stu

maybe in the new year i'll run a deathmatch island session or short campaign since i backed it. what i will not do is try to start an open-ended campaign, i do not have the time to sustain it and letting them peter out is such a bummer

i’ve always thought of stuff like the stock market as respectable forms of gambling but learning more about more recent business moguls is making me start to realize that a lot of the ppl responsible for the current state of capitalism have been or are basically just gambling addicts. once you start looking at it like that a LOT falls into place

free trials of many computing services died because of crypto miners abusing them en masse, i wonder if there will be a similar market for abuse with chatgpt wrappers. leaning toward probably not since i doubt they're paying for gpt4 but who knows

Every time I see a “search engines suck now” complaint I just want to remind everyone that you can call your local public library and ask any question you’d google the answer to and a reference librarian will find you a good answer.

When I was in library school they were so afraid of search engines killing reference librarianship and now that’s clearly not the case so go utilize your local library for getting your ready reference answers you used to google.

I’m also frustrated that the perception of google as killing librarianship means a lot of library systems cut the reference book budget and library schools taught significantly less about ready reference skills and utilizing reference books than they used to

But every librarian still is trained and equipped to go find your answer in a specialized database or to walk over to a reference book like World Book or Mayo Clinic Encyclopaedia of Medical Disorders and find you a brief but accurate answer to your questions.

Librarians also generally just have a lot of research skills you might not have that helps us comb through the SEO bullshit more efficiently if the question is a bit more sideways and unusual.

So if you’re like damn it’s impossible to get answers to questions anymore go utilize your public library. We already have had tax funded free information and answers service for a century and it’s called the library and you can call the library if you don’t wanna physically go to there or you can also use E-Reference through the website of most libraries and get a detailed answer with multiple further reading sources emailed to you within a few days.

i've mentioned this before but for practical home questions in the US your local public university probably has an extremely local extension office you can call or email. their whole job is to give science-based advice about farm/home/garden type stuff.

my local extension's website is the first place i go to answer questions like "what's this weird bug in my house, do i need to do anything about it" (strawberry root weevil, no) or "when should i plant my strawberries" (april or may)

here's a reference for pretty much all of them in the country https://www.uaex.uada.edu/about-extension/united-states-extension-offices.aspx