{"id":5704,"date":"2026-09-27T15:46:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T22:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5704"},"modified":"2026-09-27T15:46:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T22:46:45","slug":"odd-lots-375","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5704","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/2026\/09\/ai-authors-impersonating-writers-amazon\/688709\/\" target=\"_blank\">Excellent article by Brian Niemeier about the recent Amazon scam<\/a> of using AI to create novels supposedly by a (reasonably) successful author, stealing that author\u2019s name for publishing and promotion. Creepy, totally dishonest stuff, one that will not make AI popular among honest authors.<\/li>\n<li>Windows Recall is a terrible idea: It takes regular snapshots of your screen&#160; and stores them (supposedly) on your mass storage drive. I\u2019m not sure this is useful, and I think it\u2019s\u2026<em>suspicious<\/em>\u2026that newer Windows desktops and laptops have it pre-installed. If you want to get rid of it, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/check-windows-recall-status-with-dism-command\/\" target=\"_blank\">this article explains how<\/a>. It\u2019s not hard and not especially technical. Be sure to read through to the end of the article.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.polyhedra.net\/en\/\">Here\u2019s a page highlighting paper models of every polyhedron<\/a> I\u2019ve ever heard of, and no small number that I haven\u2019t. They\u2019ll also give you templates for cutting out your own polyhedrons. It fun lots is of.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.countryliving.com\/home-maintenance\/cleaning\/a73582598\/get-rid-stink-bugs-house\/\" target=\"_blank\">Everything you probably never wanted to know about stink bugs<\/a>. I\u2019ll add the asterisk that I\u2019ve never seen one in Arizona.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/health.yahoo.com\/wellness\/healthy-aging\/longevity\/articles\/coffee-habit-could-actually-help-110000530.html\">New research shows that caffeine triggers DNA repair.<\/a> I\u2019d like to see more research, but lord knows I like coffee and almost always drink two cups a day. (Any more and it would interfere with my sleep. Your mileage may vary.)<\/li>\n<li>I take zinc and quercetin every day to protect against colds and flu. It\u2019s worked very well for me, at least with colds. (We caught COVID a couple of years after the virus\u2019s heyday, but it was less annoying than an ordinary cold.) The downside to zinc is that it leaches copper out of the body. I take a multivitamin with copper, and eat cashews, which are the tree nuts with the most copper. So far so good.<\/li>\n<li>Both <a href=\"https:\/\/ssd.jpl.nasa.gov\/tools\/sbdb_lookup.html#\/?sstr=14330\">Tom Leher<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/ssd.jpl.nasa.gov\/tools\/sbdb_lookup.html#\/?sstr=14331\">Weird Al Yankovic<\/a> now have asteroids named after them. Rock music, anybody?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Excellent article by Brian Niemeier about the recent Amazon scam of using AI to create novels supposedly by a (reasonably) successful author, stealing that author\u2019s name for publishing and promotion. Creepy, totally dishonest stuff, one that will not make AI popular among honest authors. Windows Recall is a terrible idea: It takes regular snapshots of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[286],"class_list":["post-5704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-geometry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5705,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5704\/revisions\/5705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}