Ormond

I have not participated in this thread before and haven't had time to read much of it but thought it was better to post this here than create a new thread. But I just had an experience with AI that I found a bit disturbing. Over the last few months sometimes when I use Google search an "AI" answer comes out on top of the list. I don't know why Google is doing this as I have never asked for it. The last few days I have been reading a book by Bernhard Grzimek whose English title is "He and I and the Elephants." I picked it up in a used bookstore several years ago and am just now getting around to reading it. It was written in German in 1963 and the English translation I am reading was published in 1966. I decided to use Google search to see if I could find any reviews of the book. When I did I got the following "AI" report: This above is simply incorrect and seems to be a pure guess based on the book's English title. The German title of the book, by the way, was "Wir Lebten mit den Baule", which means "We lived with the Baule," with the Baule being the African ethnic group in the Ivory Coast that Grzimek was primarily relating to during the time described in the book. Grzimek was a zookeeper from Germany who was on a trip to study some of the species he had in his zoo in their natural habitat to get a better idea of how to take care of them. Despite the book's title, it is NOT primarily about elephants. There is one chapter in the book that focuses on elephants. The animals the book discusses most are chimpanzees. Even more of the book ends up being about his experience with the Baule people and their French colonizers. Grzimek was NOT someone who was "studying and living with elephants in their natural habitat" for any length of time, as researchers like Cynthia Moss or Iain Douglas-Hamilton later did. He had no close connection with an elephant population. The one chapter on elephants is about his trying to get a few photographs of a particular elephant which was raiding a banana plantation. Though the book is very interesting and informative about what life was like in Ivory Coast (now Cote d'Ivoire) in the early 1960s, I sincerely doubt that it's considered a "classic in wildlife literature." The "he" of the English title is also not Grzimek's "partner", but his then-16-year-old son. I am just surprised and disturbed that Google's AI is basically lying about this book, making up what it says out of whole cloth just on the basis of the English title. It makes me wonder what falsehoods AI is perpetuating in more important contexts than the description of an obscure book from the 1960s. I certainly am not going to trust anything I know to be AI generated without checking it out in the future after seeing this.

Barry N. Malzberg died on December 19. He's another classic science fiction author I have always thought I wanted to read and have never gotten around to yet. As a retired psychology professor I am intrigued that the obituary says he published a novel in 1985 titled The Remaking of Sigmund Freud. I'll have to look for that at used bookstores. Is anyone here a Malzberg fan and can comment on his work? https://locusmag.com/2024/12/barry-n-malzberg-1939-2024/

OK, this is actually pretty good bet , since mathematically everyone who has any ancestry within the last two or three centuries from Europe west of Russia is a direct descendant of everyone who was alive in that part of Europe in 1025 who does have descendants. Given the greater interaction between all parts of the world that occurs today than a few centuries ago, it is actually completely reasonable to think the entire human population in 3025 could be descended from Trump and Musk -- but they will also be descended from everyone else alive today who has direct descendants in 3025. P.S. As to the main question, given the way birth rates are drastically declining all over the planet today, it is quite possible that by 3025 the total population will be drastically reduced even if disasters like climate change or nuclear war do not kill billions of people. I really think if human beings are going to have long-term survival as a species we will have to develop artificial uteruses, because I just don't see there being a change of keeping a longterm average of 2.1 children per woman (the population stabilization rate) otherwise. Then again, I sort of agree with C. S. Lewis here, who thought humans having a goal of wanting their species to live forever was unrealistic and even unethical.

Below is the link to today's column. As you will see if you read it Dexter has been much more used as a given name in the USA than the UK, and was first regularly used as a first name in Massachusetts. This is probably party because of Timothy Dexter, a very eccentric wealthy Massachusetts resident. There are multiple videos about him on YouTube if anyone is interesting in learning more details. He often gets called one of the luckiest people who ever lived because he made many business decisions that looked stupid on the surface but which managed to make him large profits. I do think some of the things he did that give listed as stupid, such as sending cats to Caribbean islands, were actually rather smart. https://omaha.com/life-entertainment/local/cleveland-evans-the-name-dexter-could-see-a-reboot-with-new-prequel/article_19eb2d8e-b8c2-11ef-aad0-eb0485f50ac7.html

The first weeks of December are always crazy in my life and so I am sorry I forgot to post the link to this column until over a week after it was published. https://omaha.com/life-entertainment/local/cleveland-evans-comedian-gives-the-name-chelsea-21st-century-cachet/article_33b5e7d4-ac21-11ef-bbff-ef8f1daf6bcf.html Chelsea was a name where I found a lot more interesting information than would fit into the column. Something the column points out is that Chelsea is an early example of a name which went straight from place name to given name without ever being a surname first. Now, in checking census records there were 26 people in the 1950 United States census (the latest available) with the surname Chelsea. However, using links readily available in Ancestry.com I quickly found that 24 of these people were members of families who had changed their surnames from something Polish or Romanian such as Cieliczka or Ciesielski. The one married couple I couldn't verify a name change for probably had also done so, because though the husband was born in the USA the wife was born in Hungary and I could not find them at all in the 1940 census. The idea of turning Chelsea into a given name started in the USA. The first Chelsea born in England was only born in 1889 -- Chelsea Dutton of Warwickshire, who like the first Chelseas in the USA was male, not female. He was killed in March 1918 in World War I and tragically his younger brother Percy was killed in the war only six weeks later. Though his parents also had a younger son and two daughters, I found myself being really sad for this family that lost two sons in battle in such a short time, even though I of course have no real connection with them. The first female Chelsea born in England, Chelsea Annie Dunham, was born in Lympstone, Devon in 1896.

Perhaps, but there is also causation in the other direction with that. It's easier and surer to kill yourself with a gun than most other methods, so easy access to guns makes completed suicide rates higher. That's one reason that in the USA statistics have often shown the paradox that women are more likely to attempt suicide while the completed suicide rate is higher for men-- men are more likely to shoot themselves as a suicide method.

I absolutely agree with your point in regards to drug addiction and obesity. I am a bit confused about your putting gun violence together with them, though. I can see how high levels of gun violence impact the health care system by putting strain on medical resources that could be used for other issues, but I don't see how giving poor people "access to quality health care" reduces gun violence like it would reduce drug addiction and obesity. It seems that it would be tackling other problems of poverty rather than health care access that would reduce gun violence. It seems to me that gun injury is more like auto accident injury here.

Mary was the #1 girls' name for babies in Ireland until 1983, over three decades after it had stopped being #1 in other English speaking countries. I am now going to stop answering questions about names in this thread unless they are specifically about how names of British politicians or royalty have affected baby naming in the UK.

Jason peaked in the USA in 1974. It actually was a name which skyrocketed in popularity in all English speaking countries at about the same time -- it peaked in New Zealand in 1970, with Australia, the UK, and Canada's peaks falling in between 1971 and 1973. There were several pop culture uses of it that brought it to parents' attention, and then I believe it boomed largely because parents saw it as a "different but not too different" shift from John, James, Joseph, and Jeffrey at the point where avoiding previously common names was becoming a goal for boys as well as girls. I have known more than one Jason born in the 1970s who had a father named John or James and whose parents said they chose it because it could be interpreted as "J's son".

I am not an expert, but the YouTube channels I have looked at seem to believe that Florida houses were overpriced and due for a downswing even before Helene and Milton hit this year. Of course they made the insurance situation even worse, and vast price differences are appearing in Florida between homes based on their elevation above sea level --often being only a few feet higher is going to make a house much more expensive. But you can't really use the extreme weather events to explain Texas and Tennessee.

The economics channels I sometimes see on YouTube say that house prices are already going down in many parts of Florida, Texas, and Tennessee, but also seem to think any housing "bubble pop" will largely be confined to the South.

Unfortunately I don't have time to watch a 2 hour lecture right now. But I'd just like to point out that there are certainly other YouTube channels which preach against Christian nationalism. Below are links to a few: https://www.youtube.com/@Randal_Rauser https://www.youtube.com/@culturefaithandpolitics https://www.youtube.com/@biblegeekPhD https://www.youtube.com/@HolyPost https://www.youtube.com/@TheNewEvangelicals

If it's true that the stimulus only accounted for 3% of what was a total 20% inflation, I don't see dropping it would have greatly affected perceptions much. I think the fact that it was people over 65 who were the one age group that voted for Trump less in 2024 than 2020 probably has a lot to do with us old folks remembering the last bout of high inflation, so though the recent inflation was certainly not pleasant for us, it wasn't "unprecedented" in our memory. Surely two other factors making this so important in the minds of voters were the fact that so much of the inflation happened in food, the place where it is most noticeable to almost everyone; and the fact that as I understand it "real wages" for most of the population below the top 10% have stagnated for several decades now. Even if real wages increased enough the last few years to largely offset the recent inflation, having to live through the inflation and still not feeling like one is "getting ahead" of one's previous monetary position was probably particularly upsetting to many people.

Here is the link to today's column: https://omaha.com/life-entertainment/local/cleveland-evans-paying-homage-to-wise-women-on-st-hildas-day/article_5c80ebd4-a05d-11ef-af61-533fd8b3ce19.html As someone who has no interest in either anime or video games, it was fascinating to me to see how many characters named Hilda there have been in those venues the last 15 years or so.

I've been avoiding the US Politics threads for a couple of days to try to keep myself sane. However, I did run across a Washington Post article about exit polls that said the only age group where a smaller % of people voted for Trump than 4 years ago was people over 65. So as a 73 year old I just have to say, if any of you are still blaming Trump on Boomers, you should reconsider that now. Sorry if this has already been pointed out in an earlier thread. P.S. Here's the link to the article. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/08/trump-voter-demographic-shifts-election/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3f930ec%2F672e436482a1b34a8b62c8a2%2F60df1b7aae7e8a0db14695b2%2F14%2F58%2F672e436482a1b34a8b62c8a2

Oh dear, I don't think that "waxing nostalgic" in such a way is something an extreme narcissist is likely to do. We shall see.

I am not saying you are wrong, but do you have any evidence besides gut feeling for thinking this? I think as Trump approaches the end of the next term his narcissism might lead him to think he's the only person who can continue to effectively lead America.

Remember that Trump's father lived to be 93, and though he died of Alzheimer's was still functioning fairly well until four or five years before his death. And extreme narcissists with the beginnings of Alzheimer's are never going to admit it and will become even more obsessed with maintaining their positions. I think there's an excellent chance Trump will have at least 10 more years where he would be willing to order others to expend the effort on such an undertaking.

Yeah, I know you all are joking, which is great, but the idea that the Antichrist has to be young and "smooth" comes more from the "Left Behind" books than the Bible, as the YouTube guy who has had a channel for years saying Trump is the Antichrist has pointed out. Though I am definitely a Christian and believe in God, I don't really believe in a personal Devil. But at the moment the idea of the Antichrist just seems too apropos for our situation.

No need to be sorry. I own my own craziness here.

I did not watch any news last night and only learned he had won from a headline on the web about half an hour ago. I know you will think this sounds crazy, and it even does to me, but it is very hard for me not to believe that Trump is the Antichrist, and we are about to enter the Time of Tribulation. One thing I definitely don't believe in is a "pre-tribulation rapture", so I know I must live through this and do whatever I can in my small way to alleviate the suffering. I am so sorry for the world.

Just got back from my daily walk through the Omaha zoo. There were only about 40 voting age adult visitors I counted besides myself, definitely fewer than expected even for an overcast cool Tuesday in November. Maybe people who might have visited were out voting?

You must be in an NRD that has staggered elections and not be in a subdistrict that's up for election this year. Here in Omaha I am in the Papio-Missouri RIver NRD and only the odd-numbered subdistricts have elections this year. If you search for the name of your NRD online you can probably find a map that will tell you which subdistrict you are in.

Congratulations on voting. I'm not sure how to answer the questions though. You can probably find information on county commissioner districts and candidates by using a search engine and searching for the name of your county and "2024 election." I thought "Natural Resource District" or NRD was the term for the agencies which deal with groundwater management. You could also search for the name of the NRD you are in and information about districts and candidates there. (Of course I think the NRD thing is one of several places where we are voting on people in Nebraska that I really think should be professional hires instead of elected positions.)

Here is the link to today's column: https://omaha.com/life-entertainment/local/cleveland-evans-laineys-cool-again-as-country-star-drives-names-new-popularity/article_0881cf04-9562-11ef-b129-e7367c12efc1.html Once again I have found a name with an older history than I expected, at least in the "Laney" spelling, where it definitely is found in the 1850 census, partly as a pet form of Helena, Helene, Delaney, and Magdalena.