Sedated Stuffs

tl;dr: China yeeted a cheaper, faster, less environmental impact making, open source LLM model onto the market and US AI companies lost nearly 600 billions in value since yesterday.

Silicone Valley is having a meltdown.

So.

This monstrosity is what gbbo was trying to pass off as a smore.

This is not a smore. Look at it. It’s downright undercooked. That’s not even marshmallow. Or chocolate. It looks cold. This is about as much a smore as Cris Pratt is a voice actor. As a corgi is a wolf. As gbbo is apparently competent at research.

Also me to explain what a smore is.

For anyone who doesn’t know what the fudge a smore is, it’s a typical summertime treat often made at summercamp, when camping, or if you live in a place with a fireplace/assess to a campfire sometimes you’ll use that.

Basically it goes like this; it takes five ingredients, gram crackers, any chocolate bar with rectangular pieces you can break off (traditionally Hershey’s as it’s the cheapest and smores tend to be made in bulk, it’s one of those things a group of people make together otherwise it won’t taste right) large marshmallows, an open flame, and as previously mentioned more than one person to make them at the same time. If you make smores alone, the smores too will be sad and alone.

First you take two gram crackers and break off 1 to 2 sections of chocolate. Place the chocolate on each side, so both sides are all chocolatey. Then you take a marshmallow and skewer it on either a pointy stick from the ground or a metal skewer specificity made for roasting marshmallows/hotdogs depending on if someone has any.

Next you, well, roast the marshmallows. If you’re doing this at a campfire this involves a lot of moving away from the direction the smoke is blowing well and minor amounts of giggle-filled pvp as everyone jostles for the best spots around the fire. Mellow roasting is one of those things that is kind of the point of making marshmallows, the epic highs and lows of seeing how close to the fire you can get yours and how long you can hold it there before it either falls off or catches fire is integral to the entire experience.

Once you hastily blow out the one-fire part of the marshmallow, you slide it off the stick and between the gram crackers and chocolate. Then you squish it a bit to get the chocolate all nice and gooey, and bite in.

It’s gooey, it’s very messy, and the closer it gets to midnight the more it’s delicious.

So now we have established what a smore is, allow me to explain how UTTERLY BUTCHERED that abomination of sugar is.

First, we have the ingredients themselves. Paul Bitchwood describes the middle as ‘Italian meringue’.

Italian meringue.

Italian. Fucking. Meringue.

*deep breath*

IS NOT A MARSHMALLOW.

It does not share THE BASIC PROPERTIES OF A MARSHMALLOW.

YOU CANNOT STAB MERINGUE WITH A STCK AND HAVE IT STAY ON THE FUCKING SICK. HAVE YOU EVER EATEN A MARSHMALLOW BEFORE MR BITCHWOOD???? WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO THROW THE TOP OF A LEMON MERINGUE PIE AT YOU TO DEMONSTRATE “PAUL”?! IF IT DOESN’T BOUNCE ITS NOT A FUCKING MELLOW AND THE EFECT ON YOUR FACE WOULD BE ONE HELL OF AN IMPROVEMENT!

So already we have the single most important ingredient straight up ‘substituted’ (if you can even call it that) for an entirely different food with a completely different texture, taste, consistency, and behavior under heat.

But there’s more!

See, that chocolate? It’s not melted chocolate like you might think at first glance- no no no, that’s fucking GANACHE.

YOU KnOW, The THing With THE CoNsistenCY of FroSTING???? :) :) :)

The thing that you expressly don’t want to melt when using it in cooking on pain of death?

Thus removing THE ENTIRE PURPOSE CONSISTENCY FLAVER AND TEXTURE OF THE INGREDIENT

AGAIN!

and then. Ohhhhhhh and then.

Those are no gram crackers.

Those are ‘digestibles”

WHAT THE FUCK ARE DIGESTABLES

THATS WHAT HAPPENS TO ALL FOOD ITS NOT SPECIAL DUMBASS

WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF RICH PEOPLE SHIT ARE YOU EATING THAT YOU NEED TO POINT THAT OUT IN THE NAME

WHAT THE FUCK

AND IT AGAIN HAS A DIFFERENT EVERYTHING THEN GRAaM CRACKERS

WHY

YOU DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO DO THAT IF YOU WANTED IT TO SOUND FANCY YOU COULD HAVE JUST MADE GRAM CRACKERS FROM SCRATCH IVE NEVER SEEN ANYONE DO IT BECAUSE WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU BUT ITS AT LEAST POSSIBLE AGHHHHHHHHHHH

And then. To add insult to injury after FUCKING injury.

It’s a circle.

It’s A CiRcLE.

WHY IS IT A CIRCLE.

IT SHOULNT BE A CIRCLE-

Now 1: who invents a cookie and names it a “digestible biscuit” that is the single most unappetizing name for anything ever

And 2. Apparently the offending baked goods are flaky.

FLAKY.

ON A SMORE.

“Oh they don’t have gram crackers in England”

it’s a FUCKING BAKE OFF if you’re going to try and rich-ify a food why not just MAKE A SUBSTITUTE THATS AT LEAST VAGUELY RESEMBLING THE ORIGINAL INGREDIENT IDIOT

ITS A DAMN COOKIE THERES NO WAY ITS THAT HARD TO MAKE

FUCK YOU PAUL AND FUCK WHATEVER MISERABLE FOOL OF A WOMAN BROUGHT YOU INTO THIS WORLD FOR SHE KNEW NOT WHAT SHE HAS DONE

But yeah. Graham crackers are square, which allows for the melted marshmallow and chocolate to EXPAND when you squish them. THAT IS WHY YOU DON’T USE A ROUND COOKIE, GBBO. Because s’mores have to be SQUISHED in order to be eaten.

S’mores are also meant to be MESSY. FFS, GBBO, if the mallow doesn’t OOZE and the chocolate doesn’t threaten to DRIP OFF THE EDGE, you do not have a fucking s’more. You have a vaguely s’more-flavored thing.

You eat s’mores with sticky hands around a campfire. This is not haute cuisine we’re talking about here. You don’t use a fucking SPOON. The only utensil that gets used is the stick you spear the marshmallow in when you soften it over the fire.

Because s'mores are an experience. Everyone here has eaten s'mores - and upon learning that someone hasn't, it is an immediate sign for someone to run out to the store for ingredients while everyone else figures out how to get an open flame going (I've had s'mores cooked over candles, if necessary). Rich or poor, young or old - everyone eats s'mores and loves them and loves to share them (I've had vegan s'mores! They didn't taste great, especially for the price, but that didn't even matter - the point was sharing). They are the universal experience of warmth and love and joy - food made and shared for the sheer joy of sharing and eating food.

(Particularly if you are, for instance, caring for small children, or are a small child, or you’re at a sleepover, or you had an abrupt S’more craving brought on by the number of rants about incorrect s’mores you’ve read this week. But seriously, sometimes you do not want to deal with trying to wrangle fire and/or wrangle small humans around fire, and that’s okay.)

ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

ᕦ( ᐕ )ᕡᕦ( ᐕ )ᕡᕦ( ᐕ )ᕡᕦ( ᐕ )ᕡᕦ( ᐕ )ᕡ

ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Your position was just referred to as employment. Independent contractors do not have employers; they do not have employment. Congrats, your contact at this company just provided evidence that you were illegally missclassified.

This contact is claiming that you have set hours you’re obligated to fulfill. Unless a work task can only be done at a set time for practical reasons (i.e. you’re an audio freelancer paid to support a live event that occurs at a particular time and requires a certain amount of pre-show setup), a company cannot set an independent contractor’s work hours. This is further evidence that you were missclassified.

The whole exchange establishes that the company is interpreting an employer-employee relationship rather than expecting a service. Discipline and potential for firing (you cannot fire an independent contractor; no longer purchasing their service is not equivalent) establish that this person views themselves as a manager. Independent contractors cannot have managers.

This one text exchange could:

Get you back pay for the full duration you’ve worked there, to bring you up to the compensation that an employee would have gotten

Get you back compensation for lost benefits that an employee would have gotten

Get you back pay for the additional self-employment taxes the company should have covered

Get the company to pay back taxes to the government

Get the company to hire everyone who performed a similar role, or face further penalties and fines

A win would encourage the rest of their missclassified workers to sue for the same, or give them leverage to demand a better deal

You can also file a form with the IRS to force the company to correct your classification (assuming you meet the criteria), without necessarily having to sue:

Keep in mind that this is just federal. Most states also prohibit missclassification as an independent contractor; and even if states have more lenient rules, companies still have to comply with this federal law. The rules have largely been bipartisan and existed for decades, so they’re common.

States also have an interest in having regulations about missclassification: it’s a significant loss of tax revenue. Your self employment tax does not fully equal what a company would have paid for you in payroll taxes.

Christian Kane (“Elias Dispensator”), a former soldier and mercenary,

Aldis Hodge (“Alexander Hodus”), an alchemist and engineer,

Gina Bellman (“Sophia Deverus”), a smooth-speaker rumored to be a noblewoman, and