(This is for a charity I volunteer for. They do a lot of things, but selling secondhand books is one of the things I help out with.)

All packed up and loaded.

Word on the street this was a successful event. Part of this was me buying a huge slab of books I didn't need.

...

Two hours later and I'm a certified coffee snob.

Ha! I said the same thing to my mate.

I mean, I guess the business case is scamming people by launching new cryptocurrencies.

I went to see a set of startup pitches today.

Call me crazy, but if your product is a ChatGPT wrapper to produce blockchain white papers I can't see the business case.

*Young woman.

She was a teenager.

No doubt she cringed when I complimented her choices.

Book fair photo

I'm managing the desk at this book fair and a young girl came through to buy a bunch of CDs.

It was all Neil Young, Nirvana and Pearl Jam, so I said "great choices!"

Then I realized that having your musical taste approved by a middle aged man is not a compliment.

😂

Yeah, noting that I paid the 100 bucks for express processing.

Lucky I did too, as some work with travel came through this week.

🍀

Brilliant!

This stuff is stressful as hell when you're about to fly.

New passport received!

Hope yours came through @freerangestats.info

Dear academics:

You don't need to outline every project you're currently working on at the start of your presentation.

We're here for the presentation, not your schedule.

Unless the title of your presentation is "My Schedule".

I also love that it's not a sicophant.

When I've challenged its answers it won't automatically agree with me, which has pointed out areas to spend more time on.

...
My solution to this was to provide it a granular list of topics to choose from AND tell it which topics it's covered already before each quiz.

👌🏼

...
I've spent a bit of time tweaking the custom project to improve it, but the biggest problem I noticed was that it tended to gravitate towards similar topics across tests.
...

I've created this Claude #AI bot to quiz me prior to this exam and it's been *insanely* helpful.

It's such an engaging way to revise the material.

Whether it will help with the actual test is yet to be seen...

Hey @freerangestats.info

Any news?

✨✨ achievement unlocked ✨✨:
Cooked scrambled eggs on a stainless steel pan without it sticking.

👩🏻‍🍳

A long line of books

Never guess where I am.

@joeythejackal.bsky.social 😂

This month I've had quite a few people reach out to me looking for work.

This feels like a sign of a wider downturn in the sector

Unfortunately for them, I'm part of the same sector.

😬

Ongoing Tofu flashbacks Trying new food, for me, is a personal game. I look for places with no tourists, only locals. Sometimes, the dirtier, the better. I used to say I wanted to eat where the “rats eat.” Writing this now, ...

I'm not alone!

"...It tasted like opening one of those sewer lids in New York City, the ones steaming in the middle of winter, climbing down inside with your mouth open, and swallowing whatever warm, fermented liquid and mystery chunks were sloshing around at the bottom..."

I like nato, kimchi and century egg, but this was too much for me.

It's one of the only foods I've instantly disliked.

🤔

Picture of the mentioned dish.

I'm pretty open minded with food, but this was one of the worst things I've ever tasted.

They weren't lying when calling it "stinky tofu".

(It's hunan style fried fermented tofu).

😬

Tbh I've given up on relying on my scrawled notes and am just trying to make sure I'm across the material.

You'd think so.

This isn't even my full set of notes. This is just the *core* notes.

Great course, but certainly going to give me academic PTSD.

Open book exams are a trap.
😬

I've always assumed that all the major players engaged in similar scraping practices?

Is there evidence that OpenAI was any better?

The last Messiah book cover

I just finished reading "The Last Prophet" by Zapffe.

It's a short essay, but I really like his idea that human consciousness might have developed past its usefulness and a lot of modern society has emerged to shield us from the consequences of this.

🤔