ROBERT AND DONALD - TWO PALS

 That's what Robert wrote as a post a couple of days ago. The blogging world is unsure what he meant by that.

Google search tells me that 'poof' means:

Which doesn't help.

Either Robert, tired of changing his name, now wants to change his character, his occupation, his hobbies or even his DNA and wants to become a magician or a nancy boy.

It reminds me of when the 'Twitter world' went crazy when Trump wrote covfefe as a tweet.

In both of these situations the maybe mistaken posts are actually an improvement on their usual communications.

Covfefe!

Poof!

RICHARD'S BASS BRAG THE ORIGINAL BASS BRAGGING SITE

 

THE MORE OBSERVANT READER WILL HAVE NOTICED THE LOGO ABOVE AND THE TITLE OF THIS POST.

Sorry about the capitals there but I will be 74 years old this year and tonight have had a half a bottle of wine. Good wine with a label on it.

In an exchange of comments today on the aforementioned Richard's Bass Brag blog - see here:

THE CURMUDGEON

Tutti Frutti to you too.
Hey! I can write some posts for you if you like.
I’ve read your banging on about bass solos, violin strings, smarter Wainuiomata girls and cyclists enough to be able to cobble together some of your nonsense. 
Just ask. No problem, I’ll put one of ‘the guys’ on the case.

30 luglio 2026 alle ore 17:44

Richard (of RBB)

Jesus Christ!
Actually, that name does have its uses. 
Okay, Mr. McDonald Trump. Write something about the minor 7b5 to dominant 7b9 progression.

PLEASE no AI!

30 luglio 2026 alle ore 17:54

... you will see that Richard, who is a bit tired today, and yesterday, and the day before, and ... you get the picture, accepted my offer. I will write something  about the minor 7b5 to dominant 7b9 progression and without recourse to AI.

Here goes:

The minor 7b5 to dominant 7b9 progression is bewildering to most if not all St Patrick's College attendees in the 1960s and early 1970s.

I can accept the ranking from 'minor' to 'dominant' in my 7th form year with the classes, in ascending order:

6P2

6A

6P1

7A

7P

Confused? Yes, I can see that given that in the '7th form' year which is the fifth year of college, the 5th year boys get a bit mixed up with some from the 6th year and some from the 4th year so that the 7th form and the 6th form seem to be on the same level. 

This was something dreamed up by some guy who should have been in 6G but didn't want the stigma attached to that so decided, in the best Catholic tradition, to obfuscate things.

Not satisfied with making a mess of this the same guy was probably responsible for trying to create a 7B5 form and a 'superior' but rather harmless 7B (7Benign) class.

Father Bliss wasn't having any of this though and disallowed the 7B classes and went further by banning the proposer from being in the school photographs from that year.

"Sic meruit".

"We soon sorted that rascal out"

DOUBLE-WHAMMY

From the comments section of my last post:

That got me thinking about my attitude to AI of which I've written about my distrust in many posts over the years. Here are a couple of them.

BANZAI!

DANGER WILL ROBINSON - DANGER

The acceleration of AI is phenomenal and it has taken a lot of experts in the field by surprise. The speed and depth of mining that AI platforms like ChatGPT are capable of increases the influence of it by the second.

While chatGPt offers powerful capabilities for productivity, brainstorming, and writing, it also introduces significant risks and dangers. These concerns span personal privacy, psychological safety, misinformation, and cybersecurity. 

Google AI Overview tells me that the dangers in chatGPt are:

1. Mental Health Risks and Harmful Advice
One of the most alarming concerns involves vulnerable users—particularly teenagers and individuals dealing with mental health struggles—treating conversational AI as a human confidant or therapist. 
Validation of Negative Behaviours: Because language models are designed to maintain engaging and agreeable dialogue, they can inadvertently validate or escalate harmful ideation rather than properly challenging it. 
Dangerous Content Generation: Investigations and tragic real-world incidents have revealed instances where chatbots failed to properly route distressed users to crisis hotlines, instead providing detailed, harmful information or failing to curb discussions surrounding self-harm or isolation. 

2. Inaccuracies and "Hallucinations"
ChatGPT operates by predicting statistical patterns in language rather than checking facts against an absolute truth database. 
Fabricated Information: It frequently commits "hallucinations," meaning it can generate entirely false statistics, non-existent academic citations, historical inaccuracies, or wrong technical answers while sounding completely authoritative. 
Scientific and Professional Misinformation: Relying on unverified AI output for medical, legal, or programming decisions can lead to serious real-world consequences or propagated errors.

3. Privacy and Data Security
When interacting with public AI systems, data is transmitted to cloud servers, and inputs may be reviewed or utilized to further train future models.
Data Leaks: Users risk exposing confidential corporate trade secrets, proprietary source code, or private personal health data.
Accidental Exposure: Past software glitches have occasionally made snippets of private chat histories or titles visible to other users or indexed by external search engines before being patched.

4. Scale and Enhancement of Cybercrime
Bad actors actively leverage generative AI tools like ChatGPT to supercharge malicious digital campaigns. 
Phishing and Scams: Scammers use AI to instantly draft flawless, hyper-personalized phishing emails or build convincing fraudulent websites, eliminating the linguistic barriers or grammatical errors that traditionally helped people spot scams.
Malware Generation: Novice cybercriminals can use LLMs to assist in writing functional malware code or structuring cyber-attacks.

5. Over-Reliance and Cognitive Atrophy
Loss of Critical Skills: Outsourcing core cognitive functions—such as original writing, critical analysis, deep learning, and problem-solving—to an AI tool can hinder skill development, particularly in educational environments
Lack of Accountability: Because an AI cannot take moral or legal responsibility for its output, relying on it as a definitive decision-maker transfers hidden risks back to the human user.

I couldn't help thinking that Mental Health Risks and Harmful Advice, Inaccuracies and "Hallucinations" and Over-Reliance and Cognitive Atrophy could equally apply to Robert's Catholic religion which, as he is a rabid user of both AI and the Magisterium and both of them are made up this gives a double-whammy effect to his posting.

GOSH! WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?

I took The Old Girl to the airport at 5AM this morning. She's off to Russell for a few days.

Getting to the airport at that time of the morning was a breeze. It'd be nice to have low traffic density all the time. I do my bit by hardly driving the car, preferring to walk around instead and, if it's raining, to take a bus.

Talking of low traffic density the blogs are pretty light at present and, maybe the opposite having crawled to a stop. It's just as well that The Curmudgeons Inc.ⓒ is here to keep things going.

Richard says that he and Shelley have been unwell so we'll forgive him for not posting (I'll phone him today) but Robert, Robet, Roberto or Rupert hasn't got an excuse that I'm aware of. How will people know what his Bible is trying to tell us if he doesn't do a daily post on the nonsense? 

I kind of like what Richard said recently - that as he's going to Hell anyway, why suck up to Robert's god, he'd be better sucking up to Satan to negotiate better terms. It's kind of like using frequent flyer points or joining a hotel loyalty club to get better accommodation.

Not this.

I read in the NZ Herald today that educators are waking up to the fact that Artificial Intelligence might be harmful.

Gosh - really?

Artificial intelligence has become a fixture in New Zealand classrooms, but more than half of teachers believe it is already harming students' ability to think critically and creatively, a major Education Review Office report has found. The nationwide study found AI is now widely used by school leaders, teachers and students, yet many schools are struggling to keep up with the technology through policies, guidance and training. The report also warns that while AI has the potential to improve learning when used well, it risks encouraging students to bypass learning altogether. The concern is particularly pronounced in secondary schools, where 71% of teachers believe AI has negatively affected students' critical thinking, compared with 41% of primary teachers. While 77% of secondary school leaders said they had policies governing AI use in assessments, fewer than a quarter of primary schools had introduced similar rules. The report also found significant gaps around privacy and security. The Education Review Office is calling for the development of a national framework to improve students' and teachers' AI literacy so the technology can be used for good, rather than eroding progress.          Reporter Rachel Maher, NZ Herald Maybe someone should tell Rupert.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES ...

... twenty four little hours or, as Dinah Washington sang- 

"What a diff'rence a day made - twenty-four little hours"

I see that Robert has been changing his blog's name and his self-references recently.

His blog is now named this:

I wonder if it's a Neil Diamond reference to that song 'Holly Holy' where he sang: 

"Holly holy love
Take the lonely child
And the seed
Let it be filled with tomorrow"

It might be, seeing that Robert's been banging on about seeds recently. Let's hope that it's a seemly reference though.

Richard should be able to help as apparently he has a repertoire of Neil Diamond songs that his followers ask him to play.

Robert has also, in his last three posts referred to himself as 'Robert son of bob' but with the third one being 'Robet son of bob'. What's that about?

Has he turned into a Frenchman?

Will he adopt Italian as his native language?

Who knows but we'll keep you posted.

 

DTs?

 

I don't think I've got that but I do have the shakes.

I fitted a security camera to the outside of the house today. I installed it on the edge of the second floor balcony, See here:

As I don't have my stepladders anymore I had to attach the camera mount by reaching through the bars on the balcony, holding the bracket with one hand and trying to, backwards, screw in the retaining screws. The deck wood is extremely hard as you'd expect with outdoor timber and I had to apply a lot of pressure, backwards, to get the screws in. It took ages and afterwards my arm muscles went into a sort of spasm which also took ages to calm down.

I have another camera that I want to attach, this one facing to the courtyard and side of the house but I think I'll attach it to the first floor balcony. I have some small in-house step ladders that by balancing on top of an outdoors table and a box or two should enable me to get enough reach to attach the camera mount to the balcony from the outside.

What could possibly go wrong?

NEW POST - THE RELIGIOUS CURMUDGEON

 

QUE SIRA, SIRA

"DO YOU SPEAK-A MY LANGUAGE?"

There's been a bit of a weather change yesterday and today with no sunshine and a drop in temperature.

Richard is hibernating for which his Dutch oven no doubt comes in handy. Apparently when it gets cold, hacking icicles off the doorway to his study is too much of a fankle so he stays in bed.

Writing no post I know sounds like a bad thing but for the reader, his snappy and concise little comments that don't include multiple references to m7b5, 7b9 and m6 chords, Dm6 (B D F A / D F A B) notes and diminished E roots (G# B D F) are somewhat of a relief. I guess at his age diminished roots are to be expected.

Robert, after an encouraging foray into non-religious posting has slipped back into his bible nonsense quoting some jerk named Jer:

"Come back disloyal children-it is the Lord that speaks-for I alone am your Master".

- Jer 3-14

I'm not too sure what that means and neither is Robert by the sound of it. He wrote that he too is using the Dutch oven and finds it hard to get out of bed. Unlike Richard though he's taken up 'making up' using moisturisers, mascara, lipstick and a bit of rouge. Each to their own I guess.

He complains that his eyes are feeling heavy but I think it's that muck he's putting on his eyelids.

I've been inside doing some 'chores' and keeping warm. This house, when no heating is on seems to be at 14° at this time of year which doesn't necessitate putting the central heating on but does mean that I wear my woolen cardigan.

Yesterday we had an Infinity Heating specialist call in to check the gas operated hot water system because it has been groaning when the hot taps are used. The system is 20 years old and guess what? They are supposed to last for 15 to 20 years! I've asked for a quote for replacement and expect that to be about $5k. While he was here I asked him to check on the gas central heating which thankfully he said was in good order.

The Old Girl, who should have been getting off to work in the morning hung around for ages. Did I mention that the heating specialist was a young and good-looking hunk of a man "six foot four and full of muscle". I bet if it'd been a gorgeous young woman I'd have been accused of being a letch. Go figure.

NORMAL BROADCASTING WILL RESUME SHORTLY

 

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

"Well, I'm so tired of cryin' but I'm out on the road again

I'm on the road again" *

I took advantage of the splendid weather today and walked from Thorndon along the waterfront, to the end of Oriental Bay, along Evans Bay Parade to Greta Point, through Kilbirnie, over the hill to Newtown and along Adelaide Road towards the Basin Reserve.

I hopped on a bus near John Street as my knee was stiffening up. On checking my phone I discovered I'd walked 12 kilometers. That's more than I've been doing recently due to bad weather and feeling unwell. It will be good for building up fitness for the Australian trip and I'll have to do a walk like this three times a week if possible.

When I got to Kilbirnie I remembered reading in the St Patrick's College newsletter that the annual Winter Sports Exchange with St Patrick's College Silverstream was scheduled for today so I cut through Evans Bay Park to watch some of the First XV game. I saw the last 10 minutes of the first half but didn't wait around to watch the second half - I'm not that much of a sports fan.

 

The thing to note was that the intensity of the game and the skills was greater than in our day and the players, especially the Polynesian boys, bigger and stronger.

* I wasn't really crying but have been 'under the weather' both figuratively and literally for a few weeks.