Idaho Is Scared of Posters, I Guess

A news item.

And this is the poster in question, which should be plastered everywhere:

Back in March, the West Ada School District near Boise forced a teacher to take this poster down from a wall in her classroom. She rightly refused, left the district, and found a job elsewhere.

Now the Idaho Attorney General's Office has ruled that any school in the state wanting to display this poster is breaking the law.

It's odd to see people scared of inclusion; of offering a token to show students they're welcome.

Big scary, scary posters frightening big men who ought to know a lot better than that. Becuase I guarantee if someone of their ilk wanted to display a poster or sign in a classroom and others were against it, they'd have their knickers in a twist.

Obviously, a copy of the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, for example, could be said to express an opinion or a political point of view. Should they be banned from display in Idaho schools?

I'm sure the AG's office could write an opinion that would dance a tango around such a prohibition. But banning speech is banning speech.

One Month Left

Well, I guess a little over a month.

Five weeks, to be exact, and I have to be back working in the office.

Here's what that looks like:

Work from home: Be at my computer in the basement, talking with others at various locations via phone and email, working to revise documents and get them approved.

Work from the office: Be at my computer at the office, talking with others at various locations via phone and email, working to revise documents and get them approved.

I won't be required to be "on location" with the bulk of my customers out at the Site. I won't have to take the bus, or get up early, or get home late.

So the work I do from home won't change a bit when I go back to the office.

Help it make sense, because it doesn't.

The Housing Market is, Shall We Say, in Need of Some TLC

Lexi and Keaton are moving back locally and are hoping to get into a house.

Of course the housing market is weird, locally and nationally. Really high prices and the like. Makes me appreciate how lucky we were getting into the home we have now, at the nadir of the 2008 real estate collapse.

We took Lexi to see a house in Iona on Saturday.

Should have noted some red flags right away.

First of all, these are the only two photos of the house on the listing. No interior shots whatsoever. We'll get to that in a minute.

Then, the description:

I emailed the agent to see how much "TLC" the house required, but never heard back. We were contacted by a different agent through Zillow, however, so we set up a time to see the house.

Obviously the phrases 'great potential" and "this home does need some TLC" told me there was some work the house needed, but I thought we should at least see if it was cosmetic or if it were more structural.

I did not take any pictures, though I probably should have.

First of all, here's a view from Google Street View:

Not necessarily flattering. It's got an addition that looks like most of the town of Sweet Haven -- like it was built in a couple of hours.

Currently, the city is resurfacing the street and putting in curb and gutter, so the fence is mangled and a good portion of the driveway is missing.

We had to access the house through the back -- and the real estate agent put his foot in a hole and fell as we were walking there.

Once inside, well . . . you could see why there were no interior pictures on the ad.

An addition had been built on the back of the house, and it's clear the roof -- even though metal -- is leaking like a sieve and the ceiling in the two added rooms is either collapsing or bowing noticeably. The first room we came into was covered in bird feathers; that was after we got through the outer door, partly kicked in, and the interior door, locked but not looking all that secure.

The house stank of animal droppings, and there were a few on the carpet that looked like it had been plenty tromped on with muddy feet.

I don't know how they can ask for $230,000 for this house with a straght face. You'd seriously have to trash it out and put an easy $100,000 or more into it to make it even partly habitable, and that would likely include demoing the addition on the back of the house and putting a new roof on, so more like an additional $200,000.

This is not a house with potential or one that needs TLC. It should probably be torn down so the new owner could start again on the land.

I felt bad bringing Lexi there, but it was an eye-opener for them. They're going to either have to spend more money on a house now, or rent a while when they move back until the market has a correction.

Thanks, dirty_sanchez

 

This lovely little rhyme is from a book called "Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book," published in London in 1744.

I had a feeling that the third line, "barley butt," meant something more than just an odd grain-related insult. So I did some googling. Then I put on some PPE and clicked on the Urban Dictionary link and found this:

Thanks be to dirty_sanchez for confirming my hunch there was someting more going around.

Buck Rogers, Jim Rockford, and that Infernal Roller Disco Music

Listening to the pilot episode of "The Rockford Files" this morning as I work. He goes into a disco and suddenly it's the music from the Buck Rogers roller-disco scene.

But he's only in the disco for about five seconds. This pilot is poorly edited, even if it features some snappy music.

And while I know someone thought this was really neat, watching this scene was cringe-inducing then, and it's cringe-inducing now.

Against All AI Authority Except my Mom

So this is interesting.

Per this article at Futurism.com, teachers, researchers, and other professionals have started to notice certain writing styles popping up from ChatGPT, and likely from other large language models.

Thing is, I'm not sure I see these patterns as horrendous as reported -- certainly not use of the em dash, which I use a lot in my own writing.

From the article:

"As AI-generated text is becoming increasingly ubiquitous on the internet, some distinctive linguistic patterns are starting to emerge — maybe more so than anything else, that pattern of negating statements typified by "it's not X, it's Y."

"Once you notice it, you start to see it everywhere. One teacher on Reddit even noticed that certain AI phrase structures are making the jump into spoken language."

Pay particular to the italicized sentence (emphasis mine). It's an enormous red flag not that LLMs are corrupting the language, but that programs used to detect it are going to be outpaced as common spoken (and, yes, written) language evolves thanks to these artificial intelligence structures. Like it or not, we are going to lose the battle against AI in the written, and likely spoken word.

Do we give up?

No. But we can certainly point things out. But not in a rude way, because right now even my students whom I'm confident aren't using AI (or at least all that much AI) to write and churning out essays that sound like they always do, per author Terry Pratchett's description of newspaper language in his Discworld novels: As if the writers "have their bums stuffed with tweed."

I'm going to focus less on hunting out AI and focus a lot more on praise for students who turn their own phrases, who take risks, even if they end up taking them down blind alleys, because these are the students who really want to learn how to write or communicate. Those who want the easy way out through AI are going to take it, and technology is going to make that increasinly hard for us to detect. But that ought to help make the original, awkward, bumbling human-sourced writing stand out more. Those are the students I want to help.

Way too Late at the Movies: To Kill A Mockingbird(!)

I add the (!) in the title because, as my oldest son and I watched the movie unspool this evening, I realize that while I have seen parts of this film, I don't think I've ever sat all the way through it.

Two little asides first: William Windom, instantly recognizable as the prosecutor. Then Robert Duvall as Boo Radley. I had to stare at him for a while before I saw it; maybe I'm used to seeing him as an older actor.

Nevertheless, what a spectacular film.

A daring story to tell in a book and in a movie at the time. We could use a few more movies like this.

Much is said about Gregory Peck's performance -- and the praise is deserved. But considering the cast as a whole, I have to say there's not a bad performance in the bunch.

And regarding the controversey over the first draft of the novel, "Go Set A Watchman," that dared paint Atticus Finch in racist tones, I've got to say while I haven't read the book, I'm glad it exists. It serves a different purpose than what was published first, showing the jarring complexity of life at the time, something we'd do well to look at today where we elevate people to the status of hero until they do or say something unorthodox and have to be toppled from the pedestal and rendered human. We could all do with a bit of introspection as to our own behavior and see that while we want to believe we're saintly, we sin as well.

Lincoln at Gettysburg, by Garry Wills

I enjoyed reading Garry Wills' "Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America."

The book analyzes the rhetoric and context of the Gettysburg Address in a lot more words than the actual address includes.

While I have to believe Wills' analysis is spot on, I was most taken by two quotes from Lincoln on the subject of war:

Actual war coming, blood grows hot, and blood is spilled. Thought is forced from old channels into confusion. Deception breeds and thrives. Confidence dies, and universal suspicion reigns. Each man feels an impulse to kill his neighbor, lest he first be killed by him. Revenge and retaliation follow. And all this, as before said, may be among honest men only. But this is not all. Every foul bird comes abroad, and every dirty reptile rises up. These add crime to confusion. Strong measures, deemed indispensabe but harsh at best, such men make worse by maladministration. Murders for old grudges, and murders for self, proceed under any cloak that will best cover the occasion.

~Abraham Lincoln, "Speeches and Writings," 2.523

I read this in context of finger-pointing over bad actors at recent protests, and thought this portion of the quote pertinent: "Every foul bird comes abroad, and every dirty reptile rises up. These add crime to confusion. Strong measures, deemed indispensabe but harsh at best, such men make worse by maladministration. Murders for old grudges, and murders for self, proceed under any cloak that will best cover the occasion."

Bad guys are going to show up at protests and under that cover, do bad guy things. Those who were there to protest get blamed for the bad guys being there, doing bad things, "sullying" the protest, no matter how pure.

Then there's this:

When our own beloved Country, once, by the blessing of God united, prosperous and happy, is not afflicted with faction and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand og God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals, to humble ourselves before Him, and to pray for His mercy -- to pray that we may be spared further punishment, though most justly deserved; that our arms may be blessed and made effectual for the re-establishment of law, order and peace, throughout the wide extent of our country; and that the inestimable boon of cirivl and religious liberty earned, under His guidance  and blessing by the labors and sufferings of our fathers, may be restored in all its original excellence.

~Abraham Lincoln, "Speeches and Writings," 2.264

I can't imagine any president saying this today and not igniting a furore from those not religious, missing the mark in Lincoln's call for humility and repentance, ideals which certainly apply to those who believe in a Christian God or not.

Petunias and Birds

 

On to better things.

1. The petunias have really taken off. Michelle's not necessarily smitten with petunias, but they certainly do like the places we've planted them. I think they look great, and she agrees.

2. The baby birds have moved on. We hope under circumstances of being able to fly off and find lives beyond the hanging basket on the front porch, but we don't really know.

The internet tells me robin fledglings are fairly competent filers 10-15 days after hatching, which puts the time about right. It was amazing how quickly they grew. I don't know why I suspected I'd see adolescent birds flopping around the nest waiting for mom and dad to come home with a meal. . .

The birds' presence in the hanging basket didn't really do our petunias there much good, in part because I had to wire the irrigation dripper away from the center of the basket because the parent robins didn't like where it was hanging. I've taken that wire down and maybe the petunias will do better after that.

Huh?

The fence project I mentioned in my last post is finished, but not as I'd like. Some neighborly complications have arisen. More on that later, hopefully resolved.

Fence Replacement 2025

All I know is this:

1. This section is the more sturdy part of the fence I still have to replace.

2. She's a hot one today, Mommy. [Wipes brow with toupee.]

Strangely, I was able to yoink the old post that was in this position out of its concrete base and pound the new one into the same hole. The old post was slanty, but I was able to get this one straight. I also added a new cap of concrete about four inches thick on top of the old cap to help stabilize the new pole and prevent it from adopting the slant of the old one.

The next post will be fastened to the existing gate post. Beyond that, I have at least three other tall posts and four short posts that'll have to be yanked out and replaced because they're all leaning to the north.

And yes, I'm using the old bones of the existing fence to brace the new post, giving them one last hurrah before they're cut up for firewood.

So far, I have not had to buy any new materials. I've had two posts sitting by the side of the house for the past year or so, and I used up some Quickrete I had left over from fixing a hole in the basement bathroom floor. I will have to go buy some cedar slats and two-by-fours to fill in the gap, plus some lag bolts so I can attach the second post to the gate post, but that's it. I also want to fix the gate so it swings better as I do this part of the fence. Next I'll move to the front and work on things there, including cleaning up where the camper winters.

You Were Supposed to Be this Colossus

So I thought I'd give ChatGPT a shot at the whole miracle pill thing.

This is what I got:

The phrase "miracle pill with the chocolate coating" is typically used metaphorically and isn’t tied to a specific, real-world product. It usually refers to:

1. A Difficult Truth or Hard Solution Made Easier to Accept

Much like how medicine is sometimes coated in chocolate or sugar to make it more palatable, the “miracle pill with the chocolate coating” represents a tough but necessary remedy or truth that’s been made easier to swallow—often in the form of a persuasive message, attractive packaging, or emotional appeal.

2. Marketing Gimmick

In marketing or self-help contexts, this phrase can point to a too-good-to-be-true solution—a product or idea that promises miraculous results, dressed up in appealing language or visuals to get people to buy in without question. It’s the kind of pitch that sounds irresistible, but the “miracle” often doesn’t live up to the hype.

3. Pop Culture or Satirical Usage

It has also been used in pop culture (e.g., in movies, books, or songs) to satirize consumer culture, quick-fix mentalities, or the way society seeks instant gratification.

If you’re referring to a specific product, book, ad, or quote, feel free to give more context, and I’ll pinpoint it more precisely.

(Emphasis mine.)

I have to give *you* context, ChatGPT? That's cheating. You know it's been used in pop culture, so explore a little bit more. You were supposed to be this colossus; this great legendary thing, and yet he gains.

Sure, I understand the LLM concept that the more I put in, the more I get. But it's interesting that ChatGPT just comes up with these generalities. OK, so it's been used in pop cultre. You can't give me any examples? I don't understand why.

A 'Cloak that Will Best Cover the Occasion'

"Actual war coming, blood grows hot, and blood is spilled. Thought is forced from old channels into confusion. Deception breeds and thrives. Confidence dies, and universal suspicion reigns. Each man feels an impulse to kill his neighbor, lest he first be killed by him. Revenge and retaliation follow. And all this, as before said, may be among honest men only. But this is not all. Every foul bird comes abroad, and every dirty reptile rises up. These add crime to confusion. Strong measures, deemed indispensabe but harsh at best, such men make worse by maladministration. Murders for old grudges, and murders for self, proceed under any cloak that will best cover the occasion."

~Abraham Lincoln, "Speeches and Writings," 2.523

Lincoln wanted to avoid war, for many reasons.

So do I.

Markedly, when we see riots and protests outside of war, what Lincoln says of war here holds true. Thos foul birds and dirty reptiles rise up. We see those outside the protest wanting to equate the honest protestors with those foul birds and dirty reptiles, thus sullying the noble and just reasons people protest.

We need to stop that, the equating and the sullying, and regard the foul birds and dirty reptiles for what they are: Opportunists, taking advantage of a situation to do ill because the see a "cloak that will best cover the occasion."

We need to recognize bad guys will use good protests to do their dirty deeds.

We Put our Faith in Llama4

I know there are a lot of people out there putting a lot of faith in not only Blast Hardcheese but also the large language models of artificial intelligence. But the more I look at what these LLMs produce, the more I want to pat them on the back and say:

Miracle Max: "Have fun stormin' the castle!"

Valerie: "Do you think it'll woik?"

Miracle Max: "It'll take a miracle."

[Both] "Byeeeee!"

To a certain audience of humans, what I've written here has two obvious references, first to The Princess Bride, and next to the MST3K version of Space Mutiny.

But to any LLM, the context of these references is absolutely alien. An LLM could comment on what I've written, but without the context I and some readers have in this situation, the response will be more nonsensical than anything else.

And this is what inspired this post:

Maybe I'm being unfair to LLMs. This could just be Meta cluelessness. But I suspect all LLMs are built on the same technology and are probably just as clueless as Llama4.

I'm sure there are a *lot* of references to "miracle pills" and "chocolate coatings" on the internet for these LLMs to scrape and study. Some of them might even be from The Princess Bride. But since the LLMs only know how to put words together based on the models it has in its database, it has no idea which of the references are pertinent in context. Maybe they'll get better at that over time, but it's going to be through human tweaking, not through anything the LLMs do themselves.

I suspect, however, there's enough context here to at least help Llama4 narrow the possibilities down.

The message was posted by the Cinema Shorthand Society. So the LLM could at least consdier the context of cinema. That certainly would narrow down the possibilities.

That and the fact miracles pills AND a chocolate coating are mentioned. Even with that context, someone unfamiliar with the film could do a good boolean search on Google (miracle pill AND chocolate coating), find The Princess Bride, and deduce it's the correct context, based on the poster.

Until then, it's back to the fo'cas'le of the Pequod. Which brings in possible references from Moby Dick and The Simpsons to name only two. Only my audience knows which is the most pertinent context.

Way too Late at the Movies: Going Postal

So I'm a big fan of Terry Pratchett.

I'm also mildly aware that some of his books have been turned into movies, whether "movie" movies, mini-series, or animations. I've seen a few of them, and generally felt the ones I've seen have missed the mark.

"Going Postal" is among my top five Pratchett books. I got to watch the TV mini-series today. And, alas, it also misses the mark.

There is much good to be said about the film. Richard Coyle as Moist von Lipwig is about perfect. David Suchet as Reacher Gilt *is* perfect. If they haven't cast Charles Dance as Lord Vetinari in other movies, that's a crime against humanity.

Many of the supporting players are also fine, including those who play Stanley and Mr. Groat.

I absolutely loved how they handled Lipwig's guilt bubbling up through the "new" technology of the clicks, right down to the word cards and melodramatic poses and that odd, quick early-movie pacing.

But they messed with the plot. Or one of the plots.

Mr. Gryle, the banshee. Sorry, the "words" killed him? Maybe my recollection from the book is fuzzy, but I know it didn't happen that way. Maybe the words helped. But Stanley and Mr. Groat were certainly involved. Maybe they had to trim that part of the story for length. But it was done poorly.

And wow, they gave the Golden Suit short shrift. Maybe I glanced away and missed it, but in the book Mr. Lipwig getting the Golden Suit was a moment. In the film, he was just suddenly wearing it. Again, maybe I missed something.

Some of the other tinkering made less sense. Why send the contest message to Uberwald, rather than, where was it, Genua? And to the sunburned/allergic tit of a wizard there, who was cut from the movie entirely. A lot of the showmanship that made Lipwig a charming, oily character was missing. And they really did Adora Belle Dearheart and Sacharissa Crisplock wrong. There's a lot more to their characters than what appear in this mini-series.

Crispin Horsefry, I imagined as much younger, and I think he was depicted so in the book.

I know it's like shouting into an empty room, comparing books to their film/TV adaptations, but there was enough tinkering with this story it's not one I need to watch again. I'll just stick to the book.

But it is good evidence to have in hand when the Brits complain about "American meddling" in British stories in American adaptations. They do it too, and needlessly so.

"Cute" Musk

I saw the following posted on a propaganda satire page on Facebook:

A lot of the commenters are tittering at the idea of Musk being controlled in this way, but I see something really, really toxic here.

Sure, it's cute to imagine him getting patted on the head like this. We love the idea of the hated "genius" being revealed as a controlled moron.

But as this kind of behavior continues, the controllers are eventually replaced by fellow travelers who accommodate the genius not so they can avoid damage to the company but because they believe the golden boy improves everything he touches. The insulation erodes and becomes replaced with something worse than Yes-men.

DOGE is an excellent example of this. A lot of people are cherring that Musk and Trump had a falling out and that Musk has left DOGE behind. But he left DOGE behind, churning away at the guts of the government, run by those people who believe their man can do no wrong. But since Musk is gone, the hysteria around DOGE has crumbled markedly, even though it's still there doing it's "job."

A few see it:

HORSES

I didn't expect to see four wandering horses while at the Griffin Family Reunion in Farr West yesterday, but that's what we saw.

In and of itself, watching the loose horses was only mildly interesting. More interesting was watching the growing crowd of people who gathered to help corral them (I didn't help because, clearly, as the crowd grew, they had enough people, and the only thing I knew about horses at the time was that there were four loose and running on the road nearby).

First, they wandered up to a house where someone popped out with a little dog and shooed them away. Then, one by one, three men arrived, ostensibly to corral the horses, or they could have been just wandering by.

Then an older couple arrived in a truck and pulled into the driveway of the house where the horses has scurried into the back yard. I had no idea if they were there to help, or were just going to find a surprise.

Then -- no kidding - four motorcyclists, three with riders, pulled up. They parked at the same house and all began a merry chase, first capturing one horse, then two in rapid succession, but then fighting mightily to corral the last horse, who I pegged as the ringleader.

Read as it all unfolded here.

Closing In

It's hard to see, but I'm closing in on having my the camper bathroom finished. I didn't really want to re-hang the shower curtain, but Michelle talked me into it.

The rail is up, but not yet the curtain. It was filthy, from disuse and the leak, but I ended up hand-washing it in a tub in the back yard. Once I get that up, I'm declaring victory.

As Charles Emerson Winchester III sang when he was forced to choose between scrubbing sheets or bedpans by a belligerent Major Houlihan, "This is the way we wash our sheets. . ."

Stupid Videos

There I was, talking with my two older kids about the golden age of the Internet like the fossilized fud I am.

"I remember there were video upload sites before YouTube. My favorite was 'Stupid Videos,' because it was FULL of the pure stupidity the Internet was built for. Took forever to download and watch a 30-second video, but it was always worth it."

Then I discover that Stupid Videos IS STILL LIVE ON THE INTERNET.

I will not be sleeping at all tonight. I have about fifteen or so years of stupid videos to catch up on.

Baby Bird Update

 

About time I offered a bird update.

All four eggs hatched, and both Mom and Dad have been busy feeding the little Bernie Sanders lookalikes.

Michelle is having much better luck getting pictures than I am. It's fun to see them all pop their heads up when food arrives. One of them was sunning it's little head on the edge of the nest earlier today.

This one is from a few days ago. When they peek out of the nest, they look like little Bernie Sanderses.

This is a photo from today:

This Earns a Gen X "Meh."

It seems some in Generation X want to shed that moniker in favor of "Gen Goonie."

While I like "The Goonies," my laid back, slacker reaction to this is:

Part of me has never really understood the labeling of generations. I guess from a historical standpoint, it makes sense to help discern between eras in a way that crosses (some) cultural boundaries, though I suspect this is mostly an American (as in, United States of America) affectation. Maybe not. I don't know, and it's probably not all that important to know anyway.

In other words: I'm fine if some of them want to call themselves Gen Goonie. I'll stick with Gen X, because, meh.

Phone Voyage, and Pertinent Questions Thereof

I took this 3.4-mile, 8-minute trip today. I listened to a podcast on the way through my phone.

When I got to my destination, I couldn't find my phone, but the podcast was still going.

About a minute later I realized the phone had made the trip while resting on the driver's side cowl, where I set it while loading the car. How it stayed there the whole time I have no idea.

Isaac, of course, comes in with the pertinent questions:

On the plus side, the trip netted me $25 and some change on two bins of crushed aluminum cans and steel. Had I lost the phone, though, it would have been a costly voyage.

Want Less AI Slop? Stop Looking at AI Slop.

Got to admit, the first comment visible on this AI slop Facebook profile asks a fair question.

The answer is likely in the rest of the question posed: It's highly likely the entire account is AI-generated and run by bots, no humans involved. They're in it not for the history, nor for the discussion, but for the clicks and any resultant revenue the clicks bring.

I understand the frustration these sites bring. I comment randomly on obvious scam posts, and though my comments are delightfully snarky, the engagement the comments offers is exactly what the posters want. The more comments, the more traffic the posts get, the more money they earn.

Thus the rise of AI slop. Nevermind if the text is accurate -- it's likely it is, but that's not what is going to engage the reader. Readers will stop and look at a photograph, and if it's obvious AI slop like this -- grok the tail of the plane appearing in the center of the aircraft -- the natural response is to stop and engage in a rage over the AI slop. We become part of the chum machine, earning these people microsopic bits of revenue that, over time, help these people earn a living.

Again, this is an excellent reminder that on Facebook, the product is *us*. Our clicks and pauses and comments is what they want. Yes, even the pauses. If we pause over something, the algorithm notices and uses those pauses to offer up more like content, to get us to pause even longer.

And this is the future, to the seers and prognosticators. That's what they want us to do. I'm getting tired of it.

The only solution, of course, is to aggressively block the AI slop shops. It's a constant whack-a-mole game, because when I block one, two more pop up. And the blocking effect lasts only temporary, because what matters most to the algorithms is the collective pause, the collective traffic, not what individual accounts block. This is anecdotal, but I have noticed that I can spend an aggressive fifteen minutes blocking one evening, and the feed clears, only for the same kind of slop to appear in my feed the next day.

But I gotta admit, looking at AI slop, particularly this fanciful bomber impacting a fanciful Empire State Building, is like driving past a car wreck. You can't help but look.

Babies!

Mama Robin has had at least two babies, with what looks like one more on the way.

Michelle managed this photo today. I also got the sprinklers started, so they get a fresh shot of water three times a week.

She keeps a tidy nest.

Oh the Places I Go . . .

Two things:

1. A crossword puzzle led me down a rabbit hole of movies featuring flying cars, and I discovered the first film of said genre, called the "? Motorist" was produced in 1906, when films and cars were all relatively new.

2. The version of it I found on YouTube has a soundtrack by John Phillip Sousa, showing that Monty Python's Flying Circus has precedent in selecting Sousa tunes for filmed comedy.

The version of the film here has no sound, so I don't know if the other version with the Sousa soundtrack is the original pairing, but I like to think it is.

Also, this must have been considered the artificial intelligence "fake video" of the day, yet it led to things that we enjoy now.

I Forgot I Put This on Google Maps

I don't know if someone else can come in and put something else there, or if I'm the only one who can see this there. I guess I never thought of that. But I have put a review on Google Maps that has gotten a slow bit of attention over the years.

We Broke the Mailman

Saturday, the mailman came to the door with a package. I signed for it.

Forty or so minutes later, we left the house and the mailman was still parked by the mailbox. No big deal. I figured he was having lunch in the shade.

We ran some errands then came back home.

Our neighbor Kathy asked me on Facebook if we broke the mailman.

No idea what she was talking about. "A tow truck came and took him away "

Huh.

Ah, Internet Drama

I generally try to avoid drama, Internet or otherwise.

But given what the Internet has become these days, drama can be hard to avoid.

Example: I recently joined a Facebook group that looks at animation. It's a wide-ranging group that looks at the craptacular 1970s offerings of Hanna-Barbera to the oddities of animation from behind the Iron Curtain.

A fellow posted an image of an animation cel he'd found and was interested to know if anyone else recognized it. I could see it was clearly Hanna-Barbera, but I wasn't certain I'd seen it before. I did a Google Lens search and it came up as a cel from a show called "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids," which looked like a Scooby-doo ripoff. I'd never heard of the show.

I wasn't certain if the other guy had done such a search, but figured it was worth a shot. Worst they could do was say they'd already done such a search, and move on.

So I posted a response.

I was immediately told that my response was wrong by another postedr, and that the evidence I offered was incorrect.

Not having a dog in the fight, I replied "My bad," and went on.

But the original poster looked at what I offered and agreed with me that it was indeed where the cel came from. And he went on to chastize the other guy for being rude. I didn't think he'd been rude at all. There was a little back and forth, and it appears it's still going on a bit.

I found the episode in question, and it certainly does provide home to the characters in the cell. But man, talk about terrible Hanna-Barbera cartooning.

I mean it's not the rank snobbery I encountered on the 2001: A Space Odyssey Facebook group, but it was starting to feel like it.