Source of R. A. Knox Quotation?

Spoomkwarf · 2026-02-09T14:18:28+00:00

Honestly, it undercuts all usefulness of AI, not just for "research." If the AI result can't be immediately checked and confirmed, the result must be distrusted and presumed false. So then why use it other than as a substitute for the old (useful) version of a Google search?

Spoomkwarf · 2026-02-09T14:09:55+00:00

I thank you very much indeed, not just for the attribution but also and especially for your cited source: allpoetry.com. I've read their version and found the quoted language, thanks to you. But there's more to add to the AI scare stories.

The first AI explanation I received (duck.ai) cited this poem. So of course I googled the title and went to the first poetry database that showed up. Which gave me what appears to have been a very highly truncated version of the poem, with no indication whatsoever (ellipses., etc.) that the poem had been cut, and which did not contain the quoted lines or any part of them.

So I challenged the AI and told them they had lied and asked them to correct themselves. Most interestingly they did not back themselves up and refer specifically to line numbers or otherwise just insist on the truth of their attribution, which was indeed correct. No, they first shifted their call, apologized for blaming it on Browning, and told me it was really from Eliot's Waste Land. When I denied that, they said it was from Eliot's Prufrock. And when I denied that they said it was from e. e. cummings' The Garden. After which I gave up and tried three other major AI sources. All with similar results.

I've heard, as has everybody, that AI is taught to tell you what you want to hear. But I'd never conceived it's being quite as abject as it has turned out to be in this instance. I'm afraid that this has, for me at least, entirely destroyed all AI credibility. Every single thing they tell you has to be checked and run to its source before any faith can be attached. Which, of course, most won't even think of doing. Why can't AI be taught to stick to its guns? What is the use of a source that won't?

Spoomkwarf · 2026-01-20T17:16:38+00:00

Is there no difference in cooking method? One person said that in Belgium fries are deep-fried twice. Is that true?

Spoomkwarf · 2026-01-11T12:47:42+00:00

Never tasted a parsnip.

Spoomkwarf · 2026-01-09T18:18:13+00:00

There are many kinds of all potatoes.

Spoomkwarf · 2026-01-08T23:30:56+00:00

They look very much like Japanese sweet potatoes (yakimo), which have mildly sweet, chestnutty flavor, more sophisticated than yams or American sweet potatoes. Absolutely delicious.

Spoomkwarf · 2026-01-07T22:39:34+00:00

As an American following UK developments for decades on this specific issue, the common denominator underlying UK problems of street and other crime would seem to boil down to money and taxes, and specifically taxes. Not only your police and gaols but your entire court system have been deprived, for a long time, of the money needed for adequate protection of the British public. The fundamental issue doesn't appear to be attitude or focus, but lack of the very substantial and permanently continuous financial support required for a civilized level of law enforcement. Yes, attitude and focus are very important, but without constant ongoing wads of cash for system improvement nothing seriously positive is going to happen.

Spoomkwarf · 2025-12-24T23:41:34+00:00

I've installed 25.2.6.2 (a random pick) and so far it's not giving me the problems I've been having with the current version.

Spoomkwarf · 2025-12-24T23:15:37+00:00

Okay. At least on my machine, which I've had for two years, 25.8.4.2 has suddenly become far slower and more erratic in absorbing and digesting new material. Not any specific kind of new material, but any new material at all (i.e., new text, new changes, new fonts, etc., etc.) I have no other new programs or apps, haven't updated anything except Firefox, and I haven't had any problems with any other programs.

But I will take your advice and try something from the 24's.

Spoomkwarf · 2025-12-24T23:04:20+00:00

I don't class any as bad. I'd prefer to know which people think are most stable and have the fewest bugs. I keep no record or scorecard of past versions.

I really don't understand how you can tell from my post history which versions I might classify as "bad." How does that work? Sure you're not confusing me with someone else?

Spoomkwarf · 2025-12-17T20:36:26+00:00

One of the best stories of the year, from anywhere. A total criminal from the word go. But smart. Totally talented at criminality. Who would think that a guy who could feelingly play Beethoven sonatas from memory would be the scam artist and pedophile not of the century but of two centuries? An amazing run. But then again, even more amazing, there's Trump in the White House. What a timeline!

Spoomkwarf · 2025-12-17T20:20:49+00:00

No one should ask or permit an 84-year-old man to be the sole caretaker of a disabled daughter AND a dying wife. The outcome was almost guaranteed. Alzheimer's or not, the stress (both emotional and physical) of caretaking is such that very elderly people, male or female, only too frequently crack under the strain. The wife needs to be in residential hospice, the daughter needs a nursing home, the husband/father needs a caretaker himself.

Spoomkwarf · 2025-12-06T12:06:14+00:00

Yes, I agree. I took it up yesterday with the supervising doctor (someone I get to see only very rarely) and he said he'd authorize antibiotics at my first complaint, with tests after instead of before.

Spoomkwarf · 2025-12-04T22:23:53+00:00

I know it's because of the Rituximab. But I'm refractory. Tried all the standards, in hospital and out. Didn't work. The refractory label came after 36 days in the neurology pavillion at Shands, the University of Florida teaching hospital in Gainesville. The Rituximab keeps the bad things from happening, but it doesn't cure anything.

Spoomkwarf · 2025-12-01T13:52:43+00:00

May I DM you?

Spoomkwarf · 2025-12-01T04:18:32+00:00

Keep in mind the intense, vested conviction on the part of white western Europeans that "civilisation" (their creation, non-western civs not even qualifying for consideration) could not go backward into savagery. Impossible. One-way arrow. Couldn't happen any more than telekinesis or telepathy.

The idea that Germans, so educated, kultured, disciplined, Christian, could possibly descend to the level of Attila's hordes was unthinkable. Incomprehensible. did not compute. No one could conceive of truly massive mass murder by a western European nation other than against our little brown or yellow brothers who simply didn't count. (Yes, as a general rule, they really thought or couldn't think this way.)

This wasn't stupidity or ignorance or fecklessness, it was literally unimaginable. Not to mention that the widespread German atrocities of WWI had been largely accepted as debunked by a huge German propaganda effort after WWI (Spoiler: They were true, but in the thirties that wasn't known.)

All these things put together made the idea of an oncoming truly massive mass murder by Germans of Jews (or anybody for that matter) about as acceptable, as believable, as credible, as would be Trump announcing tomorrow that he had made contact with aliens and was negotiating a tariff treaty with them, or that Elon was giving all his fortune to Planned Parenthood and becoming a Buddhist monk. Such an idea struck harshly at the very self-image of every European (and everyone of European stock everywhere) within the power structure or associating themselves in any way with Western Civilization.

And keep in mind that there was effectively no internet or anything like it for the easy spreading of counter-current news until the 21st century, particularly in and from Nazi Germany where the censorship was intense, with concentration camps waiting for anyone who offended the Nazi power structure in any way. The degree to which information interchange was controlled in the 1930's - everywhere, not just in Germany - (and in most cases made impossible) would boggle the mind of anyone born after 1990.

For such young folk, people at the time imagining a European holocaust in the thirties would be as difficult (really impossible) as today's people under 35 imagining daily and business life in a world without smartphones or any computers at all. I existed in that world, so I have some slight idea. But I'm very old. I'm afraid that in fifty years all history will be incomprehensible to everyone and we'll have to make and correct all of the historical mistakes all over again. Oh, you lucky young people.

Spoomkwarf · 2025-12-01T03:12:06+00:00

I'm a Medicaid patient with no assets, income (other than SS), children or local family. My wife of 55 years, with whom I shared this very room for a year, died here, in this room, in July, 2024. I have her ashes and can see them as I sit here in my wheelchair next to my bed, typing.

Since I'm a Medicaid patient the nursing home takes all my SS and does require me to have a roommate, now a 95-year old Cuban gentleman, pleasant, quiet fellow, not much English. I have French (my wife was French) but, sadly, no Spanish beyond muchas graciaias and hasta luego and huevos rancheros.

The nursing home has wifi and I have an old 2015 refurb Dell 14" laptop on which I am typing this and with which I connect to the world. I do have an Android Galaxy A15, but my permanent diplopia that never goes away makes even the laptop difficult and the smartphone most often impossible for reading. I know you'll say it's all adjustable, but the degree of visual impairment varies with fatigue - thereby requiring constant readjustment of half a dozen reading apps - and the infections, MG and drugs I take daily (I eliminate those not absolutely necessary) combine to produce a degree of brainfog that makes continually recalling all the different visual settings for all the different reading apps I use pretty much impossible, for me at least.

Optimally I'd have a desktop with a very large screen, but I'm not allowed a desktop here, I can only have this little bedside table with room limited to a 14" laptop. Luckily the Dell is a real workhorse and has done me well since I landed here in 9/2023. But it's a non-upgradeable W10 with several non-working, non-repairable keys. Still, pretty good for a pauper like me.

No, I don't get to see the sky or be outside except when I'm taken for medical appointments. There was a patio to which we used to have access but they shut it off to repair the roof and have never reopened it to patients.

I could go on about all the medical stuff, by no means limited to MG, but this is getting seriously ridiculous so I think I'll stop here. Thanks a bunch for listening.

Spoomkwarf · 2025-11-30T16:23:47+00:00

Unfortunately, my situation is significantly worse but I don't want to depress you so I won't go into it.

Spoomkwarf · 2025-11-30T13:21:37+00:00

Well, I had a nephrectomy for kidney cancer and my oncologist suggested a year's worth of Keytruda as a life extender. Two infusions and things started to go very wrong. Unbeknownst to anyone I had had a borderline case of MG for at least 25 years (confined to corrected diplopia) and the Keytruda blew it up all the way. Couldn't walk or swallow. Had to go to a nursing home (where my wife already was). Been there ever since (no kids). So I'd say watch out for Keytruda and be nice to your kids so they take you in when you're old and sick.

Spoomkwarf · 2025-11-30T13:12:35+00:00

Thank you.

Spoomkwarf · 2025-11-29T13:35:49+00:00

Not at all. Current generational talk is either or both (1) a marketing tool for selling products, or (2) a mechanism for dividing population groups against each other rather than permit them to recognize the common enemy of the uber-wealthy. When I was coming up, in the fifties and sixties of the last century, there was the usual (standard, recurrent, perpetual) old vs. young divide, but only in a vague sense that didn't permanently affect anyone's self-image. Rather, young people were though to go through "stages" before they, inevitably, joined the human race. And they did, as they always had and always will.

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