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Wasn't seeing it here on reddthat yet until I tried loading it manually, so I'm guessing the bot that automatically subscribes to new communities failed.

Not an exhaustive list, but here's some of what I usually have on hand (including fridge/freezer items that keep a long time):

• Pasta (various kinds but usually at least spaghetti and shells)
• Canned beans (I usually have black beans and chickpeas + sometimes others)
• Canned tomatoes
• Chicken stock (either in tetrapaks, cubes, paste or some other shelf-stable version) -- sometimes other kinds of stock (e.g. vegetable stock too) but usually at least chicken stock
• Salt, Pepper, MSG + a good selection of various dried herbs/spices/seasonings (e.g. basil, oregano, cumin, cayenne, garlic powder, etc.)
• Soy sauce
• Vinegar
• Olive oil
• Neutral vegetable oil
• Butter
• Canned fish (at least tuna and/or sardines)
• Cheeses (I usually have Parmesan, pepper jack, and American cheese slices that melt easily [e.g. velveeta or kraft singles or something like that] plus sometimes cheddar or Swiss)
• Peanut butter
• Flour
• Baking soda
• Yeast
• Chocolate
• Cocoa powder
• Sugar
• Eggs
• Milk (UHT lasts a long time)
• Salsa
• Canned or frozen green vegetables (e.g. peas, spinach, etc.)
• Rice
• Bread (frozen for storage)
• Dried lentils
• Dried fruit
• Cornstarch
• Ground meat (frozen)
• Tea
• Ketchup
• Mustard
• Mayonnaise

(may add more to this as I think of things)

I tried throwing this image at qwen3.6 locally with the prompt "What is in this image?" and it spat out:

Based on the visual evidence, this is a micrograph (a photograph taken through a microscope) of bacteria.

Here is a breakdown of what you are seeing:

• Organism Type: These are bacteria. You can tell by their small size relative to the scale bar in the bottom right corner (which represents 10 micrometers).
• Stain: They are stained purple/blue, which indicates they are Gram-positive bacteria. In a Gram stain, Gram-positive bacteria retain the crystal violet dye and appear purple.
• Shape: The individual bacterial cells are spherical or round, which classifies them as cocci (singular: coccus).
• Arrangement: The most distinct feature is that the cocci are arranged in chains.

Conclusion: This image shows Gram-positive cocci in chains, which is the characteristic appearance of bacteria from the genus Streptococcus (or possibly Enterococcus). Common examples include Streptococcus pyogenes (which causes strep throat).

So you might be able to get further than you expect. You might try collecting some of your own sample data for things you understand (like particular bacteria you're interested in) and providing those images along with a prompt that includes labels for your sample imagery. (Like "Image 1 is an example of (...whatever..). Image 2 is an example of (...something else...). Which (if any) of these are in Image 3?")

I don't know how well it would work, but worth a try.

The dream, for me, is to get it to understand the protein structure files and DNA sequence files

Even then, much of what I'd want help with looking at proteins is how to write analyses of points in 3D space

I tried throwing this image at qwen3.6 as well, and it spits this out (but takes a REALLY long time to do it on my local hardware):

Based on the visual evidence, this image is a 3D molecular visualization of a protein structure, likely created using software such as PyMOL, UCSF Chimera, or VESTA.

Here is a breakdown of the specific components visible in the image:

1. The Protein (Blue Ribbon):

   • The large, coiling blue structure is the protein backbone.
   • It is rendered as a "ribbon" or "cartoon" diagram, which is a standard way to visualize the secondary structure of proteins.
   • The coiled sections represent alpha-helices, which make up the majority of this protein's structure. This "helix bundle" fold is characteristic of proteins in the globin family, such as myoglobin or hemoglobin, which are responsible for oxygen transport and storage.

2. The Central Ligand/Co-factor (Middle Right):

   • Nestled within the protein fold is a complex molecule shown in a "stick" and "sphere" representation.
   • The Flat Ring: You can see a flat, ring-like structure with blue sticks (representing nitrogen atoms). This is characteristic of a porphyrin ring.
   • The Red Sphere: There is a large red sphere in the center of the ring. In this context, this almost certainly represents an Iron (Fe) atom.
   • Conclusion: This complex is a heme group (or heme prosthetic group). Heme is the molecule responsible for binding oxygen in hemoglobin and myoglobin, or for electron transfer in cytochromes. The long chains extending from the ring are likely the side chains of the heme molecule (propionate groups) or a bound drug/inhibitor interacting with the iron.

3. The Ion (Bottom Right):

   • There is a small molecule floating near the bottom right of the protein.
   • It has a yellow center with four red arms arranged in a cross/tetrahedral shape.
   • In chemical coloring (CPK coloring), yellow represents Sulfur and red represents Oxygen. This indicates a Sulfate ion ($SO_4^{2-}$). Sulfate ions are common in crystal structures of proteins and are often used to stabilize the structure or mimic phosphate groups.

Summary: You are looking at a structural biology model of a protein (likely a globin like myoglobin) containing a heme cofactor (the molecule with the iron) and a sulfate ion. This type of image is used by scientists to understand how the protein works at the atomic level.

You might be able to it to do something useful with analysis of protein renderings, but I think you'll need some creativity with the prompts to stop it from overthinking things... It was able to recognize this as myoglobin in the "thinking" stage quickly enough, but then kept second guessing itself about various aspects for a long time. I also tried throwing it at gemma4 but it didn't really give me much besides recognizing it as some sort of protein structure.

hook it up to some lab robotics and automate experiments

You might find this project and associated HN post interesting -- it's basically someone doing that with electronics analysis instead of biology, IIUC. No idea how well it works, but interesting to look at and think about.

Maybe there's a coding community on lemmy that's a decent place to talk shop on how to build these scripts up and what local models are good at what?

There's !localllama@sh.itjust.works and probably some communities on lemmy.dbzer0.com as well -- they're not super-active though (at least from what's made it to my attention browsing by all).

Hmm. Maybe I'd make chilled barley tea with the toasted barley, and a simple chickpea salad with slices of bell pepper to accompany it -- or, alternatively, hummus with the bellpepper to dip in it. Would be good for hot weather.

If the weather's cold, maybe lentil and barley soup with the bellpepper added in as an extra ingredient along with any other veggies I have on hand that seem like they'd be good in a soup. (Edit: Maybe experiment with the Cajun "Holy Trinity" -- celery, bell pepper, onion -- as the base? I haven't tried that for lentil barley soup before, but might be interesting.)

non-text based problems

I don't know enough about the specifics of what you're doing to really give detailed suggestions, but I have been surprised by models like qwen3.5/3.6 giving reasonable results to questions about images -- like answering questions based on comparing a few images. For example:

• Which of these images were taken from the same place?
• Which of these images were taken in the AM and which in the PM?
• Is the third image more like the first or the second? Answer "1" or "2" only indicating which of the first two images it is most similar to.
• What sort of tags would you attach to these images? Provide a list of tags as JSON as the only response.

Those prompts actually worked for imagery from camera systems I have to deal with for my job -- which, frankly, shocked me. The AM/PM one in particular read timestamps in the image (i.e. did OCR automatically) and converted from a 24 hour clock to answer the question. I've implemented that in scripts with older computer vision tools (like tesseract) that needed a lot of hand holding; the fact that current models can just do it is sort of mind blowing to me...

The economy collapses and you get a revolution, mass emigration, and/or other major societal upheavals -- probably as soon as a lot of people start going hungry...

Broccoli cheddar soup, using the flour to make a roux + a cup of milk mixed with chicken broth. Ideally with some crackers to crumble on top... Probably would take me 20 minutes or so to make. Not sure on cost exactly -- maybe ballpark of $3 or so? I have everything on hand to make that right now, actually, except the crackers. (I suppose I could make crackers with the flour, but that's more trouble than I'd normally want to go to cooking just for myself.)

My limited understanding of "agentic AI" is that it's LLMs prompted by a script repeatedly in a loop. e.g. You give it an initial prompt, the LLM spits out a response indicating what it thinks it should do next (like run a program) and the script looks at the output of the LLM, does what is asked if it can, then feeds the results back in as the next prompt (or tells the LLM that it can't/won't do that if so programmed, I assume), until the LLM indicates to the script in one of its responses that the complex task is done -- or indefinitely if the prompt is the sort that will never terminate.

You can limit what the overall system is capable of by careful design of the control script -- just using LLMs to bridge the gaps for tasks that are hard/impossible to program traditionally. For controlling a robot, I'd guess that you'd want to have actions for things like taking a picture with a camera (or reading other sensors) that the LLM can analyze, repositioning arms, controlling motors, etc?

If I knew how to set up a robotic arm that could safely turn the pages of a traditional book, then combining it with a camera or flatbed scanner, a couple different vision models + traditional OCR (to sanity check each other), and wiring the whole thing up with a custom script to make really high-quality ebooks out of the books I own that no one has bothered to digitize would be neat... Maybe some day.

You might get more informed responses on db0 or another site; most of Lemmy is straight up AI-hostile. I have mixed feelings on it personally -- I really don't like the AI companies DDOSing the internet for profit while driving up the cost of electronics (etc), but writing off local AI tech entirely also seems like throwing out the baby with the bathwater to me...

Tue 07 Apr 2026 11:25:59 AM EDT

There is a good chance that lemmy.sdf.org will return after much needed disk expansion. We ran out of space. Currently everything is preserved, we just need more disks in order to bring the site back online. Thank you for your patience.

https://lemmy.sdf.org/

Hmm. Yes. A community dedicated to Unix and Surrealism. That'd be quite a thing!

On a completely unrelated topic, it seems like the SDF lemmy needs more disks... 😏️

Huh. I hadn't heard of that before. I do know that keeping it in the fridge overnight changes the texture though (which can make it better for some dishes like fried rice and worse for others). Thanks for the tip!