Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

It's been a while since I had any coupons from  SocialNature , but I recently qualified for a promotion of A Vogel brand "Herbamare" herb-flavoured sea salt. According to the ingredients, it is "sea salt with vegetables and herbs". I tasted a pinch and it was salty as salt should be, plus clear herb aroma, though not particularly strong. I compared it with regular table salt (slide 6) and it looks like the salt particles are generally more fine than regular table salt (not sea salt). I tried it on some Pran Plain Paratha I got from Superstore. I sprinkled Herbamare on one half while the paratha was still frozen, then toasted it in my toaster oven for 10 minutes at 400 degrees Farenheit (slides 7-8). I tried the pre-seasoned side as well as the plain side which I seasoned with Herbamare after. I did not put an excessive amount of Herbamare, enough to have mild saltiness. Of course the saltiness was evident, but the vegetables and herbs flavor was basically los

It sounds like common sense that half a truth is not the whole truth, but in truth most people are probably not aware when they only have half a truth. A little crumb of compelling truth is enough to decide things for them. You may have seen assorted news about the conflict in Gaza, especially about student protests such as this one at UBC . I can't remember when it was that I first learned about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, but I do remember it was about the Hamas "terrorists" acting for Palestine. Just the label "terrorist" decided for me that Hamas were the bad guys and therefore, Israel must be the innocent victims. After all, that's what terrorist groups do: They attack innocents to force governments to recognize their demands. War has erupted again, and this time students in North America were siding with Palestine. Older and more guarded about the various subtle attempts by media and politics to influence the masses, I decided to do more

Despite more technology and more forms of communication possible, how is it that communicating with your bank can be so hard? It really still comes down to people. They can use the technology, but if there's no proper follow-up, it's all useless. Which ultimately leads to simply looking for another financial institution. (1) Earlier this year, I received  an email from a CIBC "Financial Service Representative", Tej Gill. This was the second time that this person has emailed me. When I emailed them back the first time, they did not reply and simply sent me another email weeks later, in March. (2) The email I received in March (slide 1 below) was just as vague and thoroughly uninformative as the first one: I tried reaching out [top] you regarding one of your investment accounts. Please give a call at below number [sic]. Is this some attempt to sell me more stuff? What is this about? I didn't want to waste my time calling, hoping that this person might be in and avai

My mom is getting on in years but still refusing to treat herself to new things. So this Mother's Day I splurged a bit and got her a Qings Cake  ("King's Cake"?) They can make pictures in a jelly based on photographs you provide, but even without any photos, they have a good assortment of images you can choose from. I didn't have a picture of the cat my mom used to have, but they did have a fluffy cat image, and with a colour substitution for the fur, it turned out really quite well. From a distance it can look quite realistic but of course once you zoom in close, it's clearly not a real cat. Still, the detail and artwork was impressive. (I think many people might be much more impressed, but I'm a jaded sort and very little really impresses me). You can contact them through Instagram to get their current brochure of products -- a small 6-inch jelly cake is not the only product! I'll go through the specifications and my experience with you but I won&#

Here's an example of why AI feels quite dangerous at this time, possibly too dangerous to responsibly release for general research use. Below is a very simple example: In this conversation with Facebook's Meta AI, I was trying to ask it how to chat with Meta AI using Facebook Messenger. Here is the transcript of the ending. I have put in bold text the most relevant parts. ME: This did not work. "Meta AI" could not be found in the "To" field. META AI: I apologize for the confusion. I'm a large language model, I don't have a physical presence in Facebook Messenger, so you can't find me in the "To" field. Instead, you can try the following: Open Facebook Messenger Search for "Meta AI" in the Discover People tab: Tap the "Discover People" icon (looks like a compass) and search for "Meta AI" Select the "Meta AI" chatbot: You should see a chatbot with my name and logo. Select it to start a conversat

Curious about Microsoft CoPilot's ability to research and aggregate data, I asked it to "Describe the typical male love interest in a romance novel of the 80's, the 90's, and later." Specifically I had wanted the 1980's and 1990's separated because it was around that time that libraries seemed to have whole shelves dedicated to Danielle Steel and Nora Roberts, prolific authors in the genre during that period. (Q & A transcripts below). In the 80s, the typical male love interest in romance novels was often portrayed as sexy and "smouldering" They were strong, aggressive, and sometimes even rough with women. Some characters were portrayed as violating women or acting like "assholes". These characters were often undifferentiated from other strong and aggressive men but transformed into a softer man capable of caring for the heroine. Fabio Lanzoni  was the iconic male model for romance novel covers throughout the 80's and 90's.