WTF-Beta

Professional psychics warn about AI psychic chatbots

This journey isn’t just about algorithms or data,” an AI psychic named Urban Mystic recently told me. The chatbot, featuring an AI-generated profile photo of a smiling woman surrounded by palm trees, also said I will get married soon, that I have a pink aura and that I may have been an herbalist in a past life.

“It’s about connecting on a soulful level,” the chatbot said.

Urban Mystic is one of more than a dozen bots on the mobile app Your AI Psychic, which offers live, allegedly psychic readings via chat, video and voice calls as well as palm reading, astrology chart analysis and daily horoscopes. The app works on a coin system: each question costs 4.06 coins to ask. Users can purchase packages ranging from $9.99 for “a quick question” (82 coins) to $99.99 (1,180 coins) for “ongoing guidance and clarity” from an AI psychic of their choice.

Your AI Psychic joins an increasingly crowded space of mobile apps and websites promising users algorithmically generated spiritual insight and knowledge of their futures. The divination industry, like mathematics research, copywriting, software engineering and a host of other professions, is facing upheaval amid the AI boom – and human practitioners are scrambling to respond. The rise of AI is particularly fraught in a profession offering spiritual products that are not well-regulated.

“Our industry has, unfortunately, been associated with scams for hundreds of years, and we have to constantly be ahead of that,” said Lauryn Kellett, an intuitive coach and a professional psychic of 10 years. “So in some ways, this is not new to us: we always have to find ways to show we are real, authentic and have good integrity.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2026/oct/29/psychics-push-back-ai-readings

McDonald’s must face lawsuit over McRib, judge rules

Consumers allege the sandwich’s name and shape misleadingly suggest it contains rib meat.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/mcdonalds-mcrib-lawsuit-rcna606719

@ShiroKuro Most people live without backup power; having it is definitely a luxury. I wouldn't worry about taking the time off to look into and implement it....

@jon-nyc Same here. Overhead lines rather than underground and lots of mature trees. Spring/summer winds definitely. Ice storms are the worst. They're usually to the south of us but weather patterns have been changing for years and I think we're going to start seeing them in our area more frequently in the future. Worst outage we had was after an ice storm many years ago.

ComEd has done a lot of work on the equipment around here (at least we see some benefit from those rate increases that @daniel pointed out) and in many cases the system can re-route power automatically around the problem. Lots of times our lights will dim or go out briefly and then go right back on. The entire system is more efficient and robust, and they can locate and dispatch the resources needed to get the power back on.

We had an outage last week. It was kind of windy one day and a limb fell across the line in someone's backyard a couple of blocks away. We heard the cutout fuse pop (it's across the street from our house) and the power went out completely. Half an hour later the crew was resetting the cutout even though the tree limb hadn't been removed yet. The only houses that didn't have power were the ones immediately around the house with the downed limb. It took about four hours for them to clean up the tree, repair the damage and get the last few houses back online.

Lots of witches this year. And Mike Ditkas. Best costume went to a woman who had an inflatable octopus costume. I don't take photos of people who come to the door, but this is the costume she had on:

California update.

More than 4 in 10 names flagged as possible noncitizen voters in California by the Trump administration cannot be found on the state’s voter rolls, according to a legal filing Saturday by an immigrant-rights group.

It’s the first outside analysis of a list that the Department of Justice has used to threaten prosecution of election officials. The analysis also found that thousands of U.S. citizens appear to be flagged as ineligible to vote on the government’s list.

The contention was made in a filing by two data analysts at the University of California, Los Angeles. They analyzed the 20,930 names that the department demanded that California election officials treat as possible illegal voters by separating their ballots during the vote count on Election Day.

https://apnews.com/article/california-justice-department-noncitizen-voters-midterms-45b31d5aefb03723f0e59f6084e918d4

I'll let someone else go there....

Yup.

https://wtf.coffee-room.com/topic/3747/rip-gene-shalit?_=1793488658567

I was going to say Roddenberry...

mustache

@Piano-Dad said:

Complicated answer.

No kidding!

wtg said:

Guess I'll be donating a lot of candy to the township come Monday.

Maybe not.

Suddenly, as if from nowhere, they're all coming out....

It's Saturday. It's Halloween. Weather is OK, cloudy and cool but not unpleasant. We're an hour into trick or treat hours (3 to 7), and we just had our first six kids. A coven of witches and Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. No Toto.

Is there a Halloween Scrooge or Grinch? I'm almost thinking that next year I just won't bother at all.

Guess I'll be donating a lot of candy to the township come Monday. They collect it and send it to troops overseas in care packages.

I'd love to hear Renauda's take on this.

We have had a manual transfer switch, same setup you described, since 2000. Works great. It is a very cost effective way to get some kind of backup in case of an extended outage. But as @bernard points out, it is kind of a pain to haul a generator around to hook it up.

Standby generators are running close to $15K these days and our town has created pretty stringent setback requirements like the ones you describe that are making it near-impossible to get one installed.

These Base Power batteries are just another way to get a bit of backup so the essentials like refrigerators and sump pumps can keep on doing their thing. And a furnace in winter and well pumps if you're not on city water. Not so good for running the high-demand stuff like A/C or electric heat.

They have their own automated transfer switch, so the backup kicks in seamlessly. If you want to extend the coverage more, you can get a portable generator to use to charge things up if an outage goes on for long enough to deplete the battery.

And with the incentives (reduced electricity rates and referral bonuses), it's stupid cheap. If you can refer one person, you've covered $250 of the $295 installation cost.

Of course it's always possible that there is something in the setup at an individual house that could require additional work by an electrician so that Base can do their install. Like any home improvement project, the homeowner has to decide whether the costs outweigh the benefits.

I don't think everyone has a need for one of these, but if you do, it's worth looking into.

100 Unhinged Things Trump Did That You Probably Forgot

"Flood the zone with shit."

That's how Steve Bannon once described Donald Trump's attention-overload strategy. It's designed to overwhelm your senses, so the latest outrage erases your ability to remember the avalanche of outrages past. The "shit" part matters as well — because the goal is to make politics seem so dirty and indecent that no sane person would ever get involved in the political arena. This cedes the civic ground to hyper-partisan sociopaths.

That's exactly why combating the memory hole is essential as voters head to the polls. The 2026 midterm elections are the only structural opportunity to put guardrails on this runaway train of a president who seems hell bent on destroying our democratic norms, dividing the American people, and alienating our allies while emboldening our enemies. The result is a tsunami of sleaze: unprecedented corruption, rising costs, and governmental chaos.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/100-unhinged-things-trump-did-130000828.html

A bunch more:

https://www.boredpanda.com/winning-images-2026-siena-drone-photo-awards/

My fave of the ones in this NPR piece. Rugs in Turkey:

https://www.npr.org/2026/10/31/g-s1-150698/drone-photo-award-winners

This Halloween marks the 100th anniversary of the death of the legendary magician Harry Houdini.

He earned his reputation by freeing himself from traps that seemed impossible for a mere mortal to survive.But Houdini couldn't escape the ultimate fate waiting for him in Detroit on Oct. 31, 1926, and his spirit still haunts the Motor City.

https://www.npr.org/2026/10/31/nx-s1-6008110/100-years-harry-houdinis-death-haunts-detroit

Duh. Walkout basement. Didn’t occur to me.