San Francisco
Halal Guys' various franchised locations are pretty decent, although they lack the excitement of the original in New York. Caught up with Ants for dinner at Hamburguesa Bar for dinner, a decidedly vintage-themed bar that hit it out of the park for vibes, did a slightly unique (and still tasty) take on a caesar salad, so-so poutine (the duck fat fries might have been tastier on their own), and a solid if not terribly memorable smashburger. Definitely get the double patty, as a single 3.5 ounce patty is kind of skimpy.
Plunged into American Association of Geographers' Annual Meeting the next day. The age of AI and LLMs is something most of the world is still trying to get a handle on, and both Geo AI and its sub-set, spatial AI, are very much feeling exploratory in terms of ultimate abilities. Several promising talks never got close to their actual promise, which is fair enough, especially considering how rapidly things are evolving.
Caught up with Dr. Bauch for lunch at Lapisara Eatery. Thai-American fusion, more American than Thai, was overally pretty ordinary. Tom Yum burrito was... fine? And service was good, as was the buratta. While I get them as a solid experience, I don't get why they are quite so popular. More sessions at AAG in the afternoon, including one of the few good summaries of the currently available foundation models, along with a fairly well explained take on spatial and temporal encoding. Current AI vs. physics models are still pretty comparable, so it sounds like still plenty of room for improvement.
Caught up with the Lai-Lu family over very good margherita pizzas at Del Popolo for dinner. A large concrete pizza oven is the center piece of the restaurant, while the back patio is surprisingly extensive-- and quite comfortable on such a warm evening. A second buratta salad meant today was a very cheesy (and delicious) day, the roast cauliflower was ridiculously good, the broccolini was only a little behind. Wrapped up the day with some solid drinks at HeyTea, including their current specials, king jasmine guava and also a crisp grape bloom. Thought we beat the crowd, but no, still had a 20 or 30 minute wait.