April 2023 blogspot

Shops are cashing in on the Coronation to flog all sorts of tat, says the Evening Standard. At the upper end, Conway Stewart is selling a £575 sterling silver fountain pen featuring a detailed engraving of the King’s profile. Historic Royal Palaces - the charity in charge of Kensington Palace and the Tower of London - is flogging everything from key rings to biscuit tins. Emma Bridgewater has a £23 mug which says “King Charles” on it; Fortnum & Mason is selling a “trinkets box” for £60. Even some in the family are taking a slice - the party company owned by Carole Middleton, Kate’s mum - is selling a full coronation party set, including bunting at £1.60 a metre. And M&S online is encouraging supportive subjects of the new King to dig deep in their digital pockets at marksandspencer.com, claiming "It’s time for a right royal celebration as the nation comes together for the King and Queen Consort’s Coronation on Saturday 6 May 2023. We have everything you need to mark the occasion in style, from extra-special food and fizz to commemorative gifts and fun homeware. So, gather your friends and family and make the most of this joyous coronation weekend".
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Water Raves
There’s a “weird niche of beverage videos” circulating on TikTok, says Amy McCarthy in Eater: “recipes” for spicing up water. Creators have racked up more than 131 million views of clips recommending an array of syrups, powders and flavourings to turn a boring glass of H20 into “birthday-cake water”, “unicorn cotton candy water” or “banana-split water”. Users, somewhat dubiously, suggest the enhanced drinks are a good weight-loss hack, creating “something that tastes like a dessert but doesn’t have any calories". In this context, it's easy to see why something that tastes like a dessert but doesn’t have any calories has mainstream appeal right now, considering how many people, celebrities and some of the rest of us, are taking drugs intended to treat diabetes to lose weight. If thin is back in, as culture bloggers claim, then so may be these modern versions of diet desserts. But hopeful slimmers take note: at a time online when nothing wins more “likes” and focuses more eyeballs than a ridiculous recipe, the popularity of #watertok is mostly about video creators packing drinks with an over-the-top number of additives simply to hoover up more views than their TikTok rivals.
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Slow Influencer
Martijn Doolaard is not like the “frenetic, teeth-whitened influencers” who dominate social media, says Tom Vanderbilt in Outside magazine. The 38-year-old Dutchman is a “serene old soul” who, over the past 18 months, has been renovating a set of primitive shepherd’s cabins in the Italian Alps - and the YouTube channel documenting his efforts has accumulated half a million “feverishly devoted” subscribers. Tall, bearded, and generally wearing a dark, wide-brimmed hat, Doolaard “looks plucked from the world of 17th-century Dutch portrait painting”, an impression he supports with an old-timey uniform of waistcoats and suspenders. The slow-paced, therapeutic videos, in which he calmly carries out tasks like sawing wood and polishing his boots, are an “antidote to modern life”.
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Bard Baffles Google Chief
Google’s AI has taught itself the Bengali language, even though it wasn’t asked to do any such thing. "We discovered that with very few amounts of prompting in Bengali, it can now translate all of Bengali", chief executive Sundar Pichai told CBS's 60 Minutes in America. He says his top researchers don't really know how it managed the feat, adding that "all of us in the field" refer to the whole system as a "black box" - something "we don't fully understand". The Google chief went on to say that AI would need to be regulated. "Anybody who has worked with AI for a while realises this is something so different and so deep that we would need societal regulations to think about how to adapt". His concerns came despite Google pressing ahead with Bard, the company’s AI chatbot and a rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and the company seeking to integrate AI more deeply into its own search engine.
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Generative AI Not Yet Trustworthy
When ChatGPT doesn't know the answer, does it just make stuff up?
Reporting on BBC Radio 4's PM programme this week, host Evan Davis asked ChatGPT about recently deceased Strictly Come Dancing judge Len Goodman, and was told the 78 year old TV star had choreographed the film Dirty Dancing. Asked to double check this surprising information, ChatGPT replied: "So sorry, I'm afraid I got that wrong". All very lackadaisical, surely, when a straightforward search on Google or Bing makes no association between Len Goodman and any Hollywood musical, but immediately does provide the correct answer to the Dirty Dancing choreography question: The iconic routines were the work of famed dance and film director Kenny Ortega.
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Search Engine Of The Month
Luxxle is a uniquely different search engine that offers the option to filter results through what it calls Lenses that can be tuned to suit the user's political leaning - left or right - or their prerred content sources, such as Mainstream Media or Wiki Sources. "Lenses allow you to filter results to better match the way you see the world" according to Luxxie. Users can also decide to keep on or turn off mainstream media sources altogether and to choose how to sort content, via the Luxxle algorithm, alphabetically, or freshest first.
Take a look