I'm not Catholic, but Francis was such an incredible improvement over Benedict/Ratzinger that I was hoping he could stay a while.

That's a shame. He was a decent guy. I have two irreverent thoughts:

1) Meeting with JD Vance fucking killed him.

2) The Conclave movie people must be thrilled. That movie's gonna get a hell of a bump.

Same, Karl.

I love a conclave (I am Catholic-adjacent but have never been Ctholic) but, damn, I would have preferred to wait a while.

AI needs to be reined in not only for environmental / ethical reasons but because it mostly produces TERRIBLE results (that then require equivalent or more person-hours to correct than it would have cost to just...not use AI in the first place). The limited number of generative AI systems doing actual useful work is absolutely swamped by the number of AI assistants/enrichment tools consuming ridiculous amounts of water and fossil fuels and giving us nothing but garbage in return.

That is what burns me up, that we are apparently willing to pour vast resources into getting really poor results

A lot of people are right there with you on both of those, Dana. I will probably watch Conclave sooner now...(have been meaning to but haven't gotten around to it yet). I am having a lot of ex-Catholic feels, for sure

Meeting with JD Vance fucking killed him.

And who among us can blame him?

I would not want to meet with JD Vance but I’d probably try to kick the bucket before rather than after, so clearly there is a causal effect. IJS.

I am bummed about the pope though—not perfect but a lot better than the last one and I fear they will go hard-line for the next one.

Feeling that, Tep. Maybe dying after Easter is some sign that Francis is really special, as when RBG died during RH. I've been glad to know, even as a lot of my extended fam were pretty emphatic about being Not-Catholic that somebody at the Vatican seemed to understand the assignment...feels weird to be me and think I'd miss a Pope, but if I can, it's Francis.(There were things I did and said to my Catholic then-stepdad that I feel were a little narrowminded and I wish I could take them back, but he wasn't doing a Christian soldier's duty picking up online skanks on the sly, so maybe by now, it's a wash. ) AI: Was kind of embarrassed for Scott Pelley on 60 minutes talking to one of those CEOs for the second time and being all "Gee, Mr. Wizard," especially about stuff that doesn't seem like it's, well, there yet. Even if it were, let's try to learn something from all the Musk fawning, shall we?(Why do they want machines that can learn from mistakes and people who don't?) That guy straight-up said it "could cure all disease"(one day, I'm assuming, not while the robot's playing chess and all that bullshit) but I, beam of sunshine that I am, was like, "We're gonna have to die, so I think not.) I'd be worried about Nature being like "Fuck all y'all," and coming up with new ones to restore the balance.

I'd be worried about Nature being like "Fuck all y'all," and coming up with new ones to restore the balance.

Right? My consistent reaction to just about anything these techbros say is that they have not read enough science fiction because the scenarios they float have been written about and flaws both obvious and not brought up

yes, even though I haven't read tons of SF, either. Very up on the George Jetson "Stop this crazy thing!" continuum, though.