WTF-Beta

Russian "Chopsticks."
See if you can get to Rimski Korsakov's contributions; those are quite masterful.

Just have a feeling that we will get more of them, hence this new thread.

First installment:

@Mik said:

Yeah, that sugar as the main ingredient throws me off. I'd prefer a natural peanut butter with a good jam on it.

Would you not also get lots of sugar from jam?

Was looking at some stats provided by OpenRouter.ai (a business/platform that helps other businesses/programs direction their AI-related queries/workloads to different AI models/providers; so this is geared more towards business/programmatic use of AI models rather than direct consumer use).

Screenshots captured on 2026-04-25:

It's amazing how the landscape of fundamental AI models is basically a bipolar world: the USA, or China.

Claude (Anthropic), Gemini (Google), OpenAI, Grok (xAI) are made in the USA.
DeepSeek, Kimi, MiniMax, MiMo, Z-AI, QWEN are made in China.

Germany with its famous "German engineering," India with its army of IT professionals, Japan with its dominance in high-end consumer electronics, South Korea with its humongous electronic component manufacturing capacities, the UK and the entire European Union with their combined economic might ... it's like they don't exist in the global AI tech race.

More so than most people, I like to manually "close" unused apps on my mobile devices as a matter of habit.

Still, if availability is what you want, it's easier and more effective to have multiple devices.

In a household with multiple people, this comes naturally.

For singles, a low cost way to achieve that is to simply keep the old device when you "upgrade" to a new one, and use a prepaid SIM -- severely limited data, but cheap to maintain. (Used to be that you can just swap the physical SIM card, but as newer phones stop supporting physical SIM, a second SIM is now needed for the second phone.)

Inflation.
Peanut cheaper than hazelnut.
I look forward to trying peaNutella.

I stumbled upon this video that got me thinking:

The title notwithstanding, it goes pretty deep into how intonation affects lyrics and song writing, and why certain languages have more trouble adapting to certain pop genres.

To the extent that I compose and improvise, I do so for instrumental music, I rarely think about lyrics. Not sure if I agree with the various theses and arguments put forth in the video, but it got me thinking.

@Mark said:

More labels. Ugh. The Baby Boom was a distinct time frame after WWII. period. The term "boomer" I want nothing to do with nor do I share any of the mindset associated with the derogatory term "boomer". If I have to call myself a member of generation Jones to escape such a label I am proud to do so. I know people of the "boomer" mentality that are not even close to be being born during the baby boom or even a Gen-X'er.

OK, boomer.

Engineers call this a "complex system."

I have lots of dimmers, lots of LEDs and fluorescent lights. I also have a sensitive hearing. I hear things that I am fairly certain can be attributed to my lights and dimmers. I try not to think about them.

Ringtone inspired piano works:

Someone good with English grammar please enlighten me: is it more grammatical to say "the boys are not alright" or "the boys are not all right"?

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/15/tax-day-republicans-sell-big-beautiful-bill-00871677

The headline there is "... Republicans struggling to sell their cuts."

So a question popped into my mind: which one is harder? Selling a tax cut or bankrupting a casino?

Your thoughts?

https://www.house.mn.gov/sessiondaily/Story/19051

House lawmakers weigh proposed 'wealth tax' on assets over $10 million
...

The proposal basically is to levy an annual 1% tax on "taxable wealth" above $10 million, where "taxable wealth" is calculated the same method as that calculated for federal estate tax.

Is it rational?
We have had locals voting against Walmarts and Home Depots, nuclear generators, Amazon warehouses, wind generators, energy pipelines, ICE detention centers, cell towers, etc. This time, it's data centers.
Is it rational this time?

The commies are winning ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/13/business/energy-environment/china-energy-battery-grid.html?unlocked_article_code=1.alA.rW-a.Z3d9kgOfzttP

Now the war with Iran has laid bare the risks of reliance on Middle Eastern oil and gas. Countries are realizing that all paths to renewable power run through China and its exporters.

Even if a cease-fire between the United States and Iran helps ease disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, the shock has already grabbed the attention of governments worldwide. Faced with energy shortages, they are accelerating efforts to upgrade their power grids, bringing them to the doorstep of Chinese companies eager to supply them.

Where's that Andrew Young?
We need to talk universal basic income.

Now you can call AI "boss."

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/ai-store-sf-san-francisco-bay-area-andon-labs-market-boss-rcna267013