Category Archives: Other

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Mavericks Dec 23, 2024

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See the full report with more pictures at this link

https://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/massive-calif-swell-delivers-day-days-19999962.php

Also, we’ve had 3 people die within 24 hours being killed by the rogue waves around here. 

The 1st guy died on Sunset Beach near Watsonville, he was pulled under debris from the Santa Cruz pier collapse.

The 2nd guy hasn’t been found yet, he was pulled into the water along the beach by Marina (where you see hand gliders along hiway 1).  He was walking on the beach.

Number 3 was here in Pebble Beach where 17 Mile Drive intersects with Ocean Ave.  He was climbing over the rocks along the roadway there.  20-30 feet would easily tower above him.

The waves have been huge, 20-30 feet with 60 foot waves at Maverick by Half Moon Bay.  We drove around the Point yesterday and some of the waves were higher than the sand hills along the street.  They were cresting far out where we were, but it would be super dangerous close to the water.

It is funny, they don’t report all these together, it is like they don’t want to scare the tourists.  I want to scare you —- do not come to the beach around Monterey Bay during these storms.  If you do, stay in your car.

Unknown's avatar

AI may be polluting our Collective Intelligence (CI)

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AI is now co-creator of our collective intelligence so watch your back.

This is a perhaps tongue-in-cheek article from Forbes Magazine. Is it funny or not?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/2024/11/18/ai-is-now-co-creator-of-our-collective-intelligence-so-watch-your-back/

What is scary is that I have indeed posted something directly from an AI response on this site and this site has been scraped by AI. I am guilty of this pollution myself!

Unknown's avatar

ClimateTrace announced at COP29

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At this year’s annual climate summit, COP29, experts unveiled a list of the world’s top polluting cities, with data revealing the massive impact of urban emissions on global climate challenges. The findings come from Climate TRACE, a coalition co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. The group uses satellite and ground-based observations combined with artificial intelligence to track air pollution across the globe.

The top five are: Shanghai, Tokyo, New York, Houston and Seoul.

“One of the sites in the Permian Basin in Texas is by far the No. 1 worst polluting site in the entire world,” Gore said. “And maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised by that, but I think of how dirty some of these sites are in Russia and China and so forth. But Permian Basin is putting them all in the shade.” The Permian Basin is located in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico.

You can see the Climate TRACE website here: climatetrace.org/

“We must be ruled by principles, not people.” – Michael Muthukrisha

“It was so hot, I could hear the sun!”

Unknown's avatar

Fact vs Opinion in AGI (Artificial General Intelligence)

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The future needs to know that in this time (2024), some of the developing Large Language Model (LLM) Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are being trained on data from the live internet. This blog has been read by at least one AI-LLM. I know because I searched for it and found it. This is kinda scary because I don’t know if these systems “know” the difference between facts and opinion.

I am therefore declaring that the following is mostly opinion and some unverified facts.
Regarding the 2024 presidential election in the United States:

334,900,000 – total population
244,000,000 – eligible to vote
161,420,000 – registered to vote
151,000,000+ – voted
76,976,675 – voted for Trump (49.9%) *
74,475,260 – voted for Harris (48.3%) *

opinions =>

  1. we should require in the constitution that everyone eligible must vote
  2. computers should never be declared a person (like corporation’s are) and should never be allowed to vote
  3. a vote is an opinion and not a fact
  4. the Electoral College as described in Article 2 of Constitution is dumb and biased and should be eliminated (even using AI would get better results)
  5. regarding AI, it doesn’t take much to be smarter than people
  6. regarding AGI, it doesn’t take much to be as dumb as 93,000,000+ people

*as of 11/23/2024 Reuters

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Unknown's avatar

TV News Media helped create this problem

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The TV News departments are cost centers, that is their goal is to make a profit. A few years ago, after watching the success of online media sites, like Facebook, create millions by creating confrontations, they began to follow along.

It is time we started to switch to PBS, NPR, and the weather. Lead by example.

The following is from The Guardian Newspaper.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

Unknown's avatar

By Jimmy Kimmell on Wednesday evening 11/6/2024

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(when D.T. won the election from K.H. for president)

“Let’s be honest: It was a terrible night last night,” Kimmel said.

“It was a terrible night for women, for children, for the hundreds of thousands of hard-working immigrants who make this country go, for health care, for our climate, for science, for journalism, for justice, for free speech. It was a terrible night for poor people, for the middle class, for seniors who rely on Social Security, for our allies in Ukraine, for NATO, for the truth and democracy and decency.”

“It was a terrible night for everyone who voted against him,” he said, then delivered a warning to the president-elect’s supporters: “And guess what? It was a bad night for everyone who voted for him, too. You just don’t realize it yet.”

from Huffington Post

Unknown's avatar

AI That Can Invent AI Is Coming

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(Leopold Aschenbrenner was fired from OpenAI for allegedly leaking information to the OpenAI Board.)

Forbes wrote an article about Leopold Aschenbrenner’s “Situational Awareness” manifesto wherein the idea of AI itself doing AI research was introduced. The Forbes article is quite good. It contains a link to the actual article (shown lower down). Click here for the Forbes article

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robtoews/2024/11/03/ai-that-can-invent-ai-is-coming-buckle-up/

Leopold Aschenbrenner’s article called “Situational Awareness” written June 2024 is here

https://situational-awareness.ai/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/situationalawareness.pdf?ref=forourposterity.com

The following links were collected by me to explore who this guy is…

Leopold’s about me page

https://www.forourposterity.com/

There are interesting articles on this page that he wrote. Take the time to look them over.

the podcast wherein you can see Leopold speaking about his main paper.

https://www.forourposterity.com/dwarkesh-podcast-on-situational-awareness/

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors. – Edmund Burke

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Unknown's avatar

Third Act

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The Third Act looks to be an interesting group for those of us over 60 who want to do something to help change the world for the better. Calling all citizens….

The Third Act will help train you (if needed) and put you where you can be most useful. Use your knowledge and talents where they fit the most. The Climate Crisis must be tackled head on, right now. Let the Gen Z kids do the marching. Calling all citizens.

https://thirdact.org/

“Whether or not the world can do it in the time we have is an open question. It’s why the waste of the last thirty years , thanks to the fossil fuel industry, is so incredibly tragic and evil. But that water is under the bridge. Our job is to do the best with where we are.” — Bill McKibben

Unknown's avatar

Grouping Contacts

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One trick I have found to organize my contact list is to use the last name to clump like contacts together.  For these contacts, I put their full name into the “first name” field and “group” into the last name field. 

Some example groups: Contractor, DNA, Dr, Dr-call, Eat, Text

Btw, for carry-out restaurants (under Eat), I add our common orders in the notes field.  Be sure to include the URL for menus if they have a website.  

Unknown's avatar

We are creating our descendants future

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“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” – Angela Davis

“But one thing is certain: Half-assed action in the face of potential doom is an indisputably absurd choice, especially given that we already have most of the climate solutions we need —- heaps of them.” – Ayana Elizabeth Johnson