A.C. Flory's Blog

Istanbul: Cat paradise!

This Short makes me so happy. A whole, bloody CITY full of compassionate, caring people. And a government that mandates that compassion. This is how life should be in all our cities.

Meeks

Is Quantum Computing the answer?

Don’t worry, I’m not leading you down this particular rabbit hole as I haven’t got a clue about quantum computing either. But Will Lockett does, and his predictions about the AI bubble are pretty spot on:

‘So, it’s essentially common knowledge that the AI bubble is ripe for bursting. Things like the efficient compute frontier (read more here) and the Floridi conjecture (read more here) mean that the AI models we have now are about as good as they will ever be. Even if OpenAI spent trillions of dollars increasing the size of their models tenfold, they would only be slightly better. The recent release of ChatGPT-5 is a perfect example of this. It had significantly more data, training, and cash shoved into it than its little brother ChatGPT-4, yet it is only marginally better than ChatGPT-4.’

https://www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/the-ai-bubble-is-about-to-burst-but?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share

To head off the inevitable ‘pop’, Lockett thinks the Tech Bros are already hyping quantum computing as the solution to all of AI’s problems. Unfortunately, quantum computing is still a long way off replacing current supercomputers and may never be useful in AI:

‘Remember how, when you open the box of Schrodinger’s cat, you fix its superposition as either dead or alive? This is known as collapsing the quantum wave function. Well, when you read a qubit, you do the same, and by fixing its state, it makes it just like a regular computer, either a one or a zero, which renders this entire exponential computational thing moot. Instead, the computer needs to run an algorithm that uses quantum wave interference to whittle down the qubits to the useful ones before reading; that way, when we do read it, we get a useful answer and can harness this exponential computing power.’

https://open.substack.com/pub/planetearthandbeyond/p/the-ai-bubble-is-about-to-burst-but?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Will we ever have quantum computers running everything? Maybe. But there will be a number of very painful, and expensive, missteps before we get there. I strongly recommend reading Lockett’s article in full as it’s written in a style that even non-geeks can understand. And the subject matter will affect us all, even if we don’t use AI.

cheers,
Meeks

I want to travel! -sigh-

I have neither the funds nor the freedom to travel, but when I watch videos like this I want to hop a plane so badly….

This is an Englishman’s video of the Chinese countryside, and it gives the lie to all the crap about living conditions in China. If China can celebrate the Miao people and help them keep their ancient culture alive, I can’t help wondering why we Anglos can’t do the same?

Meeks

5000 views in one day? WordPress????

I usually average about 100 views per day, but on the 27th of August, 2025, my stats shot up to 5000:

The next day it was about 1000 making the total for 7 days an eye-watering 6.3 THOUSAND.

I thought it must be some kind of internal, WordPress error because the stats for my actual posts were ‘normal’:

But then I dug a bit deeper and had a look at what was in my archived content:

And there it was. My Mystery Viewer had gone through every single Tag I had ever used AND looked at every Category created during my 14-ish years of blogging.

Is it a conspiracy theory to suppose that my Mystery Viewer was not…human?

WordPress: I have never given you or your AI or any other AI permission to scrape my content. How dare you slurp up my years of content anyway?

‘On WordPress, copyright law applies to the content that you create and publish on your website or blog. This means that you have the exclusive right to control how your content is used and distributed. If someone uses your content without your permission, they may be infringing on your copyright.’ Quote from Sanders Design

I want an explanation, and I want it now.

Meeks

Nerd attack!

Apologies all, but the baby nerd in me was astounded by this Short and wanted to share.

I can’t stop watching this. The shortest distance is still a straight line, but it’s not the FASTEST distance! Mind blowing.

Have a great Wednesday.
Meeks

A most unexpected review. :)

I made three friends on Twitter. One died and is missed, Annette of Angel Messages is the second, and YorgosKC is the third. Yorgos is young, a talented writer, a talented artist, and a very sweet person, but I never expected him to read Innerscape…all of Innerscape!

But he did, and then he reviewed it in a way that showed he ‘got it’.

Thank you for this wonderful review, Yorgos. I think you know how much it means to have someone acknowledge your work. Very much appreciated.

Review for the Innerscape Trilogy by acflory

Hugs,
Meeks

The tragedy of social media

I don’t know how any person can be cruel enough to hound someone to her death, but that is what happened to this very special woman. And her tormentor[s]? Safe behind an anonymous identity.

The internet has become a world. Isn’t it time that it was treated like one? Stalkers in the real world can’t hide their identity forever because that identity is tied to everything else they do in life. And yes, I know that criminals can and do change their identities. But I’m talking about ordinary people here. People like you and me. Isn’t it time that we all took our real selves online so that there can be consequences to our words and actions?

I am so sick of this digital wild west where cruelty is rewarded and compassion is denigrated. Enough.

Meeks

WP recommendations: ‘add’ found

My thanks again to Yorgos for supplying the answer. This is how you add more recommendations to your list:

For reasons known only to the Misery Muppets, adding new recommendations comes under ‘Manage Subscriptions’.

cheers
Meeks

I didn’t NOT recommend you

Some of you may have been notified that I recommended your blog. Some of you may be wondering why I haven’t recommended your blog… It wasn’t deliberate!

YorgosKC, a writing buddy of mine, was the first to recommend my blog via the WordPress Reader. I don’t use the Reader so, of course, I had to go see what he was talking about. I found it here:

At that point there were no blogs in my Recommended list, so I messed around until I worked out how to start adding some. But I’ve been blogging for about 15 years and I’ve followed an awful lot of people in that time, many of whom are no longer around.

Scroll…scroll…scroll…

After about fifteen minutes my eyes were starting to cross so I thought I’d stop and come back later. Reasonable, right?

Wrong.

When I came back to continue recommending people/blogs, I couldn’t find any way to ADD more to the list.

I’m pretty tech savvy, but there doesn’t seem to be any option to continue adding blogs to the Recommended list, which is crazy. If any of you know how to do it, please tell me in comments because I feel so bad about the blogs I haven’t recommended.

Unhappy,
Meeks

The death of a child in Gaza

The child is called Amir and the Green Beret whistleblower recounts how Amir came up to him and thanked him for the scraps of food they were distributing. Then the IDF shot real bullets into the crowd, and Amir, this child, this fucking innocent child was SHOT AND DIED. Netanyahu and his government are evil bastards, and so are those who support them.

I am a mother. I cannot stay silent while children are murdered in the name of politics.

Meeks