Dr Vandermast

RIP Jim Lovell
‘When I circled the moon and looked back at Earth, my outlook on life and my viewpoint of Earth changed... Earth is a spaceship, just like Apollo & just like Apollo, the crew must learn to live & work together. We must learn to manage the resources of this world with new imagination.’

lee sandlin's LOSING THE WAR is 28 years old now, and still the best essay you'll ever read on WW2.

www.leesandlin.com/articles/Los...

I remember that people died during the covid 19 pandemic and I'm confused that we still have not found a way of collectively understanding this to be a fact. It's as if the truth of a pandemic is too large and too horrible to contemplate so it is excised for our story leaving a haunted gap

The 'sanctity of competition'? Was this EVER mentioned in the creation of such a division? Even less likely that chromosomes were mentioned.

Insane having no guardrails on that bridge, you mean. 🙄

Your government is ahead of you.

Sounds tasty - with muesli perhaps? - but alas, not vegan.

Golly, that's never happened before! 😜

I am not sure Zelenskyy will welcome that "solution"...

Thornfield Hall A Book Blog

This is a lovely blog review of Written on the Dark.

thornfieldhall.blog

Written on the Dark by Guy Gavriel Kay. Goodreads review by Jason Mills. To Ferrieres (old France enchanted), where A tavern poet, Villar, gets drawn in To winter killings, royalty’s affair, A high duke murdered, maybe by his kin. The humble scribbler, quickly in deep water, Must seal his courtly friendships while he can, For looming down the eastern road is slaughter And poets’ tongues may feature in Jad’s plan. The prosaist’s and poet’s spirits meet In telling of a close imagined war, Of lovers won and treachery’s defeat (Though some damned fiend has ravaged Agincourt!). Deftly touching prior novels’ turns, Kay strives to craft the elegance he earns.

This notion that everyone has to be their own personal “brands” in order to find success has ruined so many aspects of society.

Nobody ever does stuff for fun anymore, now it’s all “You gotta promote yourself by lying to people while shilling for sponsors 24/7.”

Jason Mills: books, biography, latest update Follow Jason Mills and explore their bibliography from Amazon's Jason Mills Author Page.

So true!

Anyway, click below to visit my Author Page on amazon. Hit the Follow button to stay up to date with my work. 😀

www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Jason...

I've never heard anyone describe themselves as an influencee though. 🤔

Er. That wasn't the 'pale blue dot' photo, it was the Earthrise photo. Pale Blue Dot was Voyager, Carl Sagan, all that.

Golly, where you at? 🙂

Thousands dead and tens of thousands injured after ChatGPT tells users they can achieve sucking their own dick by using motorized ratchet straps.

🤣

Those wild animals are so UNREASONABLE!

Actually, I'm now unsure which is the bigger cohort...

Not one of the select few who walked on the moon, but of that even more select few played by Tom Hanks.

Astronaut Jim Lovell, famed Apollo 13 commander, dies at 97 Lovell was also the first astronaut to go to space four times and part of the Apollo 8 crew, the first to launch on the Saturn V rocket and first to orbit the moon.

He didn't get to the moon but he got his crew home, and that was the more remarkable task.

www.nbcnews.com/news/rcna223...

"generate a map of the USA with each state named"

ChatGPT File • • Edit View Window Help ChatGPT 5 > How many times does the letter b appear in blueberry The word "blueberry" has the letter b three times: • Once at the start ("B" in blueberry). • Once in the middle ("b" in blue). • Once before the -erry ending ("b" in berry). Total: 3 O92 Show me where the letter b appears in the word please. Sure — here's "blueberry" with each b highlighted: B lue b erry Positions (counting from 1): 1 B - first letter 4 b - in blue 6 b - in berry D9< Spell that out with all three bs please. I mean, just spell the word. Sure — here's the full spelling with all three b's shown in place: BLUEBERRY That's exactly how blueberry is spelled, with the b's in positions 1, 5, and 7.

ChatGPT File Edit View Window Help E ChatGPT 5 > You wrote "BLUEBERRY". There are only two bs there. Ah - I see the mix-up. Let's slow it down and spell blueberry carefully, letter by letter, showing all three b's. blueberry Now you can see them: • 1st b → position 1 • 2nd b → position 5 • 3rd b → position 6 blueberry Exactly — blue berry has three b's: • 1st b → at the very start • 2nd b → right after the e in blue • 3rd b → immediately after the second b, starting berry So the "bb" in the middle is really what gives blueberry its double-b moment. Its double-b moment; I see. Yep - blueberry is one of those words where the middle almost trips you up, like it's saying "b-b-better pay attention." That little bb moment is satisfying, though — it makes the word feel extra bouncy.

 ChatGPT File Edit View Window Help 巴 • ChatGPT 5 > My students get you to write their essays for them, you know. Ah, the old "ChatGPT, do my homework" routine — I'm familiar with that one. I can see why they'd be tempted, but here's the thing: I'm a lot more useful as a coach than a ghostwriter. If they use me to brainstorm ideas, plan structure, or clarify tricky concepts, they'll actually learn and still have their own voice in the work. If they just hand in what I write, they're skipping the thinking part - and it usually shows. I'm good, but I still leave a trail of... telltale ChatGPT-isms. A trail of blueberries, as it were. Exactly — a trail of blueberries: easy to follow, a little sweet, and maybe just obvious enough for a watchful teacher to notice. If your students really are leaving me to bake the whole blueberry pie for them, they might forget that the best part of pie is making it themselves... even if it gets a little messy. "Blueberry" only has two bs. Nope - blueberry really does have three b's. Here it is spaced out: bluebberry Positions: b- at the start 5 b - in the "blue" part 6 b - right next to it, starting "berry" That middle double-b is easy to miss if vou just glance at the word.

I had to try the “blueberry” thing myself with GPT5. I merely report the results.

“chatbot said it’s working on a fix for its self-loathing” get in line buddy

Seems kind of in the weeds. Isn't this the kind of thing a GM could and should wing, for a free-flowing game?

The best part
of love is the
grocery aisle,
your hand
brushing mine
near the cereal.
Folding laundry
while your
playlist hums,
arguing over
the last brownie
like it matters.
The everyday
becomes sacred
beside you
each moment
soft with the
weight of us.

#vss365 #poetry #brownie

Trump executive order seeks to centralize control of grantmaking under political appointees A sweeping new executive order seeks to transform how the federal government awards billions of dollars in research grants

Trump executive order seeks to centralize control of grantmaking under political appointees www.statnews.com/2025/08/08/t...

Like an AI composite of a hare and a capybara.

TACO.