site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   2177 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 26, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A little over a year ago I posted about ChatGPT's voice mode, which was, at the time, not much more than text-to-speech grafted onto the chat interface. A few weeks later I posted about a startup doing some impressive language processing, but its capabilities were limited to a 5-minute demo call and some snippets they were showcasing on their website. A few weeks ago I found out that Gemini rolled out a voice mode, which leans on the power of the Gemini LLM combined with a very decent voice synthesis model. At time of writing it is freely available in the Gemini app.

I haven't done much more than a few minute-long conversations but I foresee myself using it more in the future. Would be an excellent companion for long road trips. The only things holding me back are the privacy implications, as Google is now going to have a pretty decent collection of my recent voice data. I asked it how it does voice synthesis/transcription, and it sounds like they do all the processing off-device (i.e. they take your microphone audio, analyze/transcribe it in the cloud, and generate an audio response back) rather than using on-device text-to-speech.

You guys should try it out and report back.

Gemini's voice chat has been out for a while (a few months at least) and I will use it occasionally. The other day I drove to a random historic town and didn't feel like reading so I just pulled it up to ask it about the town I was in and specific things I'm interested in (asking about the architecture and for unusual facts and so on.) It did an ok job but was a bit repetitive and didn't have a super deep understanding of the town. I wanted to keep talking to it but I got back into my car and when it went to the car's speakers, it would begin to talk and then apparently hear itself and immediately stop talking, and then just loop that over and over. I hope they fix that soon.

When they first came out with it I would use it to practice German and then Spanish and then Japanese all in the same conversation so that was fun. It was pretty good at telling me mistakes I made in a constructive way.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats