The Bluestocking Women's Pub, where brains can exist in a single state

[Magpiecomplex]

Welcome all. The booze here is minimally intoxicating, the food is calorie free and the staff are warm and cuddly. And if the thread title sounds nonsensical, blame the guy Myrtle was listening to this evening!

That sums up Éanna all right! One of a kind😄

What a fright. A rescue-gerbil will be with you at any moment - I was going to say 'with a barrel of brandy around its neck' but given the size of a gerbil's neck, that's notta lotta brandy, is it?

I suppose being a Bluestocking gerbil, it should be able to magically bring you a sufficiently large quantity of brandy to steady the nerves

I tried

@MarieDeGournay

"Do you think there are trans male flower crab spiders who pretend they can change colour, but it's actually felt-tip marker??😏"

Best I could get out of the AI

Gerbil attached to barrel of brandy, rather than the other way round, to allow for sufficient quantities of restoration. Although Giulia seems to be spilling quite a bit of brandy.

Ok, that's strange. Gemini has taken to giving me a different image when I download it, compared to the one it's showing me. This is what I got originally, which makes slightly more sense!

Gerbil brandy appreciated.

I wondered earlier about the cats' reaction to Brains and Batshit's carry-on, and it would I think be on the lines of 'Look, I know, but we realised when we came on the observation mission to this planet that the wolves and the apes domesticating each other would sometimes have regrettable results. But on the whole it has been interesting to watch over the millennia. That said, I think the apes are best employed serving US'.

It's close...

So! You've been having problems with...the web! Eh! Eh!

I knew it was a crab spider. I even knew about the colour changing. They sit in blossoms and wait for pollinators.

My moment to shine and I missed it.

<knocks back a brandy, tetchy like>

Sorry Cake. 🤭

Serve me right.

<nibbles pensively on a piece of ginger cake...or a lump of housebrick. Not entirely sure which>

<nibbles pensively on a piece of ginger cake...or a lump of housebrick. Not entirely sure which>

Dunk it in the brandy, that should soften it up a bit 🤣

Sooooo my mother couldn't cook or bake, except bread she made exceptional bread as she pretended she was pounding some blokes head in when doing the kneading, but I digress, and thankfully she rarely cooked or baked.

I do however remember the rock cakes she made once that despite me and my sister throwing them repeatedly against the back wall refused to break into pieces!.

Ahhhh, happy memories!

That is quite clearly Brains, as she will hoover up all even vaguely edible spillages, explaining (with her mouth full) that she's not eaten for at least a week. She has a very flexible relationship with the truth when it comes to food.

I'd like to apologise to a patrons, gerbils, cats, capybara, red Pandas, Colin etc etc (and possibly even the neighbours) for Batshit's earlier seizure of the karaoke system, in particular her rendition of 'Who let the dogs out?'

It was my fault. Brains had promised not to feed her any more cocktails and said she'd look after her, so went about my day leaving them both in the bar. I came back to find that Brains had eaten all the scampi fries and half a box of Tunnocks. And she said that while she didn't allow Batshit any more cocktails, I hadn't banned Prosecco.

Gosie has unplugged the karaoke machine and hidden it, Batshit is sleeping it off next to the fire, and Brains is sulking, saying that it's not her fault, I should be clearer if I mean no more alcohol, and then looking smug because, oh, tomorrow will be such fun when Batshit wakes up, because there are photos.

sound like perfect rock cakes then, Boily.

Just a tad too rock like though. Seriously they were like actual rocks! 😀

Lovely Banned!!! Sooo happy to see you xxx

I'm sure AI would be capable of doing it, but whether or not it would cooperate with the request is a completely different matter.

The idea that somebody has been training AI is slightly alarming, given that it repeats the same mistakes, it makes things up, it lies deliberately when giving information, when creating an image it has a number of arcane rules that that sometimes it sticks to and sometimes it doesn't, it claims that it "can't create that image at the moment", it grovels sycophantically and tells you how sorry it is that you feel frustrated and how it can understand... it is a sinister mixture of the mad computer Hal from 2001 A Space Odyssey, and a game such as the snake game that keeps crashing just when you're winning.

So asking it to do something grown-up like increasing the DPI is really wasting your breath. If you want to improve an image, you are better off using an editing programme or app for photos and doing it yourself.

Bitter? Cynical? What?! Me?

Seriously, if you’ve a specific task like processing an image in that way, far best to use a tool designed for the job than a generalised ‘AI’. It may well be using some sort of machine learning methods but the ones appropriate to the task.

I don’t think the current generalised generative AIs ‘deliberately lie’ - they simply don’t know what ‘truth’ really means. For finding accurate information, an LLM alone isn’t a reliable tool. DH has started using a tool called Perplexity which uses AI methods to process the queries and put together the response but it uses search methods and so can provide referenced information (not just cheerfully fake ‘papers’ like ChatGPT was wont to do…no idea if that’s been addressed at all yet).

Photoshop supposedly can increase dpi but I don't have it (colleagues do but they are in France and they were all off Thurs/Fri, because May Day) and there are some free online tools too. When I have a bit of time I might try some of these to see if I can increase dpi on some older but fantastic images we have, so they can be used in future. It does feel like the sort of thing AI or machine learning should be capable to do. As it happens, I'm really happy with the solution we found, I think he'll get a lot of people stopping to look at all the wee pictures and then hopefully gets to talk to them about his research, so it's all good.
Copilot told me "this is a delightful request" recently. Why, thank you Copilot. I asked it yesterday to rephrase something for me (I'm doing a presentation at the same conference the poster is for) and I looked at the options it offered me and there is no way I'd ever phrase something like that. It would totally stand out from the rest of the presentation. I can get things wrong, I'm not a native English speaker, but I rather have my own distinct voice.

I like the sign in that picture. "The Bluestocking Is Pub". Obviously this means AI recognises that we are the Ur-Pub and the Uber-Pub, the very definition of what it means to be a pub.

I loved the sign too. Welcome back Banned.

AI's accuracy depends on energy. The effort involved to get it to 80% accurate (current response) would have to be doubled to get it to 90% and it still wouldn't be accurate enough. It is very good at rephrasing and I give it my previous work to write things in my tone.

It has also been a massive confidence boost in assessing my abilities, overriding my imposter syndrome. And in explaining health matters about my neuro diversity.

Remember, pubhood is lived, it is not biologically given or legally bestowed...

I was reading a letter to the Irish Times about the UKSC ruling, and noticed that below it was one that referred to the boul' Éanna, and it made me laugh:

Sir, -“A journey of discovery on the Dodder” was a beautiful read (Weekend, April 26th). In relation to the accompanying photographs, I don’t think we need to consult Eanna Ní Lamhna to ascertain that the third image is that of a goldfinch and not a goldfish as your caption asserts. – Yours, etc,
😂

well done, Bing, a dead ringer!

Well that was the warmest welcome I've ever got in a pub so I'm buying everyone a round. Cheers! Verbenas are not yet in a fit state to pick you a bunch . No gambolling foxcub today either