GOP Congressman Glenn Thompson attended the wedding of his gay son three days after voting against a bill that would codify same-sex marriage with federal protections.
Ko Yamaguchi is causing such a sensation in the Japanese High School Baseball tournament that even the Major League Baseball blog has a post about him.
This savant from Japan is taking switch-hitting to a new extreme. He switches which side he hits after EACH pitch. Literally every pitch! Though perhaps we should put “hits” in quotes since it’s unclear if he actually swings the bat based on the limited footage.
When I shared this clip with my co-workers, I was instructed to “Google Eddie Gaedel” (thanks Rich!) which led me to this wonderful Wikipedia entry that included this passage:
Gaedel gained recognition in the second game of a St. Louis Browns doubleheader on August 19, 1951. Weighing 60 pounds (27 kg) and standing 3 feet 7 inches (109 cm) tall, he became the shortest player in the history of the Major Leagues. Gaedel made a single plate appearance and was walked with four consecutive balls before being replaced by a pinch-runner at first base. His jersey, bearing the uniform number “1⁄8“, is displayed in the St. Louis Cardinals Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
There was that wonderful story of the football coach from the early days who had all his team wear a jersey that had the image of a football on the front so it was hard to tell who was carrying the ball.
Dubai unveiled the world’s largest indoor vertical farm that will produce 2 million pounds of leafy greens each year. This is huge for the desert city which currently imports 90% of its produce.
Two Japanese companies came up with a solution for Japan’s overwork problem, Nap Boxes. They look like upright pods (coffins actually), but I’m afraid a box to stow exhausted workers doesn’t really address the root of the problem.
One of the highlights, comic relief actually, from last night’s House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack hearing was when they showed a sequence of images showing a defiant Missouri senator Josh Hawley before the insurrection and a video clip of him running after as the senator fled from the mob he helped incite.
The footage of “Hawley hawling ass” will forever be his legacy. It’s even mentioned on his Wikipedia page. Of course the Missouri Democrats are already making hay of it with a 5K “Hawlin’ Hawley” fundraiser.
Chevrolet got into the NFT game and put a limited edition token up for auction to drum up excitement for their latest model Corvette. Only problem? Zero bids.
Rowdy, a family’s beloved pet cat that’s been dodging airport personnel, airline employees, construction workers and animal experts since escaping from a pet carrier at Boston’s Logan Airport about three weeks ago, was reunited with her family.
A volunteer in New Zealand has become the first person to undergo DNA editing in to lower their blood cholesterol.
I don’t know why Google makes it so difficult to find the tracking script in the new G4 analytics. I guess it’s to keep consultants busy but if you’re scratching your head and trying to figure out where to find this analytics script in GA’s new setup, you’ve come to the right place.
Click on the Admin gear in the lower left hand corner of the screen.
Select the Account, in the second column, click on Data Streams
then select Web and click the right arrow.
scroll down to Tagging Instructions and click Global site tag to open up the drop down with your G4 tracking script. You can then copy the script you need to use on things like the SmartNews SmartFormat plugin or anywhere else you need to track pageviews.
In April, Steven Johnson wrote that he latest generation of an algorithm that uses deep learning to produce human-like text called Generative Pre-trained Transformer, version 3 (GPT-3) could “write original prose with mind-boggling fluency.” I was intrigued.
After reading Simon Willison’s excellent tutorial, encouraging me to play with GPT-3 because it’s “absurdly good fun,” I decided to dive in last weekend and play around. It was ridiculously easy to get started.
I asked GPT-3 to come up with a new tagline for SmartNews based on the following prompt:
Write a tagline for SmartNews, a news application that creates empathy for its users by showing them news from many different points of view. The algorithm does most of the curation but the entire process is monitored and enhanced by a small team of experienced journalists.
Get the news you need, without the noise
Not bad.
I veered epistemological and asked GPT-3 to prove it’s intelligence. The following are screenshots from our conversation in the console which they call a Playground, reminding you that this is not the voice of God or anything like that and responses here are nothing to take too seriously.
I like how my browser’s spell check stumbled over some punctuation.
Cheeky eh? OK, right back at ya.
I later read that this phrase, “There is no one correct answer to this question.” is a common dodge in order to duck a question that it does not feel confident in answering.
Later on, on a call with my parents, I and explained how GPT-3 worked and asked them if they wanted to ask the algorithm some questions. My father fired off the question below.
While the answer was the quality of a Google search result, the follow up response was quite interesting and shows not only the ability to summarize what it’s learned but also the ability to package and apply those learnings in response.
The next question was also from my father.
The algo’s response to the “complicated language” question was interesting. I did not think about the number of speakers of a language as an input but that was certainly thought provoking. I would whole-heartedly agree that Finnish is devilishly complex.
I was surprised with how far off the answer was to this relatively easy to figure out question. (I’ve heard GPT-3 is not so great at math).
I moved on to politics. Out of curiosity, I put this one out there just to see if had a sense of news & politics. It was not clear if this is ordered by priority but if it is, it’s interesting to see the #1 response which certainly seems timely.
Incidentally, I asked the same question last night and got a different set of responses then from my questions which were asked last weekend.
Inflation is certainly in the news and Yosemite is on fire. I’m not aware of any big cyber-attack but there are quite a few stories out there about potential Amazon Prime Day hacks. Nuclear War is interesting – could it be in response to PSA just released by NYC? Is GPT-3 reading the news?
I have an on-going debate with my father about which city is more congenial, Tokyo or New York (we also have an on-going debate about print v. online but that’s for another blog post).
The dialog is below. My father choose the word “comfortable.” I’m not sure about an algorithm’s definition of “comfortable” and you’ll see how it wriggles out of answering directly.
Which city do most people think is more comfortable, Tokyo or New York?
There is no definitive answer to this question as everyone has different opinions. Some people may find Tokyo more comfortable because it is a clean and safe city, while others may find New York more comfortable because it is more exciting and diverse. Ultimately, it is up to the individual to decide which city is more comfortable for them.
Why is Tokyo clean and safe?
Tokyo is clean and safe because it has strict laws and regulations regarding littering and public safety. There are also many public services that help to keep the city clean and safe, such as regular trash collection and a robust police force.
Why is New York exciting and diverse?
There are many reasons why New York is an exciting and diverse city. It is a melting pot of cultures, with people from all over the world coming to live and work there. There is always something to do, whether it is exploring the city’s many museums and galleries, or taking in a Broadway show. New York is also home to some of the best restaurants in the world, so foodies will never be bored.
My mom asked a question which kicked off the most interesting exchange of the night when I tried to pin GPT-3 down on specifics.
I’ll definitely be playing around with this some more.
Firing off questions and pondering responses from the great algorithm in the sky is a big upgrade from the usual family activities such as playing charades or hearts. I’m bringing along GPT-3 to my upcoming reunion for sure.
Where to you go when you want to get a super-short haircut after wearing it long for many years? You go to the person that has been perfecting the “pixie” haircut since the New Wave era, the guy with photos of Audrey Hepburn on the wall, the guy who owns the domain for cropsforgirls.com. Google “short haircut for women in NYC” and Crops for Girls Salon comes up as the first result. 30+ years in business, he’s even been written up in the NY Times.
Michael’s salon is in the East Village, he only takes cash, and is seriously thinking of packing it in to join his sister out West but we’re happy we found him while he’s still here. What do you think?
Over 75 people in Nigeria were rescued from a church basement where their pastor instructed them to wait in preparation for the rapture. He said it would take place in April but when it didn’t, he said the rapture had been postponed to September. Some had been down in the basement since last year.
Finnish researchers have figured out how to store energy for months at a time in gigantic sand batteries.
Kanye West announced that he is working on a car made of foam. He hired a sneaker designer to head Donda Industrial Design, his company that will lead the project.
Amazon announced that it has evolved Alexa’s speech synthesis to the point where it can mimic anyone, including your dead grandmother.
The New York Yankees blew out the Pittsburgh Pirates, 16-0. This was the Yankee’s largest shutout win since 1960. Even the Pirates announcer threw in the towel after his team, trying to staunch the bleeding, put their second baseman on the mound. “This is ridiculous,” he said as the 15th run was hit in via yet another homer.
The Sierra Leone Football Association is investigating two second-tier matches that ended at 95-0 and 91-1 respectively. The general manager of Lumbebu United, the team that lost by 95 points, said he was “not aware of any match manipulation.”
The Las Vegas Raiders football team made history as the first professional American football team to have an African American woman as president.
Due to inflation, the Hakone Aquarium in Japan has been forced to switch the penguins from Aji to cheaper Saba and they are not having it.
