Notices by David Njoku (davidnjoku@mastodon.world)

My son & I are doing some research.

US: Gemini, how much DNA do we share with hippos?

GEMINI: We share 97% of our DNA with hippos. Did you know they are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom?

US: Wow! How much DNA do we share with gorillas?

GEMINI: 98%. They are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom.

US: Huh? Who are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom?

GEMINI: Chimpanzees and bonobos. We share 98.7% of our DNA with them.

#ArtificialIntelligence #AI

@BeAware Doesn't it mean something subtly different?

He's at the hospital = there is one large hospital in our town and that's where he is.

He's at a hospital = he's in a hospital I'm not familiar with.

He's at hospital = This is less about a location and more about his state of being. "He had a fall." "Oh no, is he alright?" "No, he's still at hospital."

My wife filled out an assessment form for my son because she thinks he might be autistic. When she gave it to me to read I had a bit of a shock: every word felt like a description of ... me.

I don't know how I feel. I think the word is discombobulated. I've been reliving every incident from my life.

"Dad," my son had asked, "what would it mean if I'm autistic?"

"It changes nothing," I said. "You'll be the same loveable person."

Those are words I need to hear myself too.

#autism

@skinnylatte Would you only use these acronyms in writing or would people use them in conversation too?

@evan I was this close to at-ing you! 😃

Question for people who know about this sort of thing:

My 10 year old son has wanted a Nintendo Switch forever. He's never had any sort of console (he barely even gets a go on my phone), but is beginning to feel really left out.

Should I buy the new Switch 2 or can I get away with just buying him a Switch? I don't want to spend a whole lot of money, but I don't want to buy something that'll be obsolete in months.

#Nintendo #Switch #nintendoswitch

@Fragglemuppet Are we talking about the type of musical you go to a theatre to see (love them) or the type you watch on TV or at the cinema (not fussed)?

@LoganFive My wallet is always in my back right-hand pocket. My keys are always in my front left hand pocket.

I once thought I'd lost my car keys and had to walk all the way home. Turned out, I'd put them in my front *right* hand pocket by mistake.

True story.

@kims A doctor once said that to me - "Take 2 paracetamol and 2 Ibuprofen." - but I never do it cos it somehow feels wrong, like it must be an overdose

When I've got a slight headache, I take two paracetamol. But when I've got a raging headache I reach for ibuprofen.

I don't know for a fact that ibuprofen is more effective than paracetamol. But the word - "ibuprofen" - sounds more ... angular in my mouth, than "paracetamol".

It's Bouba and Kiki all over again.

@healyn If you change your mind about the ragtag squad of specialists, can you put me down as the glasses-wearing geek who's deadly with nunchucks?

To be clear, I am NOT good with nunchucks, but I'm happy to watch a couple of youtube videos about it.

Random Nigerian fact for you:

During the civil war, Nigeria used starvation as a weapon of war. Over a million Biafrans died, mostly kids.

Eventually, the rest of the world came through with food donations. Norway, for instance, sent a dried cod product that they barely ate called stockfish.

That was 55 years ago. Now stockfish is an indispensable part of Nigerian cuisine. We spend tens of millions of dollars each year importing it from Norway.

I guess generosity pays.

#Nigeria #Norway

@TheBreadmonkey On the surface, I agree with you; it's almost as if I added "breathes oxygen" in my bio. But I think what those people are doing isn't so much announcing that they don't like these bad things, but rather letting you know that this is what they'll mostly be posting about. That's how I've always read it.

Sometimes I need to remind myself that while I despise the Russian govt, I have no beef with the Russian people.

Growing up in the small town of Jos, Nigeria, I devoured Russian literature - Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Pushkin, Chekhov and the likes. I loved it.

But those dudes were all from the 19th century. With the exception of Nabokov, I don't think I know any contemporary Russian authors.

Is the culture dead, or am I just out of the loop?

#literature

@mountdiscovery The race is this weekend?
Fantastic. Looks like I'm going to experience my first Formula E race 😃

@roadriverrail

While we're busy laughing at the fools who voted for the face-eating leopards, let's take a minute to remember all those who warned about this happening - but are still having their faces eaten.

And, following Trump's phone call with Putin, that seems to include Ukraine and all of Europe.

I can't see how the Western alliance is going to survive 4 years of this man. America is no longer a reliable friend - or, possibly, a friend at all.

@evan I'm guessing that the overwhelming majority of people who voted yes are American. I can understand why; you dislike Trump, hate that he's president, and wish there was a way the rest of the world could fix the problem your compatriots have caused by voting for him.

But we can't. America is the biggest, strongest country in human history. We hate Trump too, but using our military against him will be suicidal.

Sorry, you're going to have to fix this problem yourself.

@futurebird I remember a David Attenborough documentary about plants from a few years ago. They sped up plants' movements and it made everything they do seem intentional. Sped up, you can see how vines reach around "looking" for branches to climb, for instance.

It revealed - or seemed to reveal - that plants think and act, and the only reason we don't realise it is that they operate on a different timescale from us.

@wiredfire I'd love the honesty if people said, "I want an LLM that has the same biases as me." Instead we pretend that ours are good and theirs is bad.

A couple of years ago, Dall-E and Bard refused to generate images of Black doctors. They seemed to think that doctors had to be white. There were barely any complaints - until Google overcorrected and started generating images of Black founding fathers. And that made all the front pages. Hmm, strange.

I'm a little tired of people complaining that DeepSeek won't answer questions about Tiananmen Square. Where was this energy when OpenAI refused to answer questions about US politics? Try asking Gemini about Donald Trump's felonies and see what it says.

(I am not equating Chinese bad things with Western bad things. But I am tired of the intentional blindness that we all sometimes have.)

#DeepSeek #OpenAI #Gemini