So, this is an old silver teapot that I have had for a while. It has some unknown (to myself) markings on the bottom of the base, and I would love to know what they represent. Here are some pictures:
I also just found the marking “80” on both sides of the hinge. Here are pics…
SADF stands for La Société des Artisans Dinandiers de Fès, a prominent maker of silver-plated items, such as trays, bowls, and teapots, often featuring intricate Islamic geometric designs. These vintage items are frequently hand-marked “SADF Fabrique Au Maroc” or just “SADF”. They are collectible representatives of Fez’s artisanal metalwork tradition.
https://www.mayfairgallery.com/moroccan-silver-plate-bowl-cover-adorned-arabesques
Going back 16 years into the history of silver forum searches and resurrecting then unanswered questions by people perhaps now long gone or items long disposed of, demonstrates how AI enables what was then complex searches to be a matter of a few key strokes.
This in turn demonstrates either the replacement of fallible human searchers or our enhancement once equipped with AI capability.
In this instance the enhanced human searcher has come up with the right but a somewhat less than complete answer. So here a bit more of it.
And here is its website today telling it was founded in 1982 and continues to function today:
CRWW
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I answer questions to the best of my knowledge. I don’t look at the calendar—I’m still learning. Some people benefit, others don’t. I don’t care.
And by the way - I don’t give a s##t about artificial intelligence…
I am quite sure many people benefit from your research, Bart. But telling them you don’t care about them is probably rather poor public relations.
Also equating your bowel movements to your attention or concern about so called artificial intelligence doesn’t, if you will pardon my saying so, quite ring true.
Last year Alphabet spent the better part of $91 billion on AI. It has radically altered the effectiveness of all search engines including the ones we use.
And, and this is the annoying bit, you and I are like feudal serfs to AI. You post an answer to a question and Google’s AI picks it up and sells your research to enrich its own shareholders.
It’s a major problem for print and TV media, university researchers and even hobby websites like this one.
Because, as you know in your part of the world better than most, if you wish to dismantle democracy first you dismantle independent media and the best way to do that is to control it and the best way to do that is to take its content and give it away.
One thing I suppose comes out of this, your don’t care much about AI and AI reciprocates your views and monetarises its lack of respect for you and everybody else.
We are the modern serfs.
Full disclosure, I bought Alphabet shares on the initial offering and have ridden the wave for a quarter of a century. The only slightly more useful thing I did was much later buy shares in an on-line book seller. I did that not to make a profit but to fulfil a promise to a young man who came to a club I had an interest in on the west coast who suggested I put the entertainers there “on the web”. I never followed his advice as I really didn’t understand what he was on about. But I did tell him if he went public I would help the IPO.
CRWW
Christopher, forgive me, I got carried away. I have bad days too… I don’t trust the media, I don’t watch TV, I don’t listen to the radio. The internet seems like the last bastion of independence and freedom of thought.
Having worked in media for a decade I can assure you it doesn’t want your trust, it wants you attention. Trust is merely a tool to get it and far from the most effective.
In Canada, the radio, specifically CBC is often the only link to civilization. As I drive through the back country I can usually get the music of my choice even when sat’nav’ phones fail as they seem to above the Arctic circle.
Unfortunately the internet has never been a bastion of independence. I first used it to sell homes to naval officers in 1983. Then it was a discrete communication system developed for defence purposes and since my audience was limited to armed forces personnel it worked perfectly.
Today, to slightly misquote the Canadian media prophet Marshall McLuhan, the media is not only the message, but its users, you, me and your readers, are its fodder not its customer base.
Freedom of thought has never been the barrier in the western world. Developing a cerebral system to process and discipline thought, in other words the education system, has always been and remains the challenge and the last bastion is created not by ignoring data sources but reading multiple, often conflicting, data sources and synthesizing the bias of one to balance the bias of the next.
So much of the data you mine on silver is from secondary or even tertiary rather than primary source. We quote authors not guilds, guilds not factories and factories not artisans working there.
Exactly how unreliable this has historically been become apparent when you start updating your own copy of works by the likes of Grimwade or Jackson. I have a very old copy of Jacksons fine work and it has 322 updates in it made by me. It’s a habit I picked up in law libraries before the internet and both the legal and the silver data system rewards the practice.
CRWW
If I’m going to be media fodder, I hope it’s indigestible with diarrhea at the end.