David Sparks, in an episode of the Mac Power Users podcast:
“My test for these AI engines that say they can program is asking them to make an AppleScript, because I’m convinced that AppleScript is the hardest language for a computer to learn how to program. And they routinely fail at it.”What I wrote after asking ChatGPT to create an AppleScript: “AppleScript seems to defy both artificial and human intelligence.” ChatGPT did much a better job (in six tries) creating Alfred workflows.
[Click for a larger view.]
It’s her movie debut. If you recognize her, or think you do, leave the name in the comments.
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I’ll drop a hint: she’s known for film, theater, and television.
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Oh, well. I’m going to leave the name in the comments before going out to walk for several miles.
More mystery actors
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From The Washington Post (gift link). Something I learned: it’s best to leave plastic caps on bottles.
From David Leonhardt’s New York Times newsletter “The Morning.” “She” is Dianne Feinstein:
She has also been suffering from a deterioration in her short-term memory and her ability to hold conversations for more than a year.Senator Feinstein should, of course, do the right thing by resigning. But sheesh, I think anyone would have difficulty holding conversations for more than a year.
Steven Millhauser, “Klassik Komix #1,“ in The Barnum Museum (1990).
Can you guess what klassik is getting a komix-treatment?
Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)
The Washington Post analyzed Google’s C4 data set, “a massive snapshot of the contents of 15 million websites that have been used to instruct some high-profile English-language AIs.” The data set includes half a million blogs. It’s not known whether the AIs include ChatGPT.
The Post article includes a search box. So I had to look:
Good grief.
Related reading
All OCA ChatGPT posts
[As the Post notes, “OpenAI does not disclose what datasets it uses to train the models backing its popular chatbot, ChatGPT.” That’s a gift link: free for all to read.]
[From Strangers When We Meet (dir. Richard Quine, 1960). Click for a larger view.]
Larry Coe (Kirk Douglas), architect, says he’s off to see a client. But Larry is in fact off to see the neighbor with whom he’s having an affair. So he leaves his wife a wrong number in case she needs to reach him. Creep.
BRadshaw appears in this list of Los Angeles Country exchange names.
Related reading
All OCA EXchange name posts (Pinboard)
“Do you want to come over to my house? It is gorgeous.”
Related reading
All OCA “overheard” posts (Pinboard)
[Joyce Compton, Lucien Littlefield, Gary Cooper, Jack Oakie, and Roscoe Karns in “The Three Marines” (dir. William A. Seiter). From the anthology movie If I Had a Million (1932). Click for a larger notebook.]
Zeb checks to see how much these three fellows owe: $4.50. But can he read? “Maybe not, but I can make marks that nobody else but me can read.”
More notebook sightings
All the King’s Men : Angels with Dirty Faces : The Bad and the Beautiful : Ball of Fire : The Big Clock : Bombshell : The Brasher Doubloon : The Case of the Howling Dog : Cat People : Caught : City Girl : Crossing Delancey : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dead End : Deep Valley : The Devil and Miss Jones : Dragnet : Extras : Eyes in the Night : The Face Behind the Mask : The Fearmakers : A Foreign Affair : Foreign Correspondent : Fury : The Girl in Black Stockings : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : I See a Dark Stranger : Journal d’un curé de campagne : Kid Glove Killer : The Last Laugh : Le Million : The Lodger : Lost Horizon : M : Ministry of Fear : Mr. Holmes : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : Now, Voyager : The Palm Beach Story : Perry Mason : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : The Racket : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : La roue : Route 66 : The Scarlet Claw : Sleeping Car to Trieste : The Small Back Room : The Sopranos : Spellbound : Stage Fright : State Fair : A Stranger in Town : Stranger Things : Sweet Smell of Success : Time Table : T-Men : To the Ends of the Earth : 20th Century Women : Union Station : Vice Squad : Walk East on Beacon! : What Happened Was . . . : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window : You Only Live Once : Young and Innocent
I have long been squeamish about Fig Newtons. I mean, what’s in them? Oh, wait: figs.
The other day, at a gathering to which people brought cookies, I tried a Fig Newton, the first Fig Newton I’ve ever eaten. It tasted good, as Ernest Hemingway might have written. It was a good Newton.
And then I came across this bit, via The New Yorker : “When you eat a dried fig, you’re probably chewing fig-wasp mummies, too.”
But then Elaine found this bit, from Louise Ferguson, extension specialist at the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences, speaking to Bon Appétit :
“There’s no fig wasp in there by the time people are eating the fruit,” says Ferguson. The female fig produces an enzyme that completely digests the exoskeleton before hungry humans can take a bite. To be clear: “The crunchy bits are seeds, not wasp parts,” she adds.Bon Appétit credits a 2022 viral tweet for the claim about wasp parts in figs. And the tweeter credited the 2016 New Yorker item.
