That's a Little Embarrassing, Aithor.

Making it look easy by having a blown up image of an Aithor ad on his screen. While eating doughnuts and rocking out to music over his headphones.

This guy is SOOOOOO COOOOOOOOL.

And yeah, I know it's for an ad, and given the product, we're not exactly looking for quality here. But it's fittingly embarrassing for the product, so I like it.

HIDE ALL COMMENTS

Note 1: There are 261 comments on this post.

Note 2: I have requested that Facebook display all comments.

Note 3: Sudowrite is so embarrassed by what people are saying about their artificial intelligence novel writing service that they're suppressing every single comment on their post.

I don't know if Note 3 expresses the truth, but that's certainly what it feels like.

Again, there are no shortcuts or quick fixes.

Water, not Gasoline

Finally found a solution to get the vinyl paper off the bathroom floor without resorting to gasoline and the fumes right next to the water heater pilot light. (An expert I found online said to use gasoline, but he looked like he'd been blowed up a few times, so I was leery.)

It's just water. I let it soak into the paper for five minutes or so, then scraped it off with a metal scraper. It's even getting the adhesive, which is the thing I was most concerned about.

Ultimate goal is to strip the paper off the floor and then level it, so I can put tile down. The leveling is to stop the stupid toilet from rocking back and forth when one sits on it.

Once the floor is done, I'll move on to other work in the bathroom to get it ready to convert into a Dr. Who-themed toidy.

 

[Facebook Removes Post as if it Were Suspended on Wires]

Rest easy, friends. Today Facebook protected you from . . .

. . . my lament that a particular gravity simulator is no longer available on the internet.

They saved you from SPAM, folks. From spam.

Not from the obvious scams they allow to run rampant on their platfrom, not from the random idiot who is using my work email address to impersonate me on their platform (they won't even tell me, nor the IT department at work, who that is, by the way), but from a link that no longer goes where it was supposed to, as I pointed out in the removed post.

This is all I can say:

This arose because Facebook showed me the gravity simulator in my Facebook memories. Aww, I thought, when I saw it. That's a fun website. I 'll go play with it for awhile. But, alas, it's gone:

So, I thought I'd post about it and allow my friends to join in my lament. Alas, spam.

And seeing as about half of my memories are links to sites that are no longer there, you'd think Facebook would look and say, aw, the oldie is having trouble dealing with the internet's impermanence and the ongoing outage at the Wayback Machine, let's cut him some slack. But no.

There Are No Spiritual Shortcuts or Quick Fixes

Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve delivered a significant speech on the benefits and dangers of modern technology, including artificial intelligence, as a devotional for young adults given November 3 of this year.

A lot of my fellow online English instructors hastened to deliver its message to their students, a good thing as we deal with a trickle-to-deluge of AI-written garbage showing up in our classes.

I plan on sharing it with my students as well, but fear it won't reach those who are tinkering with the technology and "getting away with it."

Those who are leery of AI will read the message and appreicate it.

Those who are on the fence with AI will read the message and hopefully avoid the easy pitfalls AI offers.

Those who are already using AI will read the message and maybe think twice, but I suspect for most of them the intent won't reach the core.

I confess to being a lazy person. But I look at AI and think, no, that's not the solution. The solution, as Elder Bednar reiterates several times in his speech, is work, and while I'm not necessarily a fan, I recognize that's the way to go.

The full text of his speech is here.

The text of the church's guidelines on AI use, which he references, is here.

I very much appreciate Elder Bednar's message. The crux of it is here, where he cautions those using AI to not let it deprive them of their moral agency:

As you strive to learn the gospel of Jesus Christ and perform the work you have to do, I specifically exhort you to be wise in your use of contemporary technological tools. Innovations such as artificial intelligence [can] both (1) assist you in receiving magnificent blessings and (2) diminish and suffocate your moral agency. Please do not allow the supposed accuracy, speed, and ease of modern technologies to entice you to avoid or circumvent the righteous work that invites into your life the blessings you will need. My beloved brothers and sisters, there are no spiritual shortcuts or quick fixes.

He goes on to say this:

Now beware. The ease of use, perceived accuracy, and rapid response time that characterize artificial intelligence can create a potentially beguiling, addictive, and suffocating influence on the exercise of our moral agency. Because AI is cloaked in the credibility and promises of scientific progress, we might naively be seduced into surrendering our precious moral agency to a technology that can only think telestial. By so doing, we may gradually be transformed from agents who can act into objects that are only acted upon. And we may unwittingly help Lucifer to achieve in mortality what he was unable to accomplish in premortality.

Truth is knowledge of things as they really are. Artificial intelligence cannot simulate, imitate, or replace the influence of the Holy Ghost in our lives. No matter how sophisticated and elegant AI technology ultimately may become, it simply can never bear witness of the Father and the Son, reveal the truth of all things, or sanctify those who have repented and been baptized.

I remind myself that all things have a spiritual component, including what we use our brains for and the things we submit as our own in even secular settings such as school and work.

He does not dismiss AI as useless, and even suggests we should not hide from it. There are legitimate uses, but the caution is in letting something else do all the work for us. That takes away our agency, he says, and turns us into things that are acted upon, not something that acts. We should use the talents God has given us. We should develop those talents through righteous work, not through easy shortcuts.

Ladies, A Word

Trying to fathom why men do what they do?

Maybe James Thurber can help with his short story "The Private Life of Mr. Bidwell," published in The New Yorker in 1933.

The beginning:

From where she was stitting, Mrs. Bidwell could not see her husband, but she had a curious feeling of tension: she knew he was up to something.

"What are you doing, George?" she demanded, her eyes still on her book.

"Mm?"

"What's the matter with you?"

"Pahhhhh-h-h-h," said Mr. Bidwell, in a long, pleasureable exhale. "I was holding my breath."

This seems to be Mr. Bidwell's greatest sin.

He does it at home. He does it at parties. He says it's deep breathing, good exercise. But men reading it know better. He was doing it just to see how long he could hold his breath.

Ask any man, they'll tell you. They might even be familiar with this scene from the film "The Right Stuff," and wish they had the power of a John Glenn or a Scott Carpenter:

I have to spoil the ending of the story for you. The Bidwells end up divorced, with Mr. Bidwell unprepentant after many pleas from his wife to change his ways.

The ending paragraph:

George Bidwell lives along now (his wife remarried). He never goes to parties any more, and his old circle of friends rarely sees him. The last time that any of them  did see him, he was walking along a country road with the halting, uncertain gait of a blind man: he was trying to see how many steps he could take without opening his eyes.

This little story is just one of the many reasons I love James Thurber.

Welcome, Little Mac

Welcome, Little Mac.

I saw this bear buried in the bulk item yard at Deseret Industries and decided the following course of action was required:

1. Take a picture.

2. Text that picture to the family, asking if anyone needed a bear.

I didn't bother checking my phone as we continued to wander the store because I figured no one would want this bear of unusual size. You'd think, old as I am, that I should have recognized the peril in that innocent photo and jokey message, because shortly after our oldest and I left the store we were back at the store ensuring the bear had not been purchased before my wife could arrive for a close inspection.

Needless to say, and despite its flaws, the bear is now in our home, awaiting refurbishment, and startling us as we catch view of him unexpectedly in the kitchen.

Thus the unofficial nickname "Little Mac," which my wife decided to adopt for the critter when I told it to her.

The name comes from a MASH episode featuring a full-sized dummy a chopper pilot uses as a counterweight when he has to fly in only one casualty. The dummy is used in a practical joke at camp and ends up torn to bits. Hoping that doesn't happen to our Little Mac.

Google is Spun Up about Something

So, those of you in the know: What does it mean when Google tells me a handful of pages on a blog I haven't posted on in years cannot be "indexed."

Is that bad? Should I care?

Google doesn't explain in their email.

Also, their reasons for not indexing are cryptic to a noob like me:

1. "Alternate page with proper canonical tag" (4 pages)

2. "Blocked by robots.txt" (2 pages)

3. "Crawled - currently not indexed." (1 page)

I mean, I'm not losing sleep over this. But you'd think if this were a concern to Google, which also hosts the blog in question, they'd do a better job explaining why.

They also included this handy graphic to help me visualize the problem:

Which I am unable to upload right now for some reason. I'll have to try later when Google is less concerned about my "indexing."

They did let me upload. Eventually.

The Tells of AI Writing

Universities are working at the speed of, uh, universities, to help teachers counter students submitting work completed by artificial intelligence.

Students, of course -- at least those looking for shortcuts -- are on AI's bleeding edge, using all sorts of AI tricks to make their "work" easier.

But here's the thing: Detecting artificial intelligence writing is pretty easy, even without AI detectors.

I'm not going to reveal my secrets here. First because there are likely developers on the bleeding edge of AI who are already aware of AI's weaknesses, but also because in case they're not, I don't want to aid and abet. But AI writing is obvious on its face, and is mediocre writing at best.

Part of me wants to continue calling out students who use artificial intelligence to write their essays.

A growing part of me, however, is leaning toward just grading the AI writing and giving students the grades they've earned with their "writing."

Not necessarily Fs, of course, because AI isn't that bad. But it's not churning out A level work. Or even B level work. And in many cases, barely C level work. So use AI in my classes, and you're going to get the grade you deserve, whether I "detect" your use of artificial intelligence or not.

Agreed, that's not what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to fail those students, report them to the university and all. But I'm not sure that works to deter the behavior, even if they get expelled from the university. But getting mediocre grades for AI writing -- and consistently mediocre grades, time after time -- might make them think about how good AI is.

And maybe I'm fooling myself. Could be. But it's more entertaining that way.

Standard Frying the Brain Time

November now. That means going back to Standard Time. Which in our neck of the woods means pitch darkness at 6 pm and gradual darkness in the morning until there's no sun left at all and my seasonal depression kicks in.

I spent today mostly on my butt -- feeling ill. Picked up a bug from somwhere. Don't know where. It seems to be fading, but I'm certainly glad I took the day off work. Not that I want to burn through that personal leave, but I felt really blah.

All because some idiot wanted more daylight after work so he could collect bugs.