Google Bard recently gained the ability to watch YouTube videos and then answer questions about the video. I asked it to watch a video from a maker who doesn’t share the recipes directly in the description (though he links to it), Joshua Wiseman, specifically the Popeyes Chicken Sandwich But Better video. I then asked Bard to give the recipe, which it did, ingredients and steps! I double checked it and it was perfect, including the optional mushroom powder.

I then dropped in a url of a recipe with the ingredients in volume and asked it to covert it into grams, and finally gave it simply text of a recipe and asked it to do the same thing. It did both okay, with errors coming from the websites it crawled for the conversions.

Insane and revolutionary, especially the video transcription. Try it for yourself and let me know your experience.

Strange New Worlds has been my favorite Trek since Next Generation, and if the quality continues, could easily be my favorite Trek ever. But with the e.p. wishing for more episodes per season, there’s a danger of diluting the show by adding weak episodes that would have never made it in a 10 episode season.

One of the things I’ve long admired with BBC shows is their normally low-episode seasons, which kept out a lot of filler that normally made it in to the broadcast shows from the states. But streaming (and before that, cable) changed things. Finally US based shows were able to create much lower episode seasons, allowing the creators to tell more of the story they wanted to tell, without stretching things out (too much), or being forced to add stories they weren’t thrilled with in order to fill the season. (Though, even with shorter runs, shows are still doing this. Picard season 2, for example, could have used some trimming. So, yeah, show runners are still being forced to fill seasons where X number of episodes were ordered before the story was fleshed out. Maybe it just seems more evident in serialized shows.)

I can’t help but think a longer season of SNW would be a “more is less” scenario. I’d much rather see Paramount create another Trek show that’s mainly episodic, that’s been shown the same attention to quality that SNW has received.

Besides not being aesthetically pleasing, what's the downside of strictly using countertop induction cooktops, both commercial and household varieties, as my burners? If I go for the individual cooktops, I could easily replace them individually if they break or if technology or features improve, plus I can put them away for when I need more countertop space. I do use my current built in cooktop as "counter space" during gatherings, but I'm always leery of doing this for safety reasons.

Edit: There's a wonderful community being built here. Thank you all for you responses and for the great thinking points. While I'm not entirely sure of which direction I'll go as far as countertop vs built-in, I'm definitely sure I'll be using induction.