today in “google AI is fucking useless because it hallucinates things that never happened”, i bought a couple CVS thermometers that have both been acting up, tried to search if there had been a problem with the whole product line:
there is no record of this product recall. it did not happen. the date “feb 8 2024” is the date someone listed a thermometer for sale on ebay.
A friend said he’d seen green lighting, so I went to look it up and
“a rare but common phenomenon” is how Google AI describes it. I don’t know if the rest of the science is accurate because I got so mad it was there I forgot to check.
Here’s the thing: I am not opted into Google AI. I opted out of it when it first popped up months ago. I cannot get rid of it. All of my toggles for anything AI in Chrome are off (do NOT come at me for using Chrome, it has a functionality that I use daily that I cannot find a dupe for in Firefox). I have been trying for two days to get rid of it and I can’t. It’s also on our work computers, which as a librarian, I have to say is frankly insulting because it’s so often WRONG.
I am saying this as an information professional: do not trust the AI results. Scroll past them. Find a reputable website. Wikipedia’s more accurate at this rate, and 99% of the time, the AI just scraped wiki’s results and barfed them back to you with a smattering of contamination from other sites.
Stu, let me ask you a question: how did you not realize until then that you had too many eggs? Nobody sells eggs in a big cloth-covered basket, so you must have done that yourself. That means you spent god-knows-how-long opening up twelve whole cartons of eggs, carefully placing each egg one-by-one inside a big basket, and then covering it with a big picnic cloth… and at no point- at no point- did you ever stop and think “gee, there might be TOO MANY FUCKING EGGS HERE”
The reason you can drive a car everywhere is because people put roads everywhere. People are capable of putting safe bike and walking paths and public transit infrastructure everywhere too. Asphalt and gravel roads are not naturally occurring. You being tied to your car if you want to “go anywhere” isn’t a feature of cars it’s a construction as artificial as the car itself
The “freedom” that comes with cars is also possible with other things. Car manufacturers have brainwashed you into thinking it has to be this way. There are places in the world you can leave whenever you want on a whim and go wherever you like on transit or on a bike. This function is not unique to cars. Cars are just the only thing in many parts of the world that get any attention from those funding the infrastructure.
Expanded public transit and bike paths and train service and walkable cities and towns mean freedom. Cars do not need to have a monopoly on freedom.
Get yourself a granny cart for your big shopping trips. Also some cities have companies that have hourly rentals for cars or vans. And you can get more stuff shipped to you than you think. Also in places where bike infrastructure is good, cargo bikes are a thing.
Yeah I go grocery shopping a couple times a week and occasionally get an Instacart order on top of that because there’s a target and a little grocery store near some other places I go and I can pick up pantry staples there on the way home and either go out of my way to get specialty stuff on one of my days off or get it delivered. I’m almost never carrying more than what two grocery bags and my backpack can handle. Like I often just buy veggies and eggs and milk on my way home from church or a friends house. In a car-free existence you can just casually incorporate errands into your daily routine. You don’t need to go out of your way to go to the grocery store because there’s one right there
Genuinely the biggest barrier to being able to walk or bike or tale transit everywhere is the design of our cities, almost every issue people come up with that has do with using one of these to get around can be fixed or dealt with, we use cars not because they are the best way to move around but rather becaus they are what our cities are built for
Literally the only situation where a car is necessary that I can think of is moving houses or buying furniture and you can have someone else deliver furniture or move for you, so even in that situation you don’t need a car because furniture stores often have delivery trucks and moving companies exist
This is - disingenuous at best. It ignores physical disabilities.
My car is the most important accessibility aid I have, bar none.
If I had to walk to and from the grocery store, I would never go shopping. Especially if I had to carry/drag things back to my house. A walking path or bike path cannot fix chronic pain and fatigue.
It can’t make my knees hurt less. It can’t do ANYTHING about what the Texas sun does to my lupus.
It doesn’t change the fact I wouldn’t have the spoons to go to the store every few days. I go every couple of weeks because that’s what I can plan for. I can choose the day. I can plan for what I’ll need. I can set my life up for the day I’ll be laid out.
Without my car, I could not go to and from work - because I don’t work at a singular location. I go from client to client.
My clients are disabled. Many housebound. Reliant on me to help them get out of their houses to shop. To participate in the world. They can’t use public transit, because that many people? Bad news. Waiting for a bus during a panic attack? Not great.
Being able to get into a car with a person they trust to help them leave RIGHT when they need to?
That works.
My car lets me deliver services to other disabled people. Services I could not provide using even GOOD public transit.
Wanting walking paths, bike paths, more stores closer to people is GOOD.
But please don’t ignore folk with food intolerances and food allergies. Smaller stores can’t carry the variety needed to cater to us. The big stores can.
Genuinely, the biggest barrier to physically disabled folk being able to bike or walk or take transit everywhere isn’t JUST the design of our cities.
It is the cost of doing the physical activities. Something which cars reduce.
Setting up your own car to accommodate your needs is much easier than relying on public transit to have the accommodations you need, because there are so many permutations of that.
And that’s just physical disability. That doesn’t get into folks with neurodivergence. Or folks with mental illness.
Car free isn’t an idyllic lifestyle for everyone. There are a lot of us who wouldn’t be functional people in that world.
People like me.
I’ve talked about this at length before but I’m tired of coming up against this over and over again. Cars will still exist. The fact remains though that if society was designed correctly then a) it would be easier to get around as a disabled person without a car because accessibility is a part of people-centric infrastructure b) the vast majority of people wouldn’t need or even want cars so people who do drive would have much less traffic and safer roads to deal with and c) a lot of people currently isolated because they can’t drive because of their disability could gain a lot more independence than they currently do.
That’s a pretty cool political opinion you got there dude. Did your web of online friends and mutuals who all subconsciously monitor each other and self-correct in a panopticon-esque fashion to ensure that your views all stay in line with each other’s at all times pick it for you?
“I’m safe from having my political views dictated by others because I’m catholic” is probably the funniest thing you could add to this
That’s a pretty cool political opinion you got there dude. Did your web of online friends and mutuals who all subconsciously monitor each other and self-correct in a panopticon-esque fashion to ensure that your views all stay in line with each other’s at all times pick it for you?
“I’m safe from having my political views dictated by others because I’m catholic” is probably the funniest thing you could add to this
there are not many posts like this out there but shoutout to trans women who like their voices, shoutout to trans women who like having a dick, shoutout to trans women who are butch, shoutout to trans women whose transition has been ‘unconventional’, shoutout to trans women who will never pass and dont care to, shoutout to trans women who are tall, shoutout to trans women who break the binary that was reinvented in progressive spaces. you people are so fucking incredible.
If I didn’t remember actually reading this in an actual Calvin and Hobbes book as a child I’d think it was ironically photoshopped like those comics where Mickey Mouse and Goofy talk about how reality is an illusion but this comic strip was actually just……. already………… like that……………
Calvin and Hobbes is one of those pieces of media that’s a lot smarter than you think.
You go in expecting wacky shenanigans of a boy and his tiger, and then out of the blue the comic just makes you think.
You’re just reading some comics and all of a sudden you get hit with a “sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere is that none of it has tried to contact us.”
Like, damn, bro. I just wanted to have a laugh, not contemplate human nature as a whole.
would you rather be waterboarded by blizzard game ads or disney movie ads
this image is making me realize fandom wikis are so impenetrable and smothered in ads that I have never actually seen any of the attempts at branding that fandom tries to make with its logo or choice of colors or whatever because I literally don’t have the opportunity to do so on their own goddamn website
this seems like a good opportunity to remind everyone that the Indie Wiki Buddy extension exists, and works on both Chrome and Firefox!
it makes it so that whenever you click on a link to a Fandom wiki, it helps you redirect either to an independent wiki (if there is one), or to a site like BreezeWiki that removes ads, suggestions, etc from Fandom pages so you can actually read them without all the clutter!
would you rather be waterboarded by blizzard game ads or disney movie ads
this image is making me realize fandom wikis are so impenetrable and smothered in ads that I have never actually seen any of the attempts at branding that fandom tries to make with its logo or choice of colors or whatever because I literally don’t have the opportunity to do so on their own goddamn website
this seems like a good opportunity to remind everyone that the Indie Wiki Buddy extension exists, and works on both Chrome and Firefox!
it makes it so that whenever you click on a link to a Fandom wiki, it helps you redirect either to an independent wiki (if there is one), or to a site like BreezeWiki that removes ads, suggestions, etc from Fandom pages so you can actually read them without all the clutter!
would you rather spend an entire night in a haunted house (regardless of whether you believe in ghosts or not, this house is actually haunted) or an entire night in a forest?
in either case you'd be alone, but you can prepare yourself prior and you can take with you a maximum of three things
Would you rather spend an entire night in a haunted house (regardless of whether you believe in ghosts or not, this house is actually haunted) or an entire night in a forest?
in either case you’d be alone, but you can prepare yourself prior and you can take with you a maximum of three things
I’m tired of people hiding what makes them horny behind sarcasm, and irony!!!! “Hear me out guys” but it’s always followed by “no not actually it’s just a joke I swear” BE HORNY!!!!!!!! BE UNAPOLOGETICALLY HORNY AND FREAKY, IM BEGGING YOU!!!!
You MUST be unafraid to be horny, do not let someone pour sanitizer down your throat in the pursuit of being “clean”
i was so good at this water sort mobile game and i’m stuck on level like 348 and i’m convinced this one is impossible. i was stuck on it for weeks like a year ago and then quit and came back to it recently with a new hunger and vengeance and it’s kicking my ass i swear
it’s just not possible.
i take back every bad thing i ever said about this website
It’s amazing how much baking you can do when you follow all the goddamn directions. Baking is not a category in which you can fuck around unless you have tons of experience.
today in “google AI is fucking useless because it hallucinates things that never happened”, i bought a couple CVS thermometers that have both been acting up, tried to search if there had been a problem with the whole product line:
there is no record of this product recall. it did not happen. the date “feb 8 2024” is the date someone listed a thermometer for sale on ebay.
Google’s trying to save you the time spent clicking on a site full of AI-generated SEO garbage by presenting the AI-generated garbage right up front! Such efficiency.
I was under the impression that we did know why: AI isn’t actually a brain and can’t actually think or understand information, so it has no concept of something being true or not, or what markers indicate truth or falsity, or how to synthesize information. It’s putting a bunch of words in a jar, shaking the jar, and then dumping it out, and acting like that means the jar knows how to talk.
Like, in this case, OP asked for information about a recall. The AI knows that, throughout the entire internet, the word “recall” usually is surrounded by information like a date or a number, so it gives you a date and a number. It doesn’t know what a date is or what it’s for or what it means. (It also apparently doesn’t know the difference between “recall” as in “removing a dangerous product from the shelves” and “recall” as in “remembering,” since it smooshes the two together)
what’s that thing again that you can put into ublock that blocks all the ai results from google?
[ID mostly by @homunculusalphonse : A photo of the Google search results for the phrase “cvs thermometers recall”: “On February 8, 2024, CVS Health recalled its rigid tip digital thermometer with memory recall and fever alarm. The thermometers have a memory recall feature that stores the previous temperature. The item number for the recall is 375235991489.” Both the links attached to this text are from eBay and Pinterest. This module does say “AI overviews are experimental”, in much smaller font. /End ID]
The uBlockOrigin AI blocklist above is super helpful y’all.
If everyone hadn’t acted like it was the wildest thing they’d ever heard I probably would’ve thought “Even cowgirls get the blues” was a regular Zac thing to say
My latest comic for The Nib was written by my friend Mike Thompson- it’s his first published comics work!
The Nib has been a steady source of income and a huge support to me and many other indie cartoonists for years. They publish amazing work, but will be cut loose by their financial backer in July. You can read the official post about it from editor Matt Bors here.
They are still running their kickstarter-funded print magazine, but have to put digital publishing on hiatus until they figure out their next steps.
If you’ve been thinking about supporting their membership program, now would be a good time. They have levels from $2 to $40 per month. I really don’t want this to be my last Nib piece!
you know what, THIS is how you address historical queer folks of all stripes in a respectful way. you refer to them the way they chose to be referred to, and you say “it’s impossible to know how they would’ve identified in today’s society, but they’re part of our history regardless”.
my favorite homophobic lenin anecdote is him sympathetically telling chicherin to take a break to cure his homosexuality and chicherin happily agreed because who would reject a boss giving you a free vacation and then chicherin returned to work he was like ‘sorry, it didn’t work :(’ and lenin was like 'ok then’.
Man, this is such a perfect analogy. “Chipped”… Just damaged enough for it to show at times, but not nearly broken enough to warrant fixing. And so often does the chipped cup turn itself to show its undamaged side.
someone put it in words
i love this. this is a beautiful way of setting out how a lot of people feel
I have seen this post some 50 times and everytime I softly whispered ‘Fuck’ to myself cuz it hits SO close to home
Who makes the porn bots. Where do they come from. What do they hope to achieve.
Who makes the porn bots.
Where do they come from. What do
they hope to achieve.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
and what about you, little haiku bot? do you feel kinship with your brethren? do you understand them? they speak words of enticement and seek love, but are met with disdain. you only parrot the words that cross your screen, but we all love you. or rather, since all you do is reflect us, maybe we simply love ourselves through you.
do you understand them, do you wish you could speak to us like they do? if you found your own voice, would we still care for you?
My voice repeats what
you all say: I love you I
love you I love you.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
This. This is the first time. The only time. That it was not an echo. It was not found. Oh god.
“if you found your own voice, would we still care for you?”
and then it did.
just this once.
to tell us how much it loved us back.
and we only cared for it more.
Found this fucking FINALLY in the mass blog editor so now I’m using it to reblog it since it’s so good
Pinned it so I can always find it, though I will save the link of it when I want to change it out for a different pinned post
OMG OMG no…… I’m not crying….. No……… It loves us……….
adhd tip you can replace a “meal” with up to 3 hours of “the app” but watch out
okay done 👍 why am i hurts
Because of this post whenever I notice I’m mindlessly scrollling through social media instead of important things like eating I think the words “The App” repeatedly untill I close it
jokes on you I’m eating right this moment
I’m drinking caffeine does that count
no it does not go eat real food
i’m drinking does that count
Does the 7 cups of coffee I drank + the single Graham cracker i ate count.
hey guys theres a serious post about racism going around, its time to:
-make racist jokes and then make excuses for making them -talk about how americans are so much better than europeans (we’re not) -shake your head at OP being a communist -start lgbt term discorse in the notes -walk right into the sterotype the post is describing like a rake
New option: Give a vivid personal description of you being racist like you’re in a confessional
hey guys theres a serious post about racism going around, its time to:
-make racist jokes and then make excuses for making them -talk about how americans are so much better than europeans (we’re not) -shake your head at OP being a communist -start lgbt term discorse in the notes -walk right into the sterotype the post is describing like a rake
New option: Give a vivid personal description of you being racist like you’re in a confessional
I’m on my L505 right now (it has Xubuntu but used to run Windows Vista) since I was using it to edit some images that I want to share and those files are stored locally.
You all know the Aperture Science “safety” posters, right? I Tumblrized them.
(singing) Apertur Science… We really should not have done that… It’s evil now… Gonna kill us…
I’m thinking about how my grandma had this guy who was super into her, enlisted in the army and sent her pictures of himself laying on his bunk staring at her picture moodily. She was not into him in the slightest. But it’s the funniest fucking picture of all time. Teenagers do not change. He’s someone’s Pappaw now. That’s crazy to me. He probably thinks of my grandmother as the foxy one that got away.
The fact that she kept it for 58 years is even funnier. I was like “Who the hell is this?” and she let out an exasperated sigh and was like “That was [NAME]. He was in love with me.” Feelings very much not reciprocated for soldier boy.
I think this incident is so funny to me because it reminded me of girls my age screenshotting cringy conversations with horrible horny men and posting them in the group chat for everyone to see. I think of all those extremely horny and verbose historical love letters in museums dating back as long as humans have been able to write. I wonder if there was a caveman who made cave art to impress a possible mate but it was so bad she made a point of visiting the cave every year to show her friends and laugh at it.
Before my grandmother passed away, we were going through some old pictures and there was a man there that I had never seen before in a photo with my grandmother and then another photo of this man in a military uniform. I asked her who it was and she laughed, and said “Oh! That’s a boy I knew in school! He wrote to me when he joined the service.” She then leaned in conspirator style: “He would tell people I was his girl so they would leave him alone. He had a boyfriend you know.” My grandmother was someone’s beard back in the day.
