Interesting Links for 07-04-2024

[andrewducker]

1. X's AI chatbot Grok spread a fake trending headline about Iran attacking Israel

(tags:ai fraud twitter )

2. This evening I have been learning about Hanukkah because Sophia randomly picked up "Hana the Hanukkah Fairy" at the library

(tags:books Jews children )

3. 46 years ago we laughed a spacecraft. It's now in interstellar space and we're still fixing it when it breaks

(tags:space bugs hardware history )

4. Wealth of the 1% is up by 50% in the last 4 years

(tags:wealth inequality USA )

Comments

[nancylebov]

1. I wonder if part of Grok's training set includes apocalyptic predictions.

R. A. Lafferty's _Past Master_ includes Programmed Mechanical People who are infested with literal demons. Just saying.

[kerk_hiraeth]

Didn't watch the launch, but I recall watching the first footage.

Don't remember laughing though... ;-)

kerk

[andrewducker]

Damned autocorrect!

[calimac]

2) Never judge a book by its blurb, so I won't judge this book by my reactions to its blurb, which I'd rather not express.

Sophia randomly picked up "Hana the Hanukkah Fairy" at the library

[jack]

On the one hand, aww.

On the other hand, it feels weird to have a cross-religious personifications of holidays and I'm not sure why. I think because other "personifications of holidays" or similar stories I've seen have been set in a mostly secular world with easter bunny, a father christmas, cupid, etc, including some non-traditional characters like a turkey for thanksgiving, or non-festival personifications like jack frost and the tooth fairy, where we can imagine that this relates to the most common festivals that humans follow in the film's culture, without trying to include jesus instead of the easter bunny.

But the faerie books feel like they're trying to show a range of different cultures, not just one. And specifically religious ones, given that there's no Chinese New Year faerie mentioned. If you're representing secular festivals then you can make up whatever you like. But if you're writing a story about another culture, it feels off to make up a DIFFERENT mythological representation of it, that's alien to the culture that actually exists...

I'm also wondering, why Hannukah? It feels like Jack Frost stole a ceremonial object from the most important Buddhist festival, the most important Muslim festival, the most important Hindu festival, and the Jewish festival which is most well known to Americans. I don't know if he stole anything from a Christian festival. I know I'm overthinking this. I wondered if he was targeting winter festivals, but it doesn't seem to be given Eid and Buddha Day.

The book itself did look potentially cute, despite me being very hijacked by considering the mythology of the festival faerie cinematic universe :) What did you both think after you read it?

Re: Sophia randomly picked up "Hana the Hanukkah Fairy" at the library

[jack]

ETA: Although I may have been too abrupt about Hannukah, if they're specifically representing religious followings in the US, then American judiasm may have Hannukah as a biggest festival. It's easy for me to forget that 90% of jews live in the US or Israel.

Re: Sophia randomly picked up "Hana the Hanukkah Fairy" at the library

[andrewducker]

We're only two chapters in (one per night), so it's unclear. So far the main character girls have gone to a Jewish friend's house, goblins have stolen the candles from the hannukiah in order to get them in trouble (in revenge for them helping the diwali fairy to retrieve something in the first book in the series, which we haven't read), and then locked the children in a larder.

We've got a tiny amount of "Hannukah is a celebration" and "there's a candle every night", but that's about it from a culture perspective. There may be more in future chapters, I'll let you know!

[yalovetz]

Elisha the Eid Fairy would have been a more topical choice, given the time of year...

[andrewducker]

I didn't get to choose - I was just finished returning the last lot when she arrived with her collection of loot.