erinptah: Vintage screensaver (computing)
[personal profile] erinptah

Have you heard about the “feed this document to an LLM, it’ll generate a podcast episode discussing it” gimmick?

Somebody fed it a document that’s just the phrase “poopoo peepee” over and over. And then took the discussion of that document, and fed it back into the LLM to discuss that. And then did it again. That link is to a 10-episode playlist. (…They’re only between 6 and 15 minutes long, so it’s not as much content as you’d think.)

It’s as stupid as it sounds — which makes it the perfect demonstration of “how LLMs will take anything, even the dumbest nonsense, and generate a response that has the vibe of something meaningful.” The recursion reveals even more levels of this. I swear every single video has included some version of “it reminds me of the absurdity of Dadaism”…and none of them acknowledge “the video we’re analyzing said it reminded them of Dadaism”…and they’re always repeating the same 2 basic facts about Dadaism.

(Bonus: the software always pronounces it “Day-day-ism” or “Daddy-ism”.) (Bonus 2: At least one of the videos inserts a fake ad break.)

There’s some hallucination, too. The TTS voices start referring to things like “funny sound effects” and “dramatic zooms”, which do not exist at all in the video they’re “analyzing.” One video says “Do we even really know what the original document said anymore?” (Yes. Yes, we do.) There are at least three variations of “it makes me think of apophenia, have you ever heard of that?” / “No, what does it mean?” when they’re supposedly “discussing” a video where apophenia was brought up and defined.

This is almost as good as the Chatbot Chess Championships 2026. (Which had a lot fewer random nonsense moves than the last one…but in one of the videos GothamChess mentions that he’s been “reminding the bots where their pieces are.” Boo.)

The rest of this is just a roundup of bots faceplanting in non-chess fields:

“I decided to do an experiment/torture myself with the default image model you get when you open Gemini. The prompt: “create a grid showing the flags of european countries in alphabetical order. there should be labels below them stating their name. the one for Liechtenstein should have a note below it saying “doubly-landlocked”.”

What really happened was that someone who is fully equipped to know better was surprised when her AI agent — a class of software that does not work reliably and cannot work reliably — messed up. […] This is not a misfortune befalling some random person — this is the director of AI alignment at Meta.”

“Amazon is absolutely clear who’s to blame for all this — this 13-hour outage caused by their own bot turning something off and on again is officially user error!

“Press Start Gaming is almost certainly a tool for making money off of ads and sponsored posts, and posts like the Phantasy Star Fukkokuban misinformation exist mostly to give the site more juice of looking like a real website. If someone goes out and buys a copy of Fukkokuban expecting a new and improved Phantasy Star with better graphics and new sidequests, what do they care? The article wasn’t really meant to provide information.”

“It finally became clear to me and the COYOTE team that we’d been bamboozled. Someone had fabricated an identity and put our call for pitches into a large language model like ChatGPT, just to make a fake story that we’d feasibly pay for. When I started asking too many questions, that someone evaporated.

Even entire passwords repeat: In the above 50 attempts, there are actually only 30 unique passwords. The most common password was G7$kL9#mQ2&xP4!w, which repeated 18 times, giving this specific password a 36% probability in our test set.”

The Onion: “HmmAI is at the bleeding edge of artificial intelligence, responding to prompts about recipe ideas, ancient history, or even advanced nuclear physics with the word ‘huh’ in just a fraction of a second.”

larryhammer: a wisp of colored smoke, label: "softly and suddenly vanished away" (disappeared)
[personal profile] larryhammer
For Poetry Monday:

The Llano Estacado, John Poch

How much soil do you plow to soothe a conscience?
If you’re a staked plains, dry-land, long view man:
a sky’s worth. Some even sow the dry playa
mid-summer with sorghum, the cotton plowed under
after early hail. Thus, not every farmer keeps
an old broken homestead sacred as a graveyard.
Today, no Sharpshin on a pivot for an omen,
no stoic farmer on a turn-row changing water.

Among a little wind grit, in a grid on a grid, somewhere
like the crossroads of outer space and Earth, Texas,
a handful of ragged elms withstand a long sway
of heat and wind. These old guards of a home haunt
the field but wither even as ghosts must. Honor them
with a walk among homesick bricks, and prophesy good.


First published in Poetry issue July/August 2009. The Llano Estacado is a large mesa/plateau in west Texas and easternmost New Mexico, extending from Amarillo through Lubbock and down to Odessa. The name is often translated as “staked plain,” with a folk etymologies explaining that its dry grassland is so featureless that Native Americans supposedly put up markers to guide their way (and Coronado famously did find it confusing), but the actual origin is probably “stockaded/palisaded plain,” referring to the escarpments of its eastern and western edges. The sharp-shinned hawk is a common small hawk of the region. The elms, which are not native, would have been grown by a former homesteader by irrigation from wells.

---L.

Subject quote from Dreams, Fleetwood Mac.

carbolic

Mar. 2nd, 2026 07:23 am
prettygoodword: text: words are sexy (Default)
[personal profile] prettygoodword
carbolic (kahr-BOL-ik) - n., a caustic white crystalline compound, C6H5OH, derived from benzene and used in resins, plastics, and pharmaceuticals and in dilute form as a disinfectant and antiseptic, now more commonly called phenol.


And as a short form for carbolic soap, a mildly antiseptic soap containing it, which was the first commercially available disinfectant soap. The name was coined in 1834 in German as Carbolsäure (modern German Karbolsäure), carbolic acid by the chemist, Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge, who first derived it, from coal tar -- thus the carbon connection.

---L.

Books read, March 2025

Mar. 2nd, 2026 08:14 am
brithistorian: (Default)
[personal profile] brithistorian
  • 1 March
    • Komi Can't Communicate, vol. 33 (Oda Tomohito)

I speak fluent human

Mar. 2nd, 2026 08:16 am
mrissa: (Default)
[personal profile] mrissa
 New story out in Clarkesworld: Person, Place, Thing! This was such a fun voice for me to fall into writing, and it ended up surprising me with how many Muppet references it wanted. Usually I am opposed to "I am but a servant of the muse" claptrap from writers, but when that muse is demanding aliens who have very earnestly learned from mid-to-late period Henson...well, what am I to do?
hudebnik: (Default)
[personal profile] hudebnik
Snow has been melting rapidly for the past few days, although today's temperature isn't expected to get above freezing. The car is basically free of snow, I think, although I haven't actually tried moving it. The front yard and the sub-lawns are still snow-covered, but only a foot or less deep in most places. A week from now it's supposed to be in the 60's °F. I haven't seen any crocuses or snowdrops yet, but I think it's actually happening.

do you remember your dreams?

Mar. 2nd, 2026 12:24 pm
tozka: sleeping woman (breakfast at tiffany's sleeping)
[personal profile] tozka
I used to have very vivid, memorable dreams all through my early 30s-- I'd wake up the next morning and have tons to write about in my dream journal. And then some time in the last 5 years I stopped being able to remember my dreams except MAYBE once a month, and even then it's not as detailed as it used to be.

I'm assuming there's a correlation between starting to travel full-time and having other things to focus on than my own internal life, but maybe also there's some aging thing happening? As my brain changes, so too do my dreams? Not sure.

Sooooo, since I can make polls and I'm nosy AF, here's one for y'all to answer:

Under here )

Feel free to share this around with friends so they can vote, too. It's anonymous, though you do have to be registered on DW to vote.

And if you have tips for remembering your dreams, please share them in the comments!
full_metal_ox: A National Geographic cover mock-up, with three marigolds in an analogous orange-yellow color harmony. (Nature)
[personal profile] full_metal_ox posting in [community profile] common_nature
https://visdeurbel.nl/en/

The Fish Doorbell in Utrecht in the Netherlands is an interactive online Citizen Science tool, explained in this post from last year: https://common-nature.dreamwidth.org/281642.html
meteordust: (Default)
[personal profile] meteordust
A new year, a new season - and new faces.

Spoilery reactions )

Onward to London?!

Mar. 2nd, 2026 11:30 am
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

Hey guess which fuckwit totally spaced on agreeing to a meeting in London this afternoon!

Entirely self-imposed stress. Some combination of agreeing to a thing in March a few weeks ago when that felt very far away, and having last week off.

Starting work this morning after my week off, I settle down to go through my million emails and spot that one of them says"hey Erik I'll be there at 13.54"; "there" is London Bridge and the "today" is unspoken!

Luckily I was, barely, able to get a train there in time (glad it wasn't a morning meeting!), with D kindly getting up early to give me a lift to the station that's most useful: there's trains every 20 minutes to London but now I'm effectively on the 10.15 train when it would have been the 10.55 without his help. Makes a big difference when I would've been getting into Euston about the time I want to be at London Bridge...

I spent the first hour on the train triaging emails (and Teams messages). I'm a little frazzled now so I might give myself the gift of just staring out the window a bit now that we're leaving Rugby (about halfway through my train journey).

(no subject)

Mar. 2nd, 2026 09:40 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] elainegrey and [personal profile] thady!

Reading Wrap-up 2/26

Mar. 2nd, 2026 10:16 am
vamp_ress: (Default)
[personal profile] vamp_ress posting in [community profile] booknook
 I actually didn't read all that much in February, but here are the books I *did* finish.

Setterfield, Diane: The Thirteenth Tale. Atria Books. 2006.
I loved "A River's Tale" a few years back, so I assumed this novel would be a safe bet. On the surface it circles around the same topics as "A River's Tale": What is fiction? And what is reality in relation to fiction? Does reality even exist or will everything that filters into our consciousness per default turn into fiction? So, on the surface level interesting, especially since it's a book about books / a book about reading and don't we all love those? But I found the plot to be absolutely outlandish and the whole novel rather heavy-handed. I can't say that I was bored, but I had high hopes for this one and Setterfield didn't quite deliver.

Edelbauer, Raphaela: Die Inkommensurablen. Klett-Cotta. 2023. (German)
This is a novel set in Vienna on the literal eve of WWI. It follows three friends as they spend they night and witness how the war breaks out. The vibes of this book are amazing. The Viennese slang is spot-on. (I wouldn't expect this to be translated into English anytime soon and if it is I can't see how a translation could hope to emulate the sound of this book.) Edelbauer more than delivers on the Austrian vibe and on the topics and ideas that were discussed at that point in time. I didn't connect with her characters all the much and all the esoteric talk about shared dreams went right over my head. But the rest was fantastic.

Kay, Adam: This is going to hurt. Picador. 2017.
Read for research and on that front it delivered. Other than that I think it's very specific to its time and place. If you don't live in GB you will have to live with the fact that this book clearly was not written for you. You'll still find some "funny" medical anecdotes in this. So if that's what you're looking for, go ahead and read this. (I'd advise to stay clear if you're pregnant or ever plan on being pregnant.)

Babb, Sanora: Whose Names Are Unknown. University of Oklahoma Press. 2006.
This novel tackles the same topics Steinbeck talks about in "The Grapes of Wrath" (and maybe you remember that I didn't like that book at all). The plot points are very similar - you have a family in the Oklahoma Panhandle that has to deal with continuous crop failure and that then goes to California and lives in a refugee camp. "Whose Names are Unknown" isn't a stellar novel either, but I like numerous things a lot better than in "The Grapes of Wrath": Babb clearly knows what she tallks about. Her descriptions of farm life and a farmer's relationship with his animals is spot-on and rings very true. Also, in contrast to Steinbeck she tells us things and then allows us to come to our own conclusions. You re actually invited to think for yourself in this one. Steinbeck was constantly trying to drive home his own political views via his storytelling. Even if you don't end up reading this novel, have a look at the publication history. It's highly fascinating!

chronological big life updates

Mar. 2nd, 2026 11:06 am
cimorene: Dramatically-lit closeup of a long-haired fluffy bunny (so majestic)
[personal profile] cimorene
1. Wax Sent to Customer Service Jail

Yesterday I asked [personal profile] waxjism, "Hey, don't you want to make a dreamwidth update about being sent back to jail?"

"Nope," she said.

Wax has been feeling sick (?) since we both had a nervous breakdown a year ago last September after losing two cats. She finally went to the doctor a month and a half ago and had a bunch of bloodtests but they found nothing and, I gather, said the next step is to check whether it's hormones or something and she needs to see a different doctor (a gynecologist, maybe?). But they didn't just give her a referral - apparently she has to call back to ask about how to get a referral, or what, because she doesn't actually know how to get that next appointment. Annnnnd she hasn't accumulated enough spoons again yet to do that (including when she had a week of vacation a few weeks ago).

Feeling under the weather has snowballed into near-total burnout and exhaustion and she has been having trouble focusing at work, and as a result her boss called her and revoked her Work From Home privileges, as of two weeks back. She's going back to the saltmines (the customer service mines) every day, and as a result she's even more tired the rest of the time.

On the plus side, it's good for her mental health to leave the house and have a schedule that makes her walk around and breathe fresh air everyday. Not sure if it's as good for her as the extra exhaustion is bad though.

2. My Dad Hospitalized for Copious Hallucination

My dad (69), a quadriplegic wheelchair user who has been recovering from a series of antibiotic resistant infections and other complications and in and out of the hospital constantly for like a year, has a sudden, brand-new, unusual problem. Friday he apparently woke up feeling odd and started hallucinating, at first things like a pool of water on the table or a black webbing on his own hand, then a lizard under the chair and a cat jumping onto the ceiling; they took him to the ER, and the hallucinations got more vivid and numerous very quickly. He was seeing people and animals in the ER and asking my mom if there were really kittens on the floor. By Saturday he was talking to my favorite aunt and uncle (who weren't there) most of the day and by the end of Saturday he was no longer aware that he was in the hospital. My dad has no mental disorders except anxiety, and the doctors were ruling out various kinds of dementia at first, but they thought it was likely to be something acute. He was having urine tests and x-rays and EEGs yesterday, and being interviewed by various doctors. He spent the early part of Sunday keeping my mom awake talking to hallucinated people and asking her to interact with things that weren't there (some tax paperwork on the table he said he had to file, a book he said he saw, stools and tables he wanted her to move); later he was in the house I grew up in (they moved out something like ten years ago), my grandparents' house (sold almost ten years ago), a restaurant, and imaginary places; and he had a brief spell not recognizing my mom, but he remembered who she was a minute later. The psychiatrists were saying they thought it was probably not neurological, and might be metabolic. He seems to be in less danger than he was at several points last year, but this is very stressful for my mom and sister. They both seem scared. I wish I could go there. My parents live with my sister in Louisiana.

3. Loss of One Bunny.

Rowan died Saturday night, fairly suddenly, we think basically of old age. 10 years is thought to be the maximum life span of our type of bunny, and they're 10 years and 4 months right now, but of the two, Japp has been sick several times and Rowan's never had a single health scare and has also been much more active, playful, and happy in recent years. He only seemed sick on Saturday, but he had eaten his most recent meal (which is usually the first sign of danger for ailing bunnies). I've been trying all morning to get in touch with the vet to take him to get cremated: I got up early to call them before Wax left for work with the car, but couldn't get through (and still can't). I will make a separate memorial post about him, but I have to collect pictures first. It's very sad, but we're relieved that it was quick and he didn't seem to suffer and that he had a long happy life and basically died at 101. Also relieved that he was the one to die first: he was much more clingy to Japp, who has always been more independent and not particularly sociable. I am less worried about Japp getting lonely.
harlow_turner_chaotic_ace: (Herald Editor)
[personal profile] harlow_turner_chaotic_ace posting in [community profile] su_herald
BUFFY: (upset) It's so late.
TARA: Oh ... that clock's completely wrong. Here.

~~S4E22: Restless~~



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TIME FREEZE

Mar. 2nd, 2026 01:18 am
[personal profile] battleshipmod posting in [community profile] battleshipex

Oh no! Your journey across the dimensions has distressed the fabric of spacetime like a pair of $300 jeans! Annoyed, it traps you in a TIME FREEZE, from which you will be freed in a year and a day because that sounds like a fairy tale and fairy tales are cool.


Hi friends. Your mod team is very tired and needs a lil break. There will be no official Battleship 2026, though there may be unofficial events that happen around the usual Battleship time. (If you're interested in helping with that, please open a general help ticket in the Battleship Discord.) Rest up, make some fun plans for July that you won't have to interrupt with frantic writing/arting/podding, and we'll see you in 2027.

More frog

Mar. 2nd, 2026 07:45 am
merrileemakes: A very tired looking orange cat peering sleepily at you while curled up on a laptop bag (Default)
[personal profile] merrileemakes posting in [community profile] common_nature
In my last posts I described the start and progression of my tadpole adventures. Here's the next instalment.

As soon as the tadpoles started growing legs they changed rapidly. Within days the kinda dopey goldfish behaviour, like nibbling around the surface of the water, disappeared, they became very elusive and shy. Almost like as soon as they started thinking about being predators they realised they were also prey. It was a bit sad, because I really enjoyed watching them, but also necessary for them to become wild frogs. I was glad that I hadn't spoiled them for life on their own.
Read more... )

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