that area.

Basically, there is a limit to the volume of information a human can hold. This was partially what AI advertised it could help overcome, but it’s so much worse than expected. If we could somehow increase the volume of information a human could hold and process, you’d be in much better shape for those doctor visits that end in “well, I guess this symptom is just you getting older” when really it’s SOMETHING but the doctor completely lacks the knowledge of that area.

“Trump kills children to hide trafficking and raping children.”

I think of it this way. The immune system is like an army, ready to fight off foreign invaders. If you were a king, would you want a huge standing army at all times, or the ability to draft soldiers as needed? Having a huge standing army is not only a waste of resources if there isn’t anything to fight, but your soldiers might get bored and invent things to fight or just stir up trouble.

So my guess is you’d be prone to inflammation and develop food sensitivities, but it’s a total guess. If they were the case though, chronic inflammation is really bad long term.

Naw I like this move. Obama ended “thanks Obama” with his own use of it, since no one would ever top that. Maybe Kamala can end 6-7 in her own way.

Isn’t that strange though? Catholics trace themselves back to the disciples (though I think Roman and Orthodox both claim this), yet the new ones that split somewhat recently claim they are the real ones.

My prediction of his testimony of Epstein Island: “I saw, but I didn’t partake.”

Fifthed

I actually would kind of like ai in games. Not slop visuals though. What I really would love would be in a VR game, going up to an NPC, and getting a feel for different cultures of the world I’m in through talking. Maybe you have to have a certain type of conversation to find out the plot for a side quest, or talk to a guard at a bar and work your way to find out the shift rotation as he gets drunk or something so you can infiltrate the castle.

I feel like ai could be useful like that…but getting rid of artists in favor of ai slop is just the worst way to implement this AI thing.