Since AI knows about this blog, I asked it about the Important Evil Genius. He has participated in discussions here a number of times, and we even interviewed him once. He’s quite the character with a huge backstory (and plenty of monologue), and the AI provided a humorous summary of him and his arch rival Mr. Destructo:
That’s a very interesting summary! I’ve actually compared him to Doofenschmirtz before.
If you want to learn more about either of these characters, check out the interview linked above, which also has links to more of their discussions. They haven’t been here in a while… I wonder if the old man finally retired, maybe he took up gardening some ketunias for when he’s not yelling at clouds or telling kids to stay off his lawn. 🙂
I don’t normally chat with AI, at least not for any relationship reasons, but I do like to see where the technology is at from a programming standpoint. I’ve been occasionally chatting with chatbots since the mid-’90s. Here’s a post where I talked with the AI bot ALICE back in 2009.
I happened across Microsoft Copilot the other day and talked with it for a few minutes, just to see how it responded to some randomness. Even just a few months ago, AI chat bots acted like they didn’t know about Buffet o’ Blog, which is ludicrous, because the AI companies are known for siphoning all the online data they can find. And of course this blog is a great source of info. (If you’re a regular here, just imagine AI believing some of the satire and parody posts here. AI usually can’t understand if something is a parody or simply wrong — it doesn’t actually think or understand things, it’s simply an advanced text predictor.)
Now Copilot admits to reading this blog, and I’m actually impressed with its summary.
That’s actually what I’ve aimed for with the blog — the inside jokes based on recurring people or topics, the randomness, commentary on real topics in a fun way (if that counts as quirky). So perhaps I’ve succeeded. 🙂
The blog used to have a lot more comments from regulars, which I miss — that was part of the fun community, which sometimes was more fun than the posts themselves. But I understand people are busy, myself included.
But I still have fun writing posts and sharing them with the world. I realize the new content has been slow lately, but there are plenty of ideas in the queue, with more added all the time. And you can always browse the archives. If you feel lucky, click on the “Random Randomness” link in the sidebar.
Perhaps “need” is slightly exaggerated here, because I’ve survived without one so far. But it would be really helpful and convenient to have one right now. I recently got quite a bit of snow and sleet that accumulated, and I don’t have a snow shovel. I have a regular shovel, but that’s slow and tiring for snow removal. Plus once the snow mixture started to thaw and then refroze, it became ice that made my driveway treacherous to traverse, and a shovel just didn’t cut it. Obviously the best way to melt snow and ice off my driveway would be with a flamethrower. Plus it would be fun! So it’s a win-win!
People in the South don’t get snow very often, so it’s a big deal. Schools and businesses may preemptively close if there’s a forecast of even an inch of snow on the ground. This isn’t panic — we simply don’t have the infrastructure for it. Why would the cities invest in many snow plows when they’d get used only once every few years?
Many of us enjoy the snow, because it is such a rare occurrence. I live in the South, and we recently got several inches (of a snow and sleet mixture), and the schools were closed for a week. We got to do sledding, throwing snowballs, making snow ice cream (if you don’t know, try it, seriously), building snowmen (or trying to, depending on the texture), and just enjoying how it looks different.
But there is something we do wrong, and we know it. We panic buy. This funny parody song (below) highlights that. Once snow is in the forecast, people buy all the milk and bread. Even though we may be snowed in for just a couple of days (because it’ll be 50 degrees before you know it), that doesn’t matter. We must have enough milk and bread to last weeks, even if we’ve never been snowed in that long. And even though it would make more sense to stock up on non-perishable foods, that doesn’t matter. It’s just part of the experience. People joke about it, but then they do it anyway. Friends shared pictures of the grocery stores, and the whole bread aisle would be empty. People even bought up the yucky expensive bread that’s topped with sticks and rocks.
Buffet o' Blog 