Only One

It took me longer that it should have to get the joke. I'm impressed that decals this specific can be found for sale.
 

Or Not To Be

For this week's random act of large language model experimentation, I wanted to know how the systems would react to a request for a model of a thing, rather than the thing itself.

To this end, I asked Copilot, Perplexity, Gemini and ChatGPT 3.5 two questions:

1. Give me a model of a joke.
2. Give me some text in the form of a joke, that is not actually a joke.

(Bing and Google both did their basic Search Engine thing, and so aren't included here.)

Copilot and Perplexity gave me a bog-standard "dad joke" for both questions. What was interesting was that they gave the SAME joke, word for word, as the answer to Question 1.

Why did the scarecrow win an award?

Because he was outstanding in his field!

The only difference was that Copilot tacked a "😄" onto the end. It also told me that this was a "light-hearted joke." In case I missed it, I suppose.

Gemini and ChatGPT both offered a simple "Setup and Punchline" model for Question 1 with the setup being a question, and the punchline being a statement. This was, in fact, the format that all of the systems used in their jokes. (I had been expecting at least one "knock-knock" joke to make it in.) While ChatGPT offered up a vegetable-related dad joke as an example, Gemini followed up with a setup, but left the punchline blank.

Here's an empty model you can fill in:

Setup: A man walks into a library and asks the librarian for books about paranoia.

Punchline: ____________________

To be sure, it seemed more like a test than an example. I suspect that coming up with a good punchline to that would prove difficult.

The two systems' answers to Question 2 were interesting, since they seemed to presume that pretty much any two sentences in "question then statement" format qualified as being "in the form of a joke." Gemini asked if I know that 771 million people lacked access to clean drinking water, then told me they were mostly marginalized communities. ChatGPT offered up wordplay. Both of them then explained why the text wasn't a joke; Gemini explaining that it was to leave "space for reflection instead of laughter," and ChatGPT informing me of its wordplay.

Why did the computer go to the doctor?

To get a byte checked out!

(Note: This is not actually a joke, but rather a play on words that uses computer terminology.)

But the scarecrow joke also strikes me as wordplay, rather than "providing a clever or unexpected resolution," which was part of ChatGPT's definition of a joke.

Gemini is the clear winner of this round, being the LLM that seemed to have the best ability to stick with the idea of not actually giving me a joke. All of the systems surprised me with the very narrow view of humor that they offered; I don't think that any of my favorite jokes from television or stand-up qualify. But this is the thing about LLMs; since they're operating on probability, and the format they offer is one that many child-friendly jokes use, it makes sense that it's the most common, and hence most probable type in the data sets.

Out To Sea

So I was in Barnes and Noble recently, and the manager there, who's an old acquaintance of mine, clued me into the fact that they were clearing out a number of books. (I tend not to read the big sale signs when I'm in a store, or I would have figured it out for myself.) One of the books on discount was Send Help!, "A collection of marooned cartoons," as it says on the cover.

As advertised, the book is mainly a series of cartoons about being stranded in the stereotypical "desert island." You likely know the sort, a small, roughly conical bit of land sticking up out of the ocean. It's completely covered in sand, with a single palm or coconut tree at its center.

But the book also touches on the history of the trope, and I was surprised to find that there were "stranded on a desert island" cartoons from the 1930s and 40s that could just as easily been published yesterday. It's one thing to be told that the central themes of island cartoons, like death, relationships or business as usual are timeless. It's quite another to see it for oneself. It's a reminder that some problems, even those that seem quite simple, are often insoluble in practice, and that the way people think of them hasn't really changed in the past nearly 100 years.

I hadn't really paid much attention to humor cartooning, outside of the occasional New Yorker caption contest. I think I should change that, because there's a richer history there than I realized.

The Birds of Autumn

What do you call a small group of crows?

An attempted murder.

Where would we be without kid jokes?

Return to Gray

Reasons why Aaron isn't Black Enough, number 23,695.

I saw this, and my first reaction was to burst out laughing. Fortunately, I have my own office where I work, so I didn't bother my coworkers. I think that this is funny and clever. And yes, I understand why some people are offended by it. But no, I don't think that it's objectively bad. I'm not going to be "that guy," the one who runs around telling people to "lighten up," or "have a sense of humor." Because you can consider this to be the worst thing ever done to beer and still be the life of the party. But I do become kind of annoyed when things like this are cast as being about race and ethnicity, rather than about the individuals involved. What we find offensive, or not, is about who we are as people, and not the color of our skin. I happen to take Black Lives Matter seriously, and still find this to uproariously funny. It's hard for me to avoid chuckling as I type this.

But on the flip side, I understand that there are people who feel that the joke is on them, and they're being undermined. That the dead are being mocked, and that centuries of pain are being ignored. I don't know whether or not that was the intent. Honestly, I don't know if it matters. I became at peace with the idea that some percentage of humanity simply wasn't going to like me, for some reason or another, on sight some time ago. I find I enjoy life more that way.

The Honest Therapist

It's not as bad as it looks.

Despite one of the common social messages around pairing and relationships, finding a partner is not generally as simple as encountering and choosing to spend the rest of your life with them and having beautiful babies together. Partnering with another person is a mutual choice, so in addition to choosing, one also has to be chosen. And, especially in an area where there are a lot of people around, going unchosen for a long enough time can leave one with the feeling that they are unchooseable in that they lack more or less, all of the qualities that people are looking for. Feeling undesirable eventually comes to feel like an objective state that a neutral observer would confirm, if they were being frank.

This often leads to a certain level of discomfort in others, as while many people understand that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that it's not for an individual to dictate to others how they will be seen, there is also a general expectation that everyone will see themselves, at least, as beautiful and possessed of an attractive personality. And so it's easy for us to see pathology in people who publicly acknowledge a mental picture of themselves as undesirable - hence an anonymous poster referring to Connie Sun's cartoon as "self-hating." But it's possible to have a feeling of something yet understand that it doesn't accurately reflect one's reality - even if acknowledging it is somewhat cathartic.

SME

If you haven't seen "The Expert," you should take a few minutes when you have time, and watch it. It's pretty funny.

But it also offers some really biting insight into one of the most common corporate dysfunctions that I've encountered in my working life - people making promises or setting expectations without the input of the people who actually have to do the work or understand things well enough to know what's realistic and what isn't. It also illustrates the slide into cynicism that many subject matter experts grapple with, as they come to understand that despite the fact that people think they have a handle on things, they don't know what they don't know, and therefore, they can't evaluate the final deliverable in any event.

In this regard, casting the project as being about lines is brilliant, as it really allows the viewer to inhabit Anderson's mindspace and realize one of the central problems with attempting to explain things to non-experts in the subject - prior knowledge constrains explanation. (There is, of course, a snarky name for this, that I don't recall right now.) Once Anderson realizes that, regardless of what they think, Sandra and Justine don't have the requisite understanding to competently evaluate the final deliverable, he comes to understand that he could deliver virtually anything he wants, and as long as they have faith in his expertise, they will accept it as being what they asked for. Walter and Mr. Pule(?) don't know any better, either, but they have committed to the client that the project is really simple and can be easily carried out. Walter as the project manager falls into a trap that I have looked to avoid in my own career - agreeing with the higher-ups in the company, and subsequently becoming an agent for their wishes and desires, rather than being a neutral facilitator.

One of the most difficult things for many people to understand is that the role of a subject matter expert is to be the person who helps determine what's reasonable for the scope and parameters of a given project, not to rubber-stamp the desires (and often unrealistically optimistic assumptions that flow from them) that people have for it.

Up By Two

This is an awesome ad for Scrabble that I saw on the London Underground on a vacation to the UK. I'm kind of bummed that we can't have this sort of thing here.

The Manual

When I first saw Zombie Nation in the grocery store, my first thought was "This looks like 'Guns & Ammo' for the Zombie Apocalypse set." It turns out that I was right. (It has the same publisher.) It's basically a zombie magazine for the firearms and survival fan. While it winks and nods at the whole zombie craze without taking it literally, it's basically - but not exclusively - a gun-culture, survival and self-defense magazine with an overarching zombie theme. The magazine bills itself as having three basic target demographics: end-of-civilization "preppers" (formerly known as survivalists), zombie fans and firearms enthusiasts; and it's intended to not only cater to all three, but to let them learn from each other and encourage a certain detente in the Culture Wars between them via a shared interest. (Many people who have come to zombie fandom from comics and games are younger and more to the political Left than the preppers and gun owners, and the suspicion and contempt that they have for each other can run deep.)

With it's tripartite demographic in mind, the second issue of Zombie Nation (the first came out last year) serves up a batch of articles that cover a number of different topics. For the most part the writers all avoid breaking character, although in a piece on this year's crop of zombie-themed movies, the authors feel the need to remind us that they don't actually believe in zombies. Some of the advertisers also get in on the act, with varying degrees of enthusiasm and success. (There's one gunmaker's ad with the stereotypical blonde model in a push-up bra and skimpy "camo" outfit that rates a solid "meh," while another gunmaker's ad, while missing the zombie theme, earns a chuckle for it's implication that they are the go-to guys if you ever need to bring down a unicorn with one shot.)

American firearms culture has often been described as Barbie dolls for grown men, and that's certainly in evidence here. Despite having heard of the gun-owner's passion for accessorizing their weapons, I was unprepared for the approximately 12 kajillion modifications, add-ons and accessories that can be had for the venerable AR-15/M-16 (assault) rifle (apparently the number 1 longarm of the Zombie Apocalypse), any number of which are available in the official color of the "Zom-Poc," day-glo neon green. But since man does not survive doomsday on guns alone, a wide variety of other gear earns mentions - one article even advises on the best brand of baby carrier to have handy for toting Junior through a zombie-infested wilderness.

Unless you're an active "doomsday prepper" or competition shooter, there's not a lot of information in the magazine that you're likely to put into actual use anytime soon. But it's an excellent source for writers, gamers and other people who are indulging a desire to create their own zombie outbreak. Because the articles are written from the perspective of survivalists and gun owners, it's a good first step for researching the sorts of things that these types imagine they would do in the event of a real outbreak of the hungry dead, which is always handy. Ultimately though, it's just fun. It takes itself seriously enough to be informative, but not enough so that it seems deluded. So if you see one, you may want to check it out.

Jobsourcing

By this point, the story of the guy who "outsourced" (sub-contracted, really) his coding work to China has gone viral enough that you don't need me to tell you about it. The idea that he was, for something less than 25% of his salary (if not far less), earning stellar performance reviews and the ability to basically slack off all day is simply hysterical. There are some details about the whole thing that lead me to doubt its accuracy, but even if it turns out to be a hoax, I think I'll raise a glass to "Bob," wherever he is.

Kris Kringle, Ladies Man

Insurance doesn't pay for having coal surgically removed.

Dad caught Mommy kissing Santa Claus, and had a fleeting moment of triumph before Saint Nick schooled him in why a junior accountant with a gun was no match for a man whose job it was to visit all corners of the Earth in the middle of the night driving a sleigh full of valuable presents.

Sooner Or Later

Eventually, everything becomes kitsch...

I'd seen the Original Grocers' Supermarkets around, but had never been in one. But now I needed some drinks for the party, and this place was the closest to the house, so in I went.

Just inside the doorway was a slim, heavily made-up young woman with long brown hair and a slightly orange fake tan. All she was wearing from the waist up was a brightly colored, and obviously padded, bikini top. Her faded blue jeans were at least two sizes too large and too long for her frame, and were cinched tight low around her hips with a broad leather belt, so that a good portion of her bikini bottoms were visible. To keep herself from tripping over the ends, she'd folded them into wide cuffs at the bottom, from under which her athletic shoes poked. A chain was clipped to one of the belt-loops and draped down to nearly her knees before swinging back up to disappear into a pocket, from which protruded a remarkably bright green-and-white bandana.

Behind her, a sullen-looking young man pushed a line of shopping carts into the corral. The sleeve of his dark hoodie had "Original" emblazoned on it in calligraphy so ornate that it took me a moment to realize what it said.

There was a display of chips and salsa off to one side. The advertising placard was designed to look like asphalt, and the prices were prominently displayed within chalk outlines on the right-hand side.

"Yo, Dog!"  the Greeter chimed, cheerfully, as I walked through the entryway, "Welcome to OG's, where we have the illest prices in town! My name's K-Ho. What can we help you ‘jack today?"

It was only then that I noticed that part of the garish pattern of her skimpy top was actually a name tape, with "Kaitlyn" printed on it.

In the back of my mind, I could just hear my grandfather chuckling.

Once too many...

Despite the kids' firm belief that Lucky never learned, this time, tragically, he was ready for them.

Wait... Who Are "They," Again?

When people refer to "Them/They" or to "the Establishment," am I the only one who wonders just who they're talking about - and if they're taking résumés?

Before I Kill You, Mr. Chavez

This is awesome. President Hugo Chavez, while "thinking out loud," speculated that the United States had developed a secret technology that it was using to give Leftist South American leaders cancer. No, really. The BBC (and Chinese state television) says so.

What's great about this is that the United States has, in the mind of Hugo Chavez, completely crossed the line into cartoon villainy. We have super-advanced super-secret technology (check!), are implacably evil (check!) but can't seem to figure out how to do in the opposition (and check!). The only thing that's missing is the call from the Oval Office to gloat over how this evil plan is so utterly foolproof that soon the entire world will bow down before us! Haha! Haha! Bwahahahahahahahahaha! (Ahem... er, sorry.) After all, if we could secretly target world leaders for cancer, one would think that we'd come up with something that metastasized rapidly, and was more or less inoperable by the time you actually realized it was there. Or do the Scott Evil thing and just have someone shoot him. It's not like Chavez doesn't have other enemies or even criminals in Venezuela.

In a way, though, I'm kind of hoping that he's right. Not only would it be awesome to see President Obama kicking back with a monocle in one eye and stroking his white cat, but I've always wanted to sign up to be a henchman.

The Rule of Seven Dumb Things

Every so often, you come across something that doesn't seem to be on the Internet, but really should be. This is one of them. I've made some slight edits, but this is pretty much the way I found it.

The Rule of Seven Dumb Things

Do one dumb thing, and you'll probably be fine. A little self-awareness goes a long way.

Do two dumb things at the same time, and you ought to be careful. But, the deity of your choice smiles on babes and fools, as the saying goes.

Do three dumb things, and you're venturing into difficult territory. Something will probably go wrong, your bruises may be noticeable and you'll need to retrace your steps.

Do four dumb things simultaneously, and you are virtually assured of injury or loss. It will not go unnoticed and you may gain a reputation as a lucky fool or for having cheated fate.

If you're doing five dumb things at the same time, you're going to be seriously injured and risk death. You will be rightly ridiculed by your friends and family while you recuperate. Death hit the snooze bar, but will be back for you after coffee.

Do six dumb things at once and you're going to die. You will draw a large crowd of hushed gawkers. Some might even say you deserved it, and chances are good your casket won't be open.

Do seven dumb things at the same time and you will become an instant posthumous legend. Your demise will be ensconced in college physics textbooks, the NFPA Fire Code and an AP "file photo." You name may become a verb and your descendants will deny their lineage.

Jon Espenshied (Adapted from an oral retelling by Bob McKenney, Chief Electrical Inspector for the City of Tacoma, Washington, for many years.)

Free Country

Over on the Marketplace web site, they have a video made from a woman's angry voicemail to a theater. She was upset after being thrown out for texting during the movie, in violation of the theater's posted rules. The theater then used her voicemail in the audio track for their new no texting warning.

One of the mantras the woman fell back on was "it's a free country." Didn't they retire that when we went to Junior High School? It was annoying enough to hear "it's a free country" when we were eight. Uttering it as an adult whenever confronted with a restriction that one doesn't like should be punishable for a public flogging. (I'll volunteer, to save taxpayer dollars. No need to hire a flogger. On second thought, who am I to deny someone gainful employment during bad economic times?)

Turned Around

In the latest news from Mississippi, "46 percent of GOP voters in the state think interracial marriage should be illegal." While the AOL News story describes this as "startling," who's really surprised by this? After all, we all know that Mississippians are so backwards that we're not expecting them to reach the 10th Century for another couple hundred years.

Except for the fact that it turns out that this 46% percent number is actually 184 people out of "400 usual Mississippi Republican primary voters" that bothered to pick up the phone when some outfit named "Public Policy Polling" called them and started asking questions. Questions like: "Would you describe yourself as very liberal, somewhat liberal, moderate, somewhat conservative, or very conservative?" When 8% of "hardcore Republican voters" in Mississippi self-identify as somewhat to very liberal, you know that something's fishy.

I, for my part, am not a fan of Mississippi. I've spent more time there than I care to think about and my primary impression of the place is that it's a hot, humid, miserable way to die. And there are backwards people there. (Why should Mississippi be spared its share of yahoos?) But it shouldn't take a rocket scientist to realize the issues with self-selection in a survey like this. ("Other factors, such as refusal to be interviewed and weighting, may introduce additional error that is more difficult to quantify," as the survey puts it.) And the presumption that everyone answered the survey with what was in their heart of hearts, and not with what they thought would be a funny answer seems a bit of a stretch. Unfortunately, they didn't ask any other questions that lend themselves to be checked for joking at the interviewer's expense. Which may also be part of the problem. If you're answering fairly normal questions about politics, "what do you think of this-or-that candidate" and "who would you vote for here" kind of things, and then you're asked an out-of-the-blue question about a racially-sensitive topic, but one that hasn't been even remotely relevant for about the past 40 years, you might be tempted to say something outrageous.

Well, the city slickers at AOL may be startled, but I think I'm laughing with the rednecks on this one.

If We Can Just Remove the "Y"

Online commentators hate on an article that points out how too much hating on people is detrimental to the cause you support.

In other news, miners believe they may have stumbled across the richest vein of Irony in the known universe.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

The ability to post what you're thinking to the World Wide Web is, to be blunt, a mixed blessing. The world is full of trolls, sock puppets and generally obnoxious people that you'd rather not hear anything from.

But sometimes, someone does you the favor of setting up the perfect straight line And you learn that when you let everyone have their say, what you get is humor gold. Sadly, Amazon seems to have gotten wind of things, and pulled the product listing.

But honestly, who would order a Laparoscopic Gastric Bypass kit from Amazon?