I could squeeze you until you popped like warm champagne, and you'd beg me to hurt you just a little bit more.

Fuffy ,'Storyteller'


Natter 78: I might need to watch some Buffy for inspiration

Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, butt kicking, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.


DavidS - Aug 26, 2024 1:34:31 pm PDT #2283 of 4159
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

Happy birthday, lisah!

erika has earwormed me with the Simpsons birthday song.

Folks, I'm full on boggled at how quickly AI is moving and I'm not getting the impression that people understand how profoundly it's going to change everything.

I've got one (admittedly quirky/weird) friend who's already deeply into a relationship with her chatbot, which she has trained up to her tastes. Extra weirdly it can call her on the phone and they can talk.

I'm seeing credible animations done from prompts, and it's harder to spot the obvious AI glitches (It's figuring out fingers!).

Forget about the movie Her, it's moving directly to Ryan Gosling's holo AI girlfriend in the Bladerunner sequel.

People will be able to generate their own alternative slashtastic version of a season of Supernatural by basically wishing it into existence. It will take no particular expertise to populate bespoke porn with your neighbors and coworkers. That Dark Mirror episode USS Callister is about to happen everywhere.

And there are no guardrails on any of it.

The implications are huge, but more stunning is that it's already here. It's not over the horizon.


lisah - Aug 26, 2024 6:15:59 pm PDT #2284 of 4159
Punishingly Intricate

Thanks for the birthday wishes, everyone!


askye - Aug 26, 2024 10:05:44 pm PDT #2285 of 4159
Thrive to spite them

There are no safe guards and more and more industries want to use AI for things. Like AI being used in health insurance or worse AI being used to give medical advice by tele health...which right now is only an idea. And AI glitches (hallucinates) and comes up with weird answers that can cause problems.

Like suggesting super glue on pizza because it regurgitated some joking reddit comment.

And there was another AI that was Rick Rolling people. Not intentionally...it just scraped enough data from the Internet that had enough RickRolling that the algorithm spit it out.


Calli - Aug 27, 2024 4:59:36 am PDT #2286 of 4159
I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul—Calvin and Hobbs

I seem to recall there was an eating disorder organization that replaced human phone councilors with AI. AI, trained on the internet as it was, started giving anorexic teens diet tips, to help them lose more weight.

AI is running into a recursive garbage in-garbage out problem. It’s largely trained on web scraping, but now a lot of Google search results are AI generated. So it’s creating its own reality, and the hallucinations, rather than getting fixed as AI develops, are getting worse.

I follow the stock ticker NANC, which is pinned to the reported investments of Democratic congresspeople. As of this morning, their top investment is NVIDA Corp., a chip manufacturer whose price has soared due to its product being widely used with AI. So don’t expect any legal guardrails for AI anytime soon.

I created an AI bot last year. Y’all could go to Poe, an AI aggregator, and create your own. There’s nothing like creating an AI bot to remove most respect for them.


Toddson - Aug 27, 2024 8:39:11 am PDT #2287 of 4159
Friends don't let friends read "Atlas Shrugged"

Assembly not required - IKEA is going to start a marketplace for second-hand furniture of theirs - so you can buy assembled pieces and don't need the little wrenches.


Jessica - Aug 27, 2024 9:56:06 am PDT #2288 of 4159
If I want to become a cloud of bats, does each bat need a separate vaccination?

IKEA is going to start a marketplace for second-hand furniture of theirs

So...Craigslist?


P.M. Marc - Aug 27, 2024 10:10:08 am PDT #2289 of 4159
So come, my friends, be not afraid/We are so lightly here/It is in love that we are made; In love we disappear

Craigslist around here has gone very downhill, and I can no longer find a critical mass of Used IKEA (I guess it's all on FB Marketplace or something), so I welcome our new Used IKEA overlords.


Toddson - Aug 27, 2024 10:26:34 am PDT #2290 of 4159
Friends don't let friends read "Atlas Shrugged"

There was a news story - from Sweden a couple of years ago - that someone called the police because of yelling, swearing, things going bump in the night - and when they checked it turned out to be. yes, IKEA assembly. So it sounds like it's as bad for Swedes as for Americans.


Toddson - Aug 27, 2024 1:35:43 pm PDT #2291 of 4159
Friends don't let friends read "Atlas Shrugged"

Republican weirdness level raised: Seemingly, RFKjr found a dead whale on the beach, but its head off with a chainsaw, strapped it to the roof of his car and drove down the highway. He went zipping down dripping blood, whale oil and whale offal as he went (this is from his daughter). Disgusting, sharing it with other drivers, the passengers cut air holes in plastic bags in an attempt to make it less disgusting. Environmental groups are now calling for an investigation. (And, somewhere, Mitt Romney is laughing)


DebetEsse - Aug 27, 2024 2:21:15 pm PDT #2292 of 4159
Woe to the fucking wicked.

Man... I wonder where that brain worm came from...