How many hundreds of millions of people have died, and will continue to die, over invisible ‘truths’ cooked up by liars looking for power?

The bible peddles the 10 commandments. My favorite example is a very simple rule ‘from God’: Thou shalt not kill. How many have died at the hands of ‘protectors of the faith’?

Any ideology may be dangerous. People who are convinced they’re tuned into a privileged view on reality may be willing to kill others to protect it. Human history is full of proofs of that.

“On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology.” — Kenneth Clark

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Trouble is that ‘quick answers’ mean the LLM took no time to do a thorough search. Could be right or wrong - just by luck.

When you need the details to be verified by trustworthy sources, it’s still do-it-yourself time. If you -don’t- verify, and repeat a wrong answer to someone else, -you- are untrustworthy.

A couple months back I asked GPT a math question (about primes) and it gave me the -completely wrong- answer … ‘none’ … answered as if it had no doubt. It was -so- wrong it hadn’t even tried. I pointed it to the right answer (‘an infinite number’) and to the proof. It then verified that.

A couple of days ago, I asked it the same question … and it was completely wrong again. It hadn’t learned a thing. After some conversation, it told me it couldn’t learn. I’d already figured that out.

Jansport, yep have a green, leather-bottomed one 20 years old still used weekly. One zipper is sometimes a bit sticky.

A Mackie mixer and two nearfield speakers I bought 25 years ago still see hours-daily usage. When the fancy Kenwood tuner died 2-3 years later, I replaced it with a Boss 50w/chan 12vdc transistor amp that still never even gets warm.

Speaking of Casios, I have an F-105 [1572] ‘Illuminator’ that’s 20 years old and still using the same battery. It gains about 1 minute per year.

Partly, yep. Seems like every time I try to pin down an AI on a detail of a question worth asking - a math question, or a date in history, it’ll confidently reply with the first answer it finds … right or wrong.

From your description ‘too low to the ground’ sounds like it was probably ball lightning … which can do all kinds of goofy shit depending on the weather or how it was created. I’ve never seen any good videos of BL on Youtube, but there might be newer ones.

Don’t know D.C. at all but if you were anywhere near a marsh, maybe ‘swamp gas’?

As an amateur radio operator, The high bands get wiped first! 80, 160, not so much (no ionosphere? ground wave still works. Easy to throw up a long wire … afterward). Hams (esp. ARES) will become VERY IMPORTANT for a LONG time when it happens. Field Day is a good way to prep for aftermath. (Gear can go into metal containers to escape parts damage until afterward.) Portable generators (best without a lot of electronics on them) will be needed to re-charge the batteries!

There are A LOT of BIG countries with big electric grids in the world today. Which countries GRIDS get hit the worst depends on which side of the Earth is facing the ‘hit’. Could the West (US, Brazil) or Europe or the East (China, India).

Linux Mint puts out a great OS for a few thousand per month. With the start it’s got, Firefox could go on for decades without more income.

Good start. Prefer 12-grain bread tho. And for a BIG meal, I throw on a couple (or 10) thin slices of deli meat & more mayo.

Great M.O. that. Why waste time cooking instead of learning? Bet he took that pizza home to watch History Channel.

Toast two slices. Slice of cheese between. Microwave 12 seconds to melt cheese a little. Hate waiting for toasters though,

I once ate nothing but eggs and rice for 3 months. Rice too slow. Another time I bought a 9-pound sack of roasted, unsalted cashews at wholesale, and ate only that until it was gone. Interesting pale results in the bathroom on that one.

Not foodie, so I just eat whatever takes the least time and mess to make. The toaster takes too long for me. Fold a slice of cheese in a piece of bread in under one minute!

I once ate nothing but eggs and rice all day for 3 months. (Took too long to cook rice.) Another time I bought a 9-pound sack of unsalted but roasted cashews and ate nothing else until it was gone in a couple weeks. (Interesting, pale results in the bathroom from that one.)

I was standing outside last spring and remarked ‘wow, what a beautiful day’. After a few seconds, an dude sitting at a nearby table said ‘Every day when I wake up is a beautiful day’. Yep, life can be what you make of it.

I’d say that it has been baked into the culture since the US was formed. Remember: Thomas Jefferson was in with the gang that signed the ‘all men are created equal… life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ crowd. And yet he owned over 100 slaves.

And Americans are far from being alone at that stereotyping. Take a close look at Britain, for example. In fact, where can you go in the world where you won’t have to prove the stereotypes are wrong about you?

School teaching of history has changed a lot since I was in K-12 … but at that time, I never had a history class that got so far as WW1. Yep. We spent months on the history of Europe from the Holy Roman Empire up to (barely) von Bismarck. That was it.

I suspect that was because teachers were staying away from any history that might be known to anyone who was actually alive. My daughter, on the other hand, had a teacher who spent months on the Vietnam War. I was glad to hear that.

OTOH, when TV was black and white, there was a whole series on WW2 created by the US army called The Big Picture, broadcast on hundreds of stations. Each of over 800 half-hour episodes were available to any TV station that would air them. So there was a time when ADULTS -could- learn that stuff … and no doubt many of those who lived through that era were curious what their relatives and friends died for.

I’m fairly sure that a lot of today’s elected politicians would have paid no attention to that stuff. Many of them move in a different mental culture than people who’ve lost relatives to the whims of dictators. And of course they’re sure they’re smarter than people were back then. Like the Prime Example.

After shutting down anything in use, I use suspend set for a 35-minute delay. Most evenings I listen to bed-time audio. Ubuntu hasn’t been terribly reliable, works about 2/3 of the time.