• 0 Posts
  • 15 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: January 14th, 2024

help-circle

  • It’s my understanding that the executive does not have the authority to unilaterally change official geographic names. As of my writing this, the name “change” has NOT been adopted by the United States government. Congress granted that authority to the US Board of Geographic Names in 1890. Unless accepted by the US BoGN, it changes nothing. I suppose Congress could rename it if they passed a bill that the president signed into law overriding that authority for that specific case, but until they did so, it’s not official.

    Here is the link to the US Geographic Names Information system page showing the current official name of the Gulf of Mexico: https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/search/names/558730. Note the list of accepted variant names, which still doesn’t include “Gulf of America”.

    Google are saying here that they will only change it on maps if it’s made official by the US Government, which has not happened yet. That’s why they haven’t made any change yet, and won’t unless Trump gets the US BoGN to do his bidding.




  • The solution to this is simple. She just needs to ask him to play a porn character of a cop. Then she’d get the performance she was hoping for. Just be careful to be specific so he doesn’t end up play a porn actor playing a cop, because then he’d be asking an imaginary director about his blocking, accidentally forgetting his lines, and requesting to cut and start the shot over.


  • I just checked there, and they have not renamed it, nor have they listed the new name as a recognized alternate name.

    Whether of not an executive order can override the government agency specifically granted that authority by congress is of no concern to them. By law, the Board of Geographic Names is the final authority on geographic names. If they don’t go along with this change, then the Trump admin would have to file an inter-government lawsuit about it.


  • My brother ate an 8 years expired Twinky we found when we were in boy scouts. We were cleaning out the troop’s chuck wagon (food and cooking trailer). Something got lost at the back of a deeper storage compartment, and being the little skinny kid, I volunteered to climb in to find it. I noticed the Twinky slipped into a crack and read the date with amazement. The thing was over half as old as I was, and must have been sitting in that trailer, outdoors, for at least most of that time! After pardeing it around demanding everyone “behold the ancient Twinky” someone dared me to eat it. I never liked Twinkies, but as I’d already confirmed it was still sealed, and my brother was hungry, he didn’t hesitate to claim that dare. We all watched in suspense for his reaction, and were disappointed when he just shrugged and said that it tasted a little dry, but otherwise no different than normal.


  • have a sniff

    I just always do that instead of looking at dates on food. If it looks off, smells off, or tastes off I trash it (always checking in that order, of course). Seems fine, I eat it. Never had a problem doing that.

    Well, never a food bourn illness problem. I had a big argument with a housemate about expired food. Shortly after she moved in, she promptly trashed any food that was any amount past expiration, and proudly informed me that she had cleaned out the fridge, saving me from eating pickles that were a whole 3 months past safe to eat. To be fair to her, half the things she trashed actually were bad, but the pickle jar went right back in the fridge. If you don’t want me eating pickles that have been in the trash, Amanda, then don’t throw out my perfectly good pickles! Good call on the bottle of ranch dressing though, I forgot that was in there and it looks nasty.








  • I can see the argument that it has a sort of world model, but one that is purely word relationships is a very shallow sort of model. When I am asked what happens when a glass is dropped onto concrete, I don’t just think about what I’ve heard about those words and come up with a correlation, I can also think about my experiences with those materials and with falling things and reach a conclusion about how they will interact. That’s the kind of world model it’s missing. Material properties and interactions are well enough written about that it ~~simulates ~~ emulates doing this, but if you add a few details it can really throw it off. I asked Bing Copilot “What happens if you drop a glass of water on concrete?” and it went into excruciating detail about how the water will splash, mentions how it can absorb into it or affect uncured concrete, and now completely fails to notice that the glass itself will strike the concrete, instead describing the chemistry of how using “glass (such as from the glass of water)” as aggregate could affect the curing process. Having a purely statistical/linguistic world model leaves some pretty big holes in its “reasoning” process.