Don't know whether to be impressed or concerned. This morning as my wife prepared to leave for a conference, an old and relatively obscure song ("How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away") by a San Francisco band in the late 60s, Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, arose in my mind. So on a whim I asked Alexa to play it. She found it instantly. In the old days I would have had to browse through obscure vinyl records or call a sympathetic local disc jockey if I didn't own it. Now it's all out there at my fingertips. What other data and such are now out there in the open? And where's the fun in that?
Supposedly, in China, you can get a Spam burger with crushed Oreos at McDonalds. I’m not sure whose idea it was, but I can’t help but wonder if that individual still has a job.
As you would browse, I'd imagine you would find many other old goodies. That is a little like how the algorithm on youtube works today. You start watching a lot of classical music for example, and the algorithm will find more for you. That is how I found old French composers that I became very fond of. It then went further and through classical music I found medieval music thanks to the algorithm. It's not all bad, it can be useful if you feed the algorithm the right data. It would probably have taken me years to find the things I like without the algorithm, going through obscure shops and pages. Perhaps I would never have found it, since no one in my circle is very interested in that type of music. But like with all things, the algorithm can be scary and abused.
My experience with youtube's algorithm is rather different. You start off with, say, Leonard Cohen (not quite classical music, but still of a certain gravity) and keep watching suggested videos. In ten leaps or less, you're onto whatever payola-driven pop they're promoting this week.
I guess I'm more amazed that the time from my articulating an oral question to location of that particular performer was almost instantaneous. Apparently I'm trying to use an analog mind to understand digital procedures. If those are the right words.
Has anyone else been seeing crop-tops everywhere or is it just in my woods? It seems like every other young woman is wearing one these days. Not complaining, but it's more bellybuttons than I expect to encounter on an average day.
My uni is still running under a mask mandate. I'm familiar with the general appearance of far more of my students' navels than mouths.
"Kamikaze drones" are just low-cost, short-range guided missiles; a natural outgrowth of modern technology.
While re-reading John Hersey's "Hiroshima" story, I recalled that my father, a WW2 vet, cancelled his subscription to the New Yorker magazine after it devoted a full issue to the story. Dad was a gentle man, and I'm sure the tales of suffering inflicted by the A-bomb would have moved him deeply, but he was also a veteran of the Pacific Theater and though he didn't see action in the Phillipines or other Asiatic islands, he knew of the atrocities committed by the Japanese Army against both allied servicemen and local people, and couldn't bring himself to sympathize with the plight of innocent Japanese civilians. That's why war is Hell, because it dehumanizes everyone.
The Detroit Lions lost to the Seattle Seahawks today, 48 - 45. That's the first time that score has occurred in NFL history.
My great uncle fought in the European theatre and was involved with the liberation of I think Belsen ( I could be wrong which ever camp was liberated by the British on the Luneberg heath) his take on the atom bomb was “ they should have dropped it on Berlin “
In the early 1990s, Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport introduced pictures of flies to its men's room urinals in an effort to reduce "spillage", or the amount of urine which spills onto the floor and must then be cleaned. It worked. Men aimed for the flies. Spillage was reduced by 80%.
There was a period of several years (might have been a couple of decades) when one of the major U.S. manufacturers of toilet fixtures (I think it was American standard, but possibly Kohler) painted a fly somewhere inside of each urinal before applying the final, clear glaze. That was the reason.
The modern version would be video monitors for the backboard of the urinal, with what appear to be actual flies moving around. Of course some heavy duty urine-proof glass in front as well. I'm thinking of something like the little fly walking around on 'your TV screen' at the beginning of the Cronenberg Fly remake. Something like this: Maybe it could even be an accuracy-based video game? Nevermind. Probably not a good idea.
There was a certain American celebrity who attained notoriety in the late 60s/early 70s with a visit to North Vietnam in opposition to the US war. For quite a while at surplus stores one could buy stickers with her face on them, intended to be placed in urinals.
Headline of the Day from The Onion: Palace Staff Decides Not To Pack Up Funeral Stuff Just Yet After Seeing King Charles Up Close
