I have been on BlueSky for a little while. It's a lot better than Twitter (X). No bots. No trolling (so far). I got on some "starter packs" so my follower count is moving up nicely among the people I really want to talk to .... reporters, economists, and people who study higher education in general.

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Salmon behavior is amazing. Watched salmon fighting their way up tiny creeks I could straddle near a campground in Alaska.
They also taste great.

@pique said in Society is Doomed, Scientists Say:

I feel comforted that even if human society is doomed, the planet will recover without us.

No kidding.

https://www.popsci.com/science/earth-without-humans/?utm_placement=newsletter

Berkshire Hathaway, the stock that's basically a mutual fund...

A student in America asked an artificial intelligence program to help with her homework. In response, the app told her "Please Die." The eerie incident happened when 29-year-old Sumedha Reddy of Michigan sought help from Google’s Gemini chatbot large language model (LLM), New York Post reported.

The program verbally abused her, calling her a “stain on the universe.” Reddy told CBS News that she got scared and started panicking. “I wanted to throw all of my devices out the window. I hadn’t felt panic like that in a long time to be honest,” she said.

The assignment Reddy was working on involved identifying and solving challenges that adults face with age. The program blurted out words that hit the student hard and were akin to bullying

https://www.wionews.com/world/please-die-you-are-a-stain-on-the-universe-ai-chatbot-tells-girl-seeking-help-for-homework-776635

I know. I was totally amazed by what they did.

@Cindysphinx Good points and questions about what he can and cannot do, and where he stands on certain issues.

Vox has a pretty good overview, and as so many things in our lives, not much is simple or straightforward.

https://www.vox.com/health/385541/rfk-jr-trump-hhs-vaccines-fluoride

@AndyD interesting. A quick google search brings up some questionable things they did in the U.S., hopefully the UK operations are better.

@Daniel
I was in a local jewellers a fortnight ago and was shown a fabulous tanzanite ring. £13,000
I kid you not, stunning rich blue, large of course.
It's gone
(no not me😇)
but they still have some earrings...

https://bradleysthejewellers.com/search?q=tanzanite*&type=product

@dolmansaxlil yeah, it could work with two, but would not be as much fun.

Sounds like Texas.

Darn
I suspect the staff of The Onion has been leading Alex Jones to believe they want him to front their acquisition just for laughs.

@Jodi said in Grand Obsession:

I feel like some of these modern piano composers that I like have a much bigger reach than I do,

Yep. I play music by Alexis Ffrench, David Lanz, and George Winston. All of these guys are quite tall, and as far as I can tell from videos, they all have massive hands.

😑

I’ll check out the Messenger.

I need to pick my next pieces to work on after the concert is over …

I'm thinking that you may have picked up a draft of a thread that you started sometime in the past and forgot about. This platform keeps a draft copy of whatever threads and posts you started but didn't actually post.

If you start a thread but don't finish posting it, that draft will be saved and a colored bubble will appear the lower left hand corner. Hover over it with your mouse (laptop - not sure how to do that on tablet or phone) and it will show "New Topic".

On a related note...

If you start a Quick Reply in thread A but migrate away from it to read thread B, you'll find your unposted post is still there if you go back to thread A. You can erase it or finish it up and Quick Reply.

Finally, if you open a full edit screen, type something in and then Hide it, the draft gets saved and colored bubble will appear in the lower left hand corner of the screen. If you're on a laptop and you hover over it, it will tell you "Replying to (topic name)". You can just click on it and it will take you back to the thread and you can either finish up and Submit the post or Discard it.

If anyone needs screenshots, please give a holler and I'll put together a Tips and Tricks post on how drafts are handled.

Thank you

Cindy - "Part of the problem is that folks just dont understand the reasons they are struggling because the reasons are complex."

I believe this may be a large part of "how did this happen?" - that Republicans have gotten good at providing simple reasons... no matter that those reasons aren't true, they resonate with voters... Seems to me that I remember Hillary having a plan and policy for everything, but it took more than a few words to explain.

Done!

Amusing, I think. Especially the part where Musk and Ramswarthy scratch such others’ eyes out.

I intend to point and laugh.