I hereby inaugurate the annual @Dura_Ace Hydraulic Stamp Trophy, given to the commenter who manages to comment despite being significantly injured or severely ill as he or she types. Bonus points for the most spectacular injuries or incapacitation
Anyone who actually dies while commenting gets a Lifetime Achievement Award
It's a nice idea but I have a couple of quibbles. First, "significantly injured" or "severely ill" - I think we'd need @Foxy to adjudicate on the real seriousness. Having a leg drop off is pretty serious but a headache or chest pain could also be serious.
As for the "Lifetime Achievement Award", apart from the notion the last thing you do in your life is to write a comment on PB and press SEND sounds a little trite, you may be surprised to hear we've had people come on this forum with one identity and suddenly depart. Yet, and this is the strange bit, a new poster comes on who writes in exactly the same style as the person who departed - what a coincidence.
We would need some solid proof said poster is no more and hasn't just faked their own demise like John Stonehouse or Reggie Perrin.
In all fairness, we have lost some fine posters down the years - we all have our favourites among the departed - mine was @MarkSenior
I've posted on here when I was in Durness in Scotland, after having fractured my elbow on the Cape Wrath ranges. And I think I posted a few months later from hospital when I had meningitis - or at least shortly afterwards.
The two most serious medical complaints I've had in years, and they happened within six months of each other (and might have been connected - a doc thinks the bang on my noggin I got in the fall might have damaged my head enough to allow the virus in later.)
Unsurprising. Sepsis is missed quite a lot, I believe.
I REALLY admire her for emphasising this dreadful fuck up was nothing to do with evil Tories, austerity, Brexit, NHS cuts, whatever
It is the real and mediocre NHS, prone to unaccountable errors, which deep down we all know, despite the worship
I was particularly struck be those words: don't get ill at weekends. Completely true. A relative of mine with cystic fibrosis nearly died in a Cornish hospital on a weekend. We were told that if it had been a weekday, he'd have been fine
That poll is so awful for Truss I actually wonder whether it might be a rogue one. The most alarming thing would have to be the surprisingly few don't knows. She doesn't even have her feet under the desk.
It could be full on Terry-Thomas and still be terrible for Truss.
She has spent seven weeks saying stuff, and outside the Conservative membership, people don't like what she's saying.
I'd like to say we're all feeling @Dura_Ace's pain currently - I'm not sure.
On other things, the pro-Johnson elements were out in force on the front page of the Mail - clear the soon to be former Prime Minister so he can wait in the wings for a return. Mu thought on that is he still has to get through the COVID public enquiry which may well ask him some awkward questions.
Now, for simple old @stodge to offer some thoughts - let's say the monthly energy bill at Stodge Towers is £150 but Mrs Stodge hears from our energy supplier it's going up to £300. I opine "that nice Mrs Truss and that nice Mr Kwarteng will help out - they'll either give us £150 to cover the bill or pay £150 to the energy supplier to cover the bill, either way we won't be out of pocket."
Hang on, though, that £300 worth of gas still exists - I've paid half of it but the supplier bought the rest and has to pay someone for it. All we are doing is financial buckpassing so the Stodges don't have to pay, well, not directly anyway. If the Government pays, how are they going to cover all these £150? Perhaps Kwarteng will borrow more to top up the £100 billion we're already going to have to pay in debt management next year.
A windfall tax seems superficially attractive but somebody still had to buy the energy at the higher price. If you're an energy supplier, you need energy to supply and you pay what you need to pay. If you buy £300 worth of energy and get only £150 from the customer and then get a windfall tax I'm just puzzled as to where that leaves the supply industry.
@SeanT was a sad loss. I miss his wit, humour and enthusiasms. Sometimes it seems that there are still echoes on the site but it is not the same.
Yes he was cutting rather than downright abusive and wasn't afraid at having a go at all parts of the political spectrum rather than some current posters who just seem strongly anti-"left".
Just severed the top joint of my left middle finger in a hydraulic press so I've come out of the workshop and come on here for a bit. Fucking LOL.
Ouch. No way to stitch it back on?
It's in the bin now. I'm waiting for Mrs DA to come home so she can stitch the stump up. I have a self applied dressing of a micro-fibre secured with a hose clamp. 👍
Probably best not to compromise the circulation of the stump by further over compression around the wound. The smaller the missing bit the better functionally later. Apply pressure to the end rather than around the rest of the finger and keep it elevated. This reduces the venous bleeding, arterial bleeding squirts more but the contractile elastic nature of arteries usually stops quickly.
Unsurprising. Sepsis is missed quite a lot, I believe.
I REALLY admire her for emphasising this dreadful fuck up was nothing to do with evil Tories, austerity, Brexit, NHS cuts, whatever
It is the real and mediocre NHS, prone to unaccountable errors, which deep down we all know, despite the worship
I was particularly struck be those words: don't get ill at weekends. Completely true. A relative of mine with cystic fibrosis nearly died in a Cornish hospital on a weekend. We were told that if it had been a weekday, he'd have been fine
That is not good enough
Yup. Got sent home from Derriford by a very junior doctor with the words I don't think you've got cancer (I had), you don't look as if you've got cancer and it's a bank holiday weekend coming up so nothing is going to happen here anyway.
Just severed the top joint of my left middle finger in a hydraulic press so I've come out of the workshop and come on here for a bit. Fucking LOL.
Ouch. No way to stitch it back on?
It's in the bin now. I'm waiting for Mrs DA to come home so she can stitch the stump up. I have a self applied dressing of a micro-fibre secured with a hose clamp. 👍
Probably best not to compromise the circulation of the stump by further over compression around the wound. The smaller the missing bit the better functionally later. Apply pressure to the end rather than around the rest of the finger and keep it elevated. This reduces the venous bleeding, arterial bleeding squirts more but the contractile elastic nature of arteries usually stops quickly.
Thank you. The real pain is yet to come when Mrs DA comes home and the bollocking commences.
I'd like to say we're all feeling @Dura_Ace's pain currently - I'm not sure.
On other things, the pro-Johnson elements were out in force on the front page of the Mail - clear the soon to be former Prime Minister so he can wait in the wings for a return. Mu thought on that is he still has to get through the COVID public enquiry which may well ask him some awkward questions.
Now, for simple old @stodge to offer some thoughts - let's say the monthly energy bill at Stodge Towers is £150 but Mrs Stodge hears from our energy supplier it's going up to £300. I opine "that nice Mrs Truss and that nice Mr Kwarteng will help out - they'll either give us £150 to cover the bill or pay £150 to the energy supplier to cover the bill, either way we won't be out of pocket."
Hang on, though, that £300 worth of gas still exists - I've paid half of it but the supplier bought the rest and has to pay someone for it. All we are doing is financial buckpassing so the Stodges don't have to pay, well, not directly anyway. If the Government pays, how are they going to cover all these £150? Perhaps Kwarteng will borrow more to top up the £100 billion we're already going to have to pay in debt management next year.
A windfall tax seems superficially attractive but somebody still had to buy the energy at the higher price. If you're an energy supplier, you need energy to supply and you pay what you need to pay. If you buy £300 worth of energy and get only £150 from the customer and then get a windfall tax I'm just puzzled as to where that leaves the supply industry.
I would have thought the answer was obvious... by borrowing it.
One of the best-written and saddest pieces of journalism I have read for a long time.
I finished the article in tears.
Indeed. A heartbreaking story.
Incidentally, it leads into one of my beliefs: if you're in *any* medical system, and you think the doctors are either blundering around without a clue, or doing the wrong thing, get a second opinion. Politely argue with them. Be difficult.
There's a time when, if my family had done so, I might not have suffered ten years of on-and-off pain. And there's a time when they did exactly that (a surgeon wanted to operate on my lower back, when the 'obvious' problem was a previous ankle operation) and I ended up eventually being fixed.
Also a sad illustration that a sufficiently intelligent layperson plus Google is a powerful diagnostic tool these days, as I was saying yesterday.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
Unsurprising. Sepsis is missed quite a lot, I believe.
I REALLY admire her for emphasising this dreadful fuck up was nothing to do with evil Tories, austerity, Brexit, NHS cuts, whatever
It is the real and mediocre NHS, prone to unaccountable errors, which deep down we all know, despite the worship
I was particularly struck be those words: don't get ill at weekends. Completely true. A relative of mine with cystic fibrosis nearly died in a Cornish hospital on a weekend. We were told that if it had been a weekday, he'd have been fine
That is not good enough
Every medical system has similar anecdotes, sadly. Mistakes will happen, especially with complicated conditions.
But lessons must be learned from mistakes, and to be seen to be learned. When the wagons are circled and no criticism of the institution and its people is allowed. This reached a nadir at Stafford (*), when anyone even trying to talk about what was going on was rounded on by not only the trust and its staff, but sh*t-for-brains people who could not stand to see the NHS getting criticised.
And then there's Burnham's role in all of that.
(*) A family member witnessed this first-hand, fortunately with no long-term consequences.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
@StuartDickson Scotland has plenty of energy if the the wind is blowing
That's why the new pumped storage station at Loch Lochy is interesting. Torness will close by 2030, not sure what the plan is with Peterhead.
You're applying the Scotland's geographical share of NS oil and gas doesn't really belong to them criterion I assume.
No, just pointing out that energy provision in Scotland in inextricably linked to that in RUK, unless we come up with pumped storage or lagoons.
The SG (as a green/SNP coalition) is a bit confused on the subject. Oil/gas = good for Scotland, but we are doing everything we can to avoid getting it out the ground or using it in our power stations.
Since the SG has precisely f.all remit over energy policy or oil & gas extraction I'm not quite sure what your 'doing everything we can to avoid getting it out the ground or using it in our power stations' means.
So you think the SG is wrong to oppose stuff like Cambo? To not build any new nuclear power stations? Aiui they could block them using planning laws at the moment.
What proposed nuclear power stations are being blocked by Scottish planning laws at the moment? Which specific attempts by HMG to squeeze more oil and gas out of the North Sea have been thwarted by SG opposition?
You need to decide whether Scotland's oil and gas is a relevant argument for Independence.
You can't claim Scotland would be energy self-reliant while not actually using our resources.
I don't 'need' to do anything, Sean.
Not that it is my business, but why on earth are you calling @Eabhal “Sean”?
I'd like to say we're all feeling @Dura_Ace's pain currently - I'm not sure.
On other things, the pro-Johnson elements were out in force on the front page of the Mail - clear the soon to be former Prime Minister so he can wait in the wings for a return. Mu thought on that is he still has to get through the COVID public enquiry which may well ask him some awkward questions.
Now, for simple old @stodge to offer some thoughts - let's say the monthly energy bill at Stodge Towers is £150 but Mrs Stodge hears from our energy supplier it's going up to £300. I opine "that nice Mrs Truss and that nice Mr Kwarteng will help out - they'll either give us £150 to cover the bill or pay £150 to the energy supplier to cover the bill, either way we won't be out of pocket."
Hang on, though, that £300 worth of gas still exists - I've paid half of it but the supplier bought the rest and has to pay someone for it. All we are doing is financial buckpassing so the Stodges don't have to pay, well, not directly anyway. If the Government pays, how are they going to cover all these £150? Perhaps Kwarteng will borrow more to top up the £100 billion we're already going to have to pay in debt management next year.
A windfall tax seems superficially attractive but somebody still had to buy the energy at the higher price. If you're an energy supplier, you need energy to supply and you pay what you need to pay. If you buy £300 worth of energy and get only £150 from the customer and then get a windfall tax I'm just puzzled as to where that leaves the supply industry.
The problem still exists, that supply is going to be 15-20% down this winter, compared to last winter.
If your bill goes from £150 to, err, £150, where’s your incentive to use less energy this winter?
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
Have you ever seen the Wim Wenders film 'Until the end of the World'? Someone invents a machine that can record and play back your vision (and dreams). Very worth a watch - with a great soundtrack and cast too.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
More thoughts on why Putin is snubbing Gorby's send-off:
1. Gorby ended the 1979-89 war in Afghanistan. If Putin were to say "Let's hear it for Gorby - here's what he achieved", he could hardly avoid mentioning Afghanistan.
2. He doesn't want to upset China. Never mind that the withdrawal from Afghanistan helped normalise Sino-Soviet relations, which was one of Gorby's great diplomatic achievements. Gorby was a westerniser. The Chinese government doesn't want the Kremlin to have time for westernisers.
I'm not sure if those arguments are sufficient in the sense that it is absolutely standard practice for current national leaders to attend the funerals of predecessors even when there are HUGE policy and ideological differences, or personal enmities.
I'd also assume China were represented in some capacity (presumably the ambassador or whoever) and wouldn't be at all surprised or concerned had Putin attended. Putin also didn't have to say anything - just turn up, look somber, and go home.
The most recent vaguely comparable case I can think of was Trump not attending McCain's funeral (obviously McCain wasn't President but had been GOP candidate and the President would have been expected to go as a matter of protocol). But that has a clear reason - relations were so bad that McCain's family asked Trump not to attend - and that's unlikely to be the case here.
My view is the no-show was more about Putin's current mental state. There is clearly an element of paranoia that has led him to extreme social distancing in recent times, whether due to fear of assassination or some form of germophobia. Whether that is driven by underlying physical illness (and a linked fear of being seen by Westerners in a somewhat frail state) or is simply a psychological thing, I can't say.
Unsurprising. Sepsis is missed quite a lot, I believe.
I REALLY admire her for emphasising this dreadful fuck up was nothing to do with evil Tories, austerity, Brexit, NHS cuts, whatever
It is the real and mediocre NHS, prone to unaccountable errors, which deep down we all know, despite the worship
I was particularly struck be those words: don't get ill at weekends. Completely true. A relative of mine with cystic fibrosis nearly died in a Cornish hospital on a weekend. We were told that if it had been a weekday, he'd have been fine
That is not good enough
Every medical system has similar anecdotes, sadly. Mistakes will happen, especially with complicated conditions.
But lessons must be learned from mistakes, and to be seen to be learned. When the wagons are circled and no criticism of the institution and its people is allowed. This reached a nadir at Stafford (*), when anyone even trying to talk about what was going on was rounded on by not only the trust and its staff, but sh*t-for-brains people who could not stand to see the NHS getting criticised.
And then there's Burnham's role in all of that.
(*) A family member witnessed this first-hand, fortunately with no long-term consequences.
That's why I said "mediocre" not "terrible". The NHS is mediocre: an OKish mid-ranking health system, with quite a few problems beyond "cuts" or "austeity". One of those problems is the way we are told to worship it, and protect it from criticism. So this brave, grieving mother has done us all a service
Eric Berger @SciGuySpace · Follow Why does the SLS rocket use liquid hydrogen fuel if it leaks all the time? Well, it is very efficient, energy density-wise. But most importantly, it's what space shuttle designers used 50 years ago, and Congress mandated that the SLS rocket use those same engines.
Senate Launch System - taking half-century-old re-useable technology, and making it the only recent rocket design that’s completely expendable.
But hey, the $23bn was spent in all 48 contiguous States, so pork all round for the Congresscritters.
You mean legislatures mandating aspects of design specification is not a good idea? Who knew?
Unsurprising. Sepsis is missed quite a lot, I believe.
I REALLY admire her for emphasising this dreadful fuck up was nothing to do with evil Tories, austerity, Brexit, NHS cuts, whatever
It is the real and mediocre NHS, prone to unaccountable errors, which deep down we all know, despite the worship
I was particularly struck be those words: don't get ill at weekends. Completely true. A relative of mine with cystic fibrosis nearly died in a Cornish hospital on a weekend. We were told that if it had been a weekday, he'd have been fine
That is not good enough
Every medical system has similar anecdotes, sadly. Mistakes will happen, especially with complicated conditions.
But lessons must be learned from mistakes, and to be seen to be learned. When the wagons are circled and no criticism of the institution and its people is allowed. This reached a nadir at Stafford (*), when anyone even trying to talk about what was going on was rounded on by not only the trust and its staff, but sh*t-for-brains people who could not stand to see the NHS getting criticised.
And then there's Burnham's role in all of that.
(*) A family member witnessed this first-hand, fortunately with no long-term consequences.
That's why I said "mediocre" not "terrible". The NHS is mediocre: an OKish mid-ranking health system, with quite a few problems beyond "cuts" or "austeity". One of those problems is the way we are told to worship it, and protect it from criticism. So this brave, grieving mother has done us all a service
I agree with that, but I'd add that the NHS did a blooming good job with my grand-niece last week when she had sepsis, so they're in my good books atm.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Unsurprising. Sepsis is missed quite a lot, I believe.
I REALLY admire her for emphasising this dreadful fuck up was nothing to do with evil Tories, austerity, Brexit, NHS cuts, whatever
It is the real and mediocre NHS, prone to unaccountable errors, which deep down we all know, despite the worship
I was particularly struck be those words: don't get ill at weekends. Completely true. A relative of mine with cystic fibrosis nearly died in a Cornish hospital on a weekend. We were told that if it had been a weekday, he'd have been fine
That is not good enough
Every medical system has similar anecdotes, sadly. Mistakes will happen, especially with complicated conditions.
But lessons must be learned from mistakes, and to be seen to be learned. When the wagons are circled and no criticism of the institution and its people is allowed. This reached a nadir at Stafford (*), when anyone even trying to talk about what was going on was rounded on by not only the trust and its staff, but sh*t-for-brains people who could not stand to see the NHS getting criticised.
And then there's Burnham's role in all of that.
(*) A family member witnessed this first-hand, fortunately with no long-term consequences.
That's why I said "mediocre" not "terrible". The NHS is mediocre: an OKish mid-ranking health system, with quite a few problems beyond "cuts" or "austeity". One of those problems is the way we are told to worship it, and protect it from criticism. So this brave, grieving mother has done us all a service
I agree with that, but I'd add that the NHS did a blooming good job with my grand-niece last week when she had sepsis, so they're in my good books atm.
When they're good, they can be very, very good.
Yes. On the upside it can be brilliant. The NHS at Great Ormond St saved the life of the son of a good friend of mine, when he had a cruel heart problem aged 6 months. They flew in the best pediatric heart guy in the world, from Germany
I'm not completely dissing it. I'm just despairing of the worship
More thoughts on why Putin is snubbing Gorby's send-off:
1. Gorby ended the 1979-89 war in Afghanistan. If Putin were to say "Let's hear it for Gorby - here's what he achieved", he could hardly avoid mentioning Afghanistan.
2. He doesn't want to upset China. Never mind that the withdrawal from Afghanistan helped normalise Sino-Soviet relations, which was one of Gorby's great diplomatic achievements. Gorby was a westerniser. The Chinese government doesn't want the Kremlin to have time for westernisers.
3. Putin hates Gorbachev for “Breaking up the Soviet Union”, at a time when he’s losing a significant part of his own military trying to re-constitute it?
Does he blame Gorbachev for Chernobyl? What does he think Gorbachev should have done when 92% of Ukrainians voted for independence? Ultimately Putin has no answer to this.
I doubt he blames Gorby for Chernobyl. The reason for the snub won't be an intellectual position or personal emotion. It will be optics.
"What does he think Gorbachev should have done?" Good question. Fight wars against the forest brothers in the Baltic states, order the mafia bosses in Central Asia (e.g. in Kazkhstan) and the Caucasus (e.g. in Azerbaijan) - whose local despots had seats on the Soviet Politburo - to take oaths of renewed loyalty, tell the Georgian KGB it was a department of the Soviet KGB with immediate effect, pull out of START negotiations with the US, tell the population that if they thought they might buy a family car in the near future (let alone a personal computer) then they'd better have another think coming? While keeping the Berlin Wall up at the same time maybe and invading Hungary to make sure it kept its border with Austria closed so that nobody could get from East to West Berlin round the back way? Keeping Germany divided might not have been a requirement but the optics of reunification would have made the job of retaining the USSR even harder.
Gorby ended a long-running war that the Kremlin wasn't winning, and he befriended the west. Plus don't do anything China wouldn't like (even though Gorby improved relations with China a lot, but what matters is now).
I'd like to say we're all feeling @Dura_Ace's pain currently - I'm not sure.
On other things, the pro-Johnson elements were out in force on the front page of the Mail - clear the soon to be former Prime Minister so he can wait in the wings for a return. Mu thought on that is he still has to get through the COVID public enquiry which may well ask him some awkward questions.
Now, for simple old @stodge to offer some thoughts - let's say the monthly energy bill at Stodge Towers is £150 but Mrs Stodge hears from our energy supplier it's going up to £300. I opine "that nice Mrs Truss and that nice Mr Kwarteng will help out - they'll either give us £150 to cover the bill or pay £150 to the energy supplier to cover the bill, either way we won't be out of pocket."
Hang on, though, that £300 worth of gas still exists - I've paid half of it but the supplier bought the rest and has to pay someone for it. All we are doing is financial buckpassing so the Stodges don't have to pay, well, not directly anyway. If the Government pays, how are they going to cover all these £150? Perhaps Kwarteng will borrow more to top up the £100 billion we're already going to have to pay in debt management next year.
A windfall tax seems superficially attractive but somebody still had to buy the energy at the higher price. If you're an energy supplier, you need energy to supply and you pay what you need to pay. If you buy £300 worth of energy and get only £150 from the customer and then get a windfall tax I'm just puzzled as to where that leaves the supply industry.
It is the suppliers who are making serious profits here and more than half of these are beyond the reach of the UK taxpayer. We need to have a brief think before deciding whether or not penalising those that are not is the best way to encourage new investment here. Doesn't take too long does it?
The focus on the distributors rather ignores the fact that the vast majority of them went bust this year and the remaining ones are being asked to pick up the tab for them, something they really cannot afford to do without going bust themselves. Basically, it is a really stupid idea. Indeed, that doesn't really go far enough. Any politician floating this as the answer to anything can safely be ignored as having nothing useful to contribute. Which sadly rules out the vast majority.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
Unsurprising. Sepsis is missed quite a lot, I believe.
I REALLY admire her for emphasising this dreadful fuck up was nothing to do with evil Tories, austerity, Brexit, NHS cuts, whatever
It is the real and mediocre NHS, prone to unaccountable errors, which deep down we all know, despite the worship
I was particularly struck be those words: don't get ill at weekends. Completely true. A relative of mine with cystic fibrosis nearly died in a Cornish hospital on a weekend. We were told that if it had been a weekday, he'd have been fine
That is not good enough
Every medical system has similar anecdotes, sadly. Mistakes will happen, especially with complicated conditions.
But lessons must be learned from mistakes, and to be seen to be learned. When the wagons are circled and no criticism of the institution and its people is allowed. This reached a nadir at Stafford (*), when anyone even trying to talk about what was going on was rounded on by not only the trust and its staff, but sh*t-for-brains people who could not stand to see the NHS getting criticised.
And then there's Burnham's role in all of that.
(*) A family member witnessed this first-hand, fortunately with no long-term consequences.
That's why I said "mediocre" not "terrible". The NHS is mediocre: an OKish mid-ranking health system, with quite a few problems beyond "cuts" or "austeity". One of those problems is the way we are told to worship it, and protect it from criticism. So this brave, grieving mother has done us all a service
I think the politicisation of the NHS (both pro and con) has a lot to answer for - when something goes wrong, people who dislike the system say see, it's the mediocre NHS, we need a better system, and people who like the system say no, no, the system's wonderful, except for that time. We should neither worship it nor treat every mistake as a sign of system failure - rather, except in egregious cases of wilful negligence, learn from every mistake frankly without trying to fire everyone involved. I suspect one could say the same of every medical system on the planet (and indeed organisations generally, but as the article says, we do still take doctors' opinions too uncritically in a way that we wouldn't with, say, builders or economists).
Whether it's the best way to organise health care (IMJO yes) and whether, if we choose it, the Government funds it adequately (IMO currently hell no), are two separate issues, and as the article says they don't relate to this particular tragedy.
I'd like to say we're all feeling @Dura_Ace's pain currently - I'm not sure.
On other things, the pro-Johnson elements were out in force on the front page of the Mail - clear the soon to be former Prime Minister so he can wait in the wings for a return. Mu thought on that is he still has to get through the COVID public enquiry which may well ask him some awkward questions.
Now, for simple old @stodge to offer some thoughts - let's say the monthly energy bill at Stodge Towers is £150 but Mrs Stodge hears from our energy supplier it's going up to £300. I opine "that nice Mrs Truss and that nice Mr Kwarteng will help out - they'll either give us £150 to cover the bill or pay £150 to the energy supplier to cover the bill, either way we won't be out of pocket."
Hang on, though, that £300 worth of gas still exists - I've paid half of it but the supplier bought the rest and has to pay someone for it. All we are doing is financial buckpassing so the Stodges don't have to pay, well, not directly anyway. If the Government pays, how are they going to cover all these £150? Perhaps Kwarteng will borrow more to top up the £100 billion we're already going to have to pay in debt management next year.
A windfall tax seems superficially attractive but somebody still had to buy the energy at the higher price. If you're an energy supplier, you need energy to supply and you pay what you need to pay. If you buy £300 worth of energy and get only £150 from the customer and then get a windfall tax I'm just puzzled as to where that leaves the supply industry.
The problem still exists, that supply is going to be 15-20% down this winter, compared to last winter.
If your bill goes from £150 to, err, £150, where’s your incentive to use less energy this winter?
Trouble is that if we rely on the price mechanism to drive down demand, prices have to go stratospheric and there will be utter societal carnage.
Hence the need to go back to the drawing board, even if that had disagreeable things like rationing and furlough for the most energy intensive industries. And no, I don't like those solutions much.
More thoughts on why Putin is snubbing Gorby's send-off:
1. Gorby ended the 1979-89 war in Afghanistan. If Putin were to say "Let's hear it for Gorby - here's what he achieved", he could hardly avoid mentioning Afghanistan.
2. He doesn't want to upset China. Never mind that the withdrawal from Afghanistan helped normalise Sino-Soviet relations, which was one of Gorby's great diplomatic achievements. Gorby was a westerniser. The Chinese government doesn't want the Kremlin to have time for westernisers.
I'm not sure if those arguments are sufficient in the sense that it is absolutely standard practice for current national leaders to attend the funerals of predecessors even when there are HUGE policy and ideological differences, or personal enmities.
I'd also assume China were represented in some capacity (presumably the ambassador or whoever) and wouldn't be at all surprised or concerned had Putin attended. Putin also didn't have to say anything - just turn up, look somber, and go home.
The most recent vaguely comparable case I can think of was Trump not attending McCain's funeral (obviously McCain wasn't President but had been GOP candidate and the President would have been expected to go as a matter of protocol). But that has a clear reason - relations were so bad that McCain's family asked Trump not to attend - and that's unlikely to be the case here.
My view is the no-show was more about Putin's current mental state. There is clearly an element of paranoia that has led him to extreme social distancing in recent times, whether due to fear of assassination or some form of germophobia. Whether that is driven by underlying physical illness (and a linked fear of being seen by Westerners in a somewhat frail state) or is simply a psychological thing, I can't say.
Putin had a private visit to see Gorbachov's body in state. Just snubbing the public funeral part. I think this is the 2nd or 3rd time he's done that lately - even for people he got on with (to an extent). Your final paragraph kinda rings true to me.
I'd like to say we're all feeling @Dura_Ace's pain currently - I'm not sure.
On other things, the pro-Johnson elements were out in force on the front page of the Mail - clear the soon to be former Prime Minister so he can wait in the wings for a return. Mu thought on that is he still has to get through the COVID public enquiry which may well ask him some awkward questions.
Now, for simple old @stodge to offer some thoughts - let's say the monthly energy bill at Stodge Towers is £150 but Mrs Stodge hears from our energy supplier it's going up to £300. I opine "that nice Mrs Truss and that nice Mr Kwarteng will help out - they'll either give us £150 to cover the bill or pay £150 to the energy supplier to cover the bill, either way we won't be out of pocket."
Hang on, though, that £300 worth of gas still exists - I've paid half of it but the supplier bought the rest and has to pay someone for it. All we are doing is financial buckpassing so the Stodges don't have to pay, well, not directly anyway. If the Government pays, how are they going to cover all these £150? Perhaps Kwarteng will borrow more to top up the £100 billion we're already going to have to pay in debt management next year.
A windfall tax seems superficially attractive but somebody still had to buy the energy at the higher price. If you're an energy supplier, you need energy to supply and you pay what you need to pay. If you buy £300 worth of energy and get only £150 from the customer and then get a windfall tax I'm just puzzled as to where that leaves the supply industry.
The problem still exists, that supply is going to be 15-20% down this winter, compared to last winter.
If your bill goes from £150 to, err, £150, where’s your incentive to use less energy this winter?
Trouble is that if we rely on the price mechanism to drive down demand, prices have to go stratospheric and there will be utter societal carnage.
Hence the need to go back to the drawing board, even if that had disagreeable things like rationing and furlough for the most energy intensive industries. And no, I don't like those solutions much.
I think a price step system should be used. The first few units at the same cost and then increase gradually. That would reduce usage to basic only.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
Unsurprising. Sepsis is missed quite a lot, I believe.
I REALLY admire her for emphasising this dreadful fuck up was nothing to do with evil Tories, austerity, Brexit, NHS cuts, whatever
It is the real and mediocre NHS, prone to unaccountable errors, which deep down we all know, despite the worship
I was particularly struck be those words: don't get ill at weekends. Completely true. A relative of mine with cystic fibrosis nearly died in a Cornish hospital on a weekend. We were told that if it had been a weekday, he'd have been fine
That is not good enough
Every medical system has similar anecdotes, sadly. Mistakes will happen, especially with complicated conditions.
But lessons must be learned from mistakes, and to be seen to be learned. When the wagons are circled and no criticism of the institution and its people is allowed. This reached a nadir at Stafford (*), when anyone even trying to talk about what was going on was rounded on by not only the trust and its staff, but sh*t-for-brains people who could not stand to see the NHS getting criticised.
And then there's Burnham's role in all of that.
(*) A family member witnessed this first-hand, fortunately with no long-term consequences.
Only one medical system is treated like a religion.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence".
What is imagination? We are all molecules. Men and machines alike. I see no reason why machines cannot generate original ideas like a human, they will just come from silicon not carbon
Unsurprising. Sepsis is missed quite a lot, I believe.
I REALLY admire her for emphasising this dreadful fuck up was nothing to do with evil Tories, austerity, Brexit, NHS cuts, whatever
It is the real and mediocre NHS, prone to unaccountable errors, which deep down we all know, despite the worship
I was particularly struck be those words: don't get ill at weekends. Completely true. A relative of mine with cystic fibrosis nearly died in a Cornish hospital on a weekend. We were told that if it had been a weekday, he'd have been fine
That is not good enough
Every medical system has similar anecdotes, sadly. Mistakes will happen, especially with complicated conditions.
But lessons must be learned from mistakes, and to be seen to be learned. When the wagons are circled and no criticism of the institution and its people is allowed. This reached a nadir at Stafford (*), when anyone even trying to talk about what was going on was rounded on by not only the trust and its staff, but sh*t-for-brains people who could not stand to see the NHS getting criticised.
And then there's Burnham's role in all of that.
(*) A family member witnessed this first-hand, fortunately with no long-term consequences.
That's why I said "mediocre" not "terrible". The NHS is mediocre: an OKish mid-ranking health system, with quite a few problems beyond "cuts" or "austeity". One of those problems is the way we are told to worship it, and protect it from criticism. So this brave, grieving mother has done us all a service
I think the politicisation of the NHS (both pro and con) has a lot to answer for - when something goes wrong, people who dislike the system say see, it's the mediocre NHS, we need a better system, and people who like the system say no, no, the system's wonderful, except for that time. We should neither worship it nor treat every mistake as a sign of system failure - rather, except in egregious cases of wilful negligence, learn from every mistake frankly without trying to fire everyone involved. I suspect one could say the same of every medical system on the planet (and indeed organisations generally, but as the article says, we do still take doctors' opinions too uncritically in a way that we wouldn't with, say, builders or economists).
Whether it's the best way to organise health care (IMJO yes) and whether, if we choose it, the Government funds it adequately (IMO currently hell no), are two separate issues, and as the article says they don't relate to this particular tragedy.
Indeed there was certainly poor care, but worth noting that this child's potentially avoidable death occurred at a national specialist unit as good as any in the world, but all systems relying on humans can fail, and doctors are human.
Worth noting that plenty of second opinions were sought, but as so often the problem seems to have been communication between the team, and with other parts of the hospital such as PICU.
The junior staff seem under experienced and undersupervised, and afraid of communicating with the seniors. Similar issues have been behind many recent obstetric scandals. These are not unique problems to the NHS, and happen worldwide.
The tories are well capable of putting Johnson back in if, as seems likely, the Truss project goes up in flames. Because, if not him, then who?
Nobody's ready for Rishi. PM4PM was the worst idea in British politics for the last 300 years. The Saj? Fuck off. etc., etc.
It'll be like when Putin was PM for a bit while Dimon kept the throne warm.
I think you and others grossly underestimate Johnson's problem among Tory MPs, and the sheer bad blood.
The Chris Pincher affair simply illustrated how dysfunctional it was and would always be. There was no way in which any minister or MP could believe a word from the PM or Number 10 and, in a rare lapse into honesty, he himself had said he was never, ever going to change.
So there are a high proportion of Never Johnson MPs. There are some fanbois too, of course, but also a fair few who quite like Johnson in some ways but appreciate it can never work.
Like you, I don't tend to rate the Tory bench in terms of successors to Truss. But, to be honest, that's because I'm not a Tory. Mordaunt could quite easily have been the "not Rishi" candidate but for some missteps and a campaign by the blue tops. Badenoch very much emerged strengthened as, to a lesser extent, did Tugendhat. Are any of these people terrifying prospects for Starmer or others? Probably not, but each of them and some others have a case to make.
Ultimately, the Johnson comeback story is one that people love to talk about (whether because they adore the man or loathe him). But it is, ultimately, pretty fanciful. And that's even before we talk about Johnson representing a non-safe seat and having some serious problems still over past conduct (you don't instruct Pannick if you're not panicking).
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
Naive reductionism at its worst. No attempt to define imagination or intelligence, which might make you think about the question:can we be sure a successful human artist is doing anything different?
Do you dispute that being a top level human go or chess player requires intelligence and imagination? Because if you do you are wrong. so either computers have the requisite intell and imag, or they can get by without and still win. If they can outperform the best go players why can they nor outperform the best painters?
I hereby inaugurate the annual @Dura_Ace Hydraulic Stamp Trophy, given to the commenter who manages to comment despite being significantly injured or severely ill as he or she types. Bonus points for the most spectacular injuries or incapacitation
Anyone who actually dies while commenting gets a Lifetime Achievement Award
It's a nice idea but I have a couple of quibbles. First, "significantly injured" or "severely ill" - I think we'd need @Foxy to adjudicate on the real seriousness. Having a leg drop off is pretty serious but a headache or chest pain could also be serious.
As for the "Lifetime Achievement Award", apart from the notion the last thing you do in your life is to write a comment on PB and press SEND sounds a little trite, you may be surprised to hear we've had people come on this forum with one identity and suddenly depart. Yet, and this is the strange bit, a new poster comes on who writes in exactly the same style as the person who departed - what a coincidence.
We would need some solid proof said poster is no more and hasn't just faked their own demise like John Stonehouse or Reggie Perrin.
In all fairness, we have lost some fine posters down the years - we all have our favourites among the departed - mine was @MarkSenior
A death certificate sent to the Mods is of uncertain value if they don't have one's real ID anyway ...
Perhaps we each ought to compose a final message from beyond the grave/crematorium for our executors to post on PB. One of the things of the modern digital world for which it behoves us to tak tent, as they say up here, amongst such surprising titbits as how few digital recordings on your I-wotsit-cloud-thingy actually belong to you and can be bequeathed ...
It is the suppliers who are making serious profits here and more than half of these are beyond the reach of the UK taxpayer. We need to have a brief think before deciding whether or not penalising those that are not is the best way to encourage new investment here. Doesn't take too long does it?
The focus on the distributors rather ignores the fact that the vast majority of them went bust this year and the remaining ones are being asked to pick up the tab for them, something they really cannot afford to do without going bust themselves. Basically, it is a really stupid idea. Indeed, that doesn't really go far enough. Any politician floating this as the answer to anything can safely be ignored as having nothing useful to contribute. Which sadly rules out the vast majority.
Inasmuch as we now have an effective cartel monopolising UK energy supply we can argue the market has done what it so often does - the weak ultimately go to the wall and the strong inherit. The big four or five suppliers have us all by the thermostats and that's a situation needing addressing another day.
As for the wider picture, if the aim is to neuter energy as a source of income for Russia, rather like mask wearing, it's only really effective if everyone does it. Neither China nor India (it seems all Johnson's attempts to woo Modi have been less than successful) seem willing to join the embargo on Russian oil and gas and if they continue to put foreign currency into the Kremlin that will enable the war in Ukraine to continue.
As someone else said the other day, the big winners from all this are America and China and the big losers are Europe.
Unsurprising. Sepsis is missed quite a lot, I believe.
I REALLY admire her for emphasising this dreadful fuck up was nothing to do with evil Tories, austerity, Brexit, NHS cuts, whatever
It is the real and mediocre NHS, prone to unaccountable errors, which deep down we all know, despite the worship
I was particularly struck be those words: don't get ill at weekends. Completely true. A relative of mine with cystic fibrosis nearly died in a Cornish hospital on a weekend. We were told that if it had been a weekday, he'd have been fine
That is not good enough
Every medical system has similar anecdotes, sadly. Mistakes will happen, especially with complicated conditions.
But lessons must be learned from mistakes, and to be seen to be learned. When the wagons are circled and no criticism of the institution and its people is allowed. This reached a nadir at Stafford (*), when anyone even trying to talk about what was going on was rounded on by not only the trust and its staff, but sh*t-for-brains people who could not stand to see the NHS getting criticised.
And then there's Burnham's role in all of that.
(*) A family member witnessed this first-hand, fortunately with no long-term consequences.
Only one medical system is treated like a religion.
Is it? Just talk to many an Amewrican about socialised medicine and you will get the full vampire-and-ray of light above the horizon at dawn treatment.
Points dropped for Liverpool in their chase of the Manchester Clubs. Maybe third for Pool this season if they can’t sort this up and down form out - Champions league season and the WC break won’t help them find a battle rhythm.
A lot of booking keepers this season, could tot up into bans?
I was dragged out to the football the other night, to the Emma Rutts Stadium - it was certainly more noisy than last time I was there, last season I took a book to read. Lightweight Arsenal still got beaten up by opponents despite squeaking win, and their bench and squad still far far too thin to break top 5 this season. They should have cashed in on Saka, he looks nothing this season and may never again.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943.
I do have some sympathy with what you're saying in that there is quite a big gap between learning to perform a task in a way that gives the appearance of intelligence, and actually being intelligent in the sense a human would understand it. For that reason, I'd not be surprised if we are many years further away from it than optimists (or pessimists, depending how you see it) believe.
But it probably is coming in the sense that there really isn't a ghost in the human machine and it's just an amazingly complex, beautiful, but ultimately replicable, set of connections.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
Naive reductionism at its worst. No attempt to define imagination or intelligence, which might make you think about the question:can we be sure a successful human artist is doing anything different?
Do you dispute that being a top level human go or chess player requires intelligence and imagination? Because if you do you are wrong. so either computers have the requisite intell and imag, or they can get by without and still win. If they can outperform the best go players why can they nor outperform the best painters?
It's a truly peculiar mindset, we've seen it on here many times. Even - often? - the most atheist people believe there is some sacred divine spark which makes human creativity special and rules out any other kind of creativity, especially emanating from machines
Which is quite illogical, UNLESS you are @HYUFD and you believe God made humans and made them different and superior to all His other creations
I AM religious but I have no problem, conceptually, with intelligent and imaginative machines. Indeed, I suspect they are here already. And it they are not they are certainly on the next bus. We'd best prepare ourselves
Unsurprising. Sepsis is missed quite a lot, I believe.
I REALLY admire her for emphasising this dreadful fuck up was nothing to do with evil Tories, austerity, Brexit, NHS cuts, whatever
It is the real and mediocre NHS, prone to unaccountable errors, which deep down we all know, despite the worship
I was particularly struck be those words: don't get ill at weekends. Completely true. A relative of mine with cystic fibrosis nearly died in a Cornish hospital on a weekend. We were told that if it had been a weekday, he'd have been fine
That is not good enough
Every medical system has similar anecdotes, sadly. Mistakes will happen, especially with complicated conditions.
But lessons must be learned from mistakes, and to be seen to be learned. When the wagons are circled and no criticism of the institution and its people is allowed. This reached a nadir at Stafford (*), when anyone even trying to talk about what was going on was rounded on by not only the trust and its staff, but sh*t-for-brains people who could not stand to see the NHS getting criticised.
And then there's Burnham's role in all of that.
(*) A family member witnessed this first-hand, fortunately with no long-term consequences.
That's why I said "mediocre" not "terrible". The NHS is mediocre: an OKish mid-ranking health system, with quite a few problems beyond "cuts" or "austeity". One of those problems is the way we are told to worship it, and protect it from criticism. So this brave, grieving mother has done us all a service
I think the politicisation of the NHS (both pro and con) has a lot to answer for - when something goes wrong, people who dislike the system say see, it's the mediocre NHS, we need a better system, and people who like the system say no, no, the system's wonderful, except for that time. We should neither worship it nor treat every mistake as a sign of system failure - rather, except in egregious cases of wilful negligence, learn from every mistake frankly without trying to fire everyone involved. I suspect one could say the same of every medical system on the planet (and indeed organisations generally, but as the article says, we do still take doctors' opinions too uncritically in a way that we wouldn't with, say, builders or economists).
Whether it's the best way to organise health care (IMJO yes) and whether, if we choose it, the Government funds it adequately (IMO currently hell no), are two separate issues, and as the article says they don't relate to this particular tragedy.
Indeed there was certainly poor care, but worth noting that this child's potentially avoidable death occurred at a national specialist unit as good as any in the world, but all systems relying on humans can fail, and doctors are human.
Worth noting that plenty of second opinions were sought, but as so often the problem seems to have been communication between the team, and with other parts of the hospital such as PICU.
The junior staff seem under experienced and undersupervised, and afraid of communicating with the seniors. Similar issues have been behind many recent obstetric scandals. These are not unique problems to the NHS, and happen worldwide.
It's well over a decade back now, but I had a similar experience when my father got sepsis in hospital.
I got the very strong impression that if we hadn't pestered the fuck out of the doctors for several days, we wouldn't have got the second consultant's opinion which led to his pulling through.
On other things, the pro-Johnson elements were out in force on the front page of the Mail - clear the soon to be former Prime Minister so he can wait in the wings for a return. Mu thought on that is he still has to get through the COVID public enquiry which may well ask him some awkward questions.
I got my first email from them, the COVID public enquiry, yesterday. They’re going to have a huge task, so I doubt it’ll move quickly!
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943.
I do have some sympathy with what you're saying in that there is quite a big gap between learning to perform a task in a way that gives the appearance of intelligence, and actually being intelligent in the sense a human would understand it. For that reason, I'd not be surprised if we are many years further away from it than optimists (or pessimists, depending how you see it) believe.
But it probably is coming in the sense that there really isn't a ghost in the human machine and it's just an amazingly complex, beautiful, but ultimately replicable, set of connections.
More to the point, at a certain stage the appearance of intelligence and intelligence may as well be the same thing on a practical level.
It is the suppliers who are making serious profits here and more than half of these are beyond the reach of the UK taxpayer. We need to have a brief think before deciding whether or not penalising those that are not is the best way to encourage new investment here. Doesn't take too long does it?
The focus on the distributors rather ignores the fact that the vast majority of them went bust this year and the remaining ones are being asked to pick up the tab for them, something they really cannot afford to do without going bust themselves. Basically, it is a really stupid idea. Indeed, that doesn't really go far enough. Any politician floating this as the answer to anything can safely be ignored as having nothing useful to contribute. Which sadly rules out the vast majority.
Inasmuch as we now have an effective cartel monopolising UK energy supply we can argue the market has done what it so often does - the weak ultimately go to the wall and the strong inherit. The big four or five suppliers have us all by the thermostats and that's a situation needing addressing another day.
As for the wider picture, if the aim is to neuter energy as a source of income for Russia, rather like mask wearing, it's only really effective if everyone does it. Neither China nor India (it seems all Johnson's attempts to woo Modi have been less than successful) seem willing to join the embargo on Russian oil and gas and if they continue to put foreign currency into the Kremlin that will enable the war in Ukraine to continue.
As someone else said the other day, the big winners from all this are America and China and the big losers are Europe.
The problem Russia has in Ukraine is that it cannot replace the more sophisticated weaponary or equipment that is getting eaten up at a prodigious rate in the Ukraine. This is partly because of the poor state of their reserves and the corruption and blatant theft relating to those reserves but mainly because they do not have the technological basis to do so without western firms who can no longer trade with them. They will, eventually, lose the war in Ukraine because the western supplies to Ukraine give them a huge edge that weight of numbers of very poorly trained conscripts cannot overcome. Only a change of heart by the west, and the US in particular, can change this.
Europe has of course had way more than its fair share of wars and it is generally been the loser. Only the Soviet Union was left as a major power after WW2 and it collapsed more than 30 years ago now. The power that gripped the world for the best part of 400 years has bled away and is not coming back. Nothing Putin has done in Ukraine or elsewhere is going to change this, indeed it may accelerate it.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943.
I do have some sympathy with what you're saying in that there is quite a big gap between learning to perform a task in a way that gives the appearance of intelligence, and actually being intelligent in the sense a human would understand it. For that reason, I'd not be surprised if we are many years further away from it than optimists (or pessimists, depending how you see it) believe.
But it probably is coming in the sense that there really isn't a ghost in the human machine and it's just an amazingly complex, beautiful, but ultimately replicable, set of connections.
More to the point, at a certain stage the appearance of intelligence and intelligence may as well be the same thing on a practical level.
And at that stage the belief in computer non-intelligence becomes religious rather than scientific, because it is unprovable one way or tother.
Unsurprising. Sepsis is missed quite a lot, I believe.
I REALLY admire her for emphasising this dreadful fuck up was nothing to do with evil Tories, austerity, Brexit, NHS cuts, whatever
It is the real and mediocre NHS, prone to unaccountable errors, which deep down we all know, despite the worship
I was particularly struck be those words: don't get ill at weekends. Completely true. A relative of mine with cystic fibrosis nearly died in a Cornish hospital on a weekend. We were told that if it had been a weekday, he'd have been fine
That is not good enough
Every medical system has similar anecdotes, sadly. Mistakes will happen, especially with complicated conditions.
But lessons must be learned from mistakes, and to be seen to be learned. When the wagons are circled and no criticism of the institution and its people is allowed. This reached a nadir at Stafford (*), when anyone even trying to talk about what was going on was rounded on by not only the trust and its staff, but sh*t-for-brains people who could not stand to see the NHS getting criticised.
And then there's Burnham's role in all of that.
(*) A family member witnessed this first-hand, fortunately with no long-term consequences.
Only one medical system is treated like a religion.
Is it? Just talk to many an Amewrican about socialised medicine and you will get the full vampire-and-ray of light above the horizon at dawn treatment.
The Canadians are very proud of their healthcare system, perhaps as much as the we are in the UK. The contrast with the US is part of that, Canadian identity being tied up with not being American.
Unsurprising. Sepsis is missed quite a lot, I believe.
I REALLY admire her for emphasising this dreadful fuck up was nothing to do with evil Tories, austerity, Brexit, NHS cuts, whatever
It is the real and mediocre NHS, prone to unaccountable errors, which deep down we all know, despite the worship
I was particularly struck be those words: don't get ill at weekends. Completely true. A relative of mine with cystic fibrosis nearly died in a Cornish hospital on a weekend. We were told that if it had been a weekday, he'd have been fine
That is not good enough
Every medical system has similar anecdotes, sadly. Mistakes will happen, especially with complicated conditions.
But lessons must be learned from mistakes, and to be seen to be learned. When the wagons are circled and no criticism of the institution and its people is allowed. This reached a nadir at Stafford (*), when anyone even trying to talk about what was going on was rounded on by not only the trust and its staff, but sh*t-for-brains people who could not stand to see the NHS getting criticised.
And then there's Burnham's role in all of that.
(*) A family member witnessed this first-hand, fortunately with no long-term consequences.
That's why I said "mediocre" not "terrible". The NHS is mediocre: an OKish mid-ranking health system, with quite a few problems beyond "cuts" or "austeity". One of those problems is the way we are told to worship it, and protect it from criticism. So this brave, grieving mother has done us all a service
Bit better than mediocre on a VFM basis. Verging on the fairly decent.
It is the suppliers who are making serious profits here and more than half of these are beyond the reach of the UK taxpayer. We need to have a brief think before deciding whether or not penalising those that are not is the best way to encourage new investment here. Doesn't take too long does it?
The focus on the distributors rather ignores the fact that the vast majority of them went bust this year and the remaining ones are being asked to pick up the tab for them, something they really cannot afford to do without going bust themselves. Basically, it is a really stupid idea. Indeed, that doesn't really go far enough. Any politician floating this as the answer to anything can safely be ignored as having nothing useful to contribute. Which sadly rules out the vast majority.
Inasmuch as we now have an effective cartel monopolising UK energy supply we can argue the market has done what it so often does - the weak ultimately go to the wall and the strong inherit. The big four or five suppliers have us all by the thermostats and that's a situation needing addressing another day.
As for the wider picture, if the aim is to neuter energy as a source of income for Russia, rather like mask wearing, it's only really effective if everyone does it. Neither China nor India (it seems all Johnson's attempts to woo Modi have been less than successful) seem willing to join the embargo on Russian oil and gas and if they continue to put foreign currency into the Kremlin that will enable the war in Ukraine to continue.
As someone else said the other day, the big winners from all this are America and China and the big losers are Europe.
The problem Russia has in Ukraine is that it cannot replace the more sophisticated weaponary or equipment that is getting eaten up at a prodigious rate in the Ukraine. This is partly because of the poor state of their reserves and the corruption and blatant theft relating to those reserves but mainly because they do not have the technological basis to do so without western firms who can no longer trade with them. They will, eventually, lose the war in Ukraine because the western supplies to Ukraine give them a huge edge that weight of numbers of very poorly trained conscripts cannot overcome. Only a change of heart by the west, and the US in particular, can change this.
Europe has of course had way more than its fair share of wars and it is generally been the loser. Only the Soviet Union was left as a major power after WW2 and it collapsed more than 30 years ago now. The power that gripped the world for the best part of 400 years has bled away and is not coming back. Nothing Putin has done in Ukraine or elsewhere is going to change this, indeed it may accelerate it.
On this occasion we'd rather the decliner did not rage against the dying of the light and went quietly.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943.
I do have some sympathy with what you're saying in that there is quite a big gap between learning to perform a task in a way that gives the appearance of intelligence, and actually being intelligent in the sense a human would understand it. For that reason, I'd not be surprised if we are many years further away from it than optimists (or pessimists, depending how you see it) believe.
But it probably is coming in the sense that there really isn't a ghost in the human machine and it's just an amazingly complex, beautiful, but ultimately replicable, set of connections.
More to the point, at a certain stage the appearance of intelligence and intelligence may as well be the same thing on a practical level.
Quite. And the people who will say "but it's not intelligent and has no imagination" will look quite foolish - as the machines evince creativity on an epic scale, which is indistinguishable from human creativity, only more prolific and varied
Their only explanation for saying "it's not intelligent, has no imagination" will be a pious faith that this is true, despite all the evidence otherwise. In other words, it will be a religious belief
Incidentally, if you have an Alexa Show or some other digital photo display, I heartily recommend putting your best Stable Diffusion/Midjourney/Dalle creations on there. It makes for a superb rotating digital moodboard, which is, ironically, terrific for generating creative ideas
It is the suppliers who are making serious profits here and more than half of these are beyond the reach of the UK taxpayer. We need to have a brief think before deciding whether or not penalising those that are not is the best way to encourage new investment here. Doesn't take too long does it?
The focus on the distributors rather ignores the fact that the vast majority of them went bust this year and the remaining ones are being asked to pick up the tab for them, something they really cannot afford to do without going bust themselves. Basically, it is a really stupid idea. Indeed, that doesn't really go far enough. Any politician floating this as the answer to anything can safely be ignored as having nothing useful to contribute. Which sadly rules out the vast majority.
Inasmuch as we now have an effective cartel monopolising UK energy supply we can argue the market has done what it so often does - the weak ultimately go to the wall and the strong inherit. The big four or five suppliers have us all by the thermostats and that's a situation needing addressing another day.
As for the wider picture, if the aim is to neuter energy as a source of income for Russia, rather like mask wearing, it's only really effective if everyone does it. Neither China nor India (it seems all Johnson's attempts to woo Modi have been less than successful) seem willing to join the embargo on Russian oil and gas and if they continue to put foreign currency into the Kremlin that will enable the war in Ukraine to continue.
As someone else said the other day, the big winners from all this are America and China and the big losers are Europe.
The problem Russia has in Ukraine is that it cannot replace the more sophisticated weaponary or equipment that is getting eaten up at a prodigious rate in the Ukraine. This is partly because of the poor state of their reserves and the corruption and blatant theft relating to those reserves but mainly because they do not have the technological basis to do so without western firms who can no longer trade with them. They will, eventually, lose the war in Ukraine because the western supplies to Ukraine give them a huge edge that weight of numbers of very poorly trained conscripts cannot overcome. Only a change of heart by the west, and the US in particular, can change this.
Europe has of course had way more than its fair share of wars and it is generally been the loser. Only the Soviet Union was left as a major power after WW2 and it collapsed more than 30 years ago now. The power that gripped the world for the best part of 400 years has bled away and is not coming back. Nothing Putin has done in Ukraine or elsewhere is going to change this, indeed it may accelerate it.
On this occasion we'd rather the decliner did not rage against the dying of the light and went quietly.
Yes, which is why admire Gorbachev and the Russians don't.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
Naive reductionism at its worst. No attempt to define imagination or intelligence, which might make you think about the question:can we be sure a successful human artist is doing anything different?
Do you dispute that being a top level human go or chess player requires intelligence and imagination? Because if you do you are wrong. so either computers have the requisite intell and imag, or they can get by without and still win. If they can outperform the best go players why can they nor outperform the best painters?
It's a truly peculiar mindset, we've seen it on here many times. Even - often? - the most atheist people believe there is some sacred divine spark which makes human creativity special and rules out any other kind of creativity, especially emanating from machines
Which is quite illogical, UNLESS you are @HYUFD and you believe God made humans and made them different and superior to all His other creations
I AM religious but I have no problem, conceptually, with intelligent and imaginative machines. Indeed, I suspect they are here already. And it they are not they are certainly on the next bus. We'd best prepare ourselves
Perhaps the 'divine spark' is the millions of years of brain evolution. That, of course, doesn't mean it's logically impossible to have an artificial mind, but perhaps it's just massively beyond the capabilities of humans with compilers on Windows laptops and computer code with lots of curly brackets.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
Naive reductionism at its worst. No attempt to define imagination or intelligence, which might make you think about the question:can we be sure a successful human artist is doing anything different?
Do you dispute that being a top level human go or chess player requires intelligence and imagination? Because if you do you are wrong. so either computers have the requisite intell and imag, or they can get by without and still win. If they can outperform the best go players why can they nor outperform the best painters?
It's a truly peculiar mindset, we've seen it on here many times. Even - often? - the most atheist people believe there is some sacred divine spark which makes human creativity special and rules out any other kind of creativity, especially emanating from machines
Which is quite illogical, UNLESS you are @HYUFD and you believe God made humans and made them different and superior to all His other creations
I AM religious but I have no problem, conceptually, with intelligent and imaginative machines. Indeed, I suspect they are here already. And it they are not they are certainly on the next bus. We'd best prepare ourselves
Perhaps the 'divine spark' is the millions of years of brain evolution. That, of course, doesn't mean it's logically impossible to have an artificial mind, but perhaps it's just massively beyond the capabilities of human's with compilers on Windows laptops and computer code with lots of curly brackets.
But we can see AI approaching human intelligence, already
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
Naive reductionism at its worst. No attempt to define imagination or intelligence, which might make you think about the question:can we be sure a successful human artist is doing anything different?
Do you dispute that being a top level human go or chess player requires intelligence and imagination? Because if you do you are wrong. so either computers have the requisite intell and imag, or they can get by without and still win. If they can outperform the best go players why can they nor outperform the best painters?
It's a truly peculiar mindset, we've seen it on here many times. Even - often? - the most atheist people believe there is some sacred divine spark which makes human creativity special and rules out any other kind of creativity, especially emanating from machines
Which is quite illogical, UNLESS you are @HYUFD and you believe God made humans and made them different and superior to all His other creations
I AM religious but I have no problem, conceptually, with intelligent and imaginative machines. Indeed, I suspect they are here already. And it they are not they are certainly on the next bus. We'd best prepare ourselves
Perhaps the 'divine spark' is the millions of years of brain evolution. That, of course, doesn't mean it's logically impossible to have an artificial mind, but perhaps it's just massively beyond the capabilities of humans with compilers on Windows laptops and computer code with lots of curly brackets.
The internet seems to think that the human brain is now only about 20x faster than the fastest computer. Not a big margin.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
Naive reductionism at its worst. No attempt to define imagination or intelligence, which might make you think about the question:can we be sure a successful human artist is doing anything different?
Do you dispute that being a top level human go or chess player requires intelligence and imagination? Because if you do you are wrong. so either computers have the requisite intell and imag, or they can get by without and still win. If they can outperform the best go players why can they nor outperform the best painters?
It's a truly peculiar mindset, we've seen it on here many times. Even - often? - the most atheist people believe there is some sacred divine spark which makes human creativity special and rules out any other kind of creativity, especially emanating from machines
Which is quite illogical, UNLESS you are @HYUFD and you believe God made humans and made them different and superior to all His other creations
I AM religious but I have no problem, conceptually, with intelligent and imaginative machines. Indeed, I suspect they are here already. And it they are not they are certainly on the next bus. We'd best prepare ourselves
Why do you think that? I have never met an atheist who believes in a devine spark of any sort. We just don't believe that currently machines have reached full AI.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943.
I do have some sympathy with what you're saying in that there is quite a big gap between learning to perform a task in a way that gives the appearance of intelligence, and actually being intelligent in the sense a human would understand it. For that reason, I'd not be surprised if we are many years further away from it than optimists (or pessimists, depending how you see it) believe.
But it probably is coming in the sense that there really isn't a ghost in the human machine and it's just an amazingly complex, beautiful, but ultimately replicable, set of connections.
More to the point, at a certain stage the appearance of intelligence and intelligence may as well be the same thing on a practical level.
I'm not totally sure that's right, for example on the issue of consciousness and the morality of how machines are treated.
Chess is a good example. Chess playing computers are incredibly good, and essentially indistinguishable to the observer, but ultimately I think (and I don't really know as I can't play chess for toffee) they are impersonating chess players by throwing overwhelming computing power at the problem. My suspicion is that human players are using following a very different process that computers probably will replicate in due course, but perhaps in the more distant future than many predict.
Just been buzzed by a WW2-style bombed; four engine, single tail. Possibly Duxford's B17.
We often get planes flying overhead to and from Duxford, and a Spitfire regularly comes over. And we get Apaches heading west-east low; perhaps to the Norfolk ranges?
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943.
I do have some sympathy with what you're saying in that there is quite a big gap between learning to perform a task in a way that gives the appearance of intelligence, and actually being intelligent in the sense a human would understand it. For that reason, I'd not be surprised if we are many years further away from it than optimists (or pessimists, depending how you see it) believe.
But it probably is coming in the sense that there really isn't a ghost in the human machine and it's just an amazingly complex, beautiful, but ultimately replicable, set of connections.
More to the point, at a certain stage the appearance of intelligence and intelligence may as well be the same thing on a practical level.
I'm not totally sure that's right, for example on the issue of consciousness and the morality of how machines are treated.
Chess is a good example. Chess playing computers are incredibly good, and essentially indistinguishable to the observer, but ultimately I think (and I don't really know as I can't play chess for toffee) they are impersonating chess players by throwing overwhelming computing power at the problem. My suspicion is that human players are using following a very different process that computers probably will replicate in due course, but perhaps in the more distant future than many predict.
Well, that is as purely unscientific a belief as you could hope for. If the computers are already winning how will you tell the difference/
FWIW I can't play chess either, but human players tend to the view that a computer's game can look every bit as elegant and imaginative as a human's.
Just been buzzed by a WW2-style bombed; four engine, single tail. Possibly Duxford's B17.
We often get planes flying overhead to and from Duxford, and a Spitfire regularly comes over. And we get Apaches heading west-east low; perhaps to the Norfolk ranges?
I used to have offices over by the American Cemetery. One summer 10-15 years back, a Spitfire and an ME-109 came and practiced a mock dogfight over us, then flew back over at treetop level and waved us goodbye! It was quite the thing.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
Naive reductionism at its worst. No attempt to define imagination or intelligence, which might make you think about the question:can we be sure a successful human artist is doing anything different?
Do you dispute that being a top level human go or chess player requires intelligence and imagination? Because if you do you are wrong. so either computers have the requisite intell and imag, or they can get by without and still win. If they can outperform the best go players why can they nor outperform the best painters?
It's a truly peculiar mindset, we've seen it on here many times. Even - often? - the most atheist people believe there is some sacred divine spark which makes human creativity special and rules out any other kind of creativity, especially emanating from machines
Which is quite illogical, UNLESS you are @HYUFD and you believe God made humans and made them different and superior to all His other creations
I AM religious but I have no problem, conceptually, with intelligent and imaginative machines. Indeed, I suspect they are here already. And it they are not they are certainly on the next bus. We'd best prepare ourselves
Perhaps the 'divine spark' is the millions of years of brain evolution. That, of course, doesn't mean it's logically impossible to have an artificial mind, but perhaps it's just massively beyond the capabilities of humans with compilers on Windows laptops and computer code with lots of curly brackets.
The internet seems to think that the human brain is now only about 20x faster than the fastest computer. Not a big margin.
Speed isn't everything. Perhaps there are processes within the brain whose algorithms and interactions are just so soaringly complicated that we will simply never stumble upon them. Perhaps it's sheer fluke that evolution did.
Had my first cycle ride since I caught Covid two and a half months ago. I managed ten miles into Edinburgh and back, which is further than I thought I would do, but I'm more tired than I normally would be after such a distance, but that could be as much because I've not cycled for so long than because of lingering Covid effects. Another staging post on the return to full health.
We seem to have many more massive spiders around than normal. My wife said she heard one walking over our stash of plastic supermarket bags last night it was so large and heavy. They don't have spiders in Ireland, right? St Patrick banished them all or something?
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943.
I do have some sympathy with what you're saying in that there is quite a big gap between learning to perform a task in a way that gives the appearance of intelligence, and actually being intelligent in the sense a human would understand it. For that reason, I'd not be surprised if we are many years further away from it than optimists (or pessimists, depending how you see it) believe.
But it probably is coming in the sense that there really isn't a ghost in the human machine and it's just an amazingly complex, beautiful, but ultimately replicable, set of connections.
More to the point, at a certain stage the appearance of intelligence and intelligence may as well be the same thing on a practical level.
I'm not totally sure that's right, for example on the issue of consciousness and the morality of how machines are treated.
Chess is a good example. Chess playing computers are incredibly good, and essentially indistinguishable to the observer, but ultimately I think (and I don't really know as I can't play chess for toffee) they are impersonating chess players by throwing overwhelming computing power at the problem. My suspicion is that human players are using following a very different process that computers probably will replicate in due course, but perhaps in the more distant future than many predict.
The indistinguishable part was the point. I'm sure there will still be a difference, but if in mimicing true intelligence we as human beings cannot distinguish it from true intelligence, the difference doesn't matter much. And at that point people probably will treat machines as if they have intelligence - there's enough speculative fiction on the idea of aritificial intelligence to make it plausible that if something seems like it is truly intelligent, some human beings will demand they be treated as such.
I appear to think, therefore I am?
Some people think human beings don't think as much as we like to imagine either, driven by internal processes making our choices in a way we do not comprehend. Hurts my head.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
Naive reductionism at its worst. No attempt to define imagination or intelligence, which might make you think about the question:can we be sure a successful human artist is doing anything different?
Do you dispute that being a top level human go or chess player requires intelligence and imagination? Because if you do you are wrong. so either computers have the requisite intell and imag, or they can get by without and still win. If they can outperform the best go players why can they nor outperform the best painters?
It's a truly peculiar mindset, we've seen it on here many times. Even - often? - the most atheist people believe there is some sacred divine spark which makes human creativity special and rules out any other kind of creativity, especially emanating from machines
Which is quite illogical, UNLESS you are @HYUFD and you believe God made humans and made them different and superior to all His other creations
I AM religious but I have no problem, conceptually, with intelligent and imaginative machines. Indeed, I suspect they are here already. And it they are not they are certainly on the next bus. We'd best prepare ourselves
Perhaps the 'divine spark' is the millions of years of brain evolution. That, of course, doesn't mean it's logically impossible to have an artificial mind, but perhaps it's just massively beyond the capabilities of humans with compilers on Windows laptops and computer code with lots of curly brackets.
I think that what those working in the area would say is that it increasingly isn't human compilers working on a laptop with code, but computers writing their own code. So if you can get the conditions right, the brain evolution you're talking about happens within the systems themselves, only at a vastly accelerated rate. So it isn't a team of people laboriously solving coding problems, but fully internalised.
I don't know how realistic or near that is. It strikes me as a bit like workable nuclear fusion - always feeling tantalisingly close, but never really getting there (until, one day, it quite quickly arrives).
Just been buzzed by a WW2-style bombed; four engine, single tail. Possibly Duxford's B17.
We often get planes flying overhead to and from Duxford, and a Spitfire regularly comes over. And we get Apaches heading west-east low; perhaps to the Norfolk ranges?
I used to have offices over by the American Cemetery. One summer 10-15 years back, a Spitfire and an ME-109 came and practiced a mock dogfight over us, then flew back over at treetop level and waved us goodbye! It was quite the thing.
I've been to three of my son's sports days (one cancelled due to Covid), and each time we've had a Spitfire fly over. Apparently one of the parents is involved at Duxford. They also fly regularly over us for other reasons as well. They seem to like Cambourne.
In about 2000, I was following the old railway line to St Ives (now the MGB) when a whole flight of Spitfires flew over. Apparently it was one of the largest gathering of Spitfires since the war. And I didn't take a photo.
I'm far from being an expert on identifying planes, but I can generally tell Spitfires by the engine noise and shape. Except perhaps for the marks that had clipped wings.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
Naive reductionism at its worst. No attempt to define imagination or intelligence, which might make you think about the question:can we be sure a successful human artist is doing anything different?
Do you dispute that being a top level human go or chess player requires intelligence and imagination? Because if you do you are wrong. so either computers have the requisite intell and imag, or they can get by without and still win. If they can outperform the best go players why can they nor outperform the best painters?
For some reason I find it harder to conceive of a machine being able to replicate the confusion of the human mind rather than its high performing clarity.
Doing a great painting? Yep. Writing a banger of a song? Yep. Playing near flawless chess? Yep.
But sitting there trying and failing to make sense of things, getting distracted, losing your thread, seeing connections that aren't there, struggling to separate genuine emotions from fake ones, going mad, wising up, tuning out, etc etc ... I struggle to imagine a machine doing this.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
Naive reductionism at its worst. No attempt to define imagination or intelligence, which might make you think about the question:can we be sure a successful human artist is doing anything different?
Do you dispute that being a top level human go or chess player requires intelligence and imagination? Because if you do you are wrong. so either computers have the requisite intell and imag, or they can get by without and still win. If they can outperform the best go players why can they nor outperform the best painters?
For some reason I find it harder to conceive of a machine being able to replicate the confusion of the human mind rather than its high performing clarity.
Doing a great painting? Yep. Writing a banger of a song? Yep. Playing near flawless chess? Yep.
But sitting there trying and failing to make sense of things, getting distracted, losing your thread, seeing connections that aren't there, struggling to separate genuine emotions from fake ones, going mad, wising up, tuning out, etc etc ... I struggle to imagine a machine doing this.
I hereby inaugurate the annual @Dura_Ace Hydraulic Stamp Trophy, given to the commenter who manages to comment despite being significantly injured or severely ill as he or she types. Bonus points for the most spectacular injuries or incapacitation
Anyone who actually dies while commenting gets a Lifetime Achievement Award
It's a nice idea but I have a couple of quibbles. First, "significantly injured" or "severely ill" - I think we'd need @Foxy to adjudicate on the real seriousness. Having a leg drop off is pretty serious but a headache or chest pain could also be serious.
As for the "Lifetime Achievement Award", apart from the notion the last thing you do in your life is to write a comment on PB and press SEND sounds a little trite, you may be surprised to hear we've had people come on this forum with one identity and suddenly depart. Yet, and this is the strange bit, a new poster comes on who writes in exactly the same style as the person who departed - what a coincidence.
We would need some solid proof said poster is no more and hasn't just faked their own demise like John Stonehouse or Reggie Perrin.
In all fairness, we have lost some fine posters down the years - we all have our favourites among the departed - mine was @MarkSenior
A death certificate sent to the Mods is of uncertain value if they don't have one's real ID anyway ...
Perhaps we each ought to compose a final message from beyond the grave/crematorium for our executors to post on PB. One of the things of the modern digital world for which it behoves us to tak tent, as they say up here, amongst such surprising titbits as how few digital recordings on your I-wotsit-cloud-thingy actually belong to you and can be bequeathed ...
Bill Drummond from the KLF had a website where you could log what you wanted to happen when you died. It appears to be on life-support itself now.
Chess is a good example. Chess playing computers are incredibly good, and essentially indistinguishable to the observer, but ultimately I think (and I don't really know as I can't play chess for toffee) they are impersonating chess players by throwing overwhelming computing power at the problem. My suspicion is that human players are using following a very different process that computers probably will replicate in due course, but perhaps in the more distant future than many predict.
Well, that is as purely unscientific a belief as you could hope for. If the computers are already winning how will you tell the difference/
FWIW I can't play chess either, but human players tend to the view that a computer's game can look every bit as elegant and imaginative as a human's.
I think the intuition underlying this idea (which I have sympathy with) is that as humans we know that when we play chess we are doing so as a specific application of our general intelligence and problem solving ability. On the other hand when we look at most chess-playing computers we see that they are solving a very specific problem in a specialized way, so the fact that Stockfish can play a good game of chess tells you very little about whether it is 'intelligent' in the human sense (This is less true of newer approaches like AlphaZero, which is what makes them interesting.)
More generally, we've generally proceeded mostly by getting computers better at very specific tasks (arithmetic, chess, image recognition, now image synthesis) -- does this at some point congeal into 'real' AI, or do we just end up with a big collection of specific tools for various jobs, whose input and output needs to be wired up and applied by a human still?
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
Naive reductionism at its worst. No attempt to define imagination or intelligence, which might make you think about the question:can we be sure a successful human artist is doing anything different?
Do you dispute that being a top level human go or chess player requires intelligence and imagination? Because if you do you are wrong. so either computers have the requisite intell and imag, or they can get by without and still win. If they can outperform the best go players why can they nor outperform the best painters?
For some reason I find it harder to conceive of a machine being able to the replicate the confusion of the human mind rather than its high performing clarity.
Doing a great painting? Yep. Writing a banger of a song? Yep. Playing near flawless chess? Yep.
But sitting there trying and failing to make sense of things, getting distracted, losing your thread, seeing connections that aren't there, struggling to separate genuine emotions from fake ones, going mad, wising up, tuning out, etc etc ... I struggle to imagine a machine doing this.
You'd have to program it in. Like playlist randomisers - apparently true randomness is not random enough for human consumers (because it will throw up e.g. 3 in a row by the same artist from time to time, by chance) and has to be tweaked.
But yes they could in theory be pretty dim but so relentlessly efficient and concentrated that they outperform us anyway.
Unsurprising. Sepsis is missed quite a lot, I believe.
I REALLY admire her for emphasising this dreadful fuck up was nothing to do with evil Tories, austerity, Brexit, NHS cuts, whatever
It is the real and mediocre NHS, prone to unaccountable errors, which deep down we all know, despite the worship
I was particularly struck be those words: don't get ill at weekends. Completely true. A relative of mine with cystic fibrosis nearly died in a Cornish hospital on a weekend. We were told that if it had been a weekday, he'd have been fine
That is not good enough
Every medical system has similar anecdotes, sadly. Mistakes will happen, especially with complicated conditions.
But lessons must be learned from mistakes, and to be seen to be learned. When the wagons are circled and no criticism of the institution and its people is allowed. This reached a nadir at Stafford (*), when anyone even trying to talk about what was going on was rounded on by not only the trust and its staff, but sh*t-for-brains people who could not stand to see the NHS getting criticised.
And then there's Burnham's role in all of that.
(*) A family member witnessed this first-hand, fortunately with no long-term consequences.
It comes back to the independence of the interests of the watch dogs from the system they are watching.
If they are close to the “system” then regulation becomes a backslap - see the FAA and Boeing. Or NASA and Boeing for that matter.
Unsurprising. Sepsis is missed quite a lot, I believe.
I REALLY admire her for emphasising this dreadful fuck up was nothing to do with evil Tories, austerity, Brexit, NHS cuts, whatever
It is the real and mediocre NHS, prone to unaccountable errors, which deep down we all know, despite the worship
I was particularly struck be those words: don't get ill at weekends. Completely true. A relative of mine with cystic fibrosis nearly died in a Cornish hospital on a weekend. We were told that if it had been a weekday, he'd have been fine
That is not good enough
Every medical system has similar anecdotes, sadly. Mistakes will happen, especially with complicated conditions.
But lessons must be learned from mistakes, and to be seen to be learned. When the wagons are circled and no criticism of the institution and its people is allowed. This reached a nadir at Stafford (*), when anyone even trying to talk about what was going on was rounded on by not only the trust and its staff, but sh*t-for-brains people who could not stand to see the NHS getting criticised.
And then there's Burnham's role in all of that.
(*) A family member witnessed this first-hand, fortunately with no long-term consequences.
That's why I said "mediocre" not "terrible". The NHS is mediocre: an OKish mid-ranking health system, with quite a few problems beyond "cuts" or "austeity". One of those problems is the way we are told to worship it, and protect it from criticism. So this brave, grieving mother has done us all a service
I think the politicisation of the NHS (both pro and con) has a lot to answer for - when something goes wrong, people who dislike the system say see, it's the mediocre NHS, we need a better system, and people who like the system say no, no, the system's wonderful, except for that time. We should neither worship it nor treat every mistake as a sign of system failure - rather, except in egregious cases of wilful negligence, learn from every mistake frankly without trying to fire everyone involved. I suspect one could say the same of every medical system on the planet (and indeed organisations generally, but as the article says, we do still take doctors' opinions too uncritically in a way that we wouldn't with , say, builders or economists).
Whether it's the best way to organise health care (IMJO yes) and whether, if we choose it, the Government funds it adequately (IMO currently hell no), are two separate issues, and as the article says they don't relate to this particular tragedy.
Indeed there was certainly poor care, but worth noting that this child's potentially avoidable death occurred at a national specialist unit as good as any in the world, but all systems relying on humans can fail, and doctors are human.
Worth noting that plenty of second opinions were sought, but as so often the problem seems to have been communication between the team, and with other parts of the hospital such as PICU.
The junior staff seem under experienced and undersupervised, and afraid of communicating with the seniors. Similar issues have been behind many recent obstetric scandals. These are not unique problems to the NHS, and happen worldwide.
It's well over a decade back now, but I had a similar experience when my father got sepsis in hospital.
I got the very strong impression that if we hadn't pestered the fuck out of the doctors for several days, we wouldn't have got the second consultant's opinion which led to his pulling through.
Certainly important to be assertive in asking for such things, but medicine is a team approach and in a well functioning team the juniors and nurses should feel empowered to identify and flag up any issues with a deteriorating patient, after all they are in more regular contact.
I always thank the nurses or junior doctors when they raise concerns, and take them seriously. I am not immune to making mistakes and pleased to have them picked up before they become catastrophes. Not all my colleagues take the same approach to being contacted.
I hereby inaugurate the annual @Dura_Ace Hydraulic Stamp Trophy, given to the commenter who manages to comment despite being significantly injured or severely ill as he or she types. Bonus points for the most spectacular injuries or incapacitation
Anyone who actually dies while commenting gets a Lifetime Achievement Award
It's a nice idea but I have a couple of quibbles. First, "significantly injured" or "severely ill" - I think we'd need @Foxy to adjudicate on the real seriousness. Having a leg drop off is pretty serious but a headache or chest pain could also be serious.
As for the "Lifetime Achievement Award", apart from the notion the last thing you do in your life is to write a comment on PB and press SEND sounds a little trite, you may be surprised to hear we've had people come on this forum with one identity and suddenly depart. Yet, and this is the strange bit, a new poster comes on who writes in exactly the same style as the person who departed - what a coincidence.
We would need some solid proof said poster is no more and hasn't just faked their own demise like John Stonehouse or Reggie Perrin.
In all fairness, we have lost some fine posters down the years - we all have our favourites among the departed - mine was @MarkSenior
A death certificate sent to the Mods is of uncertain value if they don't have one's real ID anyway ...
Perhaps we each ought to compose a final message from beyond the grave/crematorium for our executors to post on PB. One of the things of the modern digital world for which it behoves us to tak tent, as they say up here, amongst such surprising titbits as how few digital recordings on your I-wotsit-cloud-thingy actually belong to you and can be bequeathed ...
Bill Drummond from the KLF had a website where you could log what you wanted to happen when you died. It appears to be on life-support itself now.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
Naive reductionism at its worst. No attempt to define imagination or intelligence, which might make you think about the question:can we be sure a successful human artist is doing anything different?
Do you dispute that being a top level human go or chess player requires intelligence and imagination? Because if you do you are wrong. so either computers have the requisite intell and imag, or they can get by without and still win. If they can outperform the best go players why can they nor outperform the best painters?
For some reason I find it harder to conceive of a machine being able to the replicate the confusion of the human mind rather than its high performing clarity.
Doing a great painting? Yep. Writing a banger of a song? Yep. Playing near flawless chess? Yep.
But sitting there trying and failing to make sense of things, getting distracted, losing your thread, seeing connections that aren't there, struggling to separate genuine emotions from fake ones, going mad, wising up, tuning out, etc etc ... I struggle to imagine a machine doing this.
To take it a step further I struggle to imagine a machine struggling to imagine a machine doing this. (that's enough fucking imagining & struggling-ed)
I wonder why Father Calv crowbarred paedophillia into a tweet about transgender issues?
Only joking, I know exactly why he did!
Actually there is genuine concern about why some people may be keen to encourage the use of puberty blockers. It is worthy of consideration.
Genuine concerns about x, words to define the age we live in.
I know we don't see eye to eye on much UD, but Babylon Berlin is utterly FAB and thanks again for the recommendation.
👍 Cool. I admit to have becoming totally fanboi about the series to the point of being evangelical, but glad if I've made at least one convert!
I liked Rings of Power a lot. Am I alone here?
First of all, the elements we can all agree on? There’s nothing wrong with the excellent soundtrack and score, use of music and sound was good. And the Title Sequence is quite excellent too. I enjoyed the visual spectacle - the hidden Hobbit village coming alive was very good.
Pacing we could argue over. I thought the first episode had a good pace. There was discussion here last week, horror tales tend be short, if it’s long then it becomes more than horror - similar here in that making Rings of Power have pace, action and suspense it has to move away from pure Tolkienism - indeed hiding from, and the battle with the big Orc, sequence Spielberg would have been proud of.
And whilst some of the script was a little lame, some performances were very good. Markella Kavenagh steals acting honours as adventurous Hobbit Nori - Ismael Córdova as buttoned up Elf Arondir likeable too.
Too early to say about Characterisation just two episodes in. Accents. Maybe a bit like Derry Girls doing Midsummer Nights Dream at times?
If Tolkien purists were to argue it’s not true to Tolkien enough, I would argue it builds upon what Tolkien offered, mankind fighting for Morgoth so held in suspicion for example. For purists I’m reminded about what Stu from Romford said about ism’s earlier today. How do the purists know that the man himself wouldn’t watch this and enjoy it?
Loved Galadriel’s warrior eye make up when she took down the troll, I’m going to do mine like that. 😍
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
Naive reductionism at its worst. No attempt to define imagination or intelligence, which might make you think about the question:can we be sure a successful human artist is doing anything different?
Do you dispute that being a top level human go or chess player requires intelligence and imagination? Because if you do you are wrong. so either computers have the requisite intell and imag, or they can get by without and still win. If they can outperform the best go players why can they nor outperform the best painters?
For some reason I find it harder to conceive of a machine being able to replicate the confusion of the human mind rather than its high performing clarity.
Doing a great painting? Yep. Writing a banger of a song? Yep. Playing near flawless chess? Yep.
But sitting there trying and failing to make sense of things, getting distracted, losing your thread, seeing connections that aren't there, struggling to separate genuine emotions from fake ones, going mad, wising up, tuning out, etc etc ... I struggle to imagine a machine doing this.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
Naive reductionism at its worst. No attempt to define imagination or intelligence, which might make you think about the question:can we be sure a successful human artist is doing anything different?
Do you dispute that being a top level human go or chess player requires intelligence and imagination? Because if you do you are wrong. so either computers have the requisite intell and imag, or they can get by without and still win. If they can outperform the best go players why can they nor outperform the best painters?
For some reason I find it harder to conceive of a machine being able to the replicate the confusion of the human mind rather than its high performing clarity.
Doing a great painting? Yep. Writing a banger of a song? Yep. Playing near flawless chess? Yep.
But sitting there trying and failing to make sense of things, getting distracted, losing your thread, seeing connections that aren't there, struggling to separate genuine emotions from fake ones, going mad, wising up, tuning out, etc etc ... I struggle to imagine a machine doing this.
To take it a step further I struggle to imagine a machine struggling to imagine a machine doing this. (that's enough fucking imagining & struggling-ed)
Yep. And sorry (cos you're right it sooner or later, and usually sooner, leads up fundament alley) but just one more for the road -
I can't get my mind around a machine failing to get its mind around things in the same way that I can't.
Smarkets opened their “next Con leader after Sunak/Truss” market a week or so ago, with Boris at 33/1. Someone sharp nicked that before I could get on. By the time I noticed, he was down to 16/1. I took all I could. Now down to 10/1. £42 available at that price.
Probably still value. As Mike said, I’d guess Boris will be fav on the BF market when it gets going. Perhaps between 3/1 & 6/1.
I generally hate bets like this that hinge on someone’s motivations and personal decisions, rather than election outcomes, but value is value and you’ve got to take it when ye find it…
Smarkets opened their “next Con leader after Sunak/Truss” market a week or so ago, with Boris at 33/1. By the time I noticed, he was down to 16/1. I took al I could. Now down to 10/1. £42 available at that price.
Looks like HMS Broken Propeller is under tow, with three tugs helping it east. If it's heading towards Rosyth is going to take at least five days to make it there at the speed they're going.
Smarkets opened their “next Con leader after Sunak/Truss” market a week or so ago, with Boris at 33/1. By the time I noticed, he was down to 16/1. I took al I could. Now down to 10/1. £42 available at that price.
Possible Mercedes pole there before the yellow flag.
Yep. Indycar have instituted a new rule this year, that you go to the back if you cause a flag in qualifying that impedes the lap of others. Seems a sensible way to do things.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
Naive reductionism at its worst. No attempt to define imagination or intelligence, which might make you think about the question:can we be sure a successful human artist is doing anything different?
Do you dispute that being a top level human go or chess player requires intelligence and imagination? Because if you do you are wrong. so either computers have the requisite intell and imag, or they can get by without and still win. If they can outperform the best go players why can they nor outperform the best painters?
For some reason I find it harder to conceive of a machine being able to the replicate the confusion of the human mind rather than its high performing clarity.
Doing a great painting? Yep. Writing a banger of a song? Yep. Playing near flawless chess? Yep.
But sitting there trying and failing to make sense of things, getting distracted, losing your thread, seeing connections that aren't there, struggling to separate genuine emotions from fake ones, going mad, wising up, tuning out, etc etc ... I struggle to imagine a machine doing this.
To take it a step further I struggle to imagine a machine struggling to imagine a machine doing this. (that's enough fucking imagining & struggling-ed)
Yep. And sorry (cos you're right it sooner or later, and usually sooner, leads up fundament alley) but just one more for the road -
I can't get my mind around a machine failing to get its mind around things in the same way that I can't.
To move things away from fundament alley, I feel (no doubt displaying prejudices and subjectivity that will be leapt upon) that the whole AI artists thing seems to miss the aspect of struggle in art, the self doubt battling with massive ego, the fear of failure and ridicule, the obsessiveness verging at times on madness, the moments of alchemical transformation in even a small passage of painting, or drawing, or whatever. It's not the whole story of course but a lot of great art has been forged out of those things.
Remember when I said, all those hours ago, that AI will make the scariest horror movies EVER?
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
Which is insane, given that Stable Diffusion costs 1p a go and, as far as I can see, is just as good at most of this
Nope that's not the dalle charge, it's extra. What he does is exhibit results like your ghost children and say if you pay me 2 bucks I will disclose to you the prompt which created this. You then go off and put it into dalle.
Yes I understood that wasn't theDalle charge. But I didn't realise this guy was selling the prompts. Next time I will read a linked article before commenting...
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
AI has no imagination and it will "learn" from what prompt words people seem to like the results of and for which they keep instructing tweaked and retweaked images. Then when the same words get typed in again it will cut out the middle stages and try to appear highly intelligent, if giving the punters what they want is "intelligence". In short: it's a cool toy.
Naive reductionism at its worst. No attempt to define imagination or intelligence, which might make you think about the question:can we be sure a successful human artist is doing anything different?
Do you dispute that being a top level human go or chess player requires intelligence and imagination? Because if you do you are wrong. so either computers have the requisite intell and imag, or they can get by without and still win. If they can outperform the best go players why can they nor outperform the best painters?
For some reason I find it harder to conceive of a machine being able to the replicate the confusion of the human mind rather than its high performing clarity.
Doing a great painting? Yep. Writing a banger of a song? Yep. Playing near flawless chess? Yep.
But sitting there trying and failing to make sense of things, getting distracted, losing your thread, seeing connections that aren't there, struggling to separate genuine emotions from fake ones, going mad, wising up, tuning out, etc etc ... I struggle to imagine a machine doing this.
You'd have to program it in. Like playlist randomisers - apparently true randomness is not random enough for human consumers (because it will throw up e.g. 3 in a row by the same artist from time to time, by chance) and has to be tweaked.
But yes they could in theory be pretty dim but so relentlessly efficient and concentrated that they outperform us anyway.
I can definitely imagine the programming becoming so sophisticated such that 'they' can outperform 'us' in many, maybe most, maybe even all fields. And I have no problem calling that intelligence.
But for me human intelligence is not about performing tasks or making things. I don't look at it that way. That's human productivity. Human intelligence is what goes on in the brain - in everybody regardless of how it manifests to the outside world. Clever or not clever, talented or not talented, IQ of 140 or 90, all of this is only a marginal difference in the grand scheme of things.
Unsurprising. Sepsis is missed quite a lot, I believe.
I REALLY admire her for emphasising this dreadful fuck up was nothing to do with evil Tories, austerity, Brexit, NHS cuts, whatever
It is the real and mediocre NHS, prone to unaccountable errors, which deep down we all know, despite the worship
I was particularly struck be those words: don't get ill at weekends. Completely true. A relative of mine with cystic fibrosis nearly died in a Cornish hospital on a weekend. We were told that if it had been a weekday, he'd have been fine
That is not good enough
Every medical system has similar anecdotes, sadly. Mistakes will happen, especially with complicated conditions.
But lessons must be learned from mistakes, and to be seen to be learned. When the wagons are circled and no criticism of the institution and its people is allowed. This reached a nadir at Stafford (*), when anyone even trying to talk about what was going on was rounded on by not only the trust and its staff, but sh*t-for-brains people who could not stand to see the NHS getting criticised.
And then there's Burnham's role in all of that.
(*) A family member witnessed this first-hand, fortunately with no long-term consequences.
That's why I said "mediocre" not "terrible". The NHS is mediocre: an OKish mid-ranking health system, with quite a few problems beyond "cuts" or "austeity". One of those problems is the way we are told to worship it, and protect it from criticism. So this brave, grieving mother has done us all a service
I think the politicisation of the NHS (both pro and con) has a lot to answer for - when something goes wrong, people who dislike the system say see, it's the mediocre NHS, we need a better system, and people who like the system say no, no, the system's wonderful, except for that time. We should neither worship it nor treat every mistake as a sign of system failure - rather, except in egregious cases of wilful negligence, learn from every mistake frankly without trying to fire everyone involved. I suspect one could say the same of every medical system on the planet (and indeed organisations generally, but as the article says, we do still take doctors' opinions too uncritically in a way that we wouldn't with , say, builders or economists).
Whether it's the best way to organise health care (IMJO yes) and whether, if we choose it, the Government funds it adequately (IMO currently hell no), are two separate issues, and as the article says they don't relate to this particular tragedy.
Indeed there was certainly poor care, but worth noting that this child's potentially avoidable death occurred at a national specialist unit as good as any in the world, but all systems relying on humans can fail, and doctors are human.
Worth noting that plenty of second opinions were sought, but as so often the problem seems to have been communication between the team, and with other parts of the hospital such as PICU.
The junior staff seem under experienced and undersupervised, and afraid of communicating with the seniors. Similar issues have been behind many recent obstetric scandals. These are not unique problems to the NHS, and happen worldwide.
It's well over a decade back now, but I had a similar experience when my father got sepsis in hospital.
I got the very strong impression that if we hadn't pestered the fuck out of the doctors for several days, we wouldn't have got the second consultant's opinion which led to his pulling through.
Certainly important to be assertive in asking for such things, but medicine is a team approach and in a well functioning team the juniors and nurses should feel empowered to identify and flag up any issues with a deteriorating patient, after all they are in more regular contact.
I always thank the nurses or junior doctors when they raise concerns, and take them seriously. I am not immune to making mistakes and pleased to have them picked up before they become catastrophes. Not all my colleagues take the same approach to being contacted.
Many pharmacists would endorse your last sentence! Sadly.
Comments
The two most serious medical complaints I've had in years, and they happened within six months of each other (and might have been connected - a doc thinks the bang on my noggin I got in the fall might have damaged my head enough to allow the virus in later.)
It is the real and mediocre NHS, prone to unaccountable errors, which deep down we all know, despite the worship
I was particularly struck be those words: don't get ill at weekends. Completely true. A relative of mine with cystic fibrosis nearly died in a Cornish hospital on a weekend. We were told that if it had been a weekday, he'd have been fine
That is not good enough
She has spent seven weeks saying stuff, and outside the Conservative membership, people don't like what she's saying.
I'd like to say we're all feeling @Dura_Ace's pain currently - I'm not sure.
On other things, the pro-Johnson elements were out in force on the front page of the Mail - clear the soon to be former Prime Minister so he can wait in the wings for a return. Mu thought on that is he still has to get through the COVID public enquiry which may well ask him some awkward questions.
Now, for simple old @stodge to offer some thoughts - let's say the monthly energy bill at Stodge Towers is £150 but Mrs Stodge hears from our energy supplier it's going up to £300. I opine "that nice Mrs Truss and that nice Mr Kwarteng will help out - they'll either give us £150 to cover the bill or pay £150 to the energy supplier to cover the bill, either way we won't be out of pocket."
Hang on, though, that £300 worth of gas still exists - I've paid half of it but the supplier bought the rest and has to pay someone for it. All we are doing is financial buckpassing so the Stodges don't have to pay, well, not directly anyway. If the Government pays, how are they going to cover all these £150? Perhaps Kwarteng will borrow more to top up the £100 billion we're already going to have to pay in debt management next year.
A windfall tax seems superficially attractive but somebody still had to buy the energy at the higher price. If you're an energy supplier, you need energy to supply and you pay what you need to pay. If you buy £300 worth of energy and get only £150 from the customer and then get a windfall tax I'm just puzzled as to where that leaves the supply industry.
Nobody's ready for Rishi. PM4PM was the worst idea in British politics for the last 300 years. The Saj? Fuck off. etc., etc.
It'll be like when Putin was PM for a bit while Dimon kept the throne warm.
Here is an exceptionally early glimpse of what the machines might do. Like a scene from the worst nightmare in your worst nightmare. So deep in uncanny valley it is possibly emerging the other side of Planet Freak-out
https://twitter.com/FLKDayton/status/1565627299994558465?s=20&t=xU3hLfphScI-4zCkuF-0FA
But lessons must be learned from mistakes, and to be seen to be learned. When the wagons are circled and no criticism of the institution and its people is allowed. This reached a nadir at Stafford (*), when anyone even trying to talk about what was going on was rounded on by not only the trust and its staff, but sh*t-for-brains people who could not stand to see the NHS getting criticised.
And then there's Burnham's role in all of that.
(*) A family member witnessed this first-hand, fortunately with no long-term consequences.
If your bill goes from £150 to, err, £150, where’s your incentive to use less energy this winter?
People selling dalle and midjourney prompts for 2 to 5 dollars a pop
I'd also assume China were represented in some capacity (presumably the ambassador or whoever) and wouldn't be at all surprised or concerned had Putin attended. Putin also didn't have to say anything - just turn up, look somber, and go home.
The most recent vaguely comparable case I can think of was Trump not attending McCain's funeral (obviously McCain wasn't President but had been GOP candidate and the President would have been expected to go as a matter of protocol). But that has a clear reason - relations were so bad that McCain's family asked Trump not to attend - and that's unlikely to be the case here.
My view is the no-show was more about Putin's current mental state. There is clearly an element of paranoia that has led him to extreme social distancing in recent times, whether due to fear of assassination or some form of germophobia. Whether that is driven by underlying physical illness (and a linked fear of being seen by Westerners in a somewhat frail state) or is simply a psychological thing, I can't say.
When they're good, they can be very, very good.
I'm not completely dissing it. I'm just despairing of the worship
"What does he think Gorbachev should have done?" Good question. Fight wars against the forest brothers in the Baltic states, order the mafia bosses in Central Asia (e.g. in Kazkhstan) and the Caucasus (e.g. in Azerbaijan) - whose local despots had seats on the Soviet Politburo - to take oaths of renewed loyalty, tell the Georgian KGB it was a department of the Soviet KGB with immediate effect, pull out of START negotiations with the US, tell the population that if they thought they might buy a family car in the near future (let alone a personal computer) then they'd better have another think coming? While keeping the Berlin Wall up at the same time maybe and invading Hungary to make sure it kept its border with Austria closed so that nobody could get from East to West Berlin round the back way? Keeping Germany divided might not have been a requirement but the optics of reunification would have made the job of retaining the USSR even harder.
Gorby ended a long-running war that the Kremlin wasn't winning, and he befriended the west. Plus don't do anything China wouldn't like (even though Gorby improved relations with China a lot, but what matters is now).
The focus on the distributors rather ignores the fact that the vast majority of them went bust this year and the remaining ones are being asked to pick up the tab for them, something they really cannot afford to do without going bust themselves. Basically, it is a really stupid idea. Indeed, that doesn't really go far enough. Any politician floating this as the answer to anything can safely be ignored as having nothing useful to contribute. Which sadly rules out the vast majority.
But that's clever. Prompt selling. Makes total sense. Some people have good promptcraft, some don't. It is quite a peculiar thing. I have now discovered a bunch of prompt words which nearly always give you interesting, powerful results
They tend to be quite but not wholly unusual. I am making a list
Whether it's the best way to organise health care (IMJO yes) and whether, if we choose it, the Government funds it adequately (IMO currently hell no), are two separate issues, and as the article says they don't relate to this particular tragedy.
Hence the need to go back to the drawing board, even if that had disagreeable things like rationing and furlough for the most energy intensive industries. And no, I don't like those solutions much.
https://a2news.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/PA-KOMENT-PUTIN-GORBACHEV_frame_845.jpg
https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/esdelatino.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/02214053/Putin-desmantela-el-ingenuo-legado-de-libertad-de-Gorbachov.png
Worth noting that plenty of second opinions were sought, but as so often the problem seems to have been communication between the team, and with other parts of the hospital such as PICU.
The junior staff seem under experienced and undersupervised, and afraid of communicating with the seniors. Similar issues have been behind many recent obstetric scandals. These are not unique problems to the NHS, and happen worldwide.
The Chris Pincher affair simply illustrated how dysfunctional it was and would always be. There was no way in which any minister or MP could believe a word from the PM or Number 10 and, in a rare lapse into honesty, he himself had said he was never, ever going to change.
So there are a high proportion of Never Johnson MPs. There are some fanbois too, of course, but also a fair few who quite like Johnson in some ways but appreciate it can never work.
Like you, I don't tend to rate the Tory bench in terms of successors to Truss. But, to be honest, that's because I'm not a Tory. Mordaunt could quite easily have been the "not Rishi" candidate but for some missteps and a campaign by the blue tops. Badenoch very much emerged strengthened as, to a lesser extent, did Tugendhat. Are any of these people terrifying prospects for Starmer or others? Probably not, but each of them and some others have a case to make.
Ultimately, the Johnson comeback story is one that people love to talk about (whether because they adore the man or loathe him). But it is, ultimately, pretty fanciful. And that's even before we talk about Johnson representing a non-safe seat and having some serious problems still over past conduct (you don't instruct Pannick if you're not panicking).
Do you dispute that being a top level human go or chess player requires intelligence and imagination? Because if you do you are wrong. so either computers have the requisite intell and imag, or they can get by without and still win. If they can outperform the best go players why can they nor outperform the best painters?
https://mobile.twitter.com/adamgoldmanNYT/status/1565825728716967939
Perhaps we each ought to compose a final message from beyond the grave/crematorium for our executors to post on PB. One of the things of the modern digital world for which it behoves us to tak tent, as they say up here, amongst such surprising titbits as how few digital recordings on your I-wotsit-cloud-thingy actually belong to you and can be bequeathed ...
As for the wider picture, if the aim is to neuter energy as a source of income for Russia, rather like mask wearing, it's only really effective if everyone does it. Neither China nor India (it seems all Johnson's attempts to woo Modi have been less than successful) seem willing to join the embargo on Russian oil and gas and if they continue to put foreign currency into the Kremlin that will enable the war in Ukraine to continue.
As someone else said the other day, the big winners from all this are America and China and the big losers are Europe.
A lot of booking keepers this season, could tot up into bans?
I was dragged out to the football the other night, to the Emma Rutts Stadium - it was certainly more noisy than last time I was there, last season I took a book to read. Lightweight Arsenal still got beaten up by opponents despite squeaking win, and their bench and squad still far far too thin to break top 5 this season. They should have cashed in on Saka, he looks nothing this season and may never again.
I do have some sympathy with what you're saying in that there is quite a big gap between learning to perform a task in a way that gives the appearance of intelligence, and actually being intelligent in the sense a human would understand it. For that reason, I'd not be surprised if we are many years further away from it than optimists (or pessimists, depending how you see it) believe.
But it probably is coming in the sense that there really isn't a ghost in the human machine and it's just an amazingly complex, beautiful, but ultimately replicable, set of connections.
Which is quite illogical, UNLESS you are @HYUFD and you believe God made humans and made them different and superior to all His other creations
I AM religious but I have no problem, conceptually, with intelligent and imaginative machines. Indeed, I suspect they are here already. And it they are not they are certainly on the next bus. We'd best prepare ourselves
I got the very strong impression that if we hadn't pestered the fuck out of the doctors for several days, we wouldn't have got the second consultant's opinion which led to his pulling through.
Europe has of course had way more than its fair share of wars and it is generally been the loser. Only the Soviet Union was left as a major power after WW2 and it collapsed more than 30 years ago now. The power that gripped the world for the best part of 400 years has bled away and is not coming back. Nothing Putin has done in Ukraine or elsewhere is going to change this, indeed it may accelerate it.
Their only explanation for saying "it's not intelligent, has no imagination" will be a pious faith that this is true, despite all the evidence otherwise. In other words, it will be a religious belief
Incidentally, if you have an Alexa Show or some other digital photo display, I heartily recommend putting your best Stable Diffusion/Midjourney/Dalle creations on there. It makes for a superb rotating digital moodboard, which is, ironically, terrific for generating creative ideas
Chess is a good example. Chess playing computers are incredibly good, and essentially indistinguishable to the observer, but ultimately I think (and I don't really know as I can't play chess for toffee) they are impersonating chess players by throwing overwhelming computing power at the problem. My suspicion is that human players are using following a very different process that computers probably will replicate in due course, but perhaps in the more distant future than many predict.
We often get planes flying overhead to and from Duxford, and a Spitfire regularly comes over. And we get Apaches heading west-east low; perhaps to the Norfolk ranges?
FWIW I can't play chess either, but human players tend to the view that a computer's game can look every bit as elegant and imaginative as a human's.
We seem to have many more massive spiders around than normal. My wife said she heard one walking over our stash of plastic supermarket bags last night it was so large and heavy. They don't have spiders in Ireland, right? St Patrick banished them all or something?
I appear to think, therefore I am?
Some people think human beings don't think as much as we like to imagine either, driven by internal processes making our choices in a way we do not comprehend. Hurts my head.
I don't know how realistic or near that is. It strikes me as a bit like workable nuclear fusion - always feeling tantalisingly close, but never really getting there (until, one day, it quite quickly arrives).
In about 2000, I was following the old railway line to St Ives (now the MGB) when a whole flight of Spitfires flew over. Apparently it was one of the largest gathering of Spitfires since the war. And I didn't take a photo.
I'm far from being an expert on identifying planes, but I can generally tell Spitfires by the engine noise and shape. Except perhaps for the marks that had clipped wings.
Doing a great painting? Yep. Writing a banger of a song? Yep. Playing near flawless chess? Yep.
But sitting there trying and failing to make sense of things, getting distracted, losing your thread, seeing connections that aren't there, struggling to separate genuine emotions from fake ones, going mad, wising up, tuning out, etc etc ... I struggle to imagine a machine doing this.
https://mydeath.net/
More generally, we've generally proceeded mostly by getting computers better at very specific tasks (arithmetic, chess, image recognition, now image synthesis) -- does this at some point congeal into 'real' AI, or do we just end up with a big collection of specific tools for various jobs, whose input and output needs to be wired up and applied by a human still?
But yes they could in theory be pretty dim but so relentlessly efficient and concentrated that they outperform us anyway.
If they are close to the “system” then regulation becomes a backslap - see the FAA and Boeing. Or NASA and Boeing for that matter.
I always thank the nurses or junior doctors when they raise concerns, and take them seriously. I am not immune to making mistakes and pleased to have them picked up before they become catastrophes. Not all my colleagues take the same approach to being contacted.
(that's enough fucking imagining & struggling-ed)
First of all, the elements we can all agree on? There’s nothing wrong with the excellent soundtrack and score, use of music and sound was good. And the Title Sequence is quite excellent too. I enjoyed the visual spectacle - the hidden Hobbit village coming alive was very good.
Pacing we could argue over. I thought the first episode had a good pace. There was discussion here last week, horror tales tend be short, if it’s long then it becomes more than horror - similar here in that making Rings of Power have pace, action and suspense it has to move away from pure Tolkienism - indeed hiding from, and the battle with the big Orc, sequence Spielberg would have been proud of.
And whilst some of the script was a little lame, some performances were very good. Markella Kavenagh steals acting honours as adventurous Hobbit Nori - Ismael Córdova as buttoned up Elf Arondir likeable too.
Too early to say about Characterisation just two episodes in. Accents. Maybe a bit like Derry Girls doing Midsummer Nights Dream at times?
If Tolkien purists were to argue it’s not true to Tolkien enough, I would argue it builds upon what Tolkien offered, mankind fighting for Morgoth so held in suspicion for example. For purists I’m reminded about what Stu from Romford said about ism’s earlier today. How do the purists know that the man himself wouldn’t watch this and enjoy it?
Loved Galadriel’s warrior eye make up when she took down the troll, I’m going to do mine like that. 😍
https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2022/09/03/liquid-hydrogen-leak-detected-once-again/
I can't get my mind around a machine failing to get its mind around things in the same way that I can't.
Smarkets opened their “next Con leader after Sunak/Truss” market a week or so ago, with Boris at 33/1. Someone sharp nicked that before I could get on. By the time I noticed, he was down to 16/1. I took all I could. Now down to 10/1. £42 available at that price.
Probably still value. As Mike said, I’d guess Boris will be fav on the BF market when it gets going. Perhaps between 3/1 & 6/1.
A rare error from @shadsy I recon.
I generally hate bets like this that hinge on someone’s motivations and personal decisions, rather than election outcomes, but value is value and you’ve got to take it when ye find it…
You can’t afford to be sentimental, or get too attached to your bets in this game, if you want to make a profit long term.
But for me human intelligence is not about performing tasks or making things. I don't look at it that way. That's human productivity. Human intelligence is what goes on in the brain - in everybody regardless of how it manifests to the outside world. Clever or not clever, talented or not talented, IQ of 140 or 90, all of this is only a marginal difference in the grand scheme of things.