I pulled in late and tired to a random motel 6 in Illinois. Went in to the office with my wife and three small children, talked to the attendant through thick bulletproof glass to get a room. Attendant was very weirdly hesitant.

Went to the room, found the floor was linoleum tiles that were all peeling up at the edges, doors, doorframes, beds all in bad condition, some seriously weird and disturbing smell we didn’t recognize.

Came back down to the office and asked for our money back, which is the single solitary time I’ve ever done that at a hotel. The attendant seemed relieved and was very happy to return the money.

Our kids were really little but they’ve always remembered that and they call it the “nope-tel”

One of the things that absolutely sucks donkey balls about being a new parent is that half your friends just totally ghost you and done want to deal with the complications of your kids, which it sounds like your friend is dealing with.

Definitely hanging out in a coffee shop with a bored toddler is not a recipe for a good time, which I guess your friend has not discovered hard enough yet. The other person suggesting hanging out at a park instead is on to something. Or just anywhere else where the kid has something to do besides sit down and shut up, which generally they won’t.

*Thou hast

Maybe the people doing this are much more optimistic about how useful LLMs are for this than I am

Yes. That is the problem being reported in this article. There are many many people who have complete and unblemished optimism about how useful LLMs are, to the point where they don’t understand it’s optimism and don’t understand why other people won’t take them seriously.

Some of them are professionals in related fields

The thing about the more affluent areas is they generally don’t shoot people there very much.

My six-year-old and my eight-year-old started fighting and chasing each other around on a skinny trail at the top of the Grand Canyon with very long drop-offs and no fences to either side.

They didn’t die, then, but each time I remember it again they are at risk of being murdered