Passing clouds of inconsequential observations
Today we have the gushing enthusiasm of Matt Mullenweg for Midjourney‘s (a company which was described as “a bottomless pit of plagiarism” in one lawsuit) move into medical imaging. Meanwhile David Gerard at Pivot to AI gives us Midjourney AI pivots to Theranos: Ultrasonic CT. Theranos was another medical scam sucking a fortune out of the naive and gullible.
Perhaps we should ask an AI chat bot which is right.
The Another Day site reminds us that our birth was nearer some historical event than to today…
Similarly as I dig into some family history I can see that my birth was closer to many of the lives catalogued there than to today.
The One Thing newsletter had a splendid piece on The Banality of the Video Podcast. I have long been troubled by the proliferation of big chunky microphones in such videos when television has mostly moved to the barely noticeable clip on microphones.
Alas the article missed the wonderful Why We Bleep where we can enjoy bald, bespectacled, bearded blokes talking to each other:
From there I was searching for a clip of Stewart Lee and his observations about people filming themselves talking for YouTube – but am yet to find it.
I was intrigued by this drop down menu:
It opened by default at United States, presumably because Americans would struggle to find it otherwise, which is not a problem as it is a short hop to United Kingdom. But there was no UK. Perhaps it is listed as Great Britain. As we scroll to Gr we do indeed find… United Kingdom. But why is United Arab Emirates at the top? Switzerland under C? Spain under E? Croatia under H? Ireland between Indonesia and India? South Korea under K (I guess)? Luxembourg before Latvia? Mexico amidst the Ma’s? Norway before New Zealand? Sweden the first S and Taiwan the last T? South Africa can be found at the end.
Presumably it was vibe coded and just accepted as is without anybody actually checking what was spewed out. This was from a commercial site. Why would I trust you with my order if you cannot be bothered to get even such basic things right?
Welcome to our AI future — what can possibly go wrong?
While we await the return of the Loch Arkaig Ospreys (due any day now) it is good to see the blue tits have returned to the hole in the wall for their nest this year. They abandoned it while the roof was being replaced in 2023:
but are now making use of it again:
