Stephen B. Thomas

He came out of his shell to briefly mention: "Well, I'd tell you about that new 'squirrel diet.' But it's just nuts."

I like this quote from the abstract:

Moreover, the amylopectin in the lime mortar was found to act as an inhibitor; the growth of the calcium carbonate crystals is controlled by its presence, and a compact structure results, which may explain the enhanced performance of this organic−inorganic composite compared to single-component lime mortar.

Serious question... Does anyone know a cost-comparison? Sticky rice versus typical concrete agglomerate/conglomerate?

If I were living and attempting to do some natural building in China, I would most surely see what rice could do as a building material. Good on them.

Here's my personal calendar cover for September '26. Another completely-freehand drawing with the same brown pen I used for my friend's September calendar. The bulk of this was done when I was waiting for some water tanks to fill at Basecamp. Sitting on a trailer, in the afternoon sun, apple trees all over the place. I'm pleased with how this one turned out.

Dreaming of bird songs
Inside the air terminal
Soon, returning home

And the New York Post reported earlier this month that Amazon was training its own book-writing AI the same way, citing other companies such as Anthropic and Meta.

In my observation, Snopes is rather conservative in their speculations when attempting to confirm a claim, unless the evidence is rather overwhelming and/or substantiated by actual documentation (of course). They have a reputation that's nearly as old as public-access Internet itself. Personally, I've followed-up on crazy-ass Internet claims via Snopes for decades. I'm convinced they are reputable.

That said, I did a bit more digging. Seems like Futurism has researched this phenomenon, and the Washington Post has, as well. Apparently, Anthropic was forced to pay a $1.5 million settlement to authors, though a judge ruled that buying, scanning, and then shredding the books (ostensibly to train their AI models) was "transformative" and so a protected activity. It appears the AI companies were still plagiarizing the works of the authors to add content to their LLMs, regardless of the physical end-state of the books.

The WaPo article is hidden behind a paywall and I'm not a subscriber, so I can't read their article. But it's referenced by Futurism in theirs.

Here's the calendar cover for a friend of mine, September 2026. I wanted to do an armoured "warrior woman" facing off against some kind of adversary.

It was all freehand, and it turned out okay. I ran out of room for the lady's "opponent," so just put some stippling texture in there instead of crowding it up with more details. I picked up a brown ink pen and used that for most of the line work, then looked at text in my word processor program as a guide for the red ink text at the top.

A quick search provided this information on Snopes: the idea that AI companies are buying up old, hard-to-find books and then shredding them so they can scan the pages for their programs is currently rated as: "mostly true."

Snopes: Anthropic and other AI companies "destructively scanning" old books.

Recently, the one political blog I read had a commenter who likened this process to "burning the Library of Alexandria, again."

There are organizations such as The Gutenberg Project and Archive dot org that are trying to scan and preserve old (AKA, public domain) books, magazines, periodicals, and other media so that their contents become available at no cost to everyone, everywhere, for all time. I suggest you visit and support them when you can.

Samantha Lewis wrote:Hello Stephen!

Do you sill need the excavator owner manual?

It looks like if I buy it I will get to down load it.  Would it be better if I just sent you $30?

If passing along the funds works better for you Samantha, of course I won't say no to that. When I have the PDF, I'll be able to archive it here plus a couple other places.

Thanks...!

I drive cross-country in the winter to visit family and friends, then through the southern US on a "work tour" on the way back home.

For days reserved exclusively for travel, I plot out a route between where I am and the next stop to be at least 400 miles. That way, I'm usually done driving before sundown. Also, I personally consider it far enough to make me think I did a decent amount of travel for the day, and I'm not so burned-out by the experience that I won't want to wake up the next day, just to drive some more.

In terms of time, it's highly-variable. My typical day of driving ranges somewhere between 7 to 9 hours.