I weeded my onions today
That’s not a metaphor or anything. Gosh, onions smell of onions when you brush against them.
I’ve been thinking about that quote that Grok totally made up the other day. I made a mental note always to check sources (I’m not sure Grok gives sources, but ChatGPT and Leo do). And then I thought…before long, AI will have written those sources. And other AI bullshit websites will pick up the AI bullshit and not know it was AI bullshit.
How are we going to know what’s real?
I know actual human beings make shit up, too (Bellesiles, anyone?), but human beings have reputations to protect and generally aren’t blatant about it. Machines just. Don’t. Care.
Have a good weekend, everyone!
June 6, 2025 — 5:32 pm
Comments: 6
D’oh!
We have a safe in the office. It hasn’t been opened in all the years I’ve worked there and nobody had any idea what was in it. There was a man who knew how to open it, but he retired ages ago and nobody had the instructions.
So we got a locksmith in today. It was harder than he expected, but he finally got it open, and inside was
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instructions for opening the safe.
Also, the float: £100 in old-style paper money and out of date coins. I hope the bank will take it!
June 5, 2025 — 5:36 pm
Comments: 5
By request…
Durned asked for the Rector in color, so here it is. I pinched it out of Uncle B’s gallery (he’s got a better camera and had a shot with the sun on it), but that means the busted chair is back. See above.
I thought maybe Google Pics would have the magic eraser online, but it doesn’t. And I’m far too lazy to get out the Photoshop and do it myself.
I didn’t have much to say for myself today anyway. Just mooched around in the garden all afternoon.
June 4, 2025 — 4:47 pm
Comments: 4
Like a firework display
Our great thug of a rose, Rambling Rector. He’s not quite at his peak, but I couldn’t wait – he flowers once a year and, soon after, we always have a great wind and rain storm that blows all the blossoms away.
We’re having a bit of a one now.
There was a busted lawn chair to the left of the one in the picture. I debated whether I had the energy to move it out of the way and decided just to use the Google Photos Magic Eraser to get rid of it. It didn’t do a perfect job, but a perfectly serviceable one.
I’m not sure why I’m so delighted at a feature that would’ve put me out of a job.
June 3, 2025 — 6:06 pm
Comments: 5
Oblivion is just what I’m looking for
On the left, we see a potato. On the right, a slightly sharper potato. Nowhere near up to modern facial modelling standards, but improvement.
Bethesda issued the game Oblivion in 2006 (The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, to give its proper name) and they’ve issued this re-render earlier this year. The game is the same, the story is the same, the audio (including voices) is the same, it just looks better. And sure, I fell for it.
I played the original Oblivion, but I don’t remember anything about it except Emperor Potatoface here (who dies in the first fifteen minutes). Oh, and harvesting nirnroots.
This is just the sort of nonsense I’m in the mood for at the moment.
June 2, 2025 — 6:21 pm
Comments: 3
I cannot vouch for this
Epoch Times (who poached it from the AJC) says you can get up to 10% more flavor extraction from your coffee if you add a few drops of water to the beans before you grind them.
Researchers weren’t looking for that. They were trying to cut down on the amount of dust wafting around after grinding. But they discovered it made a better coffee.
I struggled to understand why. The article helpfully told me it’s called the “Ross droplet technique” and I went straight to Grok.
Grok say it reduces static electricity (you ever seen how the grounds jump onto your finger if you try to swirl the last coffee out of the grinder?).
“The technique is particularly useful for single-dose grinding and is popular among home baristas and coffee enthusiasts. It promotes a cleaner grind, reduces grinder retention (grounds left behind), and can lead to more consistent grind sizes, potentially improving extraction and flavor.”
I shall try it in the morning. Have a good weekend!
May 30, 2025 — 5:37 pm
Comments: 6
Huh.
I’ve been having a blast lately trawling the British Newspaper Archive. I don’t recommend it, though – it costs money.
I ran across this item from 1866. A man was brought before the magistrates by the Vaccination Officer for not having his daughter vaccinated against smallpox. His reason was that the vaccine had terribly damaged his son.
According to Grok, the Vaccination Act of 1853 was the first to mandate vaccines. Infants were to be vaccinated against smallpox within the first three months of life, on pain of fines and imprisonment.
The item goes on to say the that members of the Anti-Vaccination Society had their fees paid by the society. According to ChatGPT:
The Vaccination Act of 1853 was controversial because it represented an early and aggressive assertion of state power over individual health decisions. It sparked widespread public opposition, laid the foundations of the anti-vaccination movement in Britain, and led to significant debate about the balance between public health and individual rights.
Specific numbers aren’t available, but some kids really did get sick. Not least because consistent manufacture and dosages weren’t available then. They finally introduced a conscientious objection clause in 1898.
Huh.
May 29, 2025 — 5:37 pm
Comments: 3
We will never understand them…
Uncle B got a fancy new cellphone today. It’s one of the Xiaomi phones with the Leica lenses. He love him some phone photography.
We’ve been laughing ourselves silly over the ringtones. All of them. All of them sound like music for a cartoon set in Peking, with titles like “young people love milk tea shop” and “doll and bear dance”.
We are never going to understand these people.
May 28, 2025 — 5:56 pm
Comments: 10
They’re still doing it
Crop circle, Wiltshire, 15th May, 2025. The barley crop was young and green, so by the time they took this picture, it was five days later and it had sprung back a lot. It was undoubtedly a lot crisper when new.
Most interesting report at the link. The farmer will let you go look if you kick £10 into his GoFundMe.
We heard a lecture once about crop circles. I didn’t expect to find it interesting, but I did. The man explained that it couldn’t possibly be done the way the authorities say it was. The men who claimed to have created at least some of them, when pressed, couldn’t actually reproduce the effect at all.
If I recall (it was a long time ago), he wasn’t claiming an extraterrestrial origin, he was just saying the government was blowing smoke up our butts to make us stop talking about it.
May 27, 2025 — 5:43 pm
Comments: 5
The roses are exploding
This one is named Gertrude Jekyll, in honor of a very famous English gardener who died in 1932. She created or collaborated on over 400 gardens in the UK. Most famously, she worked with famous architect Sir Edwin Lutyens and together they invented cottagecore.
Her brother was friends with RL Stevenson, so she was probably that Jekyll, too.
She didn’t develop this rose; is was named for her by the rose specialist David Austin (who, I have just discovered, died in 2018). He specialized in breeding old-fashioned roses.
Yes, yes…of course it needs to be in color.
May 26, 2025 — 6:23 pm
Comments: 10