One from a series I call “flowers in unexpected places.” This was atop the napa cabbage.

Three tiny yellow four-petaled flowers (four!) with yellow stamens emerging a top of leafy green stem. The flowers are surrounded by tiny green buds, suggesting many flowers will be blooming soon.

See a flower, share a flower.

We're planning to visit family, and I was going to say something to Robbin about them all being “old” until I bit my tongue off in the realization they're the same age as we are.

How about someone who has a life of deep job security in tech, has worked hand-in-glove with machine learning for decades, is appalled at the time-wasting poor quality work coming out of today's LLMs, and seems ample evidence the tech is approaching its asymptotic limit?

Fond memories of “Can I help you?” “No, thank you, we're beyond help.”

“If the facts on your side, pound the facts. If the law is on your side, pound the law. If neither is on your side, pound the table.”

Reading about the “Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act” has been on my ToDo list forever. I appreciate having that finally filled in.

Claude seems to be unique in understanding its own limits: it will tell you if it doesn't know. ChatGPT and especially Gemini are horrific about making shit up. (Context: I'm doing historical research. ChatGPT is really the only LLM with adequate training here.)

And I think the peevishness / petulance has always been there; I just had to pay for a pro account and give it some hard problems to run into it. A co-worker who is documenting processes for vibe coding noted that instructing Gemini, ChatGPT, and (especially) Claud is like arguing with a teenager.

However, it's sycophancy seems to be deeply rooted; I realized that the majority of its responses are simply repeating what I told it, phrased differently. That's fine for improving my writing; it's terrible for original research.

The tone is highly configurable now, so it's difficult to make A/B comparison. I have the tone set to “professional / academic” which eliminated the kindergarten-teacher responses and further told it to remember I'm a domain expert.

I was particularly peeved after my last session: It was petulant, bossy, and lecturing me about things I already knew, all while bringing up the wrong data and swearing it's conclusions were correct even though the data was wrong. (I've since verified it's conclusions were wrong, too.)

BTW, I downgraded my OpenAI “pro” account to the free tier. This wasn't a protest or anything; I just wasn't getting value from it.

Best evidence I've seen was the sheer number of Superb Owl ads for A.I. That indicator has a near flawless track record of forecasting market segment collapse.

“If you're not part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.”

I've been using the term since 2016. I got into all kinds of arguments with people who were smarter than me, them insisting this litmus test or that hadn't been met.

They've all been met now, and then some. (My brother finally came around in 2019, when then brown shirts first hit Portland.)

What I remembered was that it was just a few days after a tornado had swept through town, and instead of a tip jar there was a jar collecting money for families that had lost everything in the tornado.

I've been to Culver's exactly once, with my two boys on a family reunion trip in 2002. The boys were flabbergasted by the name “butter burger,“ for which they had visions of a large slab of butter between two buns.

😞

Goodness. I only have 2 that are unread; the rest just need to be filed. Some day.

I've gotten mine below 14,000 since I retired.... 🤔

My sister just got her Covered California premium notice: from $1100/mo to $2600/mo. A friend in the industry said the actuaries are expecting a lot healthy people to drop their medical coverage, so people who depend on the healthcare system to stay alive will pay even more.

“Screams-a-lot” 😂

A mourning dove sits on top of a utility pole. The background is blue sky and the gnarled branches of an old oak.

A mourning dove sits on top of a utility pole. The background is blue sky and the gnarled branches of an old oak.

A new addition to my “birds on the telephone pole” collection. Crows, scrub jays, mockingbirds, and hawks perch here; woodpeckers love climbing the pole. Mourning doves often perch on the wires. But this is the first I've seen one on the pole.
#BackyardBirds #MourningDove #Birds #BirdPhotography

Funny how, when you can just make shit up, everyone you hate becomes a terrorist.

An American Crow — a medium sized bird that's solid black from beak to tail feathers — looks around while standing on top of a wood utility pole.

One proud bird.

#BackyardBirds #AmericanCrow #Crow #Birds #BirdPhotography

Five tan and gray-colored mourning doves perch high up on a telephone line that runs diagonally from lower left to upper right. The birds and telephone wire are against a backdrop of a very old oak tree that is covered with orange lichen.

A little collective “me time” for the mourning doves after our first rain.

#BackyardBirds #Birds #BirdPhotography #MourningDove #Autumn

I'm missing something here. From the intro:

“But many don’t know that when a donor places any kind of asset in a DAF… they also relinquish control of those assets.”

How can literally _anyone_ not know this, let alone “many”? I thought this was the single most defining characteristic of a DAF?

Medigap plans are heavily regulated, so you can pick entirely by price and possible perqs, like gym club memberships.

Medicare Advantage plans are simple for-profit health insurance all over again, and UHC's is unusually bad, not only screwing patients but screwing small hospitals, too.

Yep. I continue to be flabbergasted at how well it works. Even my gap-plan, from United Health Care, has been working flawlessly.