There are cockroaches in Mexico big enough to own property.

Cordelia ,'Lessons'


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.


JenP - Apr 18, 2025 12:16:02 pm PDT #6847 of 6860

I'm at 1.5 right now -- which, I have to count clicks, because there's no 1.5 pen, but I don't mind. Anyway, I met with my doc several months ago, and she said, "You may plateau at some point, just fyi, and we can talk then." I did not lose a single OUNCE after she said that, ha! I called her a month or so later and told her, "I guess I'm pretty suggestible..." We upped the dose to good effect. Down 30 since last March, and I am lucky not to have quease very often.


DavidS - Apr 18, 2025 1:25:35 pm PDT #6848 of 6860
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

Hec, for what it's worth, when I bumped up to 0.5 my weight plateaued.

I'm at 1.5 right now

Thanks! I really appreciate everybody sharing their experience. It's really helpful.


DavidS - Apr 18, 2025 1:55:20 pm PDT #6849 of 6860
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

I managed to do my whole Pilates class despite my bandaged hand, and without busting a stitch.

Next week I start doing three classes a week, including my one-on-one with Pilates Domme, Rachael.

If I can continue to throw in two runs a week that should be a really good level of activity for me.

I do need to do some more cleaning before Matilda gets back, including the dreaded Guinea Pig cage.

I think lunch will be a small soup with sausage, chicken and vegetables.


JenP - Apr 18, 2025 5:14:46 pm PDT #6850 of 6860

Nice. I'm doing a short (half mile) walk with the dog every day now -- that honestly seems to be her limit, ha! Then I swim three times a week, and I just got one of those snorkels you use when you're trying to perfect your freestyle, which I am not trying to do, because I don't actually have a form to speak of, BUT, I suck at side breathing and cannot stand water in my mouth, so I never do freestyle even though I'd like to. I'll report back on how that works out... breathing through the snorkel is weird.


DavidS - Apr 18, 2025 6:14:44 pm PDT #6851 of 6860
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

breathing through the snorkel is weird.

I grew up in South Florida and had my scuba certification by age 10. Lot of snorkeling and respirators (for the air tank).


Sophia Brooks - Apr 18, 2025 6:27:16 pm PDT #6852 of 6860
Cats to become a rabbit should gather immediately now here

Guys, Guys, Guys... I know AI is probably evil, but I had the best win today. ChatGPT helped me write a Python program to rename 100 files with the correct course name instead of the gobbledegook that comes out of the program that creates the files. It helped me figure out how to install Python and run it. It saved me HOURS of opening the files and renaming them and then saving them to Box. I understand enough of the code so that I can change it for other projects to name them correctly as well! It is my first little program in years (I am IT adjacent, so mostly worked with Macros before).


DavidS - Apr 18, 2025 8:58:57 pm PDT #6853 of 6860
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

Guys, Guys, Guys... I know AI is probably evil, but I had the best win today. ChatGPT helped me write a Python program to rename 100 files with the correct course name instead of the gobbledegook that comes out of the program that creates the files. It helped me figure out how to install Python and run it. It saved me HOURS of opening the files and renaming them and then saving them to Box.

That's impressive! I know AI is being used to make significant breakthroughs in medicine now. And when I went to Josh's memorial, I talked to an attorney who was incorporating high level AI into his law firm, and it sounded like it had a lot of utility.

I'm not sure there's anything intrinsically evil about AI, it was just very unethical in the way it scraped its data.

It is going to eliminate whole bands of jobs though in the fairly near future, and it would be nice if countries started figuring out Universal Basic Income instead of dumping a large chunk of humanity into unemployability, with a gross top layer of have-it-all billionaires and their adjacents.


DavidS - Apr 18, 2025 10:22:58 pm PDT #6854 of 6860
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

As a bonus, I'll add Cintra Wilson's encounter with ChatGPT which kinda blew her mind: [link]


Dana - Apr 19, 2025 6:32:07 am PDT #6855 of 6860
I'm terrifically busy with my ennui.

I'm not sure there's anything intrinsically evil about AI, it was just very unethical in the way it scraped its data.

It's terrible for the environment.


Consuela - Apr 19, 2025 8:05:02 am PDT #6856 of 6860
We are Buffistas. This isn't our first apocalypse. -- Pix

It's terrible for the environment.

Really really really terrible. It burns horrendous amounts of power, and uses up a lot of water. Data centers use more power than all but a handful of countries: [link]

It's one of many reasons I am pretty anti-AI. The actual uses for science are much less destructive because they have smaller, targeted databases. But the big LLMs that are stolen data by Meta and Google? And the use of AI that leads to people using it to "write" and cheat on tests, and in legal briefings? Nah. Count me out.