[simonw]

> PS: have you physically seen a pelican in real life? (not a joke)

We have several thousand living 15 minutes walk from our house. I recently started adding my wildlife photography (from iNaturalist) to my blog, so I'm posting several new pelican photos a week at the moment: https://simonwillison.net/search/?q=pelican&type=beat%3Asigh...

[exhaze]

Simon - thank you for not dismissing it (and surviving the text that came before the question).

I asked because I genuinely feel that the % of people working on some of the most important technology these days - things such as these 'strangely shaped tools' (to borrow from nearcyan) - large language models - the younger generation (folks in their early/mid 20s) - it is not unlikely that they have not physically seen the meatspace version of whatever digital correspondence of it that is being packed into latent space.

After all, why waste time going to the SF or Oakland zoo? One can just check Simon's latest pelican blog post and skip the zoo trip - the harnesses are waiting.