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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I have to credit ChatGPT4 for this answer.

    Credit, or a warning?

    From my understanding a big part of the problem with PET is the availability, either because it’s such a small percentage of plastic and demand is too great, or because it gets lost among all the rest and so is mixed or ruined for recycling.

    Honestly the debate on which material is better totally ignores the real problem - consumption demand. Reduce used to be the first ‘R’, but it was not friendly to the capitalistic mindset or an exploding population, so Recycling became the big focus along with the subtle blaming of the consumer for not being THE solution when they didn’t participate.


  • It’s partially because of cost, new plastic is cheaper than trying to recover old. But very few plastics can be truly recycled chemically, much being reformed for other purposes. Glass and metals were always a better environmental choice (with their own limitations too), but plastic is so cheap and versatile it’s hard to compete. Not just plastics - just a look around the household imagining the lack of petroleum products, it’s amazing how it’s everywhere. Yet another dead end we’ve gotten ourselves into.













  • The 6 foot distancing that wasn’t really ever followed well was a compromise to keep things open for the economy while pretending we’re doing something. What amazes me is how there wasn’t any mandate to require air filtration at key points in places with crowds - like a Corsi-Rosenthal box, the DIY stores could have had these in the front with a how-to-build and they would have made tons of profit while supplies lasted. I guess 6-foot stickers and signage was easier and cheaper. Remember when some stores tried to go further and enforce one way aisles?




  • Models are geared towards seeking the best human response for answers, not necessarily the answers themselves. Its first answer is based on probability of autocompleting from a huge sample of data, and in versions that have a memory adjusts later responses to how well the human is accepting the answers. There is no actual processing of the answers, although that may be in the latest variations being worked on where there are components that cycle through hundreds of attempts of generations of a problem to try to verify and pick the best answers. Basically rather than spit out the first autocomplete answers, it has subprocessing to actually weed out the junk and narrow into a hopefully good result. Still not AGI, but it’s more useful than the first LLMs.




  • The only issue with this adaptation of a great comic is that it infers the Confederacy was a well built structure that depended on that one small thing. The Confederacy didn’t exist that long, it even didn’t have a single flag version for longer than a year or so. Change it to the southern states’ economy and it makes more sense.