(no subject)

Jun. 10th, 2025 04:00 pm
jhetley: (Default)
[personal profile] jhetley
Lore from the tribal elders, '60s era protests edition. Beware of provocateurs.

I'll never see my mom's guitar again

Jun. 10th, 2025 02:47 pm
sovay: (Sovay: David Owen)
[personal profile] sovay
Under the circumstances, I had different weird dreams than I would have expected: writing a poem, watching some incredibly threadbare film noir with no waking equivalent, hearing a performance from a musical theater star ditto. I am beginning to think the pop culture of my dreams actually is the hell of a good video store next door, leavened in the last few nights by dreams of re-reading real-life authors currently in storage like P.C. Hodgell or Joan D. Vinge. I remain physically fried, news at nowhen. At least the rain seems to have kept off the neighborly leafblowing which perforated so much of yesterday. The news continues to feel like stupidly lethal cosplay, which I remember from the last round of this administration, which doesn't make me hate it less.
andrewducker: (my brain)
[personal profile] andrewducker
Reading this article on advice to teachers in the UK about using AI, they suggest using it for things like "marking quizzes" and "generating routine letters".

And what really annoys me about this is that it's a perfect example of where simple automation could be used without the need for AI.

The precise example in the article is "Generate a letter to parents about a head lice outbreak." - which is a fairly common thing to happen in schools. So why on earth isn't there one standard letter per school, if not one standard letter for the whole country, that can be reused by absolutely everyone whenever this standard event happens? Why does this require AI to generate a new one every time, rather than just being a standard email that gets sent?

Same with marking quizzes. If children get multiple-choice quizzes regularly across all schools, and marking them uses precious teacher time, why is there not a standard piece of software, paid for once (or written once internally) which enables all children to do quizzes in a standard way, and get them marked automatically?

If we're investing a bunch of money into automating the various processes that teachers spend far too much time on, start with simple automation, which is cheap, easy, and reliable.

Also, wouldn't it be sensible to do some research into how accurately AI marks homework *before* you tell teachers to use it to do that? Here's some research from February which shows that its agreement with examiners was only 0.61 (where 1.00 would be perfect agreement). So I'm sceptical about the quality of the marking it's going to be doing...

(no subject)

Jun. 10th, 2025 03:30 pm
jhetley: (Default)
[personal profile] jhetley
Been seeing black unmarked cop SUVs around town that don't match the make and model of our regular cop cars. And the county sheriff uses a different style, also. Maine is a border state . . .

Not just hayfever

Jun. 10th, 2025 07:55 pm
hunningham: Beautiful colourful pears (Default)
[personal profile] hunningham
I have a cold. It's horrible. I am headachy & full of snot & my ears hurt. But there's some relief in saying "yes, a cold" and having a reason for why I was feeling so very very tired yesterday & why slept so badly. It's not just hayfever. Today I have spent rather a lot of time on the sofa & eaten many oranges & not fussed about work.

I hope himself doesn't catch it; he always gets feverish and sick for at least a week and ends up with a cough dragging on & on.
stevenpiziks: (Default)
[personal profile] stevenpiziks

I’ve gotten good at cookies. They’re the perfect treat—small, easily stored, and generally easy to make. The most popular home-made cookie in America is the Toll House cookie, or chocolate chip cookie, invented by Ruth Wakefield in 1938. The official recipe you find on the back of a bag of Nestle chocolate chips is almost identical to Wakefield’s original. The only real difference is that she called for the baking soda to be dissolved in water before adding it.

Over the years, I’ve experimented with the recipe, refined it, and come up with the Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe In the Whole Damn World. And here’s the recipe. See if you agree with the name.

THE BEST CHOCOLATE CHIP RECIPE IN THE WHOLE DAMN WORLD

Steven Piziks

Ingredients:

1 cup (two sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 ½ cups packed brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon baking soda

½  teaspoon almond extract 

½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons real vanilla extract (avoid artificial vanilla flavoring)

2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

2 cups 60% cacao chocolate chips (favored brand: Godiva)

¾ cups Heath toffee bits (optional)

Kosher salt

 

Instructions:

Beat unsalted butter with brown sugar until mixture turns light (about three minutes). Beat in eggs, vanilla, almond extract, and salt until well blended. 

Sift baking soda and flour together. Add half to mixture and slowly incorporate. Add second half and slowly incorporate. (This is more to avoid making a mess than anything else.) 

Add chocolate chips and optional toffee bits and slowly incorporate. Put dough into airtight container and refrigerate for at least one hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Using a cookie scoop, drop dough onto baking sheet lined with silicon baking mat or baking parchment. Sprinkle each cookie with a small pinch of Kosher salt. Bake for 13-16 minutes, until cookies are just turning brown. Remove from oven and slide baking mat or parchment onto cooling rack. Makes about 3 dozen. 

 

NOTES

The recipe uses all brown sugar and no white sugar. This gives the cookies a richer taste and better texture.

Note the recipe calls for double the usual amount of vanilla. I don’t know why recipes are so stingy with the stuff. Extra vanilla gives more flavor. 

The almond extract gives the cookies a flavor explosion, and it’s the most powerful secret ingredient.

The toffee bits are optional, but really, really recommended.

Refrigeration the dough helps the cookies keep their shape and avoid spreading in the oven.

The hint of Kosher salt brings out amazing flavor. 

 

larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (Default)
[personal profile] larryhammer
A c-novel recommendation: I Am Average and Unremarkable, a xianxia by Yue Xia Die Ying (“butterfly shadow beneath the moon”). I’ve enjoyed four other novels by the author, including serious historical romances and the lighthearted xianxia Ascending, Do Not Disturb. If you like the latter, you will likely enjoy this, as it has much the same sense of humor—and more of it.

Our Heroine, Jiu Hui, is a young yao, a word that can mean anything from spirit to monster to demon, but in this world, spirit comes closest—in this case, she’s a plant spirit, specifically a garlic chive spirit. (Yes, that’s a lol.) Other yao in this world are animals and sometimes plants that have absorbed enough power to attain sentience and, for the more advanced, the ability to take human form. Most humans, however, believe yao are inimical monsters as dangerous as demons (also present in this world), so she always presents as human.

The story starts with Our Heroine seeking to join a human cultivation sect because she’s reached the limit of what her remote yao village can teach her about human-style cultivation. Because the larger righteous sects are very into being righteous scourges of both yao and demons, she joins a small, relaxed sect. (Very small: five masters and ten disciples.) This turns out to be an excellent fit, as her apparently weak sect emphasizes evasion and deception techniques, and its interactions with other sects are best characterized on a sliding scale from mooching to grifting—and she, too, is very much a trickster figure. The story doesn’t use the term, but I think of them as specializing in the Dao of Shamelessness, though like many literary Tricksters, they stand with what’s right when it counts. Meanwhile, her Junior Sect Brother, recruited at the same time, turns out to be, ah, let’s call him socially awkward—as in, not well socialized—and he is hardly the only character with a background that is not simple.

It’s a fun book, rolled out with solid pacing. (The author notes are hilarious.) It also has a carefully laid plot that’s the spine of a surprisingly serious thematic core for a xianxia—it examines, from multiple directions, the question of when a sacrifice for the greater good, both willing and not, is morally acceptable. That there’s a literal Omelas situation is only one thread of this. Deep spoilers for the ending in rot13: Gur puvyq va gur onfrzrag vf na vzcbegnag punenpgre, naq gur abiry pyvznk vf onfvpnyyl Bhe Urebvar tbvat ‘jub gur shpx frg hc guvf ohyyfuvg gebyyrl ceboyrz’ naq qrslvat gur urnirayl qnb sbe orvat hawhfg.

I highly recommend this to anyone who’s already read a couple xianxia—it’s probably not a good starter story for the genre, as it leans heavily on convention to avoid explanations, even more so than Ascending, Do Not Disturb. It doesn’t help that the fan translation is a little wobbly (the translator particularly has trouble with verb forms). But if you have the background and can tolerate imperfect prose, this is a great read.

---L.

Subject quote from Teardrop, Massive Attack.

(no subject)

Jun. 10th, 2025 08:21 am
jhetley: (Default)
[personal profile] jhetley
Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna' be fooled again!

Gray inside and out

Jun. 10th, 2025 07:10 am
jhetley: (Default)
[personal profile] jhetley
Air temperature 52 F, wind near calm, cloudy. Rain not supposed to kick in here until this afternoon. Foraging probable.
tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
[personal profile] tamaranth
2025/088: The Walled Orchard — Tom Holt
...how Athens came to have the most pure and perfect democracy the world has ever seen, in which every man had a right to be heard, the law was open to all, and nobody need go hungry if he was not too proud to play his part in the oppression of his fellow Greeks and the judicial murder of inconvenient statesmen. [p. 46]

I owned a paperback copy of this novel -- actually two novels in one volume, Goatsong and The Walled Orchard -- for many years but did not read it. Suddenly, recently, the time was right and I was very much in Ancient Greek mode: and I am now much more familiar with the glories of Classical Greece, and the horrors of the Sicilian Expedition, than I was before. (See, for instance, Glorious Exploits.)

The narrator of the duology is Eupolis of Pallene, a gentleman farmer and writer of comedies, from his childhood survival of the plague, which left him scarred and ugly, to his old age. Entwined with the Peloponnesian War and the Sicilian Expedition are the triumphs and disasters of Eupolis' career as a dramatist and his ongoing feud with rival playwright AristophanesRead more... )

(no subject)

Jun. 9th, 2025 08:06 pm
lycomingst: (Default)
[personal profile] lycomingst
I usually take half an otc sleeping pill because my thoughts swirling prevent me from calming down. Yesterday I was very hyper at bedtime, having had a bad day, and I took a whole pill. I didn’t get awake until 11AM. Half the day gone. And it’s so hot here. Upper 90s(F). I had plans to do errands but all I did was water the plants. Yesterday the resident deer spent the day sitting under my azalea bushes in the deep shade.

My neighbor whose name I heard as Joanne is actually named Deanna. It happens. She is a talker, and knows everybody. Not malicious gossip but if you want to know how many kids someone has or who had a stroke, she’s your girl.

The Witch Roads, by Kate Elliott

Jun. 9th, 2025 01:35 pm
mrissa: (Default)
[personal profile] mrissa
 

Review copy provided by the publisher.

This is the first book in a duology, and it's the kind of duology that's really one book split into two volumes. The end of this book is merely the stopping point of this book, not in any way an ending. If that bothers you, wait around until the other half is out.

Honestly I can't tell you why I didn't love this book. I wanted to love this book. It's a secondary world fantasy where one of the central relationships of the book is an aunt and nephew, and that kind of non-standard central relationship is absolutely up my alley. It's a fantasy world where magical environmental contamination is a major threat, which is also of great interest to me. Sensitive yet matter-of-fact handling of trans characters, check. Worldbuilding that deviates from standard, check. And there wasn't anything that made me roll my eyes or say ugh! It was just fine! But for me, at least, it was just fine. Honestly if this is your sort of thing I kind of wish you'd read it and tell me what you think might have been going on here, or if it's just...that some books and some people are ships passing in the night.

(no subject)

Jun. 9th, 2025 02:16 pm
jhetley: (Default)
[personal profile] jhetley
Don't think twice, it's all right.

Helpful

Jun. 9th, 2025 05:21 pm
shewhomust: (Default)
[personal profile] shewhomust
This morning's post brought a book I had ordered (through Abebooks). It was wrapped in a black plastic bag.

On the bag was the encouraging information: "This bag is made from a minimum 30% post consumer waste plastic and can be recycled again if dispased of correctly."

But don't despair: there's a clue: more information at https://www.recyclenow.com/what-to-do-with-plastic-film. I muttered, naturally, because that's quite a lot to type, and it would be easy to make a mistake, but I copied it very carefully.

I got a 404, of course.

(The bag does have a triangle recycling symbol with a 4 in it, and the letters LDPE, which enabled me to search the website and find an assurance that I could take it to the supermarket with my other plastic bags. Good. But coldn't they just have said that?)

Thinking About Camping

Jun. 9th, 2025 08:15 am
hrj: (Default)
[personal profile] hrj
One of the things I treated myself to in retirement was a lifetime National Park Pass (because of the senior discount). Which, of course, is only useful if I actually use it. I've been thinking about getting back to doing the occasional short car-camping trip. (Short enough to leave the cats to their own devices, so mostly fairly local. But with some light cat-checkup I could get as far as Crater Lake.)

First step will be to pull out all the camping gear to check that it's clean and in good working order. I have a set-up for the back of the Element with an elevated platform bed with gear stowed underneath. I can take a bicycle, but not the recumbent (which is a good argument for keeping the fold-up Brompton).

At one point I bought a pop-up so that I can set up a larger "living space" off the back of the vehicle, which I haven't ever used yet. So I need to do a test set-up. My plan is to use some of the canvas from my old pavilion to create walls for it, so that I can use it for changing. (Changing clothes while wriggling around in a sleeping bag is for the young and flexible.) So I need to do that.

And then, of course, there's the issue of scheduling reservations, though mid-week availability will help there, I imagine. I haven't found a similar program for state parks -- there's a senior discount program, but it isn't as generous. But state parks are more numerous, of course.
larryhammer: a wisp of colored smoke, label: "softly and suddenly vanished away" (disappeared)
[personal profile] larryhammer
For Poetry Monday:

One word is too often profaned,” Percy Shelley

One word is too often profaned
    For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
    For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
    For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
    Than that from another.

I can give not what men call love,
    But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
    And the Heavens reject not,—
The desire of the moth for the star,
    Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
    From the sphere of our sorrow?


Another poem Shelley wrote in 1822 that was posthumously published with the editorial title “To ——.” In this case, —— was Jane Williams, with whom he did not in fact have an affair—he wrote several poems to her, all professing deep friendship, but he seems to have truly kept things at that level (with his history, that’s not a given). Jane Williams and her husband, Edward, were close friends with both Shelleys, and Edward died in the same boating accident that killed Percy. The word is, of course, at the end of line 9.

(That rhyme of accept and reject gets a side-eye.)

---L.

Subject quote from My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own, Connie Francis.

I AM THAT FOOL

Jun. 9th, 2025 10:40 am
madbaker: (Chef!)
[personal profile] madbaker
This week's Resolution Recipe: Foolproof Apricot Jam.
"Apricots are one of the best fruits to make jam with thanks to their natural acidity and fragrance. Plus, you don't have to peel them."
Read more... )

Letter Writers!

Jun. 9th, 2025 08:52 am
oracne: turtle (Default)
[personal profile] oracne
Love for our Elders is a program to send handwritten letters to older adults. "Our mission is to alleviate social isolation among older adults through handwritten letters and intergenerational connections."

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desperance

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