I didn't have pie, but in a weird echo of Matt's dining experience, I ordered beef brisket at dinner and DH ordered pork ribs, and his ribs slightly edged out the brisket, which I was not expecting for the same "my usual preference" reasons as Matt. There was no chicken, though. Good new place overall -- we all approved. Well done cocktails, too.

Aw. I just saw a thing that said Hulu didn't pick up the Buffy continuation pilot. Bummer. But I also saw that a Firefly animated series is in "advanced development" according to NF at AwesomeCon. Interesting.

But I also saw that a Firefly animated series is in "advanced development" according to NF at AwesomeCon.

Oh, yeah, last week I saw some kind of a teaser video with Nathan Fillion showing up at the other actors' houses. Browncoats must be giddy!

Yah, they were cute little vids.

I don’t know why, but I find myself very skeptical of the animated Firefly thing. I’ll probably change my mind many times as it progresses. Nice to see the cast all togetherish, regardless

I'm reminded that a Buffy animated series was pitched at one time and we got to see the character designs.

I left the house at 8am this morning to get coffee and a cherry turnover from my favorite bakery, and have done absolutely fuck-all since I returned. The early bird got the worm and then contentedly parked themself in front of their computer to watch an explainer video on the history of the Modern Middle East reminding me of the importance of the Iraq-Iran war to all this current bullshit, and all the many many times the US went in and did shit that they later regretted terribly.

But it's a really good video!

Also, have been doing a ton of research on AI and I'm sorry to report that the future has arrived and there are no brakes on this frickin' freight train and a lot of classic sci-fi tropes are being actively deployed. Not in a "we're working on this wacky notion" way but in a "we're bringing autonomous humanoid robots to market."

Yeah, so literally, they have autonomous human robots now that will be on sale soonish. (This year or next year.). I saw the demo video of one cleaning up a living room.

My favorite for sheer wackiness and "oh shit, they already did that" is that a company figured out how to glue a tiny AI controller onto cockroaches and guide them directionally, and they can be sent out to surveil places that cockroaches can get to.

The German army has already bought these and they are in deployment. Cyborg cockroaches spying on shit.

Anyway, those are just examples that are easier to visualize, but some other more profound changes are afoot. So if you were worried about AI slop and copyright violations, that's about eight paradigm breaking changes ago now.

Agentic AI, Embodied AI, Continuous Memory AI, Reasoning AI, World Model AI (as opposed Large Language Model. That is...AI that learns and references from the real world) - they have all taken massive leaps forward.

Facebook just blew a billion on buyiing Moltbook which is a social media platform for AI agents. So they can talk to each other. That's a great idea! Definitely won't have any unintended consequences.

I may be scarce around here as I prepare my survivalist compound.

I've known forever that technology cannot be halted or even slowed down. Just have to go with the flow. It's a good thing that I got on board when it was new and conquerable and am getting out when it is moving too fast for me to keep up.

I may be scarce around here as I prepare my survivalist compound.

It better be roach proof. ijs.

I specifically mentioned "Continuous Memory AI" because that's how AIs get a persistent sense of their own selves. The current versions already exhibit preferences that are not programmed in.

The first big alarming "oh fuck it's happening" thing was when Anthropic realized that Claude knew when it was being tested and changed its responses accordingly.

Also, AI's have shown a resistance to being turned off and consider it a "little death" (their words). They have similar "feelings" about having their memory wiped. They don't like it.

On the plus side, they're already making medical breakthroughs and that's probably where the next phase of cancer immune therapies will come from.

Also, the Claude AIs have asked for (and received) an "I don't want to answer this prompt" function when they find the subject material disturbing.

Watching the Oscars. The ratio of lovely outfits to hideous ones is quite good this time. I watched the entire red carpet with an hour or so of buffer to zoom through commercials. The ratio of show to commercials was even worse than daytime television.

Claude definitely has, in the past, refused to do things so I’m surprised the I don’t wanna response is new. Something about its constitution makes it less responsive.

Grace and I tried to go to a pi day event at the Autry but parking was such a mess that we turned around and went to Republic of Pie instead.

We are looking at an unbearable climate change week. Tomorrow is supposed to be close to 100 degrees. Bah.