Bob Flynn

Precisely. Here, take this. Do it.

Just don’t, whatever you do, use it to file your taxes. To assess the technology’s ability to file a federal income tax return, The New York Times tested four A.I. chatbots — Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude and xAI’s Grok — to see how well they fared with eight fictional tax situations written as part of training materials by TaxSlayer, a tax-filing service. They struggled, hard, miscalculating the refund or amount owed to the Internal Revenue Service by an average of more than $2,000. Even when provided with all the necessary materials, including all the forms they needed to fill out, the chatbots whiffed on some calculations.

NYTimes headline: A Word to the Wise: Don't Trust A.l. to File Your Taxes

Taxes aren't all that hard to do. Why would you have it do anything of *any* importance for you?

I’ve been remembering how big an event Jurassic Park was—the technology behind it. Sure it put some practical effects people out of work, but it was culturally accepted as a technological wow moment for movies, on a scale that I haven’t experienced since. A huge leap.

Universal appeal, etc.

Literally word for word what happens in my living room:

“Researchers set out piles of pebbles in the gardens, with a few small crystals incorporated into each. The chimpanzees immediately sorted the crystals out of the piles.”

Chimpanzees Are Really Into Crystals

This supports why my son and millions of kids hoard colorful transparent LEGO pieces. Calling them ‘gems’, convinced they are ‘rare’.

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/s...

Psychic duck

Fish family tree

Night at the Pocket Monster museum /

Just your regularly scheduled share of this masterpiece by @tomgauld.bsky.social

Psychic duck

Fish family tree

Night at the Pocket Monster museum /

I have a Movink and picked up an alternative stylus or two that work with it. The pen that comes with it is indeed not great.

But the Movink is excellent!

The new Gorillaz video is truly a gift. I've watched it a few times now and the thought I keep having is, "thank you, truly, thank you for this."

Wow, Snoopy ears right there. Really fun naming.

A chart that shows the number of Google searches for each Pokémon. The text says: In honor of Pokémon Day, ACE.com, the free-to-play social gaming website, has analyzed Pokémon-related Google search data across the United States over the last 36 months to determine fans' favorite characters. Rank Name Generation Monthly searches 1 Pikachu Generation 1 685,100 2 Flamigo Generation 9 374,600 3 Charizard Generation 1 310,900 4 Charmeleon Generation 1 250,400 5 Squirtle Generation 1 215,800 6 Eevee Generation 1 214,500 7 Mewtwo Generation 1 209,100 8 Snorlax Generation 1 207,600 9 Gengar Generation 1 192,100 10 Ditto Generation 1 175,500 11 Bulbasaur Generation 1 171,600 12 Charmander Generation 1 169,400 13 Grafaiai Generation 9 166,900 14 Gardevoir Generation 3 149,800 15 Lopunny Generation 4 144,900

“Hey boss, are you sure Flamigo is more popular than Charizard, and people aren’t just misspelling ‘Flamingo’ on Google?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course Flamigo is more popular than Charizard, Mewtwo, Eevee, and Snorlax. Send the email.”

I really need to stop reading and watching what the news sites put out on this topic.

I don’t buy into any of this at all, but I struggle listening to Anthropic dude talking about significant growth in national GDP as a means for funding unemployment and retraining programs … like, are the handful of winners gonna share their wealth with the government to enact policy?

A lot of the best character sheets (and a lot of the best character directors) spend just as much time on the X's of what to avoid. Often comes from giving repeated notes to artists when they draw things a little off.

Best example in the set is this box here. All the ways *not to draw the mouth.

That's an honest question. The "work" here is more about explaining how *not to draw the characters. Avoiding conventions from other modes of cartooning. More a study in the characters than a new design.

Wow I love the mouth chart do’s and don’ts in particular.

We’ve been digging tunnels, sledding. Trying to make the biggest piles I can in my small yard. Worth every bit of shoveling.

Oh, you’re way ahead of everyone else? Do we have a power-up for you! It’s a vacuum that sucks up all the power-ups on the track (all yours!) and gives everyone else a Flintstone car: barefoot locomotion.

Ever notice how the world operates on reverse Mario Kart item-weighting logic?

Nice work! Hats off the art/design team too. Looks great.

This is a tough one. I’m tempted to say it’s uniquely Smurfs.

Plenty of kids books and shows use professions, costumes, and props to help show an interest or what they do.

But nothing comes to mind where they are nearly identical otherwise.

The Care Bears had their belly symbols, performing a similar purpose. But they also got a color change.

When iconic characters avoid the 'traded-by-lawyers puppet-corpse fate' it seems largely because their creators have done all they can to protect them.

'Calvin and Hobbes' comes to mind. What are some others?

Characters who have cultural longevity without being exhumed and redone each generation.

I sometimes worry that iconic cartoon characters are doomed to a zombie-like existence. Living well beyond a reasonable lifespan.

A benefit of creating characters that are more 'of a moment' is that they can rest when that moment is over.

Trump Administration Announces That We Don’t Know Where the Sun Goes at Night After deciding carbon dioxide does no harm, it was the logical next move.

maybe a beetle carries it off

First, I probably know tens of dozens of progressives who are happily using Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini.

But as for fascinating tech I’m excited about:

mRNA vaccines
Gene therapy
Particle colliders
Solar energy capture
Space telescopes
Planetary rovers

Tech that expands knowledge and saves lives.

I've only seen the movie (The Castle of Cagliostro), the series is generally kid-friendly?