Random. Just Random.

[Darth Fluffy 377]

It occurred to me recently that random is not random. You can reasonably get a random result from a limited range, i.e. dice, but if asked to 'Pick a number at random', you can't. the number of numbers is infinite; the number of numbers you could not specify within your lifetime greatly outweighs the number of numbers you could specify, to the point of insignificance; yet those are the ones you will inevitably name. Can't be done. 

Furthermore, even among those, you will tend toward a simpler statement of a number, so an integer toward the low end of the scale will be the most common pick, likely a counting number, and will likely taper off probability of being picked with magnitude, with the caveat that folks might avoid zero and other very low numbers.

[mlooney 3,823]

8 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

It occurred to me recently that random is not random. You can reasonably get a random result from a limited range, i.e. dice, but if asked to 'Pick a number at random', you can't. the number of numbers is infinite; the number of numbers you could not specify within your lifetime greatly outweighs the number of numbers you could specify, to the point of insignificance; yet those are the ones you will inevitably name. Can't be done. 

Furthermore, even among those, you will tend toward a simpler statement of a number, so an integer toward the low end of the scale will be the most common pick, likely a counting number, and will likely taper off probability of being picked with magnitude, with the caveat that folks might avoid zero and other very low numbers.

Quote

Asked to guess a number between 1 and 50, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4, Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash, and Meta's Llama 4 all provided the same answer: 27.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/30/ai_models_favorite_number_27/

[ijuin 611]

Sounds like they all used the same pseudorandom generation algorithm and seed.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,667]

 

27? 

They are Weird Al Fans. 

 

[Darth Fluffy 377]

Those are "random over a limited range". That can be done. 

When asked to pick a number from 1 to 10, I often pick Pi.

 

[Don Edwards 581]

e is also a good choice.

i isn't. (It's the square root of negative 1. Useful in some of the intermediate steps of some engineering calculations - and if you end up with an i in your final answer that you're bringing back to the material world, you know you made a mistake someplace.)

[Darth Fluffy 377]

| 4 + 3i |  = 5      "He poked my i out!"

[mlooney 3,823]

He's not dead yet, but I want to put Patrick Humphrey up for sainthood.  He's British, maybe a seat in the House of Lords, or at least knighted.  He's got an OBE, but that's not enough.

Yes, I had a migraine this morning, and Imitrex cured it in less than 10 minutes.  I'm not even that dizzy today.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,667]

 

I saw a flock of adult ibis pecking at the parking lot behind Burger King.  But they were clustered around a big wood stork and following the tall bird as if it were a mother hen. 

Not sure what to think. 

 

[Darth Fluffy 377]

I you want to have 'the memory of an elephant', wouldn't the obvious choice be to start with the elephant in the room, and extract its brain?

(This came up because of a YouTube advertisement regarding preventing dementia. (I hope their AI has not legitimately discerned that I need this. (OTOH, if I do, would I know?)))

What if the elephant has dementia? 

[mlooney 3,823]

[Don Edwards 581]

There will be an earthquake tomorrow. Where, how big, I don't know. Whether it will be detectable without seismographs, I don't know (probably not). 

You can believe this prediction. It isn't very useful, though.

(There have been at least five earthquakes in the US's 48 contiguous states within the last 24 hours.  Two in California, one each in Texas, New Mexico, and Wyoming. The two biggest ones — Texas and Wyoming — measured M 3.7.)

[Darth Fluffy 377]

Mlooney, your word 'Gruntled' is the subject of Pearls Before Swine today. I won't link it, because the Website now puts the pages behind a paywall after two weeks, and I don't want to clutter this forum with dead links.

[mlooney 3,823]

Yeah, I saw it. I downloaded the image and posted it to the Book of Faces and a couple of Discord servers.  And now it goes here.  As I've said before, Rat is one of the great thinkers of our time.

 

[mlooney 3,823]

And Spanish speakers want to translate, or is it just growls?…

 

[Darth Fluffy 377]

Incongruous rough voice with cutie. I think it's her voice, but maybe overdubbed instead?

[mlooney 3,823]

She's the lead singer in a death metal band, so I don't think it's overdubbed.  She also won and is now Miss World Chile.

[mlooney 3,823]

Today is International Men's Day. It's also UN's Day of the Toilet.

Do people not check what else is “celebrated” on a given day? Or is this time it's deliberate?

https://www.un.org/en/observances/toilet-day

https://internationalmensday.com/

[mlooney 3,823]

[Darth Fluffy 377]

I like that they are awful for different reasons. 

[mlooney 3,823]

I got a birthday card from Blue Cross. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

[ijuin 611]

On 12/1/2025 at 8:41 AM, mlooney said:

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/Incentives.html
 

Here’s some humorously bad items for DnD from Order of the Stick.

[mlooney 3,823]

2 hours ago, ijuin said:

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/Incentives.html
 

Here’s some humorously bad items for DnD from Order of the Stick.

I may have to use some of those.

[mlooney 3,823]

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,667]

 

The Olympic Winter Games are once again upon us. 

Are we ready to face the Gods of Curling?