Odd Lots
- Ok, it’s weird: Ice cream in the shape of a fried chicken leg. But it’s really ice cream. The meat is ice cream, the bones are chocolate, and the breading is made of broken but not powdered corn flakes. When I first saw it I thought: Fried chicken flavored ice cream? Whew. No.
- And if you thought fried chicken shaped ice cream was weird, consider the Republic of Slowjamistan.
- Peanut allergies and the resulting deaths were almost unknown before 1980. So what happened? Here’s a piece with as good a theory as I’ve ever seen. Carol and I eat non-emulsified peanut butter sold in glass jars, and whole peanuts. Never had any trouble, granting that we ate peanuts as fairly young kids.
- No Atlantic hurricanes this year so far, breaking a 60-year record. (More here with better graphics.) If no little spinwhizzies show up by September 22, it’ll break an 85-year record. If we don’t see any by the close of hurricane season on November 30, it’ll only be the third time on record this has ever happened. (The first two were 1907 and 1914.) Asterisk: In 1914 we didn’t have satellite cameras and so there may have been a few mid-ocean that we never knew were there.
- How will AI destroy the human species? It’ll tell everybody that they’re already dead—and everybody (but me) will believe the damn things.
- It had to happen eventually, and it just happened a few minutes ago: I was reading a substantial 700-page hardcover book that was very absorbing and addressed some issues that interest me intensely (more about this after I finish the book) when, without thinking, I touched my index finger to the page I had just finished and swiped left. Whoops.
Posted in: Odd Lots.
Tagged: ai · books · climate · food
Interesting article on peanut allergies and the possible link to peanut butter. I miss peanuts the most when I’m flying: some airlines use to pass out small bags of peanuts as snacks; now we get trail mix. I abhor trail mix and pretzel aren’t that great either.
Slowjamistan — arrgh! Just what the world needs; another idiocracy.
Jeff, did you know Mary Lynn Skirvin Johnson was declared “dead” by a computer error? Social security ended, and everything tied to your social security number goes away (driver’s license, credit cards, etc.) It took her forever to prove she was still alive. Now think what happens if AI simply declares you “dead” and erases you from everything on the internet?
Don’t feel too bad about trying to change paper book pages with a swipe, Jeff. Every so often I try to look up the meaning of a word in one by pressing on it.