- Fascinating piece on how cussing can make you stronger. It can apparently (though I remain skeptical) alleviate the immediate pain caused by bashing your shin on the coffee table or other immediate trauma. Forcing back dirty words reduces your ability to combat the pain and other possible threats in more complex crises.
- Could this be another term in the Drake Equation? Given how many satellites now orbit Earth (most of them comm constellations like Starllink) a single Carrington-level solar storm could cause countless chaotic collisions in near space that could create a layer of debris all around the planet. It’s called the Kessler Syndrome. Such a cloud would be risky to try and poke through, especially with manned spacecraft, and could set back space travel for a thousand years or more. (Hmmm. I smell an idea for an SF story or five.)
- Related: Estimates of half a million satellites in orbit by 2040 suggest that sunlight reflected from the satellites could reduce the quality of images taken by both ground-based and orbiting astronomical telescopes.
- Here’s a passel of safety tips I expect never to need again.
- I recently discovered an interesting piece of music by Josef Suk, who also composed the wonderful “Towards a New Life.” It’s called “Fantastic Scherzo,” and it’s a sort of high-energy gonzo waltz with peculiar interstices that qualify as scherzo cubed.
- I do this in private and always considered it just another facet of my legendary eccentricity. Turns out it actually helps you remain a functional human being. I guess it’s the vocal analog of journaling (i.e., writing about your emotions by pen or keyboard) and that mechanism helped me a great deal after Coriolis caved in.
- What happens when a 2,000 pound bison dies in Yellowstone National Park? Besides requiring heavy equipment to move, the carcass is taken to a top-secret location. It’s peculiar, but it all makes sense when you get the full story.
- Yet another AI hazard: Google AI is summarizing similar recipes, causing a significant dip in recipe site ad traffic. Although a given text description of a recipe is copyrightable, sets of steps are not. An AI can change the wording of a set of steps comprising a recipe and deliver an equivalent recipe to an AI user as a result of a query like “How do I create a coconut cream pie?” At some point people won’t bother looking up recipes on recipe sites—they’ll just let ChatGPT etc. do the work.
Odd Lots
Short items presented without much discussion, generally links to other Web items
Odd Lots
Odd Lots
- This (scary) item is the most significant I’ve seen recently: Microsoft is working on features that obsess with granting a Windows AI its own private workspace on your machine, plus access to your Documents, Downloads, Desktop, Videos, and Music folders. This will go nowhere good. Keep it in mind, and if MS asks for permission to enable this feature, weigh the consequences. MS admits the damned thing could install malware and have hallucinations. Huh. I won’t use a computer that thinks I‘m dead.
- There’s a cool group on Facebook called Old Radio Garage. Lots of pictures of tube-era radios, including a few on the bench being repaired, but not a lot of discussion.
- Speaking of radio, I (finally) took a closer look at AccuRadio, which is a free music streaming service that offers bits’n’pieces of almost everything musical. It takes a little study to find your preferences, but I was amazed at the breadth of coverage. You have to create a free account to avoid most commercials and have access to some features, but I think it’s worth the benefits.
- Google is evidently in the process of merging Android with ChromeOS into an OS called Aluminium. (No, I didn’t misspell that. It’s the British spelling.) The Aluminium OS will evidently have AI all over itself, inside and outside. Gosh, I just can’t wait to pass on it!
- We have AA, AAA, C, and D batteries. Why not B batteries? Reader’s Digest has a short-form explanation. What they don’t emphasize is that B batteries providing high-ish DC voltage to portable tube radios never had a standard size, not that I’ve ever heard of. I bought a 45-volt battery when I was 12 or 13 for a tube radio I was building, and it was like a long 9V battery, with the same power connectors, just more cells stacked up inside the rectangular case. I later saw all sorts of “B” batteries (most of them dead) in many shapes and voltages. Given the broad range of radios that would use it, a standard size and voltage would be impossible, which in truth explains all that needs explaining.
- Lazarus v4.4 is out. Built with Free Pascal 3.2.2. It’s a bugfix release, but hey, there’s no reason not be up to date. It’s worked great on my several Lazarus projects under Windows 11.
- I used to call Free Pascal FreePascal, but that’s no longer how the product’s creators spell it. Free Pascal it is. Sooner or later I’ll update FreePascal from Square One to reflect that spelling.
- And least but not last (ok. both least and last) Politico posted a gigantic, high-fat article about a crew called Stardust who want to make chemtrails real, in essence squirting air pollution back into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight and cool the planet. This is not a new idea, and not necessary, especially since Stardust refuses to say what the particulates they want to squirt into the atmosphere are made of. There is no climate crisis. Polluting the atmosphere with unknown crap is a scam. Don’t fall for it.
Odd Lots
- Here’s another hyperenergetic instrumental piece—with a short rest in the middle, granted—from Joseph Curiale, he of “Sky Blue After Rain.” It’s called “Double Happiness,” and it’s nutso optimistic, kinda like…me.
- Speaking of music, I remain and have always been puzzled why the purely orchestral works of Leroy Anderson are not considered “classical” and are not played on classical stations like our KBAQ. Some are quirky, like “The Typewriter,” but my all-time favorite Anderson composition, “Bugler’s Holiday,” which is really a manic trumpet concerto, somehow doesn’t qualify. Too fast? Hey, if “Sabre Dance” is considered classical, why not “Bugler’s Holiday”?
- Video generative AI is evidently getting so good that people are making bank–big bank–on slop AI videos, some that can’t easily be told from real videos. It’s more than a little scary. I don’t either make or consume video as a rule, but I would be interested in seeing a verifiably AI-written SF novel.
- Here’s another piece that nails why I think generative AI is scary. Watermarks? If an AI can make photorealistic videos, it can fake a watermark. Maybe something incorporating blockchain as is done with NFTs. I’m no expert on blockchain, but this intro to blockchain and NFTs sounds like it’s impossible to replicate an NFT—which suggests a way to prove that a video was not done with AI.
- In case you missed it: Lazarus 4.2 (Built with Free Pascal 3.2.2) was released on July 22. It’s a bugfix release, but hey, bugs are annoying and Lazarus is amazing. Take every release that happens and install it.
- I grew up in Illinois and have always been at least a little interested in monsters, so why did it take 73 years for me to ever hear of the Enfield Monster? Sure, Enfield is at the opposite end of Illinois from Chicago, a long way from anywhere, with all of 794 inhabitants—and only 764 when the monster came calling in 1973. I guess without Internet, even for an eccentric and boundlessly curious 21-year-old, some things just come and go unnoticed. By me, at least. It makes me wonder what other monsters I’ve never heard of.
- Ars Technica points out that it generally takes a garage with a high-current 240VAC outlet to charge an EV at home. And—wow, how could this be possible?—a great many Americans have garages so full of stuff that they have to park their cars outside. Yes, it’s possible; actually, the honest truth, as we see every time we drive around our neighborhood.
Odd Lots
- An AI company went bankrupt after it came out that its supposed “vibe-coding” AI was a team of 700 Indian software engineers. Even Microsoft fell for it, and threw gobs of money at them. Which brings up an interesting question: How do possible investors (or anyone else) know where (and even what) an AI is?
- Not everyone thinks that vibe coding is slam-dunk easy. A Stanford prof does it, and says it’s intellectually exhausting—just like “manual” coding is. The trick with all AI work is knowing how to create the prompts that will deliver the desired results. Although I’ve not tried vibe coding with an AI yet, my experience with text and images suggests that “prompt engineering” is the real challenge, and to me, prompt engineering looks like programming in yet another English-like language.
- Meta signed a 20-year deal with Constellation Energy, to help fund new nuclear generation capacity, starting with a plant in Illinois. If carbon is indeed the problem, nuclear is the solution. I have had some peculiar experiences with AI over the past months, but I’m willing to root for AI as a way to bring nuclear power back from the grips of those Atomic Scientists who simply can’t force themselves to go fission.
- In case you missed it: Lazarus 4.0 is out. Compatibility with Delphi is high. The 4.0 system was built using FreePascal 3.2.2. Go get it here.
- Here’s a wonderful short-ish article on Mark Twain’s rowdy early years in (bogglingly) rowdy Virginia City, Nevada.
- Today is the semiquincentennial of the US Army. Also the sestercentennial. Oh, and the bisesquicentennial too. Big words rock. I love ’em. And next year will be all those big words for the US itself, not to mention Carol’s and my 50th wedding anniversary.
- Classmates continues to send me nonsense. I supposedly have a private message waiting from a Maria G., who was in De Paul University’s Class of 1971. (The message was posted in 2007.) Well, I have that yearbook, and she’s not in it. (Her name, which I won’t quote here, is very unusual and I have been unable to find her online.) Some years back Classmates asked me if I knew a girl named Linda something, who was in the Lane Tech Class of 1970, like me. Uh…no. Lane was an all-boy school until a couple of years after I graduated. I gave Classmates money once. I won’t be giving them money again. They make up stuff like a…like an AI.
- Well, as far as I’m concerned, the famous TED talks are now over. An Australian prof who did all the necessary research was tossed out of the TED universe for a presentation that cast doubt on the perpetrators of useless COVID reactions like lockdowns, and showed evidence that the not-really-a-vaccine (you can get it and spread it!) caused more harm than good. TED stated right out that criticism of political and health leaders was verboten. Read the whole thing. (H/T to Sarah Hoyt for the link.)
Odd Lots
- I wrote about the dearth of color variety in cars a few years back. This morning I ran across an article about the same topic. And not only in cars, but in clothes and much else. He sees color variety as way down, along with color saturation.
- He may be on to something: There’s a new style of houses being built here in our area that I refer to as “Etruscan tombs” because they’re entirely white and all right angles, without curves or any kind of ornamentation. They look like they’re made of limestone or white marble:
- And cars, well, it’s not all bad news. Carol and I are seeing a lot more colors in cars around town these days, and the majority are bright and sometimes electric blue. But there are also yellows and oranges; not as many as blues but way more than we saw four or five years ago.
- By now I’m sure you’ve heard the buzz about “de-extincting” the dire wolf. I was suspicious of that claim, and turns out I’m right: What the genetic engineering firm did was modify gray wolf genes to make them look like what we think dire wolves looked like. The same firm created “woolly mice” through a more authentic process, by injecting a few recovered woolly mammoth genes into lab mice. Whether this is a good idea I’m not sure. We’ll see how far they can take it.
- As I wrote about sometime back, we dodged what might have been global extinction in the thick of the last ice age, when CO2 levels fell to the edge of what could support plant life on Earth. The claims of the climate doomscreamers haven’t panned out, and now we’re discovering that more CO2 in the atmosphere has led to a new greening peak, enlarging crops and reducing deserts. This looks like a big win to me.
- Computer modeling has solved one of mankind’s greatest problems, what some call “tinkle sprinkle”: urine splashing to one side of a urinal or another, getting on the floor, on adjacent urinal users, or on the user himself. The designs are clever and interesting in a number of ways, and one has to wonder what took us so long.
Odd Lots
- That’ll leave a mark, Mark: Unsealed emails indicate that Meta downloaded 81.7 terabytes of pirated books from sites like Anna’s Archive and LibGen. Why? To train their AIs. Most people would consider that a violation of copyright law all by itself apart from seeding the monster files while torrenting them.
- After hearing how bad eggs are for your cardiovascular health for literally decades, new research on the over-70 set finds that people in that age bracket who eat eggs six or seven days a week see a 29% reduction in heart disease. I have an extra-large egg every morning (I used to have two, until I realized one would carry me to lunch) and am much relieved. Carbs are the enemy. Eggs are your allies.
- Warner Brothers has dropped more than 30 of its feature-length films on YouTube without charge, including Waiting for Guffman and Oh, God! Note that this isn’t the YouTube paid service, but just plain, ordinary free YouTube. People wonder why, though I’d guess that WB is trying to establish itself as “the good guy” vis-a-vis old content, unlike The Mouse House, which cannot let anything go no matter how old or bad it is.
- As my regular readers know, I’m not much of a fan of AI—but I am a huge fan of nuclear power. What AI seems best at right now is persuading power utilities to put unused (“zombie”) nuclear plants back online, or even—egad!—building new ones. TechCrunch has a decent story. Me? More AI! More AI!
- I remember reading about this, um, eccentric—who claimed alien visitation and is now being sued by investors who were persuaded that he had invented an antigravity machine. Here’s the whole long-form story, from Bloomberg.
- Lazarus 3.8, a bugfix release, is now available. Worth it. Really. Pascal isn’t dead.
- From robocop to rolocop: Spherical Chinese robots are hitting Chinese streets to assist police in chasing crooks and breaking up riots. One plus: They’re pretty rugged. I can think of some minuses, and I’ll bet you can too.
- Here’s a world map showing what the commonest last name is in every country on Earth. Here? Smith. Same in Canada, Australia, and the UK. Who could have guessed?
- In the first cut of Google’s AI Super Bowl ad, the ad claimed that Gouda cheese represents from 50 to 60 percent of all cheese consumed here on Earth. They fixed it with a little non-artificial intelligence, heh. Ok, one could argue the point, since a lot of stuff labeled “cheese” isn’t really cheese as I understand the term—but even Velveeta doesn’t have numbers like that. Come for the football, stay for the Super Bowl AI hallucination about…cheese.
Odd Christmas Lots
- Be careful with your art and writing, making sure it can’t be misconstrued. (See above.) In the original draft of my story “Whale Meat” (which I wrote when I was 18) I used the word “frot” as the name of a magical power. I thought I invented the word. A friend later took me aside and told me what “frot” meant. I gulped and changed it to “zot.”
- My old friend Lee Hart took a forgotten 1844 Charles Dickens Christmas story, trimmed it down some, and modernized some Victorian archaisms. It’s free and very much worth reading. The Chimes is a short novel (about 20,000 words) so budget some time. I did a copy/paste into a Word .docx, so I could control the type size for the sake of these old eyes.
- While we’re talking Christmas stories, just a reminder that my Christmas story “The Camel’s Question” is still available for 99c on Amazon. More on the story in this entry from a few days back.
- While troubleshooting my Lionel ZW train transformer, I ran across a nice article on the ZW, which Lionel sold from 1948 to 1966. I may try to repair my ZW, though it won’t happen in time for Christmas this year. Or I may just hunt around on eBay until I find another one.
- (Not Christmas, but timely): The Altair 8800 personal computer, the one that began the desktop computer revolution, went on the market 50 years ago last Thursday, on December 19, 1974. I found it at the same site with the ZW article. Other interesting stuff there too.
- Our favorite spiked egg nog is Van Der Haute Egg Nog Traditional. Review here. We get it from Safeway, because Total Wine doesn’t carry it, nor Fry’s, though I won’t claim that no Kroger grocery does. Jewel-Osco carries it, if that’s your local store.
- If you’re mulling the issue of spiced holiday wines, consider Firebrand Spiced Red Wine, which Total Wine carries. It’s a sweet red with cinnamon, vanilla and fruit flavors that most people would consider a dessert wine. There is no vintage year on the label, which for wines of this sort really isn’t an issue.
- Sarah Hoyt recently published a book of four SF-flavored Christmas stories, called Christmas in the Stars. $2.99 on Kindle. I bought it but haven’t read it yet, although I’ve always enjoyed Sarah’s writing. And it’s making me wonder if there’s an AI SF story I could spin about Christmas. I haven’t written a short story since 2008, so it’s about time.
- Some of my older readers will know why lead tinsel was a forbidden pleasure back in the 50s and 60s. Well, you can buy it on eBay. Just search for “lead tinsel.” No shortage of choices. (It seems like the Germans may still use it!)
Odd Lots
- PLAUD recently announced their NotePin, a little AI device that hangs from a string around your neck. (I assume you could clip one to your lapel, which is what I would do.) I wrote about that concept in my SF and my magazine between 1984-1992. I called them "jiminies" after Pinocchio’s little advisor. Nice to see it become real!
- This is clever as hell: A sizeable chicken coop without a floor that moves to a new grassy spot in the pasture every day and thus gives chickens fresh grass, fresh bugs, and exercise. Some are even solar powered, wow.
- Here’s yet another reason to go low-carb and especially low-sugar: a study showing that high-sugar diets may inhibit neuron growth in the brain. I’ve been doing low-carb/sugar for 27 years now. I sure hope this study is correct!
- Wegovy and similar weight-loss drugs may treat alcoholism and opioid addiction. More research needed, obviously, but boy, that would be HUGE if proven.
- Lazarus 3.6 is now out. Built with FPC 3.2.2. Bugfix release, but why not have the latest?
- The Moon is getting its own time zone—or at least a system of standard time that would greatly help calculations of lunar missions. It’s made complicated by the fact that gravitational time dilation is involved; i.e., the gravity of the moon is less than Earth’s gravity, which makes a lunar second shorter than an Earth second. Not much, but at the speeds of spacecraft, that tiny difference can really mess up a mission. [Note well: I got this wrong the first time, and corrected the error here. Alex Dillard pointed out my error and provided a long and detailed explanation of the problem in the comments. Definitely read his comment!]
- Roy Harvey sent me a link to a BBC article about “knocker uppers,” the people who woke people up to go to work during the British industrial revolution by tapping on their windows with a long pole (especially for upper stories) or (egad) with little hammers. I guess the British never knew that “knocked up” meant “got pregnant” out here in the Colonies.
- From my friend Pete comes a report of a study indicating that high cholesterol isn’t a heart disease risk if you keep your diet low in carbs and sugar. I’ve heard that in a few other places, but this is a real study, and I sure hope it’s true, as I’ve been low carb/sugar now for over 25 years.
- Charlie Martin recently posted a number of superb astrophotos, including a picture of hurricane Milton from orbit. I can call them superb because astronomy has been a hobby of mine for over sixty years. Don’t miss it.
- Carol and I did see comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS from our front yard, but it was a bare smudge by naked eye, and only showed a trace of coma in binoculars. Yes, we live in Phoenix and light pollution can be intense here. That said, I’m pretty sure that comet Hale-Bopp (1997) and Hyakutake (1996) were lots brighter, and Hale-Bopp was visible for a very long time as comet appearances go.
Odd Lots
- It’s a little late but there’s still time to see it: Tonight will be the full Moon, and also a partial lunar eclipse. 7:45 PM makes it about ideal for the Pacific and Arizona time zone, with all the usual adjustments for Mountain, Central and Eastern.
- Scott Pinsker posted an article on PJMedia back on September 9th, about dogs allowing humans to out-compete Neanderthals. I wrote about that back in 2010: Dogs were alarm systems that made dawn raids ineffective. Lacking dogs, Neanderthals may have simply dawn-raided themselves into extinction.
- I’m looking for a book that defines terms and instruments used in classical music. Andante, allegro non troppo, adagio, the viola, the celesta, and that instrument consisting of a series of pieces of metal tubing hung from strings under a bar, whose name I just cannot recall. A lot of that stuff can be found online, but, well, I’m just partial to books. If you have one that you like, please mention it in a comment.
- The blinking cursor on our computer screens is now 54 years old. Here’s a short history of how it came about.
- It’s been a pretty sparse hurricane season, with the single exception of Beryl. Right now on NOAA’s hurricane map there is a dying hurricane in Arkansas, one named tropical storm, Gordon, and two disturbances with less than 40% chance of becoming cyclonic. We’re halfway through hurricane season, and not much has been happening. My take: predicting a hurricane season’s severity is a fool’s model. Too much chaos and butterfly effect. It could get worse any time. Or it might not. We won’t know until we get there.
- Who had this on their 2024 bingo cards? Good ‘ol Yellow #5 dye, in large quantities, makes living tissue temporarily transparent. Scientists have created temporarily transparent mice. No human trials have happened as yet. So go easy on those Cheetos, ok?
- This is boggling but perhaps inevitable, assuming it’s true—and I’m skeptical: A chemhacker group is creating software and desktop labware allowing people to synthesize expensive prescription medications at home. An $800 pill becomes a $1 pill. Yes, there are risks, but if you’re dying for lack of an expensive drug, well…
- Over on City Journal Michael Totten has a long-form meditation on Liu Cixin’s SF trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past that bears on the Fermi Paradox and the question of whether we should actively seek out alien life–or hide from it. A little outside what I see in City Journal, but well-worth reading.
Odd Lots
- The Sun spat out an X5.8 flare last night, the strongest of this solar cycle so far. I went out in the back yard and looked northeast, and damned if I didn’t catch fleeting glimpses of faint flickering light. Was too faint to discern color, but if it was an aurora, seeing it from Phoenix must be some kind of record.
- If you don’t have a link to the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, bookmark it. I suspect that they’re going to have a lot to say during the solar maximum that’s now bearing down on us.
- I’m not expecting a Carrington-class event, but my longwire, by default, is switched to my engineered ground. I’m of two minds about listening to the low bands (or lack of low bands) while this storm is underway. 77 feet of wire is more than enough to develop enough voltage to spark with a strong enough coronal mass ejection. I don’t want to fry the front end of my IC-736.
- From the "That’s a Very Low Bar" Department: AIs can pretend to be stupider than they actually are. Forgive me if I say that they may be able to do it, but they’ll be BAD at it. Still, could AI’s "four-finger problem" be a joke on us? (By that I mean the tendency of AIs not to “know” how many fingers or toes a human being has.)
- Francis Turner’s opinions on LLM-style AI pretty much map to mine, and his Substack essay on the topic is a must read.
- I ran across an intriguing piece of music listening to KBAQ, our local classical station. It’s “Sky Blue After Rain” by Joseph Curiale, and consists of a piano and a Chinese erhu 2-stringed violin alternating with full orchestra. The piece is short (4:48) punchy, melodic, and when the orchestra picks it up, energetic. You can hear it on YouTube. Be sure to listen to the whole thing, even if the erhu grates on you. The orchestral part is worth it.
- Here’s a good short article explaining how cloud levels help regulate Earth’s temperatures.
- The highest observatory on Earth is now open for business, atop Cerro Chajnantor mountain in the Chilean Andes. The observatory was designed to capture infrared images with its boggling 6.5 meter (22 feet) clear aperture telescope.
- I have a robot dog with a 9mm gun in the (for now) dormant version of The Molten Flesh. What I didn’t imagine was a robot dog with a built-in flamethrower and laser targeting.
- While I was writing this entry, I had an idea: What if I unplug my antenna from the Icom and in its place on my antenna switch, put a coax plug with an NE2 neon bulb soldered across the connector. Well, it didn’t take but ten minutes (I’ve got plenty of neon bulbs and PL-259s) and the experiment is in place. Tonight when it gets dark I’m going to spend a little time out there in the garage, watching that NE-2.
