Modern Vespa

This has taken a turn into the unusual...

Hi Jim,

Consider it dropped.

Thanks.

What is with the French and their fascination with eating cold meats, soft cheeses and worst of all croissants to break their fasts each morning?

I 'm hoping when I wake up tomorrow morning here in Luxembourg with their German influence I will be treated to some hot food, hopefully eggs, toast and fish.

It's quite puzzling that people outside of England have different customs, different foods, different likes and dislikes.

Agreed, though you should have seen my face the first breakfast in a Dutch hotel. I ate almost exclusively pineapple for breakfast that trip.

The US restaurant world couldn't exist without Mwxicans/Latinos.

I read an online comment yesterday that "Mexicans make the best Italian food in the U.S. which was followed by a long discussion about wide-ranging foods including sushi prepared by Mexicans. While I personally don't know many chefs, I've peeked in quite a few kitchens and the ethnicity of the staff seems pretty predictable. A friend of ours is a Guatemalan lady that works in an Olive Garden. They have the occasional white/American kid that rotates through, but they never seem to last long.

I have to admit a general preference for seeing real ethnic people in ethnic restaurants, but you've gotta be practical!

Tostitos hint of lime chips are superior to Doritos cool ranch

More likely it will be the side effects of using AI that will kill is. Then, after we're gone, will AI ask itself things, like the self driving cars honking at each other in SF?

So, AI is often used as a blanket term for a lot of different things. But your example is truly "artificial intelligence" in that vehicles are making informed decisions based on data they are collecting about their environment in real time. Ideally. The cars honking at each other is funny. I work in a facility that makes rear lighting for the automotive industry. Tail lamps. If this sort of intelligent driving actually takes off, there's a very real possibility that our product might go the same direction as the carburetor, because when cars can tell what all the other cars around them are doing, there won't be any need for brake lights.

Seems silly, but last year we had a prototype mockup of a pickup truck built here where the headlights had been replaced with lidar. It's coming.

The self driving cars aren't honking they're communicating, plotting
AI will divert all electricity to feed themselves...
Many of us will die under mounds of derelict server farms & decaying warehouses of crime scene evidence

This is a very entertaining presentation on the topic at hand, especially if you have experience of any sort of engineering.

BTW - I was in the audience - bald guy at the lower left of the screen in the wide shots.

Hot take: If you kill the messenger because you don't like the message, you make yourself (and probably everyone around you) that much dumber.

^^ is that a good message?

How much lower in dumbness can this hypothetical messenger killer possibly go?

Smells a lot like politics.

OFG

People triggered by an oblique reference deserve the introspection I hope it causes.

FTFY

Indeed. Ancient Greek politics.

"The first messenger, that gave notice of Lucullus' coming was so far from pleasing Tigranes that, he had his head cut off for his pains; and no man dared to bring further information. Without any intelligence at all, Tigranes sat while war was already blazing around him, giving ear only to those who flattered him"

-- Parallel Lives by Plutarch, 2nd century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Lives

The "Valley of the Sun", as the Phoenix metropolitan area likes to refer to itself, is Way Too Sunny this week. Granted it is August, and August is the worst of the summer months, but 100-teen all week is to much.
When I commuted by scoot I could handle it, but now, as a casual rider, it sucks. The monsoon hasn't developed at all this summer either, so there isn't even a cooldown after the rain.


Hot take: Come on September!!

Pubs that have 3-5 very similar Ales on the pump, always blandish copper beers.

Have some variety please, why not mix it up with a hazy IPA and/or a Stout/Porter

So many in PHX metro are that way. Lagers, Pilsners. Ales and nary a stout in sight!

Twist ties on bread bags should be discarded after opening the bread at home. They are only there to keep the bread from falling out during shipment. Once at home, their only purpose is to cause marital strife.

We're talking direction of twist here?
Maybe a collection of plastic clips?

Plastic clips have many secondary uses. Twist ties are disposable. And should be.

We discard the ties, use clothespins instead. (Peace reigns.)

Binder clips are very handy too!

Why use ANYTHING on the bag other than twist and tuck once it's safely in your house?

I'm firmly in the twist-n-tuck camp.

I never even bother opening them. I just snip the top of the bag.

We only have French Sticks or uncut loaves, preferably Sourdough so this particular problem doesn't exist for us fortunately.

I'll tell you what does miff me a bit is trying to find a spaghetti dish in a resturant that doesn't contain cheese or cream, admittently I make it more difficult by not eating red meat but c'mon it can't be that difficult, it's easily done with rice in Europe with Rissoto and Paella dishes.

Hot Take: so-called "Sovereign Citizens" would be downright hi-larious if they weren't so aggravatingly stupid.

If I've offended any sovereign citizens here, I apologize. To your family, your former friends, your former co-workers, and anyone else who has had the misfortune of having to listen to your endless stream of delusional bullshit.

It takes a very special kind of idiot to believe that you've found a loophole in the system that means the law doesn't apply to you, or that you don't need to register your car or hold a drivers license to drive on public roads.

Hear Hear!

So, as Grand High Poobah of Seamusembourgikstan I don't just get diplomatic immunity for everything?

Back to the drawing board ...

Hot Take: Elon Musk threatening to sue Apple over ChatGPT vs Grok's App Store ranking is like if Nickelback sued Spotify because Taylor Swift outranked them on the charts.

I mean, duh!

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/12/elon-musk-apple-openai-sam-altman

If he wants a better rating, he could, y'know, offer a compelling product?

With consideration to the Cybertruck, it could be argued that he wouldn't know a compelling product if one bit him on the arse.

I fed that into Chat GPT and asked it to write an Onion style article based on that as a headline. Most of it was terrible, but some of it ... not so bad. I laughed.

Nice.

If you take one thing away from this hot take, it is that Grok is the Nickelback of AI.

Coffee shops that charge extra for non dairy milk

I mean come on, they're already on a big mark up with they're flashy sounding drinks, why take advantage of glucose intolerants and people doing their bit for the environment?