To each their own ¯\(ツ)/¯

A lot of people on Lemmy work in tech so responses are going to lean heavily in that direction. I’m not in tech and if you check my answer to this you’ll have a number of examples. I also know a few people who wanted to learn a new language and asked ChatGPT for a day by day programme and some free sources and they were pretty happy with the results they got. I imagine you can do that with other subjects. Other people I know have used it to make images for things like club banners or newsletters.

I use it like an intern/other team member since the non-profit I work for doesn’t have any money to hire more people. Things like:

• Taking transcripts of meetings and turning them into neat and ordered meeting minutes/summaries, or pulling out any key actions/next steps
• Putting together objectives and agendas for meetings based on some loose info and ideas I give it
• Summarise the key points from articles/long documents I don’t have tome or patience to read through fully.
• Making my emails sound more professional/nicer/make up for my brainfarts
• Giving me ideas on how to format/word slides and documents depending on what tone I want to employ - is it meant for leadership? Other team members?
• Make my writing more organised/better structured/more professional sounding
• Writing emails in foreign languages with a professional tone. Caveat is I’m fluent enough in those languages to know if the output sounds right. Before AI I would rely on google translate (meh), dictionaries, language forums, etc and it would take me HOURS to write a simple email using the correct terminology. Also helpful to check grammar and sentence structure in ways that aren’t always picked up by Word.
• I sound more like a robot than an actual robot, so I ask the robot to reword my emails/messages to sound more “human” when the need arises (like a colleague is leaving, had a baby, etc).
• Bouncing off ideas. This doesn’t always work and I know it doesn’t actually have an opinion, but it helps get the ball rolling, especially if I’m struggling with procrastination.
• If my sentences are too long for a document, I ask it to shorten/reword and it’s pretty capable of doing that without losing too much of the essence of what I want to get across

Of course I don’t just take whatever it spits out and paste it. I read through everything, make sure it still sounds more or less like “me”. Sometimes it’ll take a couple of prompts to get it to go where I want it, and takes a bit of review and editing but it saves me literal hours. It’s not necessarily perfect, but it does the job. I get it’s not a panacea, and it’s not great for the environment, but this tech is literally saving my sanity right now.

Oh yes, but that needs to be first on the list for sure.

Edit: on second thought, make it last on the list. It tells more of a story.

I’d add a couple of things to that list:

• Duct tape
• Rope
• Burlap bag
• Shovel
• Condom

This is impossible to guarantee or control for. Birds migrate, you never know who might make a pitstop at your feeder. I’ve spotted birds that were so far off their normal range it created a buzz in the local birding community. There’s a non-zero chance something endangered or at least very rare could stop by your feeder.

If you’re worried about making sure your cat gets enough stimulation there are a lot of articles and tips on things you can do that require little effort on your part (like, even a cardboard box full of crumpled paper can do the job).

France banned soda refills a few years ago to combat obesity. Honestly that makes sense to me.

As someone in the middle of getting laser hair removal, I say go for it if you can and find a good place to have it done. I’m very happy with results even after just a few sessions.

Not a Nokia and I can’t find that exact model but it seems there were a couple of weird round phones floating around in the early to mid 2000’s:

https://www.mobilephonemuseum.com/phone-detail/c800

https://www.mobilephonemuseum.com/phone-detail/xelibri-6

https://www.mobilephonemuseum.com/phone-detail/panasonic-g70

There were some other weird as hell designs around that period, like the ones in this article:

https://medium.com/@samworldpeace/nokia-made-some-of-the-weirdest-phones-ever-a7e3412fa0c0

I recognise all but one of the phones in that link. The time just before smartphones was a weird moment in mobile phone history.

If you haven’t already, have you considered installing a few small ramps around the pool for animals to climb out when they fall in? You can find some simple cheap-ish ones on amazon like this one: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81hGTaHIS3L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_DpWeblab_.jpg

If you’re short on time I recommend Great Art Explained in 15 Minutes. May not be exactly what you’re looking for but the creator puts in a lot of work and you get to learn some really interesting things about art pieces and the artists who made them.

They may be magnificent, but are they powerful?

Whoever said bird people are boring clearly hasn’t seen some of the names they come up with.

Hmmm flying in formation like that sounds more like waterfowl. Could it be cormorants? Are you by the shore or near a large body of water? They can be all black like crows and the begging sound of the double crested cormorant does sound kind of seagull-y?

If they’re fish crows though, that’s cool, they’re rarer than the carrion crows we’re more used to. In any case I’m glad if I could be of help and I hope you continue to enjoy listening to and watching birds!

Hmm when you say flying in formation do you mean in like a cloud or a specific shape? If so could be starlings as they have a very varied repertoire of songs and can mimic other birds (which might explain why Merlin can’t identify them)

When you say ‘jagged wings’ do you mean you can see the individual feather tips (like fingers)? Could be fish crows? The juvenile sound could be a little seagull-y?

Grackles are usually fully black apart from having lighter eyes. Some species flock together, and like starlings they also minic other birds.

Edit: one thing to note is Merlin doesn’t always work well if you’ve turned GPS off on the phone. That might also interfere with identification

Where are you based approximately? Europe/Asia/US/etc? Is the bird fully black? Same size as a crow? Any distinguishing information might help!

If anyone is wondering, that’s a red-backed fairywren. Here’s some other great fairywrens (literally, it’s in their names):

Lovely fairywren

Superb fairywren

Splendid fairywren

Should…should we tell Squizzy?