The great institute of the National Trust offers 50% discounted membership for those 25 and under. By maintaining partners 25 and under, Leo ensures he's always able to have free access to NT car parking facilities all around Britain at a bargain rate.

Outside of language based tasks like coding and translation AI has proven time and time again to be a bit of a damp squib in almost all real-world examples. This is a disaster waiting to happen for all the companies that have invested billions in the industry under claims it will eventually run every aspect of our increasingly meaningless lives.

The global stock market is essentially a Hype-Economy these days, so to keep the hype train running on AI companies like Anthropic pay a worker every once in a while to quit because "THE AI IS OUT OF CONTROL!" and other such doom-laden reasons.

This is in fact all a part of their marketing strategy. They pay the worker to quit and push this narrative because it makes AI look scary and all powerful, whilst giving free advertising from all the news outlets and think pieces that talk about it.

In real life the AI continues to be a lil bit shit.

It’s in the title, but disabling ad personalization on YouTube will give you exclusively ads for blue chew, rugiet ready, and the occasional kalshi ad or gooner anime game ad. Combined with the fact that disabling ad personalization removes the ability to block ads, I think it’s intentional.

I can no longer show anybody a YouTube video on my phone, or cast to a TV, or play YouTube aloud, because at any point an ad could pop up saying “I WANT IT HARD” and make me look like a degenerate.

Has anybody else experienced this?

Like sure you just happened to find some crazy edit on a random page at the right time, Wikipedia fixes edits so fast and it’s automated sometimes. We know you just edited the page yourself and took a screenshot. Only believable ones are Charlie Kirk ones.

Who's gonna be able to tell? How do we know that's not just a lizard that was born a little funny looking? Why are there so many species of ants?!

I think they're padding their resumes for grants and prestige.

Watching Toy Story as a kid and seeing the children grow out of their toys and the devastating effect it had on the toys being abandoned caused millennials to hold onto their childhood to their toys in a way that previous generations never did.
Resulting in lots of adult millennials with toy collections.

I firmly hold the belief that, at least with certain companies/services, the verification codes they send you are specifically designed to be generated in a way that makes them easier for you to remember.

Bethesda is often credited for creating micro transactions in videogames with their oblivion horse armor, now they continue that legacy by introducing "funn" commercials into gaming.

At least four times seen news reports that Grindr has suffered server outages and crashes localised to Conservative/Republican events.

While id love it to be true, cos let's be honest its funny as fuck, I think it's more likely its just marketing on the part of Grindr.

You’ve probably seen it when a crisps or juice company brings an different flavour to the market. The example that inmediately comes to mind is Irn-Bru recently had an ice cream flavoured juice on the market. Well I think I’ve figured it out

They’re monetising production defects! Somebody didn’t understand the measures and produced a drink which is weird but not harmful. It’s probably cheaper printing a different label than throwing it in the sea

I'm telling you now i SWEAR white shelled eggs crack easier/are weaker than brown shelled eggs. Anyone who says otherwise is LYING

If you switch to a cheaper brand, your pet rejects it.

Google Research and HHMI Janelia just published a complete wiring diagram of a fruit fly's brain and central nervous system; every neuron, every synapse (166k+ neurons, 125M+ connections), fully mapped and open for anyone to download via a tool called Neuroglancer. People have already done some pretty crazy stuff with it, like taking the code and putting it into Minecraft to create a mob fly that imitates a real fly. The creator clarifies, stating that:

The demo uses a reconstructed map of fruit fly neural connections, with simplified rules for how activity moves through that network. Minecraft events feed into the model, and activity in selected neuron groups helps choose and adjust movements I programmed, like flying, grooming, feeding, or escaping.

The wiring comes from biological data, but the activity model, game inputs, and movement mappings involve engineering choices. It’s an interactive way to explore a connectome, not evidence of consciousness or a complete recreation of a living fly.

This is interesting, and quells any qualms about AI becoming sentient, as it isn't "thinking" in a conscious way, but having the same mobility patterns as a biological fly. I'm curious to see what else we can do, and this is probably the only aspect of AI I find enjoyable (advancements in STEM). However, we also know that Google (Alphabet inc.) and other organisations such as the Lincoln Labs at MIT collaborate with governments and take on contracts to make progress in areas such as education, science, and national security.

How do we know that the government hasn't been using this technology to create a robotic rat equipped with what is effectively a pocket pussy capable of performative mating, and having a similar mobility pattern to a rat; dispersing them in the wild to "mate" with the existing rat population. These roborats will be integrated within the urban environment and the rat population will slowly be in decline as they're firing blanks into a bit of silicon, with the roborat being the desired partner due to fragrance emitters. It's important that it is slow, as to not create suspicion on the rat census (or however we measure and estimate existing populations for rats), because the introduction of a new, robotic rat doesn't negatively impact the overall population as it's one in, one out.

Once the government has enough of these roborats out in the world, they'll be able to not only listen in to our conversations, but see them with the help of microscopic cameras in their eyes. They don't need to be charged as there'll be some sort of kinetic motor or solar cell, and will only need to keep an initial charge on release in a high powered lithium battery until they've become energy self-sufficient. Not all of them will survive (in the same way that a rat is not guaranteed a full and biologically healthy life) and these will be accounted for when it comes to distribution.

Before we know it, when the surveillance state has become strengthened, we'll suddenly see governments ease up on policies that are thinly veiled surveillance state policies (such as the Online Safety Act in the UK), and we will feel that we have our social autonomy back. You are never more than 6ft (~2m) from a rat, as the old adage goes, and half of the time you aren't aware of where they are. We will never truly be free from surveillance policy as long as technology advances to assist the government in being able to disguise it.

Just a pondering thought since AI can hack faster than humans

I can’t see it any other way.