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.

It's currently 33°F here, so if you want to send us 30 degrees of your surplus I'd be game.

The Oscars (or at least what wasn't interrupted by storm coverage in my area) were pretty good. I'd have liked to see Sinners win more, particularly for Delroy Lindo, but it won the awards where I really thought it mattered most—Score, original Screenplay, and Best Actor (meaning Leo and Ratboy lost!). And Amy Madigan won, though I wouldn't have been mad if Best Supporting Actress had gone to Wunmi Mosaku. Conan's cold open was pre-empted for me, but I did catch it on Youtube afterwards.

I hadn’t seen any of the movies (other than the short films, where there was a tie! The people exchanging saliva film was SO WEIRD) but agree I was surprised/sad Sinners didn’t win more!

I had a fine weekend but dang, I hate that it keeps being Monday. I feel like I am not rested even though I have gotten plenty of sleep and have not actually been very stressed lately. Probably I need a vacation. Sadly, I do not have one planned, and instead have a big dance event next weekend (which should be fun but will also be exhausting).

Speaking of UTIs... Teppy (or anyone else) what do you think of the home UTI test strips? I was thinking we might get a batch and just test every few days since everything goes so completely clown shoes so fast whenever Mommy gets one.

I've used the test strips a bunch and I think they are pretty accurate.

I had my first dental cleaning since my deep cleaning and my gums are healing ! Yay. They have this new scan they do now so it makes a 3D scan and you can see it on screen in full color .

Since this is up in Brevard I came up last night after work which was good because there was a major storm this morning. Hail! Lightning! Wind! Mom want to McDonald's this morning and there was tree that had fallen over 4 employees' cars .

The condo next to mom is for sale for $239k the woman who lived there for 40 years has passed away. Around the corner is another condo for sale for $249k. These are under 900sq feet. The condo around the corner sold in 2018 for $70,000. That's how crazy the housing prices are in Brevard.