I should think American Football is safe regardless. "Please Americam, don't get into soccer"
The tragedy of soccer taking off in the US is that it would flatten and corrode one of the best things about America: its splendid sporting culture. Even worse, you’d probably end up being really good at it.
As a Brit, I love American sports culture because of how absurdly and uniquely American it is. I love that you call your national baseball championship the World Series with a straight face. I love that people will fly 2,000 miles just to watch their local college play in a university basketball match. I love that eight of the ten biggest sport stadiums in the entire world are dedicated to amateur college football. I adore the language and the lore: the Big House, March Madness, the Red River Showdown
So far today @jonathan has said ChatGPT is “just a drum machine”, yet it is also an amazing and brilliant technological leap, yet it is also a sinister, dystopian development which will enable dictators. Not bad for a drum machine
We need a Butlerian Jihad. Leon can be our first mentat. His prescience needs no Spice.
The Spectator has clearly been reading our AI maunderings
Then you have St Thomas a Becket, before the Reformation martyrs beginning with St Thomas More, and then most recently John Henry Newman. Going back to Edmund would be the least controversial.
Yes, but Edmund was a king who lost a battle and refused to renounce Christ.
11/10 for holiness (which is the point of saints, after all) but 0/10 for killing dragons or looking hard.
Should be Bede anyway. Very English, and influential.
Here's a question for you. Let's say a robot can be trained to play a round of golf hitting 18 holes in one. Would you bother watching more than once?
Good question. There is a free chess program available called Stockfish that has an Elo rating of about 3500. If a human could play at 2900 (which is higher than Magnus Carlsen's rating), Stockfish would theoretically win about 97% of the points. How many chess players enjoy watching Stockfish play itself even now? OK, probably some do. But what if it could play at Elo 10000? Or 10 million? Watch it draw with itself every game, without understanding the key moves made by either side. Or perhaps occasionally there would be a win for White or Black, and we still wouldn't understand. What fun.
Coffeehouse chess rocks :-) Long live humanity!
(Note: I've heard it said that SF now rates 2 Nf3 followed by 3 Bd3 as the best system against the Sicilian. Cool! I've been playing 2 Bd3 in my coffeehouse for years.)
Then you have St Thomas a Becket, before the Reformation martyrs beginning with St Thomas More, and then most recently John Henry Newman. Going back to Edmund would be the least controversial.
Yes, but Edmund was a king who lost a battle and refused to renounce Christ.
11/10 for holiness (which is the point of saints, after all) but 0/10 for killing dragons or looking hard.
Should be Bede anyway. Very English, and influential.
So far today @jonathan has said ChatGPT is “just a drum machine”, yet it is also an amazing and brilliant technological leap, yet it is also a sinister, dystopian development which will enable dictators. Not bad for a drum machine
Er, no I didn’t say ChatGPT was just a drum machine. Turn your brain on Leon. The drum machine reference said two things. You can overstate how a new tool impacts the old world, and it’s not a nil sum game. There is nothing ’just’ about the drum machine and electronic music.
Then you have St Thomas a Becket, before the Reformation martyrs beginning with St Thomas More, and then most recently John Henry Newman. Going back to Edmund would be the least controversial.
Yes, but Edmund was a king who lost a battle and refused to renounce Christ.
11/10 for holiness (which is the point of saints, after all) but 0/10 for killing dragons or looking hard.
Should be Bede anyway. Very English, and influential.
IIRC he’s a Doctor of the Church, not a saint.
Eh, people would declare saints willy nilly back then, I'm sure it can be fudged.
Then you have St Thomas a Becket, before the Reformation martyrs beginning with St Thomas More, and then most recently John Henry Newman. Going back to Edmund would be the least controversial.
Yes, but Edmund was a king who lost a battle and refused to renounce Christ.
11/10 for holiness (which is the point of saints, after all) but 0/10 for killing dragons or looking hard.
Should be Bede anyway. Very English, and influential.
I'd love to live in a county where the patron saint was a monastic scholar.
But nobody is going to a football match dressed as St Bede, are they?
So far today @jonathan has said ChatGPT is “just a drum machine”, yet it is also an amazing and brilliant technological leap, yet it is also a sinister, dystopian development which will enable dictators. Not bad for a drum machine
A drum machine enabled Stock, Aitken and Waterman.
Then you have St Thomas a Becket, before the Reformation martyrs beginning with St Thomas More, and then most recently John Henry Newman. Going back to Edmund would be the least controversial.
Yes, but Edmund was a king who lost a battle and refused to renounce Christ.
11/10 for holiness (which is the point of saints, after all) but 0/10 for killing dragons or looking hard.
Should be Bede anyway. Very English, and influential.
IIRC he’s a Doctor of the Church, not a saint.
You can be both. Like St Thomas Aquinas. Don't know if Bede made the cut. (He was of course Northumbrian.)
Then you have St Thomas a Becket, before the Reformation martyrs beginning with St Thomas More, and then most recently John Henry Newman. Going back to Edmund would be the least controversial.
Yes, but Edmund was a king who lost a battle and refused to renounce Christ.
11/10 for holiness (which is the point of saints, after all) but 0/10 for killing dragons or looking hard.
Should be Bede anyway. Very English, and influential.
I'd love to live in a county where the patron saint was a monastic scholar.
But nobody is going to a football match dressed as St Bede, are they?
Maybe they played dress up at the monastery occasionally?
There is little the Government can do about public opinion , we have reached the time when the mood is "we need a change". Whatever the Conservative diehards may hope their time has gone, it happens to all governments roundabout the 12 years mark. They will need to replenish and refresh in opposition.
So far today @jonathan has said ChatGPT is “just a drum machine”, yet it is also an amazing and brilliant technological leap, yet it is also a sinister, dystopian development which will enable dictators. Not bad for a drum machine
We need a Butlerian Jihad. Leon can be our first mentat. His prescience needs no Spice.
The Spectator has clearly been reading our AI maunderings
Here's a question for you. Let's say a robot can be trained to play a round of golf hitting 18 holes in one. Would you bother watching more than once?
Bender: Now Wireless Joe Jackson - there was a blern-hitting machine.
Leela: Exactly! He was a machine designed to hit blerns. Wireless Joe Jackson was nothing but a programmable bat on wheels.
Bender: Oh, and I suppose Pitch-o-Mat 5000 was just a modified howitzer!
Leela: Yep.
It’s absolutely scary
Prompt: please translate this into French Hebrew and Japanese
Ten seconds later
ChatGPT: . French:
Bender: Maintenant, Wireless Joe Jackson - il était une machine blern-hitting.
Leela: Exactement! Il était une machine conçue pour frapper des blerns. Wireless Joe Jackson n'était rien d'autre qu'une batte programmable sur roues.
Bender: Oh, et je suppose que Pitch-o-Mat 5000 n'était qu'un obusier modifié!
Leela: Oui.
Hebrew:
בנדר: עכשיו, Wireless Joe Jackson - היה מכונת מכה בלנרנס.
לילה: די! היה מכונת מעוצבת למכות בלנרנסים. Wireless Joe Jackson היה לא אחר מאשר מטוס מוכרח על גלגלים.
בנדר: אוי, ואני מנסה ש-Pitch-o-Mat 5000 היה רק כפות מגן מותאמת!
לילה: כן.
Japanese:
ベンダー： それでは、Wireless Joe Jackson - それは blern-hitting 機械でした。
リーラ： その通り！ 彼は blerns を打つように設計された機械でした。 Wireless Joe Jackson は、輪付きのプログラマブルバット以外の何もありませんでした。
ベンダー： ああ、そして私は Pitch-o-Mat 5000 が修正された砲台だと思うのです！
リーラ： そうです。
I checked the Japanese. It’s perfect. So ChatGPT can give you perfect multiple simultaneous translations: in seconds
This is Babelfish once they put it in a hearing aid
I hate agreeing with you, Leon! Yesterday I asked it to write me some Welsh poetry. It did (and provided me with a translation). I don't speak Welsh, but my Welsh sister-in-law said not only did it correctly use mutations which are different in poetry and prose, it used some poetic techniques which are very difficult to do.
John Kerry, the US climate official, has said he is closely examining the UK government’s approval of a new coalmine, over concerns that it will raise greenhouse gas emissions and send the wrong signal to developing countries.
“Coal is not exactly the direction that the world is trying to move in, or needs to move in. What I want to know is the level of abatement here [such as whether the resulting greenhouse gases will be captured and stored] and the comparison of this particular process in the production of steel,” he said.
I like John Kerry, but he looks utterly ridiculous. Quite simply, Americans have a vested interest in stopping that coal mine.
Wiki says this:
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), there were 853 coal mines in the U.S. in 2015, producing a total of 896,941,000 short tons of coal.[1]
But apparently we are at fault for allowing 1.
I don't actually blame the hatchet-faced hypocritical turd for thinking he runs the UK's energy policy (in favour of American commercial interests), I blame our own politicians for skipping down the primrose path of going along with everything the US has wanted for decades now. I would include Thatcher in this, though of course she did also have a strong personal belief in the transatlantic relationship.
Where we are now is with a US that feels it can openly disrupt Britain's attempts to grow economically and compete fairly in global markets. Where is Kerry's 'examination' into German coal mines, or Chinese ones? Improbable as it seems, Rishi needs to discover some testicles and clarify that our relationship with America is that of two sovereign allies.
John Kerry, the US climate official, has said he is closely examining the UK government’s approval of a new coalmine, over concerns that it will raise greenhouse gas emissions and send the wrong signal to developing countries.
“Coal is not exactly the direction that the world is trying to move in, or needs to move in. What I want to know is the level of abatement here [such as whether the resulting greenhouse gases will be captured and stored] and the comparison of this particular process in the production of steel,” he said.
I like John Kerry, but he looks utterly ridiculous. Quite simply, Americans have a vested interest in stopping that coal mine.
"Sending a signal" really gets blown into the worst of all evils thesedays. It's a single mine for christ's sake, right decision or not it is not a massive deal.
Here's a question for you. Let's say a robot can be trained to play a round of golf hitting 18 holes in one. Would you bother watching more than once?
Bender: Now Wireless Joe Jackson - there was a blern-hitting machine.
Leela: Exactly! He was a machine designed to hit blerns. Wireless Joe Jackson was nothing but a programmable bat on wheels.
Bender: Oh, and I suppose Pitch-o-Mat 5000 was just a modified howitzer!
Leela: Yep.
It’s absolutely scary
Prompt: please translate this into French Hebrew and Japanese
Ten seconds later
ChatGPT: . French:
Bender: Maintenant, Wireless Joe Jackson - il était une machine blern-hitting.
Leela: Exactement! Il était une machine conçue pour frapper des blerns. Wireless Joe Jackson n'était rien d'autre qu'une batte programmable sur roues.
Bender: Oh, et je suppose que Pitch-o-Mat 5000 n'était qu'un obusier modifié!
Leela: Oui.
Hebrew:
בנדר: עכשיו, Wireless Joe Jackson - היה מכונת מכה בלנרנס.
לילה: די! היה מכונת מעוצבת למכות בלנרנסים. Wireless Joe Jackson היה לא אחר מאשר מטוס מוכרח על גלגלים.
בנדר: אוי, ואני מנסה ש-Pitch-o-Mat 5000 היה רק כפות מגן מותאמת!
לילה: כן.
Japanese:
ベンダー： それでは、Wireless Joe Jackson - それは blern-hitting 機械でした。
リーラ： その通り！ 彼は blerns を打つように設計された機械でした。 Wireless Joe Jackson は、輪付きのプログラマブルバット以外の何もありませんでした。
ベンダー： ああ、そして私は Pitch-o-Mat 5000 が修正された砲台だと思うのです！
リーラ： そうです。
I checked the Japanese. It’s perfect. So ChatGPT can give you perfect multiple simultaneous translations: in seconds
This is Babelfish once they put it in a hearing aid
I hate agreeing with you, Leon! Yesterday I asked it to write me some Welsh poetry. It did (and provided me with a translation). I don't speak Welsh, but my Welsh sister-in-law said not only did it correctly use mutations which are different in poetry and prose, it used some poetic techniques which are very difficult to do.
It’s the final curtain for translators and interpreters. Been coming for a while but the tech is now near-perfect
Then you have St Thomas a Becket, before the Reformation martyrs beginning with St Thomas More, and then most recently John Henry Newman. Going back to Edmund would be the least controversial.
Yes, but Edmund was a king who lost a battle and refused to renounce Christ.
11/10 for holiness (which is the point of saints, after all) but 0/10 for killing dragons or looking hard.
Should be Bede anyway. Very English, and influential.
IIRC he’s a Doctor of the Church, not a saint.
You can be both. Like St Thomas Aquinas. Don't know if Bede made the cut. (He was of course Northumbrian.)
Isn’t he the Venerable Bede?
That’s only stage 1… stage 2 (beatification) is Blessed and stage 3 (canonisation) is Saint
Then you have St Thomas a Becket, before the Reformation martyrs beginning with St Thomas More, and then most recently John Henry Newman. Going back to Edmund would be the least controversial.
Yes, but Edmund was a king who lost a battle and refused to renounce Christ.
11/10 for holiness (which is the point of saints, after all) but 0/10 for killing dragons or looking hard.
Should be Bede anyway. Very English, and influential.
New Scottish independence poll, Find Out Now 1-8 Dec (+/- 23-26 Mar 21 / +/- IndyRef1 2014):
Yes 54% (+2 / +9) No 46% (-2 / -9)
As relevant as polling on Santa's reindeer at present given the Supreme Court confirmed the UK government and Westminster can refuse indyref2 indefinitely. This Tory government will certainly never allow indyref2.
Though really little change from the 50% 50% before anyway excluding undecideds
A supposed “Unionist” doesn’t care if people support the Union.
If you spent some time making the Union less unpopular then the Union might be on steadier ground.
I care about respecting the 2014 referendum once in a generation result unlike you Nationalists.
A "generation" in politics is generally considered to be a group of people who come of age and enter politics at a similar time. The length of a generation in politics can vary depending on a number of factors, such as the average lifespan of individuals, the rate of political turnover, and the rate of social and political change. In general, a generation in politics might last anywhere from a few decades to several generations, and the exact length of a generation is difficult to determine. Some people might consider a generation in politics to be a group of people who enter politics within a certain time period, such as 10 or 20 years, while others might consider a generation to be a group of people who share similar experiences and political views. Ultimately, the concept of a generation in politics is somewhat subjective and can be defined in different ways.
Once, there was a journalist named Cyclefree who was commissioned to write a piece comparing three activities: watching the cricket, feeding the birds, and rubbing poo in your face like that there IanB2.
Cyclefree wasn't sure what to make of the assignment, but she knew she had to deliver a high-quality article. She decided to start by researching each activity and learning more about them.
First, Cyclefree looked into watching the cricket. She learned that cricket is a popular sport played between two teams of eleven players each. The teams take turns batting and fielding, and the goal is to score more runs than the other team. Cyclefree also learned that cricket has a rich history and a large following around the world, particularly in countries where the sport is more popular, such as England and Australia.
Next, Cyclefree researched feeding the birds. She learned that many people enjoy feeding birds as a way to attract them to their gardens and backyards. There are many different types of bird feeders and birdseed available, and people often find it rewarding to watch the birds come and go.
Finally, Cyclefree turned her attention to the strange and mysterious activity of rubbing poo in your face like that there IanB2. She was unable to find any information or examples of this activity, and she began to wonder if it was even a real thing. She decided to contact IanB2 and ask for more details.
When IanB2 replied to Cyclefree's email, he explained that rubbing poo in your face was a private hobby he did with his only friend, a dog. He apologized for any confusion and wished Cyclefree luck with her article.
Despite IanB2's explanation, Cyclefree was determined to include the activity of rubbing poo in her article. She decided to approach it from a humorous angle, and she wrote a satirical piece comparing the absurdity of rubbing poo in your face with the more mainstream activities of watching the cricket and feeding the birds.
The moderator of website politicalbetting.com was impressed with Cyclefree's unique take on the assignment, and the article was published on the website the following week. It quickly became a popular and controversial piece, with many readers expressing shock and amusement at the idea of rubbing poo in your face.
In the end, Cyclefree decided to try rubbing poo on her own face, and to her surprise, she found that she enjoyed it. She concluded her article by encouraging others to give it a try and see for themselves the strange and wondrous effects of rubbing poo on your face.
Leon’s prose isn’t usually so leaden - so the latter.
I do think that Leon added the last paragraph himself though.
No I didn’t. ChatGPT did that. Quite a good ending
This Cyclefree person is now going to be forever linked to facial poo rubbing in AI world.
The real Cyclefree is off instead to the local Xmas market and then collecting her reconditioned bicycle. It is not in fact snow dusting North London but frost. The day is gorgeous if hardly ideal cycling weather. I should be driving up north but I don't want to risk a drive in the dark over the icy fells.
You can't be the only one on here with better things to do on a Saturday than to try and get an AI bot to talk about poo rubbing on the faces of anonymous internet posters.
It might be for you, but I'm off to a winter beer festival, then a chilli and then watching the football with friends.
So you’ve come on PB to tell us exactly why you’re not on PB
Makes sense
Nope because:
a) I haven't gone yet
b) I was clearly referring to the endless whittering on about AI and not about being on PB.
c) Making the point that AI is not the most important thing in my life, nor most people's lives
But otherwise you got it spot on.
C ) it is, actually. You just don’t realise
B ) wittering. No “h”
A ) Bye
a) Still haven't gone
b) It can be spelt either way. Try asking your AI m/c
c) Try asking the average human. Not only is it not the most important thing, they don't actually know what it is. The most important thing in people's lives are things like climate change, not getting killed if you live in Ukraine and much of the 3rd world, or the World Cup for much of the first world. And in my case, currently getting to the beer festival. Really looking forward to those winter warmers on a day like this.
This is what I've been trying to say. Interesting but no gamechanger unless it impacts on the big global issues.
I should think American Football is safe regardless. "Please Americam, don't get into soccer"
The tragedy of soccer taking off in the US is that it would flatten and corrode one of the best things about America: its splendid sporting culture. Even worse, you’d probably end up being really good at it.
As a Brit, I love American sports culture because of how absurdly and uniquely American it is. I love that you call your national baseball championship the World Series with a straight face. I love that people will fly 2,000 miles just to watch their local college play in a university basketball match. I love that eight of the ten biggest sport stadiums in the entire world are dedicated to amateur college football. I adore the language and the lore: the Big House, March Madness, the Red River Showdown
Amateur college football is a zillion dollar industry dedicated to making everyone rich. Apart from the players.
After a few scandals, some brave universities have actually enforced teaching the athletes to read and write, as opposed to dumping them with no skills when they get injured.
When someone suggested ending “sports scholarships”, it was pointed out that this would collapse African American numbers at a number of universities.
College sport in America - exploitation, drugs and bullshit with a topping of racism.
Comments
The tragedy of soccer taking off in the US is that it would flatten and corrode one of the best things about America: its splendid sporting culture. Even worse, you’d probably end up being really good at it.
As a Brit, I love American sports culture because of how absurdly and uniquely American it is. I love that you call your national baseball championship the World Series with a straight face. I love that people will fly 2,000 miles just to watch their local college play in a university basketball match. I love that eight of the ten biggest sport stadiums in the entire world are dedicated to amateur college football. I adore the language and the lore: the Big House, March Madness, the Red River Showdown
https://spectatorworld.com/life/please-america-get-soccer-world-cup/
Coffeehouse chess rocks :-) Long live humanity!
(Note: I've heard it said that SF now rates 2 Nf3 followed by 3 Bd3 as the best system against the Sicilian. Cool! I've been playing 2 Bd3 in my coffeehouse for years.)
Though people like martyrs more.
But nobody is going to a football match dressed as St Bede, are they?
Prompt: please translate this into French Hebrew and Japanese
Ten seconds later
ChatGPT:
.
French:
Bender:
Maintenant, Wireless Joe Jackson - il était une machine blern-hitting.
Leela:
Exactement! Il était une machine conçue pour frapper des blerns. Wireless Joe Jackson n'était rien d'autre qu'une batte programmable sur roues.
Bender:
Oh, et je suppose que Pitch-o-Mat 5000 n'était qu'un obusier modifié!
Leela:
Oui.
Hebrew:
בנדר:
עכשיו, Wireless Joe Jackson - היה מכונת מכה בלנרנס.
לילה:
די! היה מכונת מעוצבת למכות בלנרנסים. Wireless Joe Jackson היה לא אחר מאשר מטוס מוכרח על גלגלים.
בנדר:
אוי, ואני מנסה ש-Pitch-o-Mat 5000 היה רק כפות מגן מותאמת!
לילה:
כן.
Japanese:
ベンダー：
それでは、Wireless Joe Jackson - それは blern-hitting 機械でした。
リーラ：
その通り！ 彼は blerns を打つように設計された機械でした。 Wireless Joe Jackson は、輪付きのプログラマブルバット以外の何もありませんでした。
ベンダー：
ああ、そして私は Pitch-o-Mat 5000 が修正された砲台だと思うのです！
リーラ：
そうです。
I checked the Japanese. It’s perfect. So ChatGPT can give you perfect multiple simultaneous translations: in seconds
This is Babelfish once they put it in a hearing aid
Yesterday I asked it to write me some Welsh poetry. It did (and provided me with a translation).
I don't speak Welsh, but my Welsh sister-in-law said not only did it correctly use mutations which are different in poetry and prose, it used some poetic techniques which are very difficult to do.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), there were 853 coal mines in the U.S. in 2015, producing a total of 896,941,000 short tons of coal.[1]
But apparently we are at fault for allowing 1.
I don't actually blame the hatchet-faced hypocritical turd for thinking he runs the UK's energy policy (in favour of American commercial interests), I blame our own politicians for skipping down the primrose path of going along with everything the US has wanted for decades now. I would include Thatcher in this, though of course she did also have a strong personal belief in the transatlantic relationship.
Where we are now is with a US that feels it can openly disrupt Britain's attempts to grow economically and compete fairly in global markets. Where is Kerry's 'examination' into German coal mines, or Chinese ones? Improbable as it seems, Rishi needs to discover some testicles and clarify that our relationship with America is that of two sovereign allies.
That’s only stage 1… stage 2 (beatification) is Blessed and stage 3 (canonisation) is Saint
After a few scandals, some brave universities have actually enforced teaching the athletes to read and write, as opposed to dumping them with no skills when they get injured.
When someone suggested ending “sports scholarships”, it was pointed out that this would collapse African American numbers at a number of universities.
College sport in America - exploitation, drugs and bullshit with a topping of racism.