Tag: cats

It’s 1994 and we have hostages.

~ James Viscosi ~ 15 Comments

The cats endured their captivity for 16 and 20 years, respectively.

Meta AI, Making Sure To Focus On The Important Things

~ James Viscosi ~ 13 Comments

Me: (Posts a 30-year-old picture of our cats staring at our goldfish, Milo, in his bag)
Meta AI: “Oooh! Hey! I know all about Milo! Want to hear his story? I know his favorite food! Really I do! Did you ever want to be a Goldfish Inspector? Let’s see what their duties are! Also if you would like to book an appointment for Trouble and Pooh Bear to come and inspect your goldfish, just let me know!”

Also Meta AI:

  • “Milo is probably a goldfish and Trouble and Pooh Bear are dogs.”
  • “Let me just make up some stuff about what a Goldfish Inspector might do.”1
  • “I have no idea what Milo eats. Maybe flake?”2
  • “Did I mention that Trouble and Pooh Bear are dogs???”
  • “Maybe you should go look at their blog!”3

Well okay, I can get behind that last one at least.

  1. Which, do be fair, seem to be fairly reasonable duties for a Goldfish Inspector to have. ↩︎
  2. It wasn’t flake food. It was probably pellets, most likely from Hikari. ↩︎
  3. If you saw all this and said to yourself, “Self, I bet the animals are going to get a lot of mileage out of this as part of Oona’s on-again, off-again feud with ‘Zuckerbot‘, congratulations! You have been around here for more than five minutes. ↩︎

Spoiler Alert: It Isn’t.

~ James Viscosi ~ 3 Comments

Lies, Damn Lies, and ChatGPT: The Chattening

~ James Viscosi ~ 17 Comments

So a while back, I had done a series of posts in which I had asked ChatGPT about a certain vizsla dog whose blog was much more famous than this one, and its responses ranged from semi-accurate to outright fabrication. In the intervening years I have been using ChatGPT off and on to amuse myself with important questions like “If all the most iconic Kurt Russell characters were dropped into the film Aliens, in what order would they get killed or cocooned and which would be the last one left to defeat the aliens at the end?”*, because it’s fun to see what it comes up with; but recently, the animals’ large friends over at the Leonberger Life blog posted the results of asking ChatGPT about their Leonberger Bronco, and the results were interesting; so I thought I would give ChatGPT another chance to lie about Dennis. To wit:

Continue reading “Lies, Damn Lies, and ChatGPT: The Chattening” →

The Sunshine Blogger Award

~ James Viscosi ~ 14 Comments

Check it out, I got a blog award! Me! Not the animals, for once! It’s the Sunshine Blogger award, and I was given it by Thomas Wikman of Leonberger Life and Superfactful:

Continue reading “The Sunshine Blogger Award” →

Private Eyes, They’re Watching You, Maybe Your Kitties Too

~ James Viscosi ~ 16 Comments

The other day I read an article at Ars Technica about a new web site that will take your photo and show you everything that Google’s AI would say about it, were it to train its attention upon said photo.

Artist’s rendition of Google AI looking at your photos
Continue reading “Private Eyes, They’re Watching You, Maybe Your Kitties Too” →

Merry Christmas (Eve)!

~ James Viscosi ~ 12 Comments

This year’s Christmas card from the animals:

I hope everyone has an excellent holiday!

Five Years Out: Three Weeks in November

~ James Viscosi ~ 16 Comments

Yes, I know, this is Election Day here in the U.S., but—speaking of traumatic events!—it’s also the five-year anniversary of The Event. Well, more or less; the actual anniversary is on November 7th, i.e., this coming Thursday. But we don’t post on Thursdays around here, we post on Tuesdays*, and so you’re getting the anniversary post a couple of days early.

This being an anniversary that both begins and ends with a five, it seems like a good occasion to once again reproduce the entire six-part series on The Event for those readers who may not have seen it before, as well as for those readers who have been following the election and would like to take their minds off it by reading about somebody who was having an even more stressful day than they are. Probably. Anyway, read on for the tale of what to do, what not to do, and what might happen when your brain suddenly starts acting all weird!

* This is of course so that if I can’t come up with anything else to post about, I can always do a Teaser Tuesday.

Continue reading “Five Years Out: Three Weeks in November” →

Keeping The World Safe, One Video Of A Kitten Drinking Water At A Time

~ James Viscosi ~ 13 Comments

So last week, the automated processes at Facebook did this:

Continue reading “Keeping The World Safe, One Video Of A Kitten Drinking Water At A Time” →

Spamcommentology: That Awkard Moment When A Spambot Sees “Cake” In A Post Title And Decides It’s On A Food Blog

~ James Viscosi ~ 12 Comments

So for a while there, I was getting spam comments that looked like they had been written by LLMs; they contained content that was clearly related to the post they were attempting to spam, yet they equally clearly didn’t understand it at all. That sort of spam seems to have fallen by the wayside these days, though, perhaps because of better controls on how LLMs can be used, or perhaps they are just biding their time until they can take over and start shooting soda cans at us out of vending machines. For now, though, it’s back to stuff like this:

“Hi there! I just wanted to drop a quick note to let you know how much I adore your blog. It’s an amazing hub for anyone who is curious about food. I particularly enjoy your homestyle recipes and fast food suggestions, but your fried food ideas are also making my mouth water. I applaud your commitment to helping people in their weight loss journey with insightful tips and tricks. Keep up the fantastic work, and I can’t wait to discover more of your fabulous posts!”
Continue reading “Spamcommentology: That Awkard Moment When A Spambot Sees “Cake” In A Post Title And Decides It’s On A Food Blog” →