The Off Topic Topic

[Valmy]

Chiefs are going to the Super Bowl!

Again.

Sorry Spicey.

[The Brain]

I hear that in both Sweden and Denmark there were no bank robberies in 2022, a novelty in the modern era.

[Josquius]

I had a little play with chat gpt. I decided it'd be fun to get it to write an engaging introduction to a fantasy novel. Its quite a frustrating experience. It jumps between getting some stuff right to completely forgetting that and doing something else- I tell it explicitly a character is a noble in the army... but then a few corrections later that has been dropped without my saying so and he's now a farmer with a home-made weapon.

Also a bit annoying how when you try to give it more to work with it will repeat that back to you verbatim. Which...does not make for great reading.

AI won't be writing novels anytime soon.

[Syt]

Started reading The Darkness That Comes Before, the first of the Prince of Nothing Books by R. Scott Bakker.

I like his style so far, but I had a Nam-flashback-1000-yards-stare moment when I came across a bit where he writes (paraphrasing), "It wasn't possible to tell the color of the garment, but in the dim light it looked blue and black."

 

(The book was written in 2003, well before the famous image wreaked havoc on the internet.)

[Zanza]

90 years ago, Hitler became chancellor of Germany and the darkest period of our history began.

[Syt]

The Caius Cestius pyramid and Aurelian walls in Rome in 1860s vs. modern Google Earth view.

[Josquius]

Kind of sad to see such a decline in such a short and youd think enlightened period.

[The Brain]

Decline?

[Tamas]

Kind of sad to see such a decline in such a short and youd think enlightened period.

Ladies and gentlemen, THIS is why nothing gets built in Britain anymore.

[Sheilbh]

[The Larch]

What decline? The city grew, and what once was in the outskirts of the city got absorbed into the city proper, while respecting the ancient structures of the area (the pyramid and the city walls, mainly).

In Rome you get ruins every time you do almost any kind of construction or public work. If they stopped projects because ruins are found the city would be frozen in time for all of eternity.

[Maladict]

Those trees to the left of the pyramid is where Keats and Shelley chose to be buried. You can see why.

[Josquius]

Italy was a mistake.

[Barrister]

Italy was a mistake.

Long live the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies!

[garbon]

Kind of sad to see such a decline in such a short and youd think enlightened period.

Ladies and gentlemen, THIS is why nothing gets built in Britain anymore.