A day without stupid?

[lpetrich]

On Xwitter, every now and then, I find some right-winger who claims that rural people are the real producers because they produce all the food that we eat.

I like to respond that without what city people make, rural people would be stuck in the Stone Age.

More specifically, the Neolithic, the technology of the first farmers.

Why? NO METALS.

No plastics, either.

Wood? Leather? One would be stuck with what one can easily cut with stone knives. That means no precision cutting, like what is necessary to make wooden wheels. So no wheels, either.

The wheel was invented in SE Europe not long after the widespread use of bronze in tools in that part of the world, andI suspect that that is no coincidence.

But Neolithic Middle Easterners and SE Europeans did have domestic animals -- bovines, sheep, goats, pigs, dogs -- and the larger ones could be used as work animals, carrying loads and pulling plows.  List of domesticated animals Horses and donkeys were latecomers, but I'll be generous and accept them.

 

[lpetrich]

Let's say that you want to make some hamburger.

You'll need bread for the bun, meat in the middle, and vegetables on the meat.

To make the bun, you'll need grain, and here's how you'll get it.

You have to plow a field, with the plow pulled by a bovine or a horse or a donkey. You then sow seeds in the plowed land. The grain then grows, and you'll have to reap it, cut off the upper parts of the plants. Once you do that, you'll have to thresh it, to beat it so that the grain comes loose from its parent plants. Then you have to winnow it, to separate the grain from its parent plants, the wheat from the chaff. All because you don't have a combine harvester, a machine that reaps, threshes, and winnows.

Once you have your grain, you now have to grind that grain by hand to make flour, and you then mix the flour with water to make bread dough. You may now add some starter dough, some leaven, to make the bread rise. Once it is ready to go, you must then bake it. You must get the fuel by chopping down some trees with a stone ax, though you can bring the wood home on the backs of your larger animals. You might also collect farm-animal dung and dry it out.

You grow vegetables the way that you grow grain, but harvesting is easier. Pick your vegetables by hand. There is the problem of preserving it, but you can make vinegar by doing extra fermentation or else get saltwater from the sea, and you then soak the vegetables in this acid or salty water.

Meat patty? You will have to chop up the meat by hand, and do a lot of chopping. Slaughtering an animal will give you plenty of meat, so you must preserve it, and a simple way to do so is to dry it. You can also use saltwater, making salted meat.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

On Xwitter, every now and then, I find some right-winger who claims that rural people are the real producers because they produce all the food that we eat.

I like to respond that without what city people make, rural people would be stuck in the Stone Age.

More specifically, the Neolithic, the technology of the first farmers.

Why? NO METALS.

No plastics, either.

Wood? Leather? One would be stuck with what one can easily cut with stone knives. That means no precision cutting, like what is necessary to make wooden wheels. So no wheels, either.

The wheel was invented in SE Europe not long after the widespread use of bronze in tools in that part of the world, andI suspect that that is no coincidence.

But Neolithic Middle Easterners and SE Europeans did have domestic animals -- bovines, sheep, goats, pigs, dogs -- and the larger ones could be used as work animals, carrying loads and pulling plows.  List of domesticated animals Horses and donkeys were latecomers, but I'll be generous and accept them.

Exactly. In time their stuff will wear out and they can't replace it. That's why a collapse of civilization is unrecoverable.

But I disagree on the wheel. If you come into the situation with the knowledge I think you can make a wheel with stone tools--specifically, via a lathe. But note that lathes are a form of wheel, thus it would have been impossible to invent that approach.

 

[ZiprHead]

Under Tim Walz, Detroit has the highest murder rate in Minnesota. - Lauren Boebert

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Under Tim Walz, Detroit has the highest murder rate in Minnesota. - Lauren Boebert

As far as I can tell with a brief search, this statement is not real.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Under Tim Walz, Detroit has the highest murder rate in Minnesota. - Lauren Boebert

As far as I can tell with a brief search, this statement is not real.

I thought we were well past the point of things needing to be real to be important aspects of our political discourse.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Under Tim Walz, Detroit has the highest murder rate in Minnesota. - Lauren Boebert

As far as I can tell with a brief search, this statement is not real.

I thought we were well past the point of things needing to be real to be important aspects of our political discourse.

Just because the GOP is shitting in the pool doesn't mean I need to.

 

[Elixir]

“Reportedly”. Perplexity seems evasive in this response, but at least it’s technically correct.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

That doesn't work for me. Generally I've found when X and social media are the only thing reporting a quote, it likely wasn't said. There is not a single article citing this.

The funny thing about Perplexity's response is it is confirming that someone said she said it.

 

[Elixir]

The funny thing about Perplexity's response is it is confirming that someone said she said it.

The “funny” ( not so funny) thing is the first word of the response; “Yes,”
Without that single affirmative, the response is spot on.

 

[bilby]

That doesn't work for me. Generally I've found when X and social media are the only thing reporting a quote, it likely wasn't said. There is not a single article citing this.

The funny thing about Perplexity's response is it is confirming that someone said she said it.

"AI" is utter shit for this kind of query, for that exact reason.

 

[bilby]

The funny thing about Perplexity's response is it is confirming that someone said she said it.

The “funny” ( not so funny) thing is the first word of the response; “Yes,”
Without that single affirmative, the response is spot on.

Without that affirmative, the response fails to answer the question.

With it, it answers the question in a misleading and over-confident way.

 

[blastula]

That doesn't work for me. Generally I've found when X and social media are the only thing reporting a quote, it likely wasn't said. There is not a single article citing this.

The funny thing about Perplexity's response is it is confirming that someone said she said it.

"AI" is utter shit for this kind of query, for that exact reason.

Incorrect.

Source:

 

[Elixir]

Perplexity is a free Al-powered answer engine that provides accurate, trusted, and real-time answers to
any question.

lol, yeah. Not!
It’s at least as fucked up as the rest of them. The thing I do like about it is the reference links. It tells you where it got the notion it’s trying to sell you.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The funny thing about Perplexity's response is it is confirming that someone said she said it.

The “funny” ( not so funny) thing is the first word of the response; “Yes,”
Without that single affirmative, the response is spot on.

Without that affirmative, the response fails to answer the question.

With it, it answers the question in a misleading and over-confident way.

Actually it affirmatively states that someone indeed reported that Boehert said that quote. That is factual.

 

[Elixir]

The funny thing about Perplexity's response is it is confirming that someone said she said it.

The “funny” ( not so funny) thing is the first word of the response; “Yes,”
Without that single affirmative, the response is spot on.

Without that affirmative, the response fails to answer the question.

With it, it answers the question in a misleading and over-confident way.

Actually it affirmatively states that someone indeed reported that Boehert said that quote. That is factual.

Right. Bilby's point is that it is selectively factual. The tone is "I'm answering your question" but it's not, it's answering a different question with a fact that while tangential, is only qualified as addressing my question by the first word "Yes," in answer to "did LB say dat?". Usually Perplexity comes up with "cannot be verified, but... " so this response struck me as unusual and possibly misleading.
If taken literally and grammatically, it reads "Yuppers! The bobblehead said that! Everybody knows!" to me.
YMMV

 

[ZiprHead]

As far as I can tell it goes back to August 24. And Minnesota has a Detroit Lakes city.

 

[Elixir]

As far as I can tell it goes back to August 24. And Minnesota has a Detroit Lakes city.

Does it have the highest murder rate in Minnesota?

“Detroit Lakes does not have the highest murder rate in Minnesota. In fact, its murder rate is 0.0 per 100,000

… but it has less than 10k people.

 

[blastula]

The dimwit thinks he's got the original there. And he's still hung up on Biden?

 

[NoHolyCows]

Since Trump came to office, has there been a day when he didn't do or say anything outrageously stupid?

I've taken a quick look, and it's just utter mind-blowing idiocy every day. Most days several times a day.

Honestly, I’ve looked too—and I think the only quiet day he’s had was probably during a colonoscopy. And even then, I bet he tried to tweet through the anesthesia.

NHC