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Pickle carrier
Pickle’s son, Marmalade, sadly passed a while back, and they were both afflicted with some strain of flu. This made them weak and moody. I took Pickle to the vet several times over the course of a few months, and she got even more annoying and meowy in the car than she normally is… But she sure is a cute derp sometimes.
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A note you might stumble upon when humankind is in ruin…
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Dall-e can’t spell (humans can’t spell)
Asking ChatGPT to generate line drawings for my textbook resulted in the curious and repeated misspelling of the word “performed” (never mind the “s” missing from “actions”). At first it left out the “f,” and then the “r.” Asking it to correct the mistake caused it to regenerate the exact same graphic several times. When asked why this was happening, Chat GPT responded with: The image model isn’t a true spelling checker. It “draws” letters based on patterns it’s seen, and sometimes misrenders them, especially in words that aren’t visually distinct or are less frequent in visual training datasets. I said just get it done, man. So ChatGPT got clever…
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Weaver
I went on an excursion to the nearby town of Kut Lang on a social development training course for our students. This consisted of locals gathering at a temple, Wat Nong Saen Nuea, and showing off their handmade product crafting skills while students watched and asked questions, with the intention of offering improvement strategies at a future date. For me, however, this meant a chance to do a side quest and add a new skill, so I embraced it and sat on the concrete floor and learned to weave dried bamboo strips and reeds for five hours. The old ladies were surprised that a foreigner was so interested in their…
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The most confusing Google search
Is natto keto? Dammit. Conclusion: Part of this is that most people who say no are calculating carbs per cup. Nobody eats a whole cup of natto, so…
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and/or
Andor made Star Wars relevant to me again, after ignoring everything that came out the past years. It was really good, especially because I followed it up with Rogue One (and almost A New Hope as well, but I prefer to keep that one in my mind’s Pee-Chee folders/bubble memory). Anil Dash has a great run down of all the extras.
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Wrapped
Max took private Muay Thai lessons when he came back during the summer last year. He really enjoyed it, especially since private lessons in the states are too expensive. His gym and teacher were the same from when he studied with Mina when they were bobies.
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When Yahoo was King
I was recently asked about beta testing I did for Google’s cHTML site for NTT DoCoMo i-mode 20+ years ago on a clamshell keitai. Most of it was done between shots of Cuervo at Tramps (pout one out for Tramps, y’all!) in Kyobashi with my pal and Movable Type mentor, Bill. I actually corrected the color on the Google logo for i-mode (for which I received payment in the form of two black XL tees with the old school Baskerville Google logo that elicited many a “what is Google” at the company hanami on the banks of the O River in Sakuranomiya). I haven’t really felt that kind of freedom…
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The Last Marvel Supper
My brother-in-law opened a boat noodle shop last year. The noodles are good (and the crackling toppings are great), but the wall art is just fantastic: As you can see, the boat props for boat noodles are very important. On Maps: รวมพล ก๋วยเตี๋ยวเรือ
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I switched back to Firefox again.
I’ve switched between using FF and Chromium-based browsers (mainly Opera and Brave) several times over the years. They both had times when they were so good! Now it seems like we’re forced to use the one that sucks the least… Chrome’s most recent transgression was making uBlock Origin unusable, but I was leaning this way for a long time. I just kept putting it off by building PCs with more and more RAM.
