Random Thoughts: Something Deeply Disturbing About AI

2025-12-01: I just tested a web service that "detects AI-generated content." I fed one of my blog posts through it. It reported that it contained 74% AI-generated content. Then, for a fee, it offered to rewrite my blog post to make it appear 100% human. There's something deeply disturbing about that.

The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

Rotten Tomatoes

The Shop Around the Corner (1940): Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan in a romcom with the "Lubitsch Touch." Also starring Frank Morgan, who you will recognize as the Wizard of Oz in the 1939 classic. See how many romcom tropes that are still standard today are in this movie, some used for the first time. B+

HBO Max

#VeryTardyReview

Weapons (2025)

Rotten Tomatoes

Weapons (2025): Less a horror film, more a mystery/thriller. All but one child from the same class flee their homes at 2:17 am one night and disappear. Story is told from different perspectives, each filling in a few more details. Slow build to a satisfactory conclusion. B-

HBO Max

Book Review: On the Calculation of Volume (Book I)

From On the Calculation of Volume (Book I), by Solvej Balle:

Amazon

"My name is Tara Selter. I am sitting in the back room overlooking the garden and a woodpile. It is the eighteenth of November. Every night when I lie down to sleep in the bed in the guest room it is the eighteenth of November and every morning, when I wake up, it is the eighteenth of November. I no longer expect to wake up to the nineteenth of November and I no longer remember the seventeenth of November as if it were yesterday."

POTD: High Protein Refreshment

From 2025 03 23 Chiang Mai

Today's photo-of-the-day was taken at a food store at the foot of Doi Suthep, the site of a popular temple. As healthful as I imagine the products on sale here to be, we didn't partake.

Bonus photos are after the jump.