@Big_Al said: I wonder if he was working at the Erdemir plant. I worked with an engineer who was involved with a sinter plant for that company. Here is a snippet from my neighbor Joe Faloon's obit. He died in 2006 at the age of 87, so he was much older than you. Joseph and his wife Virginia both graduated from Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1939. Joseph was an industrial engineer who worked in the steel industry throughout his career, first for U.S. Steel, then Ford Motor Steel, then Kaiser Engineers, managing the creation and expansion of major steel plants, living in Turkey and consulting in Indonesia, Australia, Venezuela and Mexico.

Happy birthday, Steve. That weeding knife looks useful. My grandmother used the stub of a butcher knife as a similar implement when she was in the garden. I hope you got some dessert as good as what that picture WTG posted looks! Big Al

I asked ChatGPT where its intelligence lie and got the answer below from ChatGPT. In it ChatGPT also states that it does not have consciousness. My “intelligence” isn’t located in a single place or stored like a database of facts. It comes from patterns learned during training and from computation happening when you ask a question. At a high level: I’m a large neural network created by OpenAI. During training, the model processed enormous amounts of text and learned statistical relationships between words, concepts, reasoning patterns, coding structures, writing styles, and more. Those learned patterns are encoded in billions of numerical parameters (“weights”). That distributed pattern of weights is the closest thing to where my “knowledge” or “intelligence” resides. When you send a message, the model runs computations across those parameters to predict the most useful next pieces of language. So my intelligence is: Distributed across the network’s parameters, Activated dynamically during inference (the moment you interact with me), And hosted physically on servers/GPUs in data centers rather than in a single machine or location. It’s also important that I don’t “understand” in the human sense: I don’t have consciousness, emotions, beliefs, or self-awareness. I don’t experience thoughts internally the way humans do. I generate responses by modeling patterns and relationships in language and data. One way to think about it: A traditional database stores explicit facts. A human brain stores memories through biological neural structures. A model like me stores compressed statistical structure across many layers of artificial neurons. The “intelligence” emerges from the interaction of all those layers together, not from a central core.

On another gardening note...I really like a variety of tomato called 'Little Sicily'. Tasty tomatoes, great yields. I have purchased them at Home Depot and at a local garden center but neither had them in stock this year. I don't have a lot of opportunities to get out to do plant shopping these days, so I took a flyer and ordered them from Home Depot online; I was surprised to see them listed. I thought I would probably get a couple of spindly, broken, yellow plants that I'd be schlepping to the store for a refund. Imagine my surprise when this very sturdy box arrived with two tomato plants in it: [image: 20260516-125435.jpg] Each plant was in a small hinged "greenhouse": [image: 20260516-125343.jpg] Some of the healthiest specimens I've seen. I unpacked the plants when they came a few days ago, so they've already grown. I set up this photo so you could see how cozily they were packaged: [image: 20260516-125409.jpg] Hopefully the universe will forgive me for all that packaging. But I'll be eating the tastiest tomatoes in the 'hood later this summer!

Ax- Still, articles like this makes me question of the American car industry is still alive only because of protectionism. What politician wants to be known for putting thousands out of work?

DougG My bad

wtg, sorry for your loss. I enjoyed your post.

This is crazy. It’s not that complicated. I bake with my starter every week or two or three. I rarely if ever use fed starter, it’s usually totally flat, and I feed it after I’ve mixed up the dough and stick it back in the fridge. So it gets fed every week or two ( I almost never feed it if I’m not baking something). I never discard. I make mostly pizza dough and sandwich loaves in a loaf pan, and bagels and sweet rolls.. The bagels and sweet rolls go overnight, but the pizza and bread get baked the same day. I don’t weigh, and I loosely measure, sometimes I add a lot of starter to the mixture if I need to use some up. I add water, then flour until the dough feels right. I used a stand mixture and don’t do stretch and folds. It always works.

Bernard, I've just been through the wringer you're describing: trust, trustee, secondary trustee, power of attorney, and medical power of attorney. It's a long, intensive, and expensive process. My advice is to take it step by step, be patient with yourself, take the time you need, and be encouraged that you will accomplish your goals. It can be confusing at times. It can be frustrating. It can seem endless. You'll get there, just don't rush anything. I'll be holding a good thought for you.

Lol!

+1 re: the DNC

@bernard Did you see that Fetterman was the single vote to decide not to end the Iran debacle? He and his comfy clothes should be in an insane asylum, or he should be in prison for complicity in war crimes, or he should be in a military prison for treason, in my opinion.