Thanks for the offer Peter, but I think I’ll give that one a miss! 
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Around 60% is WATER!
stop scaring the gals, Peter.
water…•Acting as a main constituent of body fluids.
•Transport of nutrients and waste products.
•Assisting in chemical reactions and energy generation.
•Solvent for ions and other charged molecules.
•Lubricant for joints.
•Regulation of body temperature.
It is worth noting that severe dehydration and water intoxication (drinking large amounts of water in a short period of time) can be fatal. Water is lost through respiration, sweat, feces and urine. Therefore, daily replenishment is needed.
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Tracey. The bots are more than horrible. I think…the most revolting aspect of bot/human communication, in my experience, is sudden recognition that tenderness/caring/ has been wasted on a machine.
I watched one of the first of the presentations of a thing that could do a lot of human actions, including walk up steps and run. It looked a bit like a human, and appeared to be so determined to “please”, so willing to tolerate failure and yet keep on and on, " doing its best", that the audience began to show quite real, emotional involvement …with its efforts.
That already happens, of course, when humans become so engrossed in IT, that infants are abandoned/starved etc.
Sorry…ree…!!! Drifted off into thoughts of “what makes your day a nightmare”…
SO…NOW FOR PRECIOUS, WONDERFUL MOMENT!!
FOUR beautifully cooked eggs, no cracks or damage, on first trial of my super fast…really working perfectly… Rocket Stove.
Took a bit longer than 5 mins. I discovered …not enough bricks after all, so used four concrete blocks and 3 bricks instead.
Haha! One more on the nose, for EDF.
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Jeanette, a lot of technology is educational, time saving, useful and has many + points.
However the same technology can produce programmes etc… which many will deem time-wasting and unnecessary.
Children have unfortunately been neglected long before technology and the “bots” arrived.
The sort of person that can neglect a child, has always existed albeit due to ignorance, selfishness an obsession (with another person or lover, a work zealot who has no time for anyone or anything else) and plenty of other reasons/excuses.
But enough, this is supposed to be a happy thread, but I couldn’t let you blame technology for child neglect, when it is the person, not the technology, that is truly at fault.
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Yes, indeed. Tracey…Of all the inventions of the past few years, IT, internet communication/opportunities of every imaginable benefit …must come among any life top picks. However you can see my beef is not about simply “IT”, not at all. But it is about Bots, in particular.
Its a wonderful world to discover machines that take over all kinds of human care jobs, that might simply be considered onerous or very dull. My own revulsion is a response to what seems to me, to be deliberate, IT deception/dishonesty?
No, the little green man of SF, barely makes the grade as a pretend human, but I prefer, EVERY TIME, to understand when I am speaking to/interacting with, a bit of technology, and NOT, as appears to be the case, a human being. This is happening more and more. How many times have you wasted your own time, addressing that matey sounding pop up adviser, on this or that website…who used to be rare enough to be entirely convincing? Never? Very good.
Clearly the more " helpful advisers" show up on any web site, the more people will eventually understand that they are wasting their time with anything but a very commonplace, likely to be repeated 50 times a day, question…
But that intrusion of a website “pretend person” is one of the least offensive, because its already known pretty well, now. Enough to be ignored. It took me a while to understand that the instructions on sf, were a bot, or I would have ignored them sooner.
The person who is NOT a person, but a bit of tech, might persuade many people to act/ buy/ do all kinds of unwise things, because of the ordinary trust that has already been established between humans over millennia. Humans, generally speaking, prefer to give the benefit of the doubt. That makes them very vulnerable, to scams and deceptions. The internet bristles with them.
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I’m in sympathy with your concerns @anon78757855 about the ‘helpfulness’ of bots.
One of my own concerns is the difficulty of distinguishing between a real-life interlocutor and a clever machine.
An anecdote. A few years back I desperately needed someone outside the family to confide in on a very personal issue.
I called a national UK helpline (I was at the time already in France) and spoke to a counsellor (of the “good” variety that cross to the other side to help) whose support was valuable, but I needed to speak to her/him again, only to discover that continuity of access to the same person was not possible.
One had to ‘start again’’ with another counsellor who had no knowledge of what had been discussed earlier. The calls were quite expensive, so I opted for the ‘email’ service that was offered as an alternative.
I took this up in good faith, but after beginning a conversation it soon became apparent that not only did the conversation cohere as it developed, the responses I got from the ‘counsellor’ were stereotypic of the I-speak-your-weight machines of the 1950s.
Just a play-back of my words, a clichéd “I recognise-your-pain” gobbet of psychobabble, then a "Would-you-like-to -say-more-about-whatever-it-is-you-last-told me?” request.
After three of these I started to ask the ‘counsellor’ if she/he was for real, a rookie, or a bot. These questions generated more or less stereotypical responses using the same formula:
“I see from your email Peter that you have begun to doubt whether you are communicating with a person or with a computer programme. This is clearly causing you uncertainty and your doubt about my authenticity is raising your distress. You would like to be reassured that your concerns are being heard, and I do hear you, and wish to continue to be of help, Peter.”
“Given the limitations of this method of making support available some concerns about its effectiveness do sometimes arise, and it does not suit everyone. Do you want to continue our conversation in this way, Peter? The choice is yours, it will be respected, and we shall continue to address the important concerns you have raised going forward”.
PS “Peter is not a robot’, just in training to be one” 
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Intensely distressing, I imagine. I’m sorry you went through that, but you survived. My guess is, that for at least a few people, finding themselves being cheated as well as NOT listened to at all, by a human, the blow could be fatal.
Counselling, therapy …of every shape/size/duration/ seems to me to be very big business. Two guys I contacted when facing desperate times. One was Greg Mullhauser, now, 15+ years later, a vast enterprise…who was pretty good. (The other Tim Field, founder of ‘Bullyonline’…he died.
He was so genuine, so kind, no way could he have been a bot,)…
GM offered that supposedly Carl Rogers style “reflective listening”, you indicate, (which can be, IMO, the very best, practiced by a caring, genuinely listening human), but which must be THE perfect, phoney human, Bot-adaptable technique, for anyone hoping to make their first trillion, in a year. No, I don’t believe he does that.
‘Mirroring, reflecting back’, the thoughts expressed, but using different words,?! Bot-makers fun paradise.
I should point out that the réponse I posted was confected by me as an illustrated example of type of response I got on line from the S*****tans, and is true to the robotic and equivocating tone.
No-one ever directly denied that they were in fact robot-generated replies, from which lack of a denial I inferred that they probably were, if not in whole, at least in outline as a ‘template’ for volunteers to use to save time and avoid errors.
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So where is it, discobots CV?
I currently know how to do the following things:
@discobot start {name-of-tutorial}
Starts an interactive tutorial.
{name-of-tutorial}can be one of:tutorial, advanced tutorial.
@discobot roll 2d6
3, 6
@discobot quote
Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you — Princess Diana
@discobot fortune
You may rely on it
So? …that doesn’t work?
Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.
Good afternoon.
@discobot display help .
I think you said that already. Bye bye. Take care.
Today’s perfect moment!!!
My DIY rocket stove. Didn’t work. Almost reduced to tears, looking at empty coffee cup and uncooked rice. Somebody said “science” to me yesterday, and I decided to consider that aspect of my construction. WHY didn’t it work…today…
Then
Hooray! Realised the bit of metal mesh, pillaged from a used disposable BBQ, that I had used to support my “flue” pipe, was special for camp site portable BBQs…and 100% useless, for the purpose I put it to.
It was tough and supported my chimney well enough, over the twig burn chamber…but silly me…it also acted as a block to rising heat. It did its camp site protection job, too well, so that no up draught was possible, and my rocket stove had just died.
Removed bit of mesh!
Rice and raisins, with grapes…plus coffee. All ready now!
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@anon78757855: “WHY didn’t it work…today…
Then
Hooray!”
Hardly any greater satisfaction in life than coming up against a practical problem, allowing one’s mind to pore unforced over its causation, allowing same mind to generate a solution, visualising its implementation, and finding it works.
Even better than sex? Possibly.
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All shades of sensual/physical thrill never, ever get close to best level consciousness, IMO.
Erica Jong said a lot of all that might be usefully taught about sex, she wrote…“The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game. The man is not “taking” and the woman is not “giving”. No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn”.
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Ha, Fear of Flying, I remember reading it at school (not a set text, I mean I was at school). Just befote mrs T became PM & EJ was being quoted a lot as a 2nd wave feminist which obv concerned us all (girls’ school).
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Yes.Vero.! Jong’s FoF, published around the same time that Jimmy Savile’s ‘Jim’ll fix it’ was first gaining millions of viewers, and the first known use of the term ‘Domestic violence’ in a modern context, meaning violence in the home, was used in parliamentary debate. (Jack Ashley 1973).
Along with many other tales of perfect sex, love and affection.
Dark times, thankfully a little more light …now that sex/gender abuse…male and female, is no longer counted ‘nobodies business but those taking part’.
So glad to see stories like this one, globally, too… https://medium.com/@boazabel/female-chief-in-malawi-breaks-up-850-child-marriages-and-sends-girls-back-to-school-918fd4d7b414
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