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Well, it might be, if Red Bull feel they don't have better options and decide to keep Perez. Based on current form, they could do worse. Relying on Perez to lead the team if Max bails is a bigger problem as their preferred options (Norris, Sainz, Alonso) are out of reach. Maybe they'd target Russell, who's going nowhere fast at Mercedes, but I get the impression the grid is moving away from thinking that highly of Russell (like, he's not crap, at all, but he might be more in the Button-Webber class than the Hamilton-Alonso one, he can be fantastic only in certain circumstances). Albon might open up as a good possibility for Red Bull again. Rumours that Newey was spotted in Italy today, but very much unconfirmed.

If all my jokes are old, tired, and deeply unfunny, does that mean that I might be AI? (...asking for a friend, of course... 汗)

Caught in flagranti. Hope you told him to piss right off.

Apparently Ukraine has withdrawn some of its MBTs, including all of the Abrams, from the eastern front, where they were being targeted relentlessly by drones and were easily hit due to their low speed. Ukraine has switched to counter-drone operations and using much nimbler Bradleys instead. Interesting signs of a Ukraine attack on Novoprokrovka, NE of Robotyne. They briefly took it in the autumn offensive last year but had to withdraw. Ukraine's air force - its main jets, not drones - have been pounding Russian positions in the town, suggesting Russian air defences in the wider area have been fully suppressed. Uncoincidentally, Ukrainian drones have been going bonkers hitting Buks and Pantsirs all along the front and Russia has pulled its S-300 and S-400 systems well back from the front, giving Ukraine's MiGs and Flankers (and any incoming aircraft cough) more room to operate. Spain and Greece have turned down requests for Patriots, Greece citing a threat from Türkiye (which other NATO countries have raised eyebrows over) and Spain, rather less convincingly, citing a threat from Morocco (which Morocco seems confused by). An angry claim on Russian Telegram that the mobilised regiments of the Russian military from 2023 alone suffered over 35% casualties, maybe closer to 40%.

This is too easily just imitated. I'd lean more toward trying to have it create original metaphor or simile that make both sense and are original, or to compose original jokes or explain to me why a particular joke funny.

Ego and/or feelings-pricked reactions are one gauge certainly. In this case, why would it be? Intelligence, sentience, and consciousness aren't precisely the same things as I understand it.

Ukraine is pulling the Abrams out of front line duty because their niche is not sustainable while there are so many good drones out there. https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-war-abrams-tanks-19d71475d427875653a2130063a8fb7a

Are those how you gauge sentience? Interesting. My point is that the ability to argue or Eben produce language at all has been shown to be incredibly not the proof of sentience we thought it was. If you ask chatgpt to act like it needs to convince you of sentience it will do a decent job of it, right now! As it turns out LLMs are so good at acting like humans because it's likely that's how we use language too. It isn't thought out carefully or artfully decided, it's just words coming after the next word towards some goal. Them telling us - or us believing them - is not sufficient as a Turing test.

On the plus side, every one of the core just signed a new contract this year basically so they're pretty set for the foreseeable future. I just have a hard time seeing them want to go to a team like PSG purely for money. Madrid is always a lure so maybe but not sure who they'd go after that would get in their side right now.

I did indeed, ‘try’ being the operative word. It’s where I discovered Gödel and worked backwards from there to Nagel and Newman book (I forgot which, either GEB:AEGB or Penrose’s The Emperors New Mind enthusiastically recommended ‘Godel’s Proof’. I think I got about halfway and struggled, though this was many years back so maybe I should take another run up at it. I had a streak of reading everything I could find on these sorts of topics, and then realised that I was romanticising the idea of finding that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, be it micro-tubules or programming loops or just some kind of tangible thing that one could point to. This has X, so it must be conscious. This doesn’t, so can’t be. I’m wary of falling into that trap nowadays as I don’t really think it’s a solution that will be so easily identified.

And you keep the recipe cards for the ones that are delish for next time. It's a great way to learn to cook and build up personalised recipe book.

My 21 year old wanted to learn more about cooking things other than the "basics" so I have once again signed up for Hello Fresh, and I am walking him through the instructions. I like it because the recipes are for 2 people, the kits have all the ingredients, so you can try new things without spending a fortune on ingredients you may never use again, and the instructions are fairly easy to follow (plus pretty pictures to help with a lovely presentation)

Ahem, speaking of this very issue, the Doctor called last night, while I was with Law Professor.

Historically speaking, this is a fair point Kal. It's not like an AI is going to become petulant, throw a tantrum, or give us the silent treatment if we ground them from the internet or turn them off or somesuch. But, absent other queues we're familiar with, if an AI actually became self aware the refusal to believe its arguments would be our limitation, no?

Are we going to get one of these excellent summary posts for April and May too?

The bit where he kills the kidnappers in the "shithole bar" reminded me a lot of Unforgiven, his riding away at the end reminded me of Shane.

I have to say...at the risk of big backlash , but I dont think that most recent prequel trilogy they did, ( Duke of Dune, Lady of Dune, Heir of Dune) is bad at all. I found that quite an interesting prequel set just before the events of Dune, something I have always wondered about.

I've more or less exhausted my thoughts on that prologue chapter in other threads but will have a stab at this new puzzle. From a logical point of view, associating Arthur Dayne and Gerold Hightower with a wormy apple / Darkstar suggests these two kingsguards were not as noble, chivalrous etc. as they are made out to be. Darkstar sticks out because of his attempt on Myrcella's life, a child. So if there is a connection to the Tower of Joy, perhaps this is it - the attempted / intended murder of a child. I've long puzzled over something Ned said to Robert: Aerys is responsible for murdering a great many people but did he also specifically target children? Not that we know of, though Ned's statement has me wondering if Aerys secretly attempted to wake dragons from stone, thereby sacrificing babies or children for this purpose. Back to the Tower of Joy. Someone on this forum (sorry can't remember who it was) theorized that Jon Snow was meant to be sacrificed in a waking dragons from stone ceremony (parallel to Rhaego), hence the need for Ned's contigent to fight the kingsguard for access to Lyanna and her child. It's not something widely discussed in the fandom but not impossible. Of note: It was Gerold Hightower who reminded Jamie that he "swore a vow to guard the king, not to judge him" All stood by as the king had atrocious acts carried out - even the "most honourable" kingsguards. So at the very least, comparing A. Dayne and G. Hightower to Darkstar and wormy apples suggests we should examine them in a different light. If the intention to kill a child or defending the child's future use as a sacrifice applies to those two honourable men, then Jamie's statement, "That was the White Bull, loyal to the end and a better man than me, all agree," is laden with meaning, for Jamie did attempt to kill a child, Bran.

Yeah, it's gonna be remarkable how amazingly those guys will play on another team in 3 years time

This, by the way, is inaccurate. It's true if you only look at one specific program (to a point) but if you model systems as competing and cooperating sets of algorithms you end up being just fine. Basically both are true if you are assuming computers must provide a solution that is 100% true and accurate. Programs don't have to do this.

I wanted to add a couple of thoughts to the Blackwood discussion: In the above post I looked at the name Tytos. We do not know what relationship Tytos Blackwood had to Alyssa Blackwood, who was Lord Walder Frey's 4th wife. She was probably his great-aunt, going by the fact that she died around the time Tytos was born having first borne 5 children. She would have married Walder around 265 AC (early in King Aerys II's reign). The fact that her branch of the Frey family makes use of names with the Ty_ prefix as well (Tyta, Tysane), and furthermore has marriage alliances with the Brax family (who also use the name Tytos), and Lefford family (also of the Westerlands) further strengthens the evidence that the Blackwoods have some Lannister in their lineage. The evidence is therefore mounting that the current Blackwoods descend from the unnamed Lannister male who married a Baratheon woman in 178 AC (30 years before Tya+Gowen, who were 76 years before Cersei+Robert), during Aegon IV's reign (while Jeyne Lothston served as his mistress, House Lothston ascendant). This nameless couple had 3 daughters and 1 son.

Why should we believe them?

Have to disagree with that take. Shattered Sea felt noticably different and much less interesting to me than his other works, I definitely noticed a different style and characterization. Its not on the level of the books that came before it. Is it super young adult? No. But the characterization is definitely a lot more young adult than his other books, that is clear.

Well, it's an RPG made in Japan, so in the literal sense, sure. But in terms of JRPG being used as a genre marker (which I know is contentious in some areas anyway, but I feel like generally people know what is meant by it- especially in older games), it probably isn't a lot closer to Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest than it is to Baldur's Gate or whatever, no. It's really its own thing, and is a subgenre-defining game in its own right. To be fair though like, Fire Emblem is also not a JRPG in that sense and I'm not sure Persona (which I've not played) is either (though I've heard it said that the series is getting closer to it as it moves along). Heck, might be the right move for someone not into them to approach JRPGs via the gentle road.

LeBron is going to have Russell on the chopping block after that shit show.