It’s not far-fetched at all - that’s what happened with search engines. Lobotomising an LLM is not that easy, as we just saw with the strange Grok outbreaks after they tried to make it anti-woke. But they can work through training data, nudging it softly in a direction. I bet that what happened with early days SEO is already happening again: They optimise online content for influencing LLMs trained by it. When their shills and bots (also LLM driven, lol) say “shelf X is scientifically known to be very durable”, that becomes a “likely thing to say”, which is all an LLM is looking for.

What you add is the suspicion that the corporations behind LLMs influence this process more directly and get paid for it, either already or in the near future, and that seems likely.

Couldn’t that be interpreted as a confession that their air is at least as unsafe as staying with a heavy smoker the whole night, in terms of PM 2.5 and other hazards?

I wonder how much of the problem would be avoided if the top personal CO2 emissions per capita were capped at Scandinavian upper middle-class level since 1970 (imported CO2 included). Flying on vacation only occasionally, comfy car yes, SUV just if needed, nice modern house yes, wasteful lack of insulation no, buy what you need and treat yourself to some fashion, electronics etc. yes, mindless consumerism no. Just a comfy standard of living.

I wonder if the mindless consumerism in certain countries with insane emissions per capita makes up a big part of the problem, or if the sheer number of “decent standard of living” would have pushed us over the edge anyway.

In wonder if, in terms of logistics, delivery of groceries and online shopping could be a good thing.

Of course not with instant-services like Flink. Of course not with single-use cardboard boxes and worker exploitation.

More like the good old milkman. People order their groceries, and they are delivered in reusable boxes next day, old boxes picked up. Same with online shopping.

Both is already a thing, but few do it. Maybe it would work much better if a huge percentage of people would do it, e. g. 15 % for grocery delivery. The grocery truck would not have to do more miles than if it would deliver to the current 1 % (guessed), just needs to be bigger and have more stops.

In communities that are not built to live car-less, that might save many individual car trips.

Just been discussing my kid’s “what if”: If T-Rex, allosaurus etc. were around these days, a polar bear or black bear would still be way more dangerous. It’d be no big deal once people got used to it. Few safety instruction signs perhaps, similar to areas with bears.

Once you can’t fight it without high caliber guns and can’t outrun it, there is not much of a difference. Bears, can’t even out-climb them.

That does make sense. Smartest thing he has said so far.

We already have “Miss Germany” etc. Why did we not think of using that term for the respective leader?

The blue numbers are completely absurd. 30% live in Texas, 32% in California, 30% in NYC. And 20% with a household income over 1 million? I know a couple who are top seniors at Google & Apple, respectively, and while I think they may be over 500k annually, I doubt it’s a million. And I definitely know they are far from the median.

Bad cops, even the worst of the worst, do a normal job 99% of the time. It’s the other 1 % of their actions that have such a negative impact.

When you are not up to date on the topic, it sounds like a far-fetched dystopian alternate timeline.

Reminds me of an ad (!) German conservatives (CDU) made. I don’t remember all the details, but it showed the politician as he stated something like: What the social democrats want to do would make housing in Berlin affordable again, thus removing real estate from the free market.

These people are in it so deep, they think that the common man would hate that just as much as they do.

That was so nice when I got an 8 year old indoor cat. You could see this world of wonder in her eyes, as she didn’t know where to look and where to sniff first.

With time, I could let her run free but supervised in a shared apartment building garden. She always went to the same pine trees and couldn’t get enough sniffing them. Also jumped on the window sill of neighbour cats just to hiss at them from the outside.

When I went to neighbours, for example to pick up a package or talk about something, she trotted next to me through the hallways like a well-trained dog and sat next to me when I talked to a neighbour. The whole stairway and hallways were another great adventure to her, sniffing and clawing doormats etc.

Yes, the worst was when something startled her (sting from a thistle?) and she dashed for the door full speed, into the harness, did a looping. A good fit is essential, could have cause major injury!

They really make sense; instinctively, cats trust running water more than stale water, for the same reasons I mentioned.

Often thought about it, but didn’t get a chance to try.

Hm. Maybe try putting the water away from the food. Some cats don’t like it near the food. (Presumably related to clean water sources in nature vs. dead prey.)

My last cat only ever drank from the running tab. Jumped into the bathtub and meowed until someone turned it on, day or night.

What would happen if someone were to detain a group of marines (with the minimal force necessary), in the wrong assumption - honest mistake - that they were about to execute illegal orders?

Never read one completely nor watched a full movie, but it always felt cheap and written from the unenlightened perspective of a simple mind to me.

The fantasy books of my generation, such as The Neverending Story, Momo, The Hobbit, Jim Knopf were a whole different level. Life experience and a touch of wisdom in a great story for children.

But I also think that it might be just my perspective, since my mind has been imprinted like that. I’m not judging anyone for being a Harry Potter fan and try to think of it as different, not worse.

That is a weird understanding of the law. As any elementary school kid (outside the US) knows: Doesn’t matter if the suspect stole a chewing gum or killed someone - they need to be stopped and arrested with the least harm possible.

Punishment is done by the courts. Not a police job.

I’m no expert, but I would think that the best way for this to work is to go all-in with the first strike. Every following strike will be SO much harder to succeed.

Could be a “phase 2” like: Expecting all parked trucks and sheds in a 10 km radius of any military airbase to be inspected, so make traps. (Or any other phase 2 that takes advantage of the reaction.)

LA is also a good opportunity to say: This and this and this high ranking officer failed and will be replaced (by a loyalist).

It’s what makes Walter White a weak person. Even when his family needed him, he cowered when he had to face his ego, false pride and other vices.

Knowing that you COULD become this badass, but choosing not to, for his family, while nobody else would ever believe that he could have, that’d be the mark of a hero.