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.