I’m now a Post-Captain in the Royal Navy hunting down an American frigate preying on our whalers in the South Pacific. Oh, the joy of the sea - nothing finer than a slanting deck and hum of the backstays! Now, where is that mumping villain Killick with my toasted cheese?
Also, I should have said, I appreciate you replying to me when I know you were trying to lay low.
Tree is decorated, presents are scattered under and between its boughs, coffee cake is out of the oven, and Hans Gruber has fallen from Nakatomi Plaza.
Everyone cheer for Christmas is here!
Happy Winter Solstice Holiday to all who celebrate, in any way you celebrate!
True enough. There’s a ton of protein structure prediction and such using AI tools going on in scientific research, and it’s groundbreaking. The difference being that it’s bespoke AI, not general GenAI.
I say all this not to pile on an author I respect greatly who has been very kind and helpful to me, but to make it clear - there’s a difference between “the plagiarism machine helped me draft this hard thing” and “the plagiarism machine lied to my face”
In short, it B.S.s you with all the confidence, lack of remorse, and lack of awareness of a mediocre white man. If you are relying on it to look up or find information for you, you WILL be lied to.
Even if all you’re using it for is to demystify jargon, you CANNOT trust it.
I see it w my students, and it’s cropping up in submitted scientific reports now too. GenAI spits out things it thinks science looks like, but if fabricated it out of (stolen) thin air. Citations that don’t exist, facts that don’t exist, the existence of enzymes or organisms that don’t exist.
Taking iff my ‘author’ hat and putting on my ‘scientist’ and ‘professor’ hats here.
Word of warning - NEVER trust GenAI or llms for science-based information. It’s one thing to synthesize stolen written works to spit out a new written work that ‘looks right,’ but doing that w/ science doesn’t work!
A middle-aged bearded man dressed as a teenaged girl mermaid for halloween.
In keeping with annual tradition, today I brought in a guest lecturer for my Genetics class. My students were very excited to welcome Princess Ariel to come talk about RNA modification and intron splicing today.
I'm just the guy to make a pithy joke about Dunning-Kruger and Imposter Syndrome being 2 sides of the same coin, but then who am I to think I'm qualified to be that funny?
I have a vewy gweat fwiend in Wome named Pontius Piwate!
Yet another photo of a finished fruit salad.
You will dread the onset of Fall, and lament the long, fruitless Winters of discontent. Days will stretch into endless unbroken dreams of that taste of life, of God, on your tongue. You will crave baptism in the thin purplish-brown holy water of mingled fruit juices. Enjoy!
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Now you've been taught, there is no longer any excuse. Once you've tried this, you will see 'fruit cocktail' and premade fruit salads as the coarse, repugnant things they are. You'll never go back, cursed to spend weary months waiting for early summer when things ripen.
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Serve as is. Do not adulterate. If you twist my arm, I'll let you sprinkle cinnamon on top, and whipped cream (ideally homemade) works well. But this beast needs no added sugar, and don't you dare add a fake sugar syrup to it!
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Now, throw away your pits, peels, and rinds. Clean up your work area, and prepare yourself. This is the closest I've ever come to a religious experience, and it will change your world. Sex will lose meaning & colors will sprout scents.
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Photo of a finished fruit salad
But trust me, it’s worth it. A fruit salad fresh off the cutting board is delicious, but immature. Let it sit, let it chill.
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Congratulations, your fruit salad is almost complete. Now, cover the bowl w/ some clear wrap, and chill it for at least 1 hr before serving. Lets the pieces macerate and the juices mingle. You'll thank me. This will be the longest hour of your life.
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Fold in the squishies. Get them somewhat homogenously mixed, and you are done!
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A photo of 2 kiwis, laid out in varying stages of culinary dismemberment.
Kiwis – Peel them, trim off the ends, and then slice 'em once from pole to pole, along their long axis. Lay 'em out in parallel, then cut across each half like latitude lines. Then a single perpendicular cut from north to south. Lay them with the bananas.
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An uninspired photo of a banana, stripped of its peel, lying naked on a glistening cutting board. The banana is butchered, sliced into lifeless disks of a thick tropical paste. The cutting board bears the stains of the lifeblood of the fruits that have fallen to the blade before, previous victims of the cruel chef bent on gastronomic frugicide.
The Squishies
At this point, toss your salad well, my pretties. From here on out, it's all gentle caresses, no rough stuff. Peel your bananas and kiwis. Slice the bananas into rings, leave them on the cutting board.
56/
Photo of a ring of watermelon, diced in a Euclidean grid, into cuboid vessels of flavored water embedded in a dissolvable red cellulose matrix, against every law and convention of all that is right and holy in the universe.
Slice the ring in half, height-wise, so you have 2 thinner rings on top of each other. Not it's a simple few grid cuts, and you've got small watermelon cubes, to mingle w your honeydew balls. Yeah, you heard me. You can cut these as big as the grapes if you choose. Toss it in the bowl.
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The white ones just float around your mouth with the consistency of a dead cricket, ruining your watermelon tasting experience. Dig ‘em out.
54/
I hate “seedless” watermelons. Sure, the big black seeds are gone, but the little white seeds? They’re still there, there’s more of them, and they’ve always been texturally worse than the blacks ones anyway. At least those you could easily spit out.
53/
Take your watermelon, and cut out a ring 1 1/2" thick & lay it on your cutting board. Slice away the rind, trim off any white. Dig out any obvious seeds. Fun fact, watermelon rind combats ED. Leave too much behind, and I take no responsibility for your actions.
52/
Photo of a ball of cantaloupe, with a honeydew in the background. No idea why I didn't include a ball of honeydew in the photo.
Cut a 3rd out of your honeydew, and cut your cantaloupe in half. Dig out the seeds w/ a spoon. Grab your melon baller, and ball those fuckers right into the bowl. Down to the rind. No baller? Warm up that hand, baby, bec you're in dicing town again! Remove the rind 1st tho.
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He dislikes melon in fruit salad because they only ever taste like pineapple or mandarin oranges. That's NOT the melon's fault! It's the goddamned pineapple. Blame where blame is due, people!
50/
Melons
My buddy Casey saw one of my fruit salads once, and tried to tell me I did it wrong because I added melons. Case, I love you, but you're as wrong as an ass on a jellyfish. Can anyone spot his mistake? He failed to consider the rules of fruit salads. NO CITRUS, AND NO FUCKING PINEAPPLE.
49/
Hang in there, you're doing great, and we're in the home stretch. All that's left are the melons, and the squishies. The fine dicing is all done, and there's just some minor chopping left. Massage your hand&wrist, and let's finish this.
48/
It's a color explosion! The fruit salad is nearing sentience. This is a photo of a fruit salad that has reached a full stage 3 of 5.
Stand them on their head, and slice them along the long axis into a couple thin strips. Lay the strips out in 2 piles, middle of the fruit down. Dice em. I go 1/4" x 1/2". Add them to the salad and stir.
47/
Wait 3 more hours, and it’s all bruise with white-green fuzz. I’ve been hurt by strawberries before, and I can’t trust them. But if you can find firm unbruised not moldy strawberries anywhere, get them ready.
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