Outside the Beltway

TGI Tabs!

Steven L. Taylor
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5 responses to “TGI Tabs!”

  1. steve222 Avatar
    steve222

    I know James talks with his students. When I served, long ago, I think the general consensus among people was that the military should stay out of domestic issues. Even the conservative guys agreed though there were a few ultra-conservatives who disagreed a bit. Bear in mind the the large percentage of military identified as conservative. Now it’s pretty clear from my reading that a sizable number of military, have bought into Trump and actively support him. I have to wonder if they have permanently rejected that separation. I also have to wonder if it will be just a selective belief, that it’s ok to intervene just Trump or for any conservative cause.

    Steve

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  2. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    Speaking of ChatGPT, the latest version of the bot is out (drumroll) ChatGpt 5

    I caught a video on it yesterday. the salient features are: 1) it’s faster, 2) it picks which kind of GPT best suits your query, 3) it’s even better at coding.

    No word on how much more it increases greenhouse gas emissions.

    I also ran across multiple posts on Bluesky showing the bot insisted the word “blueberry” has three Bs.

    I tried it a bit. I asked it for a timeline of the Martian Revolution.

    The immediate reply was ok: which Martian Revolution? it mentioned several books I haven’t read. I asked it for Mike Duncan’s.

    It pretty much ripped off the podcast’s synopsis, and mostly the titles of various eps in the order they were released. Some eps are named after salient events in the story (ie The Day of the Batteries, The Annulment of Contracts, The Three Days of Red, etc.)

    Still not impressed.

  3. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @Kathy:
    That would surely be the Mars novels of Kim Robinson?

  4. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    @JohnSF:

    I did not read them.

    I’m sure I began the first book at some point, but somehow lost access to it and didn’t bother to get it again. I remember vaguely a bit about a group of oeple eating dirt.

    Duncan did a fictional Martian Revolution to revive his Revolutions Podcast. It’s well worth the time.

  5. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @Kathy:
    They are worth reading, imho.
    Though one of the main protagonists is an utter arsehole who has a rather heroic figure killed for “political” reasons that are obviously just a figleaf for personal resentment.

    It’s perhaps the best novelistic version of a “semi realistic” Mars settlement scenario.
    Though, if you actually think about it, demands a level of massive economic effort and capacity way beyond anything likely for centuries.
    And therefore rather unlikely

    My other favourite “Mars Revolution” novel is Red Dust by Paul McAuley, where the terraforming project of millenia in the future is failing, and Earth has been subsumed by AI “monads”.
    Oops.

    Or then again, there’s always “Out of the Silent Planet”: C.S. Lewis’s smack back at Olaf Stapledon.

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