Featured Links - May 29, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Spring dandelions

The Search for Intelligent Life Is About to Get a Lot More Interesting.  "There are an estimated 100 billion galaxies in the universe, home to an unimaginable abundance of planets. And now there are new ways to spot signs of life on them." (Gifted article-no paywall)

Snow Crash: the 30-year-old novel that predicted today’s twisted Metaverse. "Prophetic sci-fi author Neal Stephenson tells Dazed what his seminal story got right and wrong about today’s terminally online world."

The Brain and Long Covid. "2 new studies shed light on persistent neuro-inflammation from even mild infections." Keep wearing those masks folks. 

At long last, the glorious future we were promised in space is on the way. "It is gratifying to see folks coming around."  He is more of an optimist than I am. 

The 2022 Tonga Eruption Created a Very Rare 'Super Plasma Bubble' in The Ionosphere. 'The volcanic eruption in Tonga in January 2022 was so large, it created waves in the upper atmosphere that constituted their own form of space weather. It was one of the largest explosions in modern history and impacted GPS across Australia and Southeast Asia. As we describe in our new study in the journal Space Weather, the eruption caused a super "plasma bubble" over northern Australia that lasted for hours.'

The brief Age of the Worker is over – employers have the upper hand again. "The pandemic ushered in an era of ‘quiet quitting’ and ‘bare minimum Mondays’ but workers have since lost leverage." I hope they're wrong.

Thought experiment in the National Library of Thailand. 'When you read the output of ChatGPT, it’s important to remember that despite its apparent fluency and despite its ability to create confident sounding strings that are on topic and seem like answers to your questions, it’s only manipulating linguistic form. It’s not understanding what you asked nor what it’s answering, let alone “reasoning” from your question + its “knowledge” to come up with the answer. The only knowledge it has is knowledge of distribution of linguistic form.'