Random non sequitur posts catch-all thread

Prederick wrote:

FWIW, release is in a few days and all the reviews I've seen have been glowing.

I'm sure it looks absolutely amazing. The first one did too and also got great reviews. The problem with the first one wasn't that it was a bad movie (because it wasn't), it's that beyond the visual spectacle of it there was nothing to really latch onto. The real test will be if people still talk about anything other than it's visual and technological impressiveness in a year. And if he learned his lesson from the first one and gave this one what it needs to actually have a lasting cultural impact, then good for him.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Now I would use my phone or watch but it wouldn't be as clean. I'd have to search for the app instead of just pressing a button.

On an iphone, if you press and hold the power button to activate Siri, then say "Note to self: why are there shoes hanging on the phone lines?", Siri will create a new item in your Notes app with contents "Self why are there shoes hanging on the phone lines".

That kind of device is called a dictaphone, and they're still around, and cost about $40. No tape anymore, it's all digital, but it'll do the same thing.

Alexa costs about that and does far more.

Well, you can't carry Alexa in your pocket aside from an app, and there's no simple, tactile, push-button record, which is what I think Baron is looking for.

I set reminders by talking to my Apple Watch all day. I never thought I would “Michael Knight” with it, but I do it so often now I would miss it if it wasn’t there.

I expect I'll go see Avatar Wet & Wild sometime in January, after seeing one film in the theater in 2021 and zero in 2022. I suspect I'm not the only one waiting for that kind of visual spectacle to drag me back in.

PaladinTom wrote:

I set reminders by talking to my Apple Watch all day. I never thought I would “Michael Knight” with it, but I do it so often now I would miss it if it wasn’t there.

I have a Reminder list named "Shopping", so now I can just activate Siri and say "add milk to the shopping list", and it goes and does that. Then in the store I can just tap to mark that item as done once I put milk into my cart. Added bonus: I have this Shopping list shared with family members, so they can add stuff to the list for me to (review and) buy when I'm at the store.

merphle wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

I set reminders by talking to my Apple Watch all day. I never thought I would “Michael Knight” with it, but I do it so often now I would miss it if it wasn’t there.

I have a Reminder list named "Shopping", so now I can just activate Siri and say "add milk to the shopping list", and it goes and does that. Then in the store I can just tap to mark that item as done once I put milk into my cart. Added bonus: I have this Shopping list shared with family members, so they can add stuff to the list for me to (review and) buy when I'm at the store.

We used to do that but the sync between my wife's phone and mine was VEEERRRYYY hit'n'miss, and after several grocery store trips where half the list didn't get purchased because it didn't sync, we switched to a grocery list app (Buy Me A Pie) that DOES sync.

This was years ago though, I'd hope the Reminders bug has been squashed by now

Jonman wrote:
merphle wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

I set reminders by talking to my Apple Watch all day. I never thought I would “Michael Knight” with it, but I do it so often now I would miss it if it wasn’t there.

I have a Reminder list named "Shopping", so now I can just activate Siri and say "add milk to the shopping list", and it goes and does that. Then in the store I can just tap to mark that item as done once I put milk into my cart. Added bonus: I have this Shopping list shared with family members, so they can add stuff to the list for me to (review and) buy when I'm at the store.

We used to do that but the sync between my wife's phone and mine was VEEERRRYYY hit'n'miss, and after several grocery store trips where half the list didn't get purchased because it didn't sync, we switched to a grocery list app (Buy Me A Pie) that DOES sync.

This was years ago though, I'd hope the Reminders bug has been squashed by now

I share a shopping list with my wife and it never misses anything. But for some reason when I “add red beans to the shopping list” Siri adds two items “red” and “beans” to the list. Sigh…

I opened up the Alexa app on my phone at one point to find that at some point before I linked it to my Google Keep to use as a shopping list, it had added "an entire bag of dicks" to my Alexa shopping list at one point when I became frustrated with it.

merphle wrote:
Baron Of Hell wrote:

Now I would use my phone or watch but it wouldn't be as clean. I'd have to search for the app instead of just pressing a button.

On an iphone, if you press and hold the power button to activate Siri, then say "Note to self: why are there shoes hanging on the phone lines?", Siri will create a new item in your Notes app with contents "Self why are there shoes hanging on the phone lines".

Have android but I just tried doing the same thing and it works. Never had a reason to use the assistant to now.

The phone assistants can be pretty dumb, but if you know how to talk their language, they can do some pretty useful things. I'll often tell Siri "5 minute timer" or "7pm alarm" or “change my 7 o’clock alarm to 7:30”, and it does the thing I want it to do.

One of my favorite genres of tweet/article is "Can you believe that direct blood relatives look similar?"

This is going here instead of the loathe thread because I said so. I wrote this for Facebook but I have like 3 Facebook friends so you can have it too.

Dear face friends:

(This was going to be a semi-factual post written to amuse myself and maybe you - but for clarity I’ll include a factual section at the beginning)

THE FACTUAL SECTION:
I’m in hospital.
I’ll be fine.
I have a mystery illness which consists of fever and skin rash, no serious issues going on. The doctors are figuring it out.
I can’t have visitors.
I’ll probably be home in a day or two.

THE SEMI-FACTUAL POST WRITTEN TO AMUSE MYSELF AND MAYBE YOU:

I’ve been in hospital since early Saturday morning, when my wife looked at me and literally threw me into the car and drove here. After a short eternity in the ED I was wheeled into an isolation room that I’m fairly sure is constructed entirely from bottles of hand sanitiser. I’m not really sure if this is to protect everyone from me, or to protect me from everyone else, who all have COVID.

I’ve enclosed a picture of my new best friends, Jug and Reynard. They bring me pills and cold water. I’m pretty sure you can’t get addicted to paracetamol, but I’m working on it.
(Note - I have not enclosed this picture, so you’ll have to imagine it. Jug is a pink plastic water jug - 2 litres, which I think is about 12 furloughs when you convert decimal to Fahrenheit - and Reynard is a small paper cup with “REYNARD” written on it)
My second-best new friends are the nurses, who are all awesome (and also they bring me Jug and Reynard but that doesn’t alter my impressions of them… much)

Each day I’m visited by a collection of doctors, I’m not sure if they are vampires but they keep making up reasons to take more blood. “It could be scarlet fever, dwarfism, dementia, post-modernism? Suck- I mean, take another blood sample just to be sure”. They also bring me a stick which gets bigger every day to shove up my nose to see if I have COVID. (No, I don’t)

Also here are some visual aids I’ve prepared (no I haven’t actually prepared them, you can do that yourself)
A: how I look:
1. Imagine a child’s stick drawing of a person.
2. Scribble all over it with dark red crayon.
B: my mood chart:
1. Picture one of those sine wave things that goes steadily up and down in a regular pattern.
2. On the top write “making leech jokes with the doctors”
3. On the bottom write “staring at the wall until it gets too hard to stare”

Anyway that is the news, also I will definitely be fine.

Please do not under any circumstances:
Repost this post on your own face thing (unless you are me)
Add one thing on the end that amuses you that starts with “S” and send to 10 friends
Click this link to my givealot page to donate to my lifesaving surgery (which I don’t need, and wouldn’t have to pay for if I did, thanks NZ healthcare system) http://givealot.com/scams/saveredher...
Tell me the name of the street you grew up on, your favourite colour, or your first pet’s name.

Well, the GOTY write-ups are definitely getting weirder every year.

Which Harry Potter character are you?

fangblackbone wrote:

Which Harry Potter character are you?

I'd be the sorting hat.

Watching The Nutcracker 1986. Maybe grab some hot cocoa.

Here is a question though. After the three head rat is defeated his body melts away leaving his robes. Our Hero and the nutcracker enter his robes and exit into a new land. They dance for a bit. Then a group of ladies from nowhere start dancing while our couple is nowhere to be seen.

Question: What does this scene mean? Bunch of dancing ladies seems so random.

I know it is a ballet and people dance but it is also story and the people usually have a reason for dancing. My only guess was perverted and I doubt it is correct since this is a family movie.

It's one of the main ensemble dances, the Dance of the Snowflakes. It's meant to be part of the romance between the girl (now an adult, magically) and the soldier. That's what I remember, anyway.

I'm not really into musicals, but I am consistently amazed how many of the famous ones are set against a deeply horrifying real-life backdrop (I just read about when "The Sound of Music" is set).

I'm not super into musicals either-- I've certainly enjoyed a few but I'm hardly an expert-- but watch a film version of Sound of Music sometime, or see if you can find a local production if you feel like an excuse for a night out (maybe a university in your area has a theater department?).

It's just plain a good story, well-told.

Prederick wrote:

I'm not really into musicals, but I am consistently amazed how many of the famous ones are set against a deeply horrifying real-life backdrop (I just read about when "The Sound of Music" is set).

I took my mom to see Sound of Music in 70mm a few years back. Amidst all the fascist Trump stuff going on, some scenes will bring you to tears just about watching how similar things are. We grew up with the double VHS of that movie. Breathtaking to see it actually on 70mm.

Just because I watch one gymnastic video youtube thinks I want to see a endless number of gymnastic videos where the camera person is in love with butts. Youtube knows me so well, I'm scared.

For Christmas we got 12 chocolates two of each are the same flavor but 4 of each look the same.

We now have three people trying to figure out which are which.

We have determined coffee and mint. narrowed down cherry and orange to "fruity" and have had a few "normal chocolates". There are only 2 normal chocolates in the box.

We cannot confirm too much as white with red can mean two different flavors or the same.

How do they even know what flavors they put in the box?

We were talking about using AI to write novel plots over in the "The Internet Was a Mistake" thread, and I tried feeding ChatGPT some prompts to get it to write up a plot summary for me. This didn't seem like it belonged in that thread anymore, so I brought it over here. My initial prompt was: "I need a plot for a science fiction novel. It should include space travel within the Earth's solar system only. Humanity has advanced to colonize the Moon and Mars, and is currently terraforming Venus. The space-travel technology is slightly slower than light speed. I need a murder mystery plot that uncovers a large corporate, criminal conspiracy. The most valuable substance in the solar system is Hydrogen."

Here is the first response it gave me after that prompt:

ChatGPT wrote:

The year is 2065 and humanity has made significant progress in space exploration, with colonies established on the Moon, Mars, and the terraforming of Venus underway. The most valuable substance in the solar system is now hydrogen, which is used as fuel for space travel and is in high demand.

The protagonist of the story is a detective working for the Interplanetary Police Department (IPD), tasked with solving crimes that occur across the solar system. The detective is called to investigate a murder on the Moon, where a young scientist working for a powerful space corporation has been found dead in his laboratory.

As the detective begins to investigate, they quickly realize that the murder is just the tip of the iceberg. The scientist was working on a revolutionary new method for extracting hydrogen from the Moon's surface, and his death was clearly not a random act.

As the detective delves deeper into the case, they uncover a complex web of lies and corruption spanning across the solar system. The powerful space corporation that the victim worked for is revealed to be involved in a criminal conspiracy to monopolize the hydrogen market and eliminate any competition.

The detective must navigate the dangerous world of corporate espionage and political intrigue as they race against time to bring the perpetrators to justice and uncover the truth behind the murder. Along the way, they encounter a diverse cast of characters, including rival detectives, ruthless business executives, and dedicated scientists, all caught up in the deadly game of power and greed.

As the case comes to a head, the detective must confront the mastermind behind the conspiracy and bring an end to their ruthless plans, all while navigating the dangers of life in outer space.

After about a half hour of getting it to flesh out some detail, I told it to try again with the plot summary. This is what it came up with:

ChatGPT wrote:

In the year 2065, humanity has made significant progress in space exploration, with colonies established on the Moon, Mars, and the terraforming of Venus underway. The most valuable substance in the solar system is now hydrogen, which is used as fuel for space travel and is in high demand. Detective Jack Riley, a seasoned investigator with the Interplanetary Police Department (IPD), is called to the Moon to solve the murder of Srisakul Khan, a young scientist who was working for the powerful space travel corporation LunarHydro in the Interplanetary Fuel Dynamics department.

As Jack delves deeper into the case, he quickly realizes that Khan's murder was not a random act. It becomes clear that someone wanted to silence Khan and prevent him from completing his work, which could have threatened LunarHydro's plans to monopolize the hydrogen market. Jack begins to uncover a complex web of lies and corruption spanning across the solar system, with LunarHydro at the center. The company's ruthless business executives, including CEO Marcel Rousseau and CFO Helga Schmidt, have been working with the Martian mafia, led by Don Antonio Marino, to disrupt the operations of their competitors and eliminate any potential threats to their monopoly.

In order to bring the perpetrators to justice and stop LunarHydro's monopoly on hydrogen, Jack must navigate the dangerous world of corporate espionage and organized crime. He must gather evidence, interview suspects, and go undercover as a member of the Martian mafia in order to gather the information he needs to solve the case. Along the way, Jack encounters a diverse cast of characters, including rival detectives like David Rodriguez, ruthless business executives like Rousseau and Schmidt, and dedicated scientists like Dr. Elena Novak and Dr. Alexander Petrov, all caught up in the deadly game of power and greed.

As the case comes to a head, Jack must confront the mastermind behind the conspiracy and bring an end to their ruthless plans, all while navigating the dangers of life in outer space. Can he solve the mystery of Khan's murder and bring the perpetrators to justice, or will he become the next victim of the corporation's ambitions?

youtube thinks I want to see a endless number of gymnastic videos where the camera person is in love with butts

That is America's ass.

Well, that didn't take long for YouTube to recommend to me a "Glass Onion: Ending Explained!" video.

I didn't click on it, but it was 25 minutes long and I figure it must just show the last 25 minutes of the movie, because I don't know how to better explain the ending than that.

I really loved Glass Onion, but if I was going to make a complaint about it then leaving things unexplained would definitely not be it