Notices by Zach Weinersmith (zachweinersmith@mastodon.social)

When describing what a fruit tastes like, do you have a set of fruit primitives? Like a sort of fruit primary colors that are used to explain other fruit..

Bonus panel here: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/safe #smbc #comics #ai

For those interested, my new book got a super positive review from Kirkus, one of the major book reviewers, and notoriously stingy with good reviews. Hope kids agree!

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/zach-weinersmith/sawyer-lee-and-the-quest-to-just-stay-home/

Which is closest to your view?

Full comic here: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/peace-4 #smbc #comics

One other thought: possibly it was not a human culture shift but an Internet composition shift? Like, early Internet overrepresented dorky young men, and that likely affected what was considered appropriate or problematic.

Like, one of my earliest weird experiences with LLMs was when bing chat came out. I asked it "what is the most popular content searched for on bing." It started writing about porno for a bit, then abruptly everything disappeared and it said it couldn't answer the question. Which is strange in multiple ways, but most odd that Bing AI can't tell you the most searched for thing on Bing. The same servers will deliver, like, racist vore cartoons or whatever, but the Ai has to be squeaky clean.

Do you think of LLMs came out in, say 2003, the major players would've allowed nsfw mode? Like to my knowledge there was never serious pushback on search engines indexing basically anything legal, even if it was deeply offensive. Is that a culture shift or is it more about how an LLM feels like a human being, rather than a mindless indexer.

Nerd confession: I've read hardly any Pratchett.

But yesterday, my 12 year old got loaned a copy of Wee Free Men and read it front to back in, like, an afternoon. And then was quoting it to me for hours.

Help me, what does she need next?

Available now!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/weiner/parenting-an-smbc-comic-collection

Thanks for your support, everyone!

Bonus panel here: #smbc #comics #math

Another wild result using LLMs to solve math problems. https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/1smehbo/stunning_ai_breakthrough_gpt_54_solves_erdos/

I continue to be amazed how little people care about this compared to automatic PowerPoint presentation generators and Ai girlfriends.

Hey cybersecurity geeks-- so it seems like anthropic now has really good exploit detection ability. Do you think this makes offense or defense harder? Like, seems like everyone might have to go through a battery of automated checks before deploying stuff into the world.

I think there's an extent to which activism and artistry are opposed, in that the former is trying to achieve some end now and the latter is trying to make things that are permanent and not about the present.

But there are rare exceptions, such as Orwell, or Arthur Koestler or especially Hunter S Thompson. I fine Thompson particularly compelling as someone who can take an article on a thing that happened last week and somehow let the whole universe peek around its edges.

I don't see this is a bad thing the editors did. I can see why they wanted to do it, and probably would've done the same. But I suppose it's a casualty of such an era that the Great Conversation, about free will, language, mathematics, etc. gets hard to hear over all the shouting.

So, there used to be an NYT column called The Stone, which did essays about philosophy. They ended in 2020, but had 3 compilation books.

One of the interesting things reading these books is how, post-Trump, I would say the essays become much less interesting, because you can (I think?) feel the editors and writers suddenly wanting to grapple with current events. The focus necessarily gets narrow and reactive.

Hannah Arendt is another, though I'm less a fan of her writing style. Dickens is another, and Gaskell maybe my favorite. But there's a real skill in trying to see what's out your window (or on your phone) as part of the sublime movement of history.

Hey geeks! We're ordering extra blank mugs for the upcoming Mother's Day, but if you want one of our statistical parent mugs, please get your order in. https://smbc-store.myshopify.com/products/good-parent-mug

One of the weirdest things to me about the tech scene for AI is you regularly hear variants on "Super-human intelligence is coming next year and will permanently alter life as we know it. Prepare your business and finances accordingly." Setting aside what you think about the first half, how does the second half make any sense? Like... what would you do differently, other than move to the woods?

Dunno if I've mentioned I here, but my wife Kelly does a podcast with our friend Daniel Whiteson. One of my favorite running themes is Kelly Ruins Cool Science Facts. In the middle segment of this one, there's a really good bit about the widely repeated idea that giraffes and bats have special blood valves. https://omny.fm/shows/daniel-and-kellys-extraordinary-universe/listener-questions-34