The taste and quality of tap water varies hugely where you are. I find hard water particularly unpleasant.

wade through hundreds of AI generated pages of useless information

I personally find the best use of AI is to read those pages of useless information and summarise what I actually want to know.

Google: " hugo, show total number of posts not including pages " = advertising, a billion pages of partially but not entirely relevant information that takes ages to wade through.

Gemini: same question: Clear explanation and working examples in seconds.

They’re both google, but one knows what I’m actually trying to say and doesn’t (yet) push advertising at me.

Joe Pasquale sings it

I’m so sorry.

Vote better.

Adults saying “poop”

Am British where it’s what kids call it. For adults it’s poo or shit.

Walking on Dartmoor one cold, gray and rainy winter’s morning.

A young man in a sodden T-shirt and shorts emerged out of the mist on the same moorland path I was on. He was carrying a tesco carrier bag with a ram’s skull sticking out and what looked to be the spine stuffed into it.

Sheep die out there all the time so it was probably a chance find - but walking in what were difficult conditions so poorly dressed, but with a carrier bag…? I still wonder what he was going to do with his prize.

Oh, and that time when I drove around a corner to find five pirates pushing a horse and carriage up a hill. (It was a themed wedding and the horse was slipping on the way to the reception so the followers got out of their cars and helped push - but it earned a second glance)

And when these guys discover local auctions, the storage requirements explode. So many half-broken mowers, engines, chests of old tools - all needing sorting out, fixing and keeping forever.

Agree. Context from OP suggests it’s a sick day, but day off = paid holiday, surely?

I think I’m going to disagree with the accuracy statement.

Yes - AIs can be famously inaccurate. But so can web pages - even reputable ones. In fact, any single source of information is insufficient to be relied upon, if accuracy is important. And today, deliberate disinformation on the internet is massive - it’s something we don’t even know the scale of because the tools to check it may be compromised. </tinfoilhat>

It takes a lot of cross-referencing to be certain of something, and most of us don’t bother if the first answer from either method ‘feels right’.

AI does get shown off when it’s stupidly wrong, which is to be expected, but the world doesn’t care when it’s correct time and again. And each iteration gets better at self-checking facts.

I have been this week, for the first time.

I’m using Hugo to design a new website and Gemini has been useful in find the actual useful documentation that I need. Much faster and more accurate than trawling the official pages, and does a better job of providing relevent examples. It’s also really good at sensing what I’m actually asking, even if I’m clumsy at the phrasing.

And for those who continue to say AI isn’t really useful for learning - another thing I’ve been using it for. “write perl to convert a string to only container lowercase, converting any non-alpha chars to dashes” - I’ve learned how to do stuff like that over and over again, but the exact syntax falls out of my head after a few months of not doing it. AI is good at providing a quick recollect. I’ve already learned perl properly (including from paper books - yes, I first wrote perl a quarter of a century ago) - and forgotten it so many times. AI doesn’t prevent me learning, just makes it faster.

I found it quite preachy, but still watchable if you don’t think about it too hard.

“Oil = bad”. “Smokers = bad”. Hopper aside, the bad guys were as shallow as you can get in character development.

Plus at 2h15m it was about 45 minutes longer than it should have been, and Kevin Costner is a polarising actor for some due to his lack of charisma.

All that said, I watched it twice. Once partly to admire Jeanne Tripplehorn’s dress, which should have got a best supporting role.

It’s no coincidence that Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had such a close relationship - they thought alike.

In Britain, Thatcher is still reviled by many for sweeping changes. Killed the coal industry without giving support to the many thousands employed there and put the North into recession, took milk away from children, depowered the unions (which were too powerful at the time, tbf) and generally put the Tory Party on the London & Banks first mantra that they’ve been on ever since.

Agree, it’s a bit unfair that people are blaming Labour for trying to sort things out. The mini budget from the previous government a year before is estimated to have cost the UK £30bn alone in two weeks.

Neither. Cinnamon on Debian. Has just enough bling to be pretty and still manages not to be fat, and pretty similar to both your choices.

UK:

• Snowing in some parts of the country. First time this year. Historically we lose our shit when it snows. (England and Wales at least, Scotland are pretty good at dealing with it)
• Farmers upset at a recent budget where they get taxed on death duties above £1m if they didn’t transfer property to their kids early enough. (The French farmers are also protesting, but for different reasons)
• Quite a few small businesses going bankrupt because of the same budget. (Especially motorbike retailers who’ve suffered some other problems)
• Ukraine fired a UK-supplied missile into Russia. We’re kinda worried about repercussions, but why did we give it to the them if it wasn’t meant to be used?
• Sex allegations about Al Fayed, the now deceased boss of Harrods. “As bad as Savile”

Pretty much a normal Wednesday.

Be wary of such proof.

As a young kid in the 80s, I went to stay for three days at an adventure centre. One barn was converted to house bunk beds and there were about 20 kids of about 11 years old. Everyone else was there for a week and I joined midway, and found it difficult to integrate.

One kid, the only one who had shown me any welcome, had his woolly hat stolen. Another kid suggested searching everyone’s bags for it. There was general resistance, most kids thought he’d lost it somewhere and that never happened.

When I got home the following day and unpacked, I found the hat in my bag. Someone had planted it there, probably the kid who suggested searching bags. Taught me a lot about people, that did.

I agree. It’s theft.

HR should absolutely get involved because it’s going to really affect the working environment. And if you’re hungry as a result, you’re really not going to be doing your best work.

Twitter’s already served its purpose. People slagging it off because it’s losing money really don’t understand that it won a country.

At the speed at which government push back the retirement age, I expect something like 70 with 47 worked years by the time I’ll be old enough.

I don’t know which government you mean. Here in the UK it’s gone from 65 to 67 for men and 60 to 67 for women (Sliding scale - currently 66, but 67 when I get there, and further still for younger people), so I guess it’s happening for everyone. I started work at 16, so if I retired at the legal age I’ll have worked for 51 years.

But - that’s just the state pension which is subsistence only. If you’re smart you have a private or work pension alongside it, and you can take that whenever you can afford to, then collect state pension as well when you’re old enough.

We’ve also lost the mandatory retirement age - you can keep working until you drop, if you want to.

Honestly, it scares me a bit. I’ve known men who retired and just… stopped. Sat in their chair, or maybe went for a little shuffling walk. Dead within a few years.

I could probably retire now, finances wise, but I enjoy my job and don’t know what I’d do all day without some structure.