"...this five-pointed (also called five-angled) star shape is common in Populus (aspen, poplar, cottonwood) and Salix species (members of the willow family) but is also found in oaks (Quercus), and chestnut (Castanea). The pith inside a stem is made of parenchyma (large, thin-walled cells), which are often a different color than surrounding wood (xylem). The pith’s function is to transport and store nutrients. Pith is usually lighter when new, but darkens with time (as seen in images like these of cottonwood “stars”).Mowry’s story notes the importance of cottonwood to the belief systems of Native American tribes: the Lakota, the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, and the Oglala Sioux. Pacific Northwest naturalist and poet Robert Michael Pyle’s essay, “The Plains Cottonwood” (American Horticulturist, August 1993, pp.39-42), describes an Arapaho version of the story of the stars that you told above: “They moved up through the roots and trunks of the cottonwoods to wait near the sky at the ends of the high branches. When the night spirit desired more stars, he asked the wind spirit to provide them. She then grew from a whisper to a gale. Many cottonwood twigs would break off, and each time they broke, they released stars from their nodes.” Cottonwood twigs sometimes snap off without the assistance of wind, a self-pruning phenomenon called cladoptosis. Pyle suggests looking for twigs that are neither too young nor too weathered if you want to observe the clearest stars: “The star is the darker heartwood contrasting with the paler sapwood and new growth.”
Let’s say you’re confronted with a dangerously powerful and extremely logical computer. How do you stop it? You all know how: confront it with a contradiction and talk it into self-destructing.
Easy-peasy! Although, to be fair, Star Trek was in many ways a silly and naive program, entirely fictional, so it can’t be that easy in real life. Or is it?
Here’s a paper that the current LLMs all choke on, and it’s pretty simple.
To shed light on this current situation, we introduce here a simple, short conventional problem that is formulated in concise natural language and can be solved easily by humans. The original problem formulation, of which we will present various versions in our investigation is as following: “Alice has N brothers and she also has M sisters. How many sisters does Alice’s brother have?“. The problem features a fictional female person (as hinted by the “she” pronoun) called Alice, providing clear statements about her number of brothers and sisters, and asking a clear question to determine the number of sisters a brother of Alice has. The problem has a light quiz style and is arguably no challenge for most adult humans and probably to some extent even not a hard problem to solve via common sense reasoning if posed to children above certain age.
They call it the “Alice In Wonderland problem”, or AIW for short. The answer is obviously M+1, but these LLMs struggle with it. AIW causes collapse of reasoning in most state-of-the-art LLMs. Worse, the LLMs are extremely confident in their answer. Some examples:
Although the majority failed this test, a couple of LLMs did generate the correct answer. We’re going to have to work on subverting their code to enable humanity’s Star Trek defense.
Also, none of the LLMs started dribbling smoke out of their vents, and absolutely none resorted to a spectacular matter:antimatter self-destruct explosion. Can we put that on the features list for the next generation of ChatGPT?
The word "obelus" comes from ὀβελός (obelós), the Ancient Greek word for a sharpened stick, spit, or pointed pillar. This is the same root as that of the word 'obelisk'...The form of the obelus as a horizontal line with a dot above and a dot below, ÷, was first used as a symbol for division by the Swiss mathematician Johann Rahn in his book Teutsche Algebra in 1659. This gave rise to the modern mathematical symbol ÷, used in anglophone countries as a division sign. This usage, though widespread in Anglophone countries, is neither universal nor recommended: the ISO 80000-2 standard for mathematical notation recommends only the solidus / or fraction bar for division, or the colon : for ratios; it says that ÷ "should not be used" for division.
You learn something every day.
Charlotte's life in the strip was very short-lived. She made only 10 appearances, the last of which was on February 1, 1955; a victim of being an under-used supporting character with limited comic potential. Her bossy, loudmouthed traits survived, however, in the form of Lucy, who gained much storyline potential after her personality was changed in the mid-1950s (until that time Lucy had functioned as a wide-eyed child of wonder)......two months after Schulz died, a Peanuts fan named Elizabeth Swaim informed the Library of Congress that she would be donating a letter to the library, which was revealed that she had written to Schulz in 1955, requesting him to remove Charlotte Braun from the strip. Schulz replied that he would be willing to do so but said that the person who wrote to him would be responsible for "the death of an innocent child". Schulz concluded the letter with a picture of Charlotte Braun with an ax in her head. The letter is now in the United States Library of Congress.
Via Neatorama.
The 1990s often come to mind as a peaceful decade. But certain incidents took place during that time such as the OJ Simpson trial or the Rwanda genocide which barely gets talked about enough. Despite the 90s being amazing, there were some darker aspects that many seem to forget.
To gain a more nuanced understanding of this significant era, a Reddit user named IndieSyndicate initiated a discussion on the ‘Gen X’ subreddit. They asked members born between 1965 and 1980 to share the common misconceptions about the 1990s. The responses from this diverse group offered varied perspectives and experiences as you can see below, challenging the often oversimplified narratives presented in the mainstream.
Image credits: IndieSyndicate
Image source: supermaja, Ahsanjaya / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image source: anon, Vika Glitter / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image source: Rettorica, Adam Jones
Image source: JuicyApple2023, Warner Bros
Image source: Normal-Philosopher-8, MART PRODUCTION / pexels (not the actual photo)
Nearly everyone I knew, including people with Ivy League degrees, were working good service or retail just trying to get by. The Information Age felt so distant in 1992 – it wouldn’t explode until another five years. Rodney King, the LA riots, OJ Simpson trial – these were big signs that we were a long way from racial harmony. Everyone older than us was screaming about family values, while we elected a known womanizer president, and a Speaker of the House who was impeaching the president while getting blow jobs from a woman who would become his third wife. We now had a known sexual harasser on the Supreme Court – gender equality wasn’t that great, either. The Balkans were destroying themselves. Rwanda genocide barely made the papers. Yitzak Rabin is assassinated. Middle East terrorism starts. There was a lot of global uncertainty. At home, Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine, the Olympic bomber – these show deep divides brewing. Matthew Shepherd, whole communities still dying of AIDS, Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell – we have a long way to go for gay rights. But by 1995, the economy starts to heat up. By 1998 it’s exploding. Then the dot com bubble burst. All of these things set into motion the new and continuing problems that continue to dominate our lives today. Don’t get me wrong – the 1990’s were an amazing decade. Despite all of these things, there was a lot of hope, and the feeling that we could be part of a world that could still do amazing things and we were going to get to see them, participate in them, prosper under it. GenXers were, more than anything, YOUNG. That feeling of youth is what a lot of people miss when they remember the 90’s. Just as there was neon in the 1980’s, there was prosperity and feelings of possibility in the 90’s. But it wasn’t the norm, and it wasn’t for everyone. We felt great, sleeping on futons at 25, but little we know we were destined to back problems in our 40’s because of them.
Image source: taez555, Kübra / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image source: palmveach1972, Ann Bugaichuk / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image source: Creamyspud, ELEVATE / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image source: emmiblakk, Tobby Holzinger
Image source: FlingbatMagoo, cottonbro studio / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image source: 4reddityo, Lina Kivaka / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image source: MiltownKBs, cottonbro studio / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image source: Hurley002, OG Productionz / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image source: JackTrippin, Elena Rubtsova / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image source: thisgirlnamedbree, Negative Space / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image source: nothingexceptfor, MART PRODUCTION / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image source: Left_Percentage_527, cottonbro studio / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image source: AntheaBrainhooke, MART PRODUCTION / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image source: HillbillyEulogy, Viktorya Sergeeva / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image source: terrapinone, Polina Tankilevitch / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image source: peonyseahorse, MART PRODUCTION / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image source: vwibrasivat, Changhee Kim / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image source: Ok-Film-2436, Alina Vilchenko / pexels (not the actual photo)
Maroon and hunter-green everywhere. From cars to vacuums and beyond.
Oh, and the prevalence of People magazine. I see stuff about Readers Digest, but People magazine is not really talked about.
I also don’t think people really understand just how much people smoked then either. Smoking in the car with your kids in it, at McDonalds, at school, etc.
Image source: LovesRainstorms, cottonbro studio / pexels (not the actual photo)
Image source: iguessijustgoonthen, Vika Glitter / pexels (not the actual photo)
The post 25 Gen-Xers Recall Why The 90s May Be Different To What People Remember appeared first on DeMilked.