Roads are not flat. There is a crown in the middle and they slope down to each side so water does not pool.

For centuries, stages were “raked,” which is to say they sloped towards the audience to make it easier to see action at the rear of the stage. After hundreds of years, someone noticed the rake made sets fall down and required sawed off legs on chairs. So the rake has fallen out of style.

For much of the 20^th century, the ground floor in a movie house was flat, because it was cheap. Some began to rake the seats, a gradual slope up to the back. Most modern cinemas have what is called stadium seating (after the sporting venues), with a more pronounced rise.

A longtime friend of mine listened to Last Lie on YouTube at my request. Then he sent along a link to a Cayce documentary.

YouTube generally offers you videos using an algorithm based on what you just watched. It can’t understand the lyrics, so it goes with the title, category, notes and author. Normally, when someone listens to one of my songs, automated offerings include another song of mine, someone else’s love song, or sometimes the theme to Schindler’s List. Offering the Cayce documentary is unprecedented. Perhaps coincidence doesn’t exist. Serendipity? Vicki prefers synchronicity.

Cayce talks about how reincarnated souls will meet and work together. I met Vicki by looking for the tallest woman in the room; what happened next seems to have no other explanation than reincarnation. Our first rodeo clearly took place a long time ago.

In one of my many (unfortunately frequent) stints in the hospital recently, a doctor (following the script to feign bedside manner) said, “Can I answer any more questions?”

My smart alec response, “Yes, what is the meaning of life?” did not draw the usual shrug. I should have noted her name, so I could thank her. In my mind I can see her over to the right, next to the wall, turn to look at me and say, “What do you think it is,” making a joke into a serious question. “Spreading joy and loving kindness.” I had never said it so clearly and succinctly. Cayce said we would be confused until we understood out spiritual journey. He was right. I’m not confused anymore.

Continued Here

Thank you Jared White on LinkedIn for posting this meme and pointing at I Now Prefer To Compare Generative Models To Leaded Petrol

Why is this meme is on a page about Large Language Models/Not AI? It should be obvious to the casual observer.

Link O’Rama
Want more Computer Chronicles?
Paul Video, New and Old
HOT FRESH AI LINKS
LLMs Earn Praise When Not Used Stupidly
NOTAI/LLMs: Songs For Our Times

Produced under the supervision of the American Society for the Protection Of Human Writers. No LLMS/Not AI were used, abused or injured in the production of this column.

A Bundle of Briefs

A tip of the PSACOT Hat to my long-time friend Joe Kashi; from now on, the AI subsection of This and That will be subtitled:


IDIOTS ON PARADE
Meat Proxy Turns Viral
Like most old guys, I am usually on the trailing edge of new terms. Not this time. A Meat Proxy is a person who forwards AI-generated text, code, or other output without reading, understanding, or validating it. The person acts only as a relay between the AI system and the intended recipient.
…
Bill Gates Gets With The Program. On His Own Website: An epochal shift. The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical. We need a plan to ensure that the good outweighs the bad. In the New York Times: Bill Gates Warns A.I. Is More Dangerous Than Big Tech Will Admit
…
Scientists Found Evidence That Al Builds Internal Models of the World
There’s a fierce debate at the heart of Al: is a system trained only to predict the next word just a fancy autocomplete, shuffling surface patterns, or does it secretly build a model of reality inside itself?

=== end Idiots On Parade

Parton Tribute Planned
Let me add my weight to the idea that Sept. 25 should be Dolly Parton day. (9-two-five, get it?) Like May 4 (May the force be with you, Star Wars), and March 14  (π day). Shower down other such if you know them.
…
Coyote V. Acme Deemed Not So Innocent
My friend and former editor Joe Brancatelli Finds  Coyote vs. Acme Problematical. Also How the Anvil Was Nearly Dropped on ‘Coyote vs. Acme’ New York Times: (Free from me to you) The live action-animation hybrid comedy fought a real-life studio battle to win its theatrical release
…
Norm Sandler Fund Donations Required
My friend, my best man, a terrific and successful journalist, Norman D. Sandler died tragically at age 53. The best memorial for Norman is MIT’s Norman D. Sandler (1975) Memorial Scholarship Fund. Give generously, that MIT students from Iowa may receive financial support.
…
Collective Nouns
I could swear I had done an item on collective nouns before, but the Internet says no. Nicky Mee just discussed them. They fascinate me. An ostentation of peacocks, an exaltation of larks. Turns out there are also collective nouns for professions: a sentence of judges, a doctrine of doctors, a melody of harpers, a superfluity of nuns and a prudence of vicars.
…
A Gaggle Is Not What You Think
Along the same line, the spirit animal of my college paper, The Tech, is the turkey. A half century ago, it was widely believed that the annual headline on the board election story, Gaggle Cops The Tech Board used the collective noun for turkeys. Turns out gaggles are geese, Turkeys come in rafters, gangs, or posses.
…
Original Thought
A tip of the PSACOT hat to Clark Smith, for reminding us, via a quotation, that LLMs are not the only unintelligent entities on this earth.
“Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.”
–Fran Lebowitz
…
The Movies on TV
A Tip of the PSACOT hat to Daniel Dern for forwarding this from the Boston Globe: From “Network” to “Anchorman,” the movies don’t seem to have the most generous read on the small screen.
…
Jingles Stuck In Your Head
I don’t know if you’re ashamed by how many of these you know, but I only missed one, the one about short-shorts. I guess I was just too far out of the target demo. And there’s one that generated a vile joke: “That’s the sound two babies make when you drop them in a vat of acid.” Proving once again that children are not yet real human beings.
…
Fly Me To The Moon, Eagle Scout
Even some Eagle Scouts I know are unaware of the fact that every man who has set foot on the moon was an Eagle Scout.
…
Quote Hunt: Who Doubted Paperless Office?
In the early 1980s, when Office Automation was a thing, an industry consultant (Gartner? Lecht? Baharin?) said “The paperless office is about as plausible as the paperless bathroom.” Did librarian Jesse Shera say it before his death in 1982? (using the word society rather than office)? Most likely the consultant was quoting Shera, or merely restating the obvious. Also: more paper is now used in offices than ever before.

But First These Important Words From Our Sponsor
NOTAI/LLMs: Songs For Our Times
AND: Trump’s Election Meddling Erodes Our Democracy. Urgent. Must Read. Free link.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program–the actual item that goes under the headline.

This is my repeating Labor Day item. One-third of the public (according to surveys) doesn’t know what day it is.

This year, I am celebrating by posting a column almost entirely filled with fascinating items that I don’t have to write… except this one, which I first wrote years ago.

I am a life-long supporter of, believer in, student of and beneficiary of the American Labor Movement. I know writing is not really labor.

I am a beneficiary because my father, who became a Teamster after selling the family dairy and remained one for the rest of his life, was able, with just a high school degree, to provide an upper-middle class life to our family of four which included regular vacations, a terrific pension and great medical and dental coverage. Take that, gig economy. For that matter, take that, non-union American journalism.

Alas, with the exception of three years in the Wire Service Guild at AP and UPI, and 11 years in the American Federation of Teachers as a teacher, I spent most of my working life without the protection and support of a union. The Oregon Journal, a Newhouse newspaper, was the stepchild of a bitter strike, so I worked with a staff full of scabs. Wonderful people, great journalists, but most with start dates during the strike that destroyed the paper’s independent existence.

CMP, where I spent 21 years, used to say it didn’t need a union because the company treated its employees fairly, and for the most part that was true as long as the founders were in charge—less so later.

I have been attributing this “never done any” quote to AFL-CIO leader George Meany for decades. I still contend he said it, even though the Internet disagrees. Turns out it is from G.B. Shaw’s Man and Superman.

Poet Octavius Robinson: “I believe in the dignity of labor.”

Chauffeur Enery Straker: “That’s because you’ve never done any, Mr. Robinson.”

Some of my thoughts on labor and class.

The very best in crowd-sourced Internet humor: top5list.com

The locker joke is mine; I was bullied in high school, but I was too big to be shoved in a locker and too heavy for a swirly. So it turns out sticks and stones may break your bones, but words from morons never hurt me.

This meme courtesy of Nicky Mee