Ozexpatriate

Did the jelly snakes have a similar fate?

And a nice job it did too, though the Arrowroot biscuits are the wrong shape and there are too many of them. On the plus side the guests seem to have the correct number of appendages, though some might be missing some legs. The kangaroo paws are right sketchy.

One hopes things have improved since the days of needing the right stripy necktie or handshake to gain employment. The last bastion of hiring discrimination is ageism.

With a gag order in place?

So was the Wee Wee Fairy accompanied by the Poo Poo Gnome? 😉 Never mind. TMI.

That observation has set me thinking. So if that poem (essentially then a rant against the established church, by an enlightenment era enthusiast for the French revolution) is an unofficial anthem of English sports fans - roses or lions or whatever (and others equally proud of England's green & pleasant land), then is it so in ignorance? Much like this critical observation in the Wikipedia article: We were introduced to Blake in school - but in the context of a Tyger. Which is (of course) not about a tiger at all but a contemplation on why a "loving" God permits the existence of evil.

Their recent problems are related to manufacturing and quality control rather than engineering. If all the bolts are installed and tightened they do fly.

New spy-ware install.

Unless the interviews are conducted purely in writing, addressing Dear "Candidate 1" (address undisclosed to the interviewer) that is quite impossible. The only pragmatic way to handle this is to make sure the interview team is well educated on avoiding bias - conscious or otherwise. One could imagine a Victorian application for employment in writing by post but even names are suggestive of gender, ethnicity and even class. Address is suggestive of socio-economic status. A former boss liked to have a sample of a candidate's written work. This remains a good idea, but few insist on it. It's difficult when, excepting in the academic sphere, most professional written work is not public information. I did recently see a baccalaureate candidate submit a PowerPoint presentation instead of a traditional resume. He was offered the job.

Still waiting for our resident western Sydneysider to film the horses looking over the fence from the paddock next door with the sound track - da-dum, da-dum, da-dum ...

Here the real estate valuation is used for property tax assessment. There are protections - enacted by voter referenda - to grandfather the valuation based on the sale price with some small-ish increases over time. This began in California decades ago where property taxes (linked to exponentially rising home prices) were driving people out of their homes, particularly those on a fixed income. Reconstruction cost drives the price of insurance. I had my 'sticker shock' moment with increased home owners' insurance last Autumn. The insurance industry is being hammered by climate-change related catastrophes (wildfires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes) coupled with a scarcity of builders* and inflation in the price of building materials. The replacement/reconstruction cost of my home exceeds its resale value dramatically. * Many of the subcontractors disappeared around 2017. I'll let you do the maths.

Here it is widely available with variable quality. I was taken to "The Refuge" in San Carlos, CA where it is the specialty. (They pair pastrami sandwiches with Belgian beers, which were there an elective heaven, this concept would be close.) It was featured on a Food Network show called Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, which, once you get past the over-the-top, frosted-hair, host (with whom I once shared an airport security line - he was headed to an appearance on late-night television) showcases a lot of really good (and not 'posh') eateries.

Very vernal here. 24°C forecast under sunny skies. My Eastern Redbud is a haze of tiny pink blooms over the grassy verge. (All the Sakura are long gone and the annual tulip festival will close a week early, with early than anticipated blooming.) While we're still ahead on the precipitation scale over the 'rain year', April has been dry and we're behind by 1.25" / 32mm for the month.

Yes - that's the most weirdly "human" thing about it. Very "lifelike".

One wonders what the consequences might have been were the Donegal Corridor (over neutral Irish soil) closed to Coastal Command.

No - it's not "sentient". And LLM generative AI is much more capable than "guessing the next word". Generative AI programs have passed the bar exam. Now of course passing the bar exam requires a lot of rote learning and somewhat formulaic responses based on learning precedent. LLM-based generative AI is good at that sort of thing. "Artificial Intelligence" does not have to be sentient. That may be your definition, but it is not how the term is used. The "Turing Test" aka Imitation Game (essentially the "duck" test*) was the "standard" for Artificial Intelligence. I would suggest the state of the technology is pretty close to that. * If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

I like Tim Tams (dark chocolate mint please). I like Vegemite - actually had some this morning. Vegemite Tim Tams look disgusting.

No - Large Language Models are one branch of Artificial Intelligence. The terms are not equivalent. Large Language Models are used to comprehend natural language input. They are also part of generative AI that can compose in natural language such that it is not gibberish. Is the ability to lean to read and speak a foreign language a measure of intelligence? It is more than syntax and rules and the state of contemporary LLMs have surpassed that. Is what LLM-based, generative AI creates derivative? Yes. Arguably so is every time we wish someone "Good Morning". It is something we were taught.

That bit I understood - I missed the other inference. Thank you. I'm not sure "Theist" is the most complete description for Blake. Perhaps "Deist"? He seems tricky to define taxonomically. "Not a fan of organized religion" is apt. The Wikipedia page leads to Marcionite. That's new to me.

What is that PBY livery? After contact was lost with Bismarck it was a PBY of RAF Coastal Command (purchased before lend-lease) with an USN (ret)* attaché / instructing copilot at the controls which located Bismarck. * The US was not at war (May '41) so the training flying officers provided with the aircraft temporarily "retired" their commissions, but were flying combat missions.

This is very common in the US and Australia. "Corning" in this case refers to 'corns' of salt used. Tinned products do not approximate it at all. It is often associated with Irish heritage, and inevitably appears on St. Patrick's day with cabbage, but various brisket preparations are also associated with Ashkenazi Jewish cooking traditions in the US - where the corned beef on rye is a classic Jewish deli staple, along with the Ruben sandwich (corned beef on toasted rye with sauerkraut, swiss cheese and Russian dressing). Peppered brisket, cold smoked and then steamed is Pastrami. Also delicious and a little more intense. Hot pastrami on rye is wonderful. Corned beef hash is a diner breakfast staple and is found everywhere in 'traditional' diners.

Did they not have a dog that chewed the furniture, defecated on the floor or barked all night? Stayed in plenty of pet-friendly places with annoying dogs. (And I do like dogs.)

Along with the children that spun it in Blake's dark Satanic Mills.

Halloween cosplay as some of my ancestors - "Bound for Botany Bay".

It's not that "old". Enterprise customers had (for the most part) not switched to it pre-pandemic. I know of one very large Enterprise that was using Skype (also a Microsoft product - though they acquired it) at that time. In that setting Skype was terrible. It wasn't until the pandemic hit that Enterprises switched to Teams. There are many evident problems with the architecture of Teams. It has many redundant capabilities with Outlook (like the calendar) intended for 'stand alone' operation that create serious synchronization problems. It's biggest problem is that it is a memory pig - I'm guessing it's a "sedimentary" solution with features being layered on without any architectural overhauls for performance. I reboot every morning. Unless I wait for Teams to (not just open but) complete all it's background loading it doesn't do the "one thing" it is supposed to do - join a meeting. It can take five minutes before it is actually "ready". Until then the application looks like it's up - but you try to join a meeting with a link and it just sits there. (If you have all the minutia at hand, like meeting number, password, etc you can connect manually, but many meeting hosts don't provide this - just a link.) Of course the quality of the interaction is far superior with an in-person interview. But when the interview team is not co-located and a successful candidate would be relocated to the work location (frequently requiring air travel and an overnight stay for the interview), using virtual video interviews is a no-brainer. I imagine that it is 'easier' to conduct traditional in-person interviews in the UK where distances are less, though the stories I hear here about rail transport make me wonder how practical that is these days.