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Serious questions and musings

What makes me laugh is that out of me and my best mate, when we were younger, I had the hair while he had a buzz cut. Fast forward a quarter century, and I'm a cueball, while he looks like Gandalf. 🤣

EDIT: I'm very jealous that the grey patch on his magnificent beard is perfectly central.
 
I'll own up to that. In the late 90's/early 2000's, I had long curtains (undercut in the 90's), down to my cheeks. I used to straighten them and they were bleached bright yellow. T'was stylish at the time.

Luckily, despite such hair abuse, I've got a full head of hair coming up for 42.
 
Just.......

I'm blessed with having stupidly straight hair and a large head. No hair style would suit. Plus the only barber in village was always shaking from the alcohol consumed the night before. Short back and sides and a fuck up on top was all he could really do.

Didn't stop me trying. For ages I tried to get it like Noel Gallagher or Gaz from Supergrass Ended up once paying £20 at a hair studio In Leeds because I wanted to look like Paul Weller In the Going underground video. (I had a mod phase.) Which went well, till I woke up the next day and hadn't a clue how to get it back like that.
 
Here's one for you.

Ive been trying to remember a TV show from the late 90s early 00s. Not even sure if it was a series. But for the life of me I can't remember the name. I think it was early 00s as it would be coat tailing the hype of 9/11.

The programme was basically a government cobra meeting. Sat at large desk in front of a huge TV screen. I remember a terrorist episode and a weather emergency in London. Usual thing, 4 random folk and actors over hamming their roles as government advisors.

Can anyone remember the name of this programme?.
 
Slugjc said:
Here's one for you.

Ive been trying to remember a TV show from the late 90s early 00s. Not even sure if it was a series. But for the life of me I can't remember the name. I think it was early 00s as it would be coat tailing the hype of 9/11.

The programme was basically a government cobra meeting. Sat at large desk in front of a huge TV screen. I remember a terrorist episode and a weather emergency in London. Usual thing, 4 random folk and actors over hamming their roles as government advisors.

Can anyone remember the name of this programme?.
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Sounds like Crisis Command – Could You Run the Country? (BBC 2004)
 
Thameslink Rail said:
Sounds like Crisis Command – Could You Run the Country? (BBC 2004)
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Yup. I worked on that!
We shot it in real time over about four hours without a single pause. Very knackering to say the least. I even managed to snag an un-edited copy of the raw footage on a VHS. Dunno if I still have it though. But it was fascinating to see just how dumb these "look how rich I am" banker types really are when confronted with actual choices to make.
Many thousands of Londoners died because they spend too long arguing over a simple "trolly problem"... multiple times in a row! :p
 
DiogoJ42 said:
Yup. I worked on that!
We shot it in real time over about four hours without a single pause. Very knackering to say the least. I even managed to snag an un-edited copy of the raw footage on a VHS. Dunno if I still have it though. But it was fascinating to see just how dumb these "look how rich I am" banker types really are when confronted with actual choices to make.
Many thousands of Londoners died because they spend too long arguing over a simple "trolly problem"... multiple times in a row! :p
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I love the small world crossovers on here!
 
For years I thought I made this programme up.

After 9/11 I remember a load of programming being made about "isn't being in government really, really hard."

Enjoyed watching these when they first came on. The episode where it rained a lot sticks out. At some point they had a colossal rollicking, the general tone of rollicking was "well done retards, you've flooded the London underground."
 
The terrorist attack one also featured that. A train had been bombed while under the Thames, south of Embankment.* The tunnel was in danger of collapse. They had the choice to close the floodgates (Which FYI, have not been servicable since the end of the cold war), but dithered on it.
I think it ended with a hijacked plane crashing in to "Big Ben" because they didn't want to shoot it down.

Like I said, it was essentially one "trolly problem" after another: Sacrifice a couple of hundred people to save many thousands. It's a no-brainer. But no one wanted to be "that guy".

* This was a couple of years before the co-ordinated tube bombings.
 
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I watched the plague epidemic episode last night. One bloke clearly thought "send the army in, shoot if needs be. It's only scousers affected."

What it did was remind me of just how slow our government reacted to COVID.
 
If people don’t mind helping me, I have a mild ethical dilemma I’d like to pose to you all this evening.

This afternoon, I’ve been concocting an up-to-date CV for applications to graduate schemes and graduate jobs following the end of my MSc degree next year. With me being a new graduate, I lack professional experience, so I largely centred it around the skills I have rather than experience.

After Googling some best practices for CV writing, I decided to list a smaller number of skills, but do a little blurb next to each one highlighting a real-world example (or examples, if applicable) of where I’ve exhibited the skill effectively. I asked my dad to read it, and he said that I was writing too much for each blurb and it needed to be more concise.

This came as no surprise to me; as most of you know, I am not a naturally concise writer! But to make these blurbs more concise while keeping the same information, I decided to do something I’ve never really done before on the recommendation of a lecturer at university… I decided to use ChatGPT.

I’ve traditionally steered clear of ChatGPT, as I always felt like I’d be selling my soul if I used it for professional purposes, but since starting my MSc at Cardiff, multiple lecturers there have surprisingly sung its praises and said that “it will be your new best friend” or words to that effect. One lecturer recommended that we use it to make our writing more concise, so I decided to give ChatGPT the prompt “Make this more concise for me” followed by the blurb I wanted to make more concise. I have to say, I was very impressed by what it churned out; it maintained all the information, but relayed it in far fewer words and generally maintained fine English!

However, I must admit that part of me felt slightly immoral doing it given how much I’ve been warned off ChatGPT in the past. To part of me, it almost felt like plagiarism, or like I was being disingenuous doing it. With this in mind, I’d be interested to know; do you think it’s OK for me to use ChatGPT to make parts of my CV more concise, or does it sound ethically dodgy?

For clarity, I was not asking ChatGPT to write things for me. I was writing things myself and coming up with the information myself, and all of it was true. I was simply asking it to make the writing more concise for me, and I did also check it afterwards and correct a few mistakes and anachronisms (such as American English, a minor spelling mistake, or a bit where it misinterpreted my writing and said something that wasn’t true).

I should also clarify that I have not yet sent this CV to anyone.
 
Matt N said:
If people don’t mind helping me, I have a mild ethical dilemma I’d like to pose to you all this evening.

This afternoon, I’ve been concocting an up-to-date CV for applications to graduate schemes and graduate jobs following the end of my MSc degree next year. With me being a new graduate, I lack professional experience, so I largely centred it around the skills I have rather than experience.

After Googling some best practices for CV writing, I decided to list a smaller number of skills, but do a little blurb next to each one highlighting a real-world example (or examples, if applicable) of where I’ve exhibited the skill effectively. I asked my dad to read it, and he said that I was writing too much for each blurb and it needed to be more concise.

This came as no surprise to me; as most of you know, I am not a naturally concise writer! But to make these blurbs more concise while keeping the same information, I decided to do something I’ve never really done before on the recommendation of a lecturer at university… I decided to use ChatGPT.

I’ve traditionally steered clear of ChatGPT, as I always felt like I’d be selling my soul if I used it for professional purposes, but since starting my MSc at Cardiff, multiple lecturers there have surprisingly sung its praises and said that “it will be your new best friend” or words to that effect. One lecturer recommended that we use it to make our writing more concise, so I decided to give ChatGPT the prompt “Make this more concise for me” followed by the blurb I wanted to make more concise. I have to say, I was very impressed by what it churned out; it maintained all the information, but relayed it in far fewer words and generally maintained fine English!

However, I must admit that part of me felt slightly immoral doing it given how much I’ve been warned off ChatGPT in the past. To part of me, it almost felt like plagiarism, or like I was being disingenuous doing it. With this in mind, I’d be interested to know; do you think it’s OK for me to use ChatGPT to make parts of my CV more concise, or does it sound ethically dodgy?

For clarity, I was not asking ChatGPT to write things for me. I was writing things myself and coming up with the information myself, and all of it was true. I was simply asking it to make the writing more concise for me, and I did also check it afterwards and correct a few mistakes and anachronisms (such as American English, a minor spelling mistake, or a bit where it misinterpreted my writing and said something that wasn’t true).

I should also clarify that I have not yet sent this CV to anyone.
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This is a perfectly valid use of generative AI, and the sort of use that you and I have discussed before. If you use it as a tool you're fine. If you use it to literally do all of the work for you, that's when it becomes ethically tricky.

Use AI to help you analyse data, to make things more concise, to be a research assistant, to be a writing partner, to be a proof reader, to assist you in everything that you need. That's no different from having a human assistant. Don't be a Thomas Edison, however, and put your name on everything that your assistants, or employees, have created for you.

The only thing I would personally knock you on is your use of ChatGPT over Gemini, but that's a different conversation entirely! Although, if you do want a 3 month trial of Gemini Advanced, hit me up.
 
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OK Matt.
Man is one of the few species on earth that actually uses tools.
That made us develop and grow as a single species, and slowly come to dominate the planet.
Tools are positive in the right hands.
AI is simply another tool, so use it.
Especially so if academic guidance has been encouraging the use.
 
I'm dyslexic, so struggle to write anything like a c.v for myself. Anything official like this, or a cover letter I needed a committee. As my wife has explained to me when she went through job applications. People are judged on your they write.

Even posts on here are a stretch at times. I simply cannot get down what's in my head. I can never find the right words and grammatically I get tied up in a million knotts. When i have ventured into other areas of this forum, such a thirteen being a disappointment, I get frustrated when people don't understand what I'm saying because I simple can't get my view across.

So, chatgpt. I won't lie. I have used it. It can guide you down the correct path. Especially during c.v writing. There is no harm in using it, so long as you don't copy and paste the whole thing. for me, it give me access to words and phrase I wouldn't know. Especially, as I've had to recently, I've needed to write quiet formal emails at work. (One being my notice.)

The bad side of AI will always get highlighted. As a tool to help people, it's incredible. I know someone who used it to help him build a court case against a utility company and he won. It has it's uses.
 
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