Off tor the Weekend

It's Easter weekend up here in the Great (no longer) White North, and I'll be taking the weekend off from blogging. It'll be time spent with family and watching the Blue Jays, who are well ahead of the Rays in their season opener as I type this. I'll be back Tuesday. 

In the meantime, here are a couple of geese enjoying the spring sunshine. 

Two geese enjoying the spring sunshine

London's Mayoral Race Is a Harbinger of What's to Come in the US

If you follow British politics at all, you'll be familiar with Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, who is up for re-election in May. His campaign and the politics surrounding his current term are providing a glimpse of the craziness that is likely to come in the next six months before November's US elections. 

Wired has taken a long look at what's been going on in London. It's not pretty. 

Last summer, one of Khan’s flagship policies—a benign pollution reduction measure—was fused with the global conspiracy, sucked into a nightmarish mass delusion about climate authoritarianism, and co-opted by populist culture warriors to justify a rollback of carbon emissions targets. The chaos that ensued shows how the drip of online conspiracy and radicalization, driven by algorithms and exploited by opportunists, has warped political discourse in democratic societies. It is now much harder for elected leaders to manage the compromises needed to keep cities—and countries—together and functioning. That battle is becoming ever more one-sided, fueled by conspiracy theorists and cheap and convincing deepfakes. Khan’s bid for reelection in May will be the UK’s first major vote in this strange new world, a precursor to a national election happening some time this year—and, quite possibly, a warning sign of how dangerous the merging of populism, extremism, and technology has become.

There's a lot more in the article, including a sophisticated deep fake. 

In the fake recording, an authentic-sounding version of Khan’s voice could be heard calling for the ceremony at the Cenotaph war memorial in London to be called off in favor of the Gaza rally. “I don’t give a flying shit about the Remembrance Weekend,” the voice said. The mayor, it said, controlled the police.

The message pressed every button on England’s paranoid fringes: an insinuation of support for Hamas, an apparent denigration of British history and memory by a Muslim left-winger, and a sense of backroom deals being done. A secret woke plot that plugged straight into the grand online conspiracy that unites the far right, anti-vaxxers, and climate deniers.

There are obvious implications for the coming local, state, and federal elections. 

Photographs Aren't What They Used To Be

I've come across a couple of interesting articles recently that examine the intersection of AI and photography.

In his weekly The Plain View column, Wired's Steven Levy looks at the controversy surrounding Princess Catherine's apparent manipulation of a family photo. As he points out, tools that let anyone do this are now ubiquitous. What will that mean for journalism going forward?

One might be tempted to say that the only proof now that something is real comes when you can see it for yourself. But consider Apple’s Vision Pro. When people don that headset, they view a mix of the real world intermingled with a digital layer. But that so-called “real” world isn’t directly visible to one’s eyes—instead a suite of cameras presents video images of what the eye would normally see. That videostream is prone to manipulation—in fact, recreating reality is the point of such devices. If you stroll out into the street wearing one of those, who knows—maybe the Royal Family Industrial Complex will hack your goggles to insert a convincing digital representation of Kate Middleton, shuffling through Wegman’s in her leggings.

All of this should have been apparent long ago. The trustworthiness of what we see no longer relies on images and videos themselves. Our belief in what we are presented with hinges on the credibility of who is presenting it. Maybe if the Windsors had a track record of straightforwardness, people would have accepted the image as a family photo, mildly rinsed by a Photoshop tweak.

But AI tools permit more than just simply tweaking someone's smile in a family picture. 

There's been a long tradition of photographers colourizing old black-and-white photos. Originally that was done by an artist painting over the photo. Now you can easily do it in a tool like photoshop or by uploading your photo to a website. But What if the entire picture itself is a fake generated by an AI tool like Midjourney. How can you tell?

In "AI is creating fake historical photos, and that's a problem", Marina Amaral, a digital photo colourist looks at a new phenomena – digital fake historical images. I was startled at the realism of the examples she shows; I would certainly be fooled by them. 

Just to give you a concrete example of how pervasive this issue is becoming, a few days ago, I stumbled upon two Instagram pages that have started sharing these fake historical photos, passing them off as real to their thousands of followers, complete with fabricated captions and all that. The last time I checked, the most recent of these photos had over 5,000 likes. Now, granted, not every single one of those likes was necessarily from someone who was completely deceived. Some people might have just been scrolling through their feed and hit the heart button without really thinking about it. Others might have recognized the photo as fake but still appreciated it on an artistic level. But even if we're being conservative and assuming that only a fraction of those 5,000 people have truly believed in the authenticity of the image, that's still a significant number of individuals who have been exposed to a piece of misinformation masquerading as historical fact. And that's just one post on one platform. Multiply that by the countless other social media accounts, websites, and even publications that could potentially be spreading these images, and you start to see the scale of the problem. The potential impact of such posts cannot be overstated. The more these fake images circulate, the harder it becomes to separate fact from fiction. Each new post or share distorts the truth a little bit more, until we're left with a version of the past that bears little resemblance to reality.

This is a big problem and it's only going to get worse. 

In my own case, I now ignore any news, travel, or historical photos posted on the internet unless I am sure the source is legitimate. That rules out a large part of what's posted on Facebook or X, for example.  

A Mediterranean Salad Recipe

Here's a recipe to try if you like salads and are a fan of the Mediterranean diet. We used the recipe from the 30-Minute Mediterranean Diet cookbook that I got in a Humble Bundle recently, but this one is basically the same. 

We mixed all the ingredients together instead of keeping them separate on a plate. I increased the quantities a bit because our can of chickpeas was larger and we have enough leftover for lunch tomorrow. 

For the dressing, we didn't use any garlic, water, or salt and made an infusion of the oregano in the oil by heating them for a few minutes as suggested in the cookbook. 

If you don't want to make your own dressing, Kraft's Greek with Feta and Oregano dressing would go well with it. 

BetaKit's Interview with Cory Doctorow

My nephew, Douglas Soltys, is the founder and editor-and-chief at BetaKit, the leading site for Canadian tech news. He's just interviewed Cory Doctorow and the interview is now live on BetaKit's site. 

Before the interview, Doug asked me if I had any questions he could ask Cory. Of course I did. I wanted to know if he saw any relationship between his concept of enshittification and Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy. He asked Cory that, and Cory's answer takes up a good chunk of the podcast. Doug did mention my name, and Cory remembered me from back when he was living in Toronto and working at Bakka, much to my surprise. 

It's a good podcast with some real insights into tech and the state of the internet and social media. Give it a listen.  

Featured Links - March 25, 2024

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

Colourful sunset

• We’re finally working out why the Mediterranean diet is so good for us (archive.ph link). "We have known for decades that the Mediterranean diet lowers the risk of heart attack and other conditions – now we are starting to understand how certain components of the diet work their magic."
• How to Convert Images to Editable Text in Microsoft Word. "Want to extract text from an image in Microsoft Word? Here's how to convert images into editable text within Word." It's a bit round about but as long since Word doesn't have a native way of doing it. 
• Media Matters publishes useful guide to Project 2025, the extreme right-wing agenda that "represents a threat to democracy, civil rights, the climate, and more". "We need to talk more about Project 2025, the terrifyingly right-wing blueprint crafted by right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation that is meant to guide the next Republican administration. If you aren't very familiar with Project 2025, it's time to school yourself and start spreading the word."
• The Publicly-Traded Presidential Candidate. From Jay Kuo: "One final note. The media needs to do a much better job warning about the dangers of such a publicly-traded candidacy and possible presidency. This is a man who has always been up for sale to the highest bidder, and who will now abuse the meme stock frenzy to achieve shocking personal financial gain while exposing our nation’s highest office to massive financial leverage. The American people need to be warned of the dangers inherent in this, far beyond the probable dispiriting headlines next week that Trump really will have become a billionaire, at least on meme stock paper."
• Women are getting off birth control amid misinformation explosion (gift link). "Physicians say they’re seeing an explosion of birth-control misinformation online targeting a vulnerable demographic: people in their teens and early 20s who are more likely to believe what they see on their phones because of algorithms that feed them a stream of videos reinforcing messages often divorced from scientific evidence." 
• There is a Royal Order of Adjectives, and you follow it without knowing what it is. "There is a Royal Order of Adjectives, and you follow it without knowing what it is—a particular sequence to use when more than one adjective precedes a noun. There are exceptions, of course, because English is three languages in a trenchcoat." I never thought about it much when I was working as a technical writer because I didn't use many adjectives in my documentation.
• Blocking Burning Man and Vandalizing Van Gogh: Climate Activists Are Done Playing Nice. "Disruptive protests capture clicks. But in a movement that cites mass mobilization as the goal, can activists turn eyeballs into bodies?"
• The evidence is clear: A liquid-only diet before a colonoscopy is unnecessary. "It is true that diet matters for colon cleansing. Certain foods can greatly obscure our views of the colon: corn, nuts, seeds, and many kinds of vegetables. But that leaves many solid foods that people can eat and digest without affecting the quality of their colonoscopy. A low-residue diet, one that is heavy on starch and protein and free of vegetables, is just as effective, and much less difficult to endure, than a diet restricted to clear liquids all day." The article source, StatNews, is a reputable site. 
• EVs Are Much Lower-Emitting Than Combustion Cars. "Electric vehicles’ lifecycle emissions can be 70% lower than gasoline and diesel vehicles, BNEF finds in a new analysis."

Photo of the Week - March 24, 2024

This week's photo is of our dog, Tea Sea, out in the backyard before bedtime to do her business. I wonder if anyone has ever trained a dog to use a toilet. I'm glad I'm not a dog. (Then again, I had to shovel the patio and a bit of the yard for her, which is almost as bad as having to pee in the snow).

Saturday Sounds - Charles Lloyd - The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow

Charles Lloyd is an American jazz musician (saxophone, flute), who has been active since the 1950s. I remember listening to his album, Forest Flower, when I was in university and in later years, some of his many albums for ECM. I have a very vague memory of seeing him at an early jazz festival in Toronto sometime in the 1980s, but I can't find any evidence of that online. I did find it interesting that he was part of the Beach Boys touring band in the 1970s, so it's possible that I saw him in 1975 at Maple Leaf Gardens. 

Relix has published an appreciation of Lloyd and his music.

Earlier this month, he released his latest album, The Sky Will Still Be Here Tomorrow, and it is lovely. In their review, The Guardian says: 'Lloyd well knows he’s in the twilight of a great career – he recently remarked to Jazzwise that he’s “in the last stages of the journey now”. But you’d never know it from the light and joy glowing through this music.' If it is his last album, he's going out on a high note.

Vernor Vinge, RIP

I woke up this morning to the sad news that Vernor Vinge has died at the age of 79. Unfortunately, I never met him in person, but thoroughly enjoyed his books, especially his "zones of thought" novels. I've read A Fire Upon the Deep several times and could happily read it again. If ideas had weight, you'd need steel beams to hold a shelf of his books.  

The Elephant Is Getting Restless

I try not to pay too much attention to US politics but it's getting hard to avoid and even harder not to worry about it. As former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau said about the US back in 1969: "Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt". 

This week has been especially notable with Trump going full fascist in a campaign speech in Vandalia, Ohio last Saturday. I've seen detailed commentary on this from Timothy Snyder, Jay Kuo, and Heather Cox Richardson, as well as what's been reported in the mainstream press, who thankfully are beginning to wake up to the danger presented by Trump.

From Timothy Snyder, who analyzed the speech in detail: 

So, right at the beginning, Americans at the rally are told to identify themselves with people who tried to overthrow an election by force, who are celebrated as "unbelievable patriots."  That is perhaps the most essential element of context to Trump's later reference to a bloodbath.  He has already made clear, in a the collective performance, that violent insurrection is the best form of politics.  Well before he actually used the word, he had instructed his audience that bloodbaths are the right form of politics.  (This is, by the way, not just the context of this rally, but of his rallies generally.)

Snyder has also written an article describing the strongman fantasy behind Trump's appeal to many Americans.  

Quite a few Americans like the idea of strongman rule.  Why not a dictator who will get things done? 

I lived in eastern Europe when memories of communism were fresh.  I have visited regions in Ukraine where Russia imposed its occupation regime.  I have spent decades reading testimonies of people who lived under Nazi or Stalinist rule.  I have seen death pits, some old, some freshly dug. And I have friends who have lived under authoritarian regimes, including political prisoners and survivors of torture. Some of the people I trusted most have been assassinated.

So I think that there is an answer to this question. 

Strongman rule is a fantasy.  Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman.  He won't.  In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents.  We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance.  The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing.  We get abused and we get used to it. 

On another front, Trump's fantasy about winning the 2020 election continues to spread chaos across the US electoral system.

From Rolling Stone:

Across the country — in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania — Republican officials have refused to certify or delayed certification of results for the election of local, state, and national candidates, over debunked claims that mail-in ballots aren’t secure, conspiracies about voting machines, claims of unsecured ballot drop boxes, and myriad other claims rooted in election denier beliefs. 

If local election officials nationwide decide en masse to refuse to certify election results this year, it could slow the certification of statewide tallies crucial to determining the next president — and create chaos.

And from the Washington Post (gift link): 

The scene at the Feb. 28 meeting terrified many Maricopa employees and others who were reminded of what happened after Joe Biden won the county — and, with it, Arizona — in the 2020 presidential race. Back then, Trump supporters used baseless fraud claims to try to pressure or scare elected leaders into changing the results for the metro Phoenix county, which is home to more than half of Arizona’s residents.

Now, with another presidential election quickly approaching and Arizona again likely to be central to Donald Trump’s electoral strategy, the incident late last month has revived fears that officials responsible for running Maricopa County elections will be targeted with a campaign of threats and abuse — or worse. 

The news is not all bad. Jay Kuo believes that there is reason for cautious optimism:

First, as the previous primaries have shown, Trump continues to underperform with voters in GOP primaries relative to how Biden is doing with voters in Democratic primaries. Even with Nikki Haley and the other challengers dropping out of the race, Trump is still losing between one-in-five and one-in-six GOP primary voters to other candidates. And a good chunk of those voters he will never get back.

Second, it appears MAGA either hasn’t learned the lesson of 2022 or it is wholly incapable of changing its spots when it comes to nominating extremist candidates. Those candidates are more likely to lose general elections, but they keep putting them up. In this case, they have nominated another extremist to represent the GOP in the crucial Ohio Senate seat race—a man named Bernie Moreno. He’ll face off against incumbent Sherrod Brown. And from where I sit, our chances of holding the Senate just ticked upward as a result.

Third, while I don’t want to focus too much on polls, I do want to point out two things. To the extent that people care, the national polling averages now show Biden with a slight lead over Trump, who had led in these averages since September. More importantly, within the separate polls over time, many show that voters have moved toward Biden by a few points. While polls are not predictive of final results this far out, it is still useful to see how things have moved relatively within the same poll, even if absolutely speaking, it may be way off.

I do hope that Kuo is right and enough Americans come to their senses that the absolute disaster of another Trump presidency can be avoided. As Jerry Pournelle often commented: "Remember, despair is a sin." 

 

 

Britain Is Becoming a Toxic Dump Under Brexit

Brexit was supposed to free Britain from onerous EU regulations and inefficiencies. In reality, the inefficiencies are still there and the regulations were protecting British citizens from toxic waste and deadly chemicals in the environment. The Guardian has a well-researched report into the current state of the environment in Britain. It's not good. 

As the campaign group Chem Trust documents, our shadow version of the EU system, called UK Reach, is beset by underfunding, understaffing, a skills crisis and an impossible workload. It looks to me like the kind of failure-by-design that afflicts so much of environmental regulation in the UK.

This dysfunction leaves us exposed to toxins now being banned or restricted in Europe. For example, tetraethyl lead has long been banned from fuel for surface vehicles. But it continues to be used in aircraft fuel, ensuring we are sprayed with a chemical that causes neurological disorders. The EU, after long resisting the obvious step, has at last ruled that it must be phased out. But the UK hasn’t. It will remain legal here. The same goes for endocrine-disrupting chemicals in children’s toys, formaldehyde, brominated flame retardants and the microplastics intentionally added to fertilisers and artificial sport surfaces.

US readers should note that this is a precursor to what will happen to environmental regulations should the Trump and the Republicans take power in November. 

2023 Nebula Awards Finalists Announced

The finalists for the 2023 Nebula Awards have been announced by SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association). The awards are voted on by members of SFWA and will be announced at the 2024 Nebula Awards conference in Pasadena, CA in early June.

These are the finalists for the Novel award.

The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)

The Water Outlaws, S.L. Huang (Tordotcom; Solaris UK)

Translation State, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

The Terraformers, Annalee Newitz (Tor; Orbit UK)

Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, Wole Talabi (DAW; Gollancz)

Witch King, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)

I've only read one of the finalists, The Terraformers, and would be quite happy to see it win the award which I reviewed here. 

Many of the short fiction finalists are linked in the Locus Magazine article so you can read them online.

Featured Links - March 18, 2024

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

Light on the bay

• US Citizens Are Strikingly Bad At Sorting Facts From Opinions. "There’s a huge amount of research on misinformation. But what we found is that, even before we get to the stage of labeling something misinformation, people often have trouble discerning the difference between statements of fact and opinion." This is worrisome, though I am not at all surprised. 
• Kate Middleton’s Story Is About So Much More Than Kate Middleton (gift link). "But the frenzy around Catherine, Princess of Wales, raises important questions that go well beyond the usual concerns of royal watchers. Those questions stem from the extreme deference with which Catherine has previously been treated, in Britain at least, compared with the thrashing bestowed on her sister-in-law, Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex." The Royal Family and the British Press do not come off well. 
• AI is growing in the food-service industry — and nothing will stop it. "These technologies are spreading fast, despite breaches of privacy and the biases baked into software."
  
• Covid, 4 years on. "As we recently hit—March 11, 2020—the 4-year anniversary of when WHO finally declared Covid a global pandemic, and today, March 13th, when the US declared it a national emergency, we’re still learning every day about SARS-CoV-2’s impact, its evolution, protection from vaccination, and more. Here’s a quick summary of what I think is worth reviewing."
• America's Cheyenne Mountain Complex Can Withstand A 30-Megaton Nuclear Bomb. "693,000 tons of granite were blasted out of the mountain to make the bunker at the height of the Cold War." I've been in the NORAD SAGE base in North Bay, a similar facility, now decommissioned. 
• Climate Change Is Bad for Your Health, Wherever You Are. "Rising temperatures are a threat regardless of where you live on the planet—they’re just dangerous in different ways."
• Why Does This One Couch From West Elm Suck So Much? "Comparing notes with other unsatisfied owners of the Peggy sofa." Modern furniture isn't what it used to be. 
• Las Vegas Sphere has 4,000TB SSD storage delivering 400GB/s throughput — World's only 16K display requires some exquisite technology to keep it going. "

Photo of the Week - March 17, 2024

This week's photo is of the west shore of Frenchman's Bay taken late in the afternoon on a mild but cloudy and windy day. I like the contrast of the light in the sky and the dapples on the water. Taken with my Pixel 8 Pro 5x zoom and not modified.  

Late afternoon on the bay

Saturday Sounds - Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - 2022/07/16 -Jazzopen Stuttgart

This week's musical treat is a concert webcast from Robert Plant and Allison Krause in Stuttgart, Germany in 2022. Being a webcast capture, video and sound are excellent. They will be touring this summer and perhaps seeing this will encourage you to see them. I certainly would; I like the direction Plant has taken with his music in the last few years as he ages.

Some Useful Links for Technical Writers

Here are a few links that should be useful for technical writers, especially those who want to improve their technical skills. The first four are from the excellent freeCodeCamp site. 

• How to Make Your Web Sites Accessible. " Roughly 1 out of every 7 Americans lives with a disability. As developers, we should keep these folks in mind when building our apps. Thankfully, there's a well-established field called Accessibility (sometimes shortened to “a11y” because there are 11 letters in the word that fall between the A and the Y). This nuts-and-bolts freeCodeCamp course will teach you about Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, Accessible Rich Internet Applications, Semantic HTML, and other tools for your toolbox. (2 hour YouTube course)" This should be useful to those writers who are producing web-based help or documentation as well as web sites.
• JavaScript in the Browser – How the Document Object Model (DOM) and Events Work. " The Document Object Model (DOM) is like a big Christmas tree that you hang ornament-like HTML elements on. This front-end development handbook will teach you how the DOM works, and how you can use it to make interactive web pages. You'll learn about DOM Traversal, Class Manipulation, Event Bubbling, and other key concepts. (full-length handbook)." Most high-end writing tools now use JavaScript or something close to it as a macro language (Word excepted, of course).
• Regular Expressions (RegEx) in JavaScript – A Handbook for Beginners. "freeCodeCamp just published another full-length handbook – this time on Regular Expressions. RegEx are one of the most powerful – and most confusing – features of modern programming languages. You can use RegEx to search through data, validate user input, and even find complex patterns within text. This handbook will teach you key concepts like anchors, grouping, metacharacters, and lookahead. And you'll learn a lot of advanced JavaScript RegEx techniques, too. (full-length handbook)" Regular expression syntax can vary depending on the application but the basic concepts are similar. 
• Advanced Prompt Engineering for Content Creators – Full Handbook. "But you don't have to learn a ton of Statistics and Machine Learning to get more out of AI. You can first focus on just getting better at talking to AI. This new Prompt Engineering Handbook will give you practical tips for getting better images, text, and code out of Large Language Models like GPT-4. (full-length handbook)"
• BookMaker Demo for Desktop Publishing. "This video will demonstrate the use of BookMaker, a software developed by Jack Lyon, to create a professional book design using Microsoft Word, starting from your own manuscript. You will be able to create a properly formatted book according to industry standards with a minimum of effort. However, the more you know about proper book formatting, the better you will be able to use this tool." I haven't used this tool, but I have used other tools of Jack Lyon's and he produces high-quality software. 
• Making a LaTeX document appear as though it were typeset in MS Word. Some advice on how to dumb down LaTex. 
• Intel One Mono. "Identifying the typographically underserved low-vision developer audience, the Intel One Mono typeface was designed for maximum legibility to address developers' fatigue and eyestrain and reduce coding errors." I like it though my personal preference would be for a higher x-height. It is especially good at distinguishing symbols and brackets. 

Stop the FAA from Hobbling SpaceX

I watched the SpaceX Starship launch while shopping at Costco this morning. The launch looked good and they made it through staging but the booster appeared to lose control at the start of the landing burn and they lost the second stage Starship during reentry. 

It looked like both stages had attitude control problems which could have contributed to the failures. I was amazed that they had video and telemetry from Starship through at least part of the reentry. They did make it a lot further with this flight so their iterative development process seems to be working. 

Unfortunately, the FAA had stuck its fingers in the pie by ruling that the launch was a mishap, which means another five- or six-month wait while the bureaucrats generate more paperwork before SpaceX can launch again. The US needs to get the FAA out of the loop on these launches so they can spend their time on more important things like making sure Boeing's airliners are safe.

Ruminations on Anachronyms

Benjamin Dreyer, author of the wonderful book, Dreyer's English, has an article in the Washington Post (gift link) in which he ruminates on anachronyms, a term I have to admit I hadn't come across until reading the article. He starts off by talking about subtweets.

The coinage dates to 2009, when Twitter was still Twitter, and posts there were referred to as tweets. But if Twitter has been X’d out and tweets are no longer tweets but posts instead, what is to become of the useful coinage “subtweet”?

 Given that the word now has become a generic term used on other social-media platforms (hello, my friends at Bluesky), I suspect that “subtweet” will join the ranks of what are known as anachronyms: words that are used “in an anachronistic way, by referring to something in a way that is appropriate only for a former or later time.”

That’s the way Wikipedia defines them, which will have to suffice for now, because the word is too new to have worked its way into dictionaries. Maybe when it does arrive, lexicographers will have identified its originator; linguist Ben Zimmer is often credited online, but he says he doubts he was the coiner.

He goes on to talk about several other similar terms, among them "subway token booths" (tokens now having been eliminated in New York and Toronto), and "podcasts" (the iPod having long been discontinued).

I wonder how long we will continue to call our omnipresent digital terminals "phones". How many phone calls have you made on your cell phone in the last week? 

Hopeland's The Music

I have just had my mind well and truly blown. I'm reading Ian McDonald's latest novel, Hopeland, and about a fifth of the way into the book he introduces the Music, a machine to play a piece of music that will take a thousand years to complete. 

It's like the Long Now Foundation's long clock in a way, but McDonald's conception is more evocative and his description in the book is stunning in its beauty and power. It's the most striking thing I've read in a decade. 

I found the beginning of the book a little hard to get into, but kept going because MdDonald is such a good writer, even if the story wasn't grabbing me. But he has me thoroughly hooked now. 

Featured Links - March 11, 2024

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

Birds on the lake

• Amid explosive demand, America is running out of power (gift link). "AI and the boom in clean-tech manufacturing are pushing America’s power grid to the brink. Utilities can’t keep up."
• Dune: Part Two Asks Questions That the Original Never Dared. "Denis Villeneuve's new Dune film alters the arcs of key characters, but not everyone gets such careful treatment." This article echoes my feelings about the movie. 
• ‘The feelings are still there’: A disinformation expert on the legacy of the ‘Freedom Convoy’. "TVO Today speaks with University of Maryland researcher Caroline Orr Bueno about conspiracies, Russian influence, and why the convoy is part of a longer-term movement."
• Babylon 5 Was the Ultimate Exercise in Plotting vs. Pantsing. "With a possible reboot on the horizon, let's take a look back at what made the classic series so profoundly unique." Babylon 5 is still my favourite science fiction TV series. I do hope Straczynski gets to do his reboot.
• Losing Ice. "The trillions of tons of ice that moderates our climate is melting away." We could have ice-free Arctic winters before the end of the decade. This will have major effects on climate and the environment.
• The uncomfortable reality of life on Earth after we breach 1.5°C. (archive.ph link). "Passing 1.5°C of global warming isn't just a political disaster, it will have dire consequences for us all, as those living on the front line already know."
• Conscious AI Is the Second-Scariest Kind. "A cutting-edge theory of mind suggests a new type of doomsday scenario." The article is by Peter Watts, one of the best SF writers around, and whose stories are widely read in the AI development community.
• The Artist Who Visited 'Dune' and 'The Most Important Science Fiction Art Ever Created'. An appreciation of John Schoenherr's wonderful art for the Analog serialization of Dune with many illustrations. 
• US prepared ‘rigorously’ for potential Russian nuclear strike in Ukraine in late 2022, officials say. "In late 2022, the US began “preparing rigorously” for Russia potentially striking Ukraine with a nuclear weapon, in what would have been the first nuclear attack in war since the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki nearly eighty years before, two senior administration officials told CNN."

Photo of the Week - March 10, 2024

This weeks photo is of the clouds over Frenchman's Bay. I was struck by seeing clouds that you'd normally expect in summer in early March. This was taken with my Pixel 8 Pro using the 5x zoom and tweaked with the Dynamic filter in Google Photos. 

Summer clouds in March

 

Saturday Sounds - Jason Isbell andthe 400 Unit - 2024/02/27

This week's sonic treat is a recent concert from Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, recorded at the Kodak Center in Rochester, NY on February 27th. It's an audience recording but the quality is very good and the performance up to Isbell's usual high standards despite him recovering from a recent illness. You can view the setlist and recording info here. 

The recording is sourced from the sugarmegs.org site and is a single MP3 of the whole concert. 

We're Toast 47

This post is a collection of links that support my increasingly strong feeling that the human race (or at least our technological civilization) is doomed. It is part of an ongoing series of posts.

Abandoned shopping cart

The World’s Essential Aquifers Are in Deep Trouble. "New research finds that the groundwater systems that hydrate your life are in rapid, sometimes accelerating decline around the globe. Here’s how to stop the retreat."

New research shows that COVID-19 can cause "significant drops in IQ scores". Tje article has links to several sites citing this and similar research. It's not over folks. Mask up!

Scientists Are Freaking Out About Ocean Temperatures (gift link). “It’s like an omen of the future.” 

Imperiling Climate Goals, Global Resource Extraction Set to Surge 60% by 2060. "Wealthy nations are responsible for most of the consumption of natural resources, according to a new United Nations report."

Gab’s Racist AI Chatbots Have Been Instructed to Deny the Holocaust. "The proliferation of generative AI chatbots on extremist platforms could lead to increased radicalization, experts warn."

Critical transitions in the Amazon forest system. "The possibility that the Amazon forest system could soon reach a tipping point, inducing large-scale collapse, has raised global concern. For 65 million years, Amazonian forests remained relatively resilient to climatic variability. Now, the region is increasingly exposed to unprecedented stress from warming temperatures, extreme droughts, deforestation and fires, even in central and remote parts of the system."

Category 6 Hurricanes Are Already Here. "Some scientists say Category 5 is not enough to describe the monster storms that have battered us in recent years."

There's Plastic in My Plaque! "First report of micro/nano plastics in patients with atheroma and their link to worse clinical outcomes (composite of all-cause death, heart attack and stroke)."

Some Thoughts on Dune

Dune and its sequels has been a part of my life ever since I was a teenager; I first read part of it after it was serialized in Analog and I found copies of the magazine in a used bookstore. I was smitten and read the novel as soon as I could get my hands on it at the library. (You can read about the rather interesting publishing history of the book in this article by Andrew Liptak on his excellent Transfer Orbit blog.)

The Prophet of Dune from Analog

Since then I've reread Dune several times and read all of Herbert's sequels as well as several of those written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. Of course, I've seen the movies too.

Last weekend, Nancy and I rewatched Dune Part 1 and Tuesday we saw Dune Part 2 at an IMAX theatre. I do have mixed feelings about it as an adaptation, which probably won't matter if you haven't read the book. (Spoilers ahead). 

Tt was, needless to say, spectacular; and one of the most intense cinematic experiences I've had. For once, I was watching a movie on a screen that was big enough (it filled most of my field of view), bright enough, and with concert-quality sound. If you can possibly get to an IMAX theatre, it's definitely the way to go for big-budget spectacles like Dune. And the movie was full of spectacular set pieces that took my breath away. The scene where Paul rides a sandworm for the first time was jaw dropping and there were many others like it.

But I didn't find an emotional connection with the characters in this part of the story that I had when watching Dune Part 1. The characters were overpowered by the spectacle. Paul's transition from desert warrior to what is essentially a superhero was too abrupt to be convincing. I also didn't like the change to Chani's character at the end of the movie. It probably is a setup for Villeneuve's third Dune movie, but it's a major divergence from the original storyline and didn't work for me at all. My thoughts on the movie parallel those expressed by Carlos Morales in this article.

All that aside, I enjoyed the movie and will no doubt watch it again once it shows up on streaming services. It is a major achievement and one of the best adaptations ever of a major work of science fiction or fantasy, certainly on a par with Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. But it isn't the masterpiece that is the novel.

More on COVID-19's Effects on the Brain

More research is being published about the effects of COVID-19 on the brain. Eric Topol has published a Substack post summarizing two recent studies that were based on studying large groups of people.  

The 2 new studies are the largest to date to prospectively assess Covid impact on cognitive function, and both are consistent in showing declines as compared with controls without Covid. The assessment of cognition in the cohort from England was more in-depth, but of shorter duration, and demonstrated the favorable effect of symptom resolution. The extrapolation to a loss of 3 to 9 IQ points is difficult contextualize, and the risk of long-term sequelae is unknown. It is worthwhile noting that these IQ score losses represent averages, and there is considerable variability in cognitive deficit. In contrast, the Norwegian study only got into memory but had much longer, serial assessment up to 3 years. None of this is good news for Long Covid and the brain, folks.

I wonder what the long-term effects on society will be from this. Having a large percentage of people with measurable cognitive impairment cannot be a good thing. 

Featured Links - March 4, 2023

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

Sparkles on the bay

• Two giant US telescopes threatened by funding cap. "Thirty Meter Telescope and Giant Magellan Telescope might need to compete for survival in face of federal spending limit."
• Look for these 9 red flags to identify food that is ultra-processed. "Free yourself from the grip of ultra-processed food by looking for these signs on the package label."
• Fiber optic cables transport petabytes of data every second around the world — scientists say they could also save lives by detecting tsunamis early. "Scientists at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) have discovered a novel technique that can turn undersea power and telecom cables into arrays of environmental sensors, opening the door to extensive ocean monitoring."
• DOJ quietly removed Russian malware from routers in US homes and businesses. "Feds once again fix up compromised retail routers under court order." 
• The invisible campaign to censor the internet. "There’s an enormous and largely invisible campaign to use fraudulent notices under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act to remove critical articles from the internet. We don’t know who is running the campaign, but we do know it’s facilitated by Google’s amazingly trustworthy approach to DMCA complaints made by companies that don’t exist."
• How Embedded Linux is used in spacecraft. "George Emad kicks off a series of posts to see how Embedded Linux is used in outer space. The Linux OS has gain some popularity in the space domain in applications including spacecraft, nano satellites, and astrophotography."
• Behind F1's Velvet Curtain. "If you wanted to turn someone into a socialist you could do it in about an hour by taking them for a spin around the p"addock of a Formula 1 race. The kind of money I saw will haunt me forever."

 

Photo of the Week - March 3, 2024

This week's photo is of a sunset taken just after a strong, stormy cold front passed through. The orange colour was enhanced by wildfire smoke from Texas high in the atmosphere. Wildfire smoke reaching here has become a part of our summers, but having it happen in February is unusual if not unprecedented. 

I took the picture with my Pixel 8 Pro using the 5x zoom.

Sunset after a storm

 

Saturday Sounds - Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets - Palmanova 2023

This just popped up in my YouTube feed yesterday and I'm very glad it did. I still haven't forgiven myself for missing Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets when they played Toronto a few years ago. Mason has been touring steadily, mostly in England and Europe, playing early Pink Floyd music. I was fortunate to see Pink Floyd in Detroit; their 1972 concert was the last one of my university days and was sonically spectacular, intense, and memorable. Floyd went on to huge commercial success, but with a few exceptions they lost the psychedelic edge that their early music had. 

This concert is from Palmanova, Italy on July 20, 2023. Video is 4K and probably fan shot. I'm not sure about the audio. It's very clean and may be a soundboard/audience matrix. It's two hours of psychedelic joy and I love it. 

Movie and TV Reviews – February 2024

Short reviews of movies and TV shows that Nancy and I watched in February.

Movies

• The Last Voyage of the Demeter: A horror flick based on a single chapter in Bram Stoker's Dracula. It's well done with good acting and pacing. Cory Hawkins as Clemens is particularly good. It's an interesting take on the Dracula legend and the ending leaves room for sequels. (Prime)
• Oppenheimer: I was afraid this would be a little dull and talky but found it moved quickly for a three-hour movie. I enjoyed it but probably wouldn't watch it again. (Prime)
• Argyll: We went to see this because we liked the director's previous work and it was $5 Tuesday. 

TV Shows

• Hope Street, season 3: A lighter show than some we've watched. I didn't realize that the 3rd season has been split into two parts, and I don't know when the second half is coming. (BritBox)
• Antiques Road Trip, season 26: This is the latest season, so I suppose we will have to work our way through the earliest episodes now to get our antiques fix. (PBS)
• Only Murders in the Building, seasons 1-3: The main reason I watched this show  was for the performances of Steve Martin and Martin Short. Comedies like this aren't usually my cup of tea, but I liked this one a lot. It is very funny and somewhat twisted and kept us surprised and engaged though the three seasons. (Disney+) 
• Severance, season 1: What happens in the office stays in the office, until it doesn't. This turned out to be much better than I expected and much stranger. It reminded me and Nacy of Terry Gilliam's Brazil. I do wish the season had resolved more instead of ending with a major cliffhanger.  (Apple TV+)
• Law and Order Toronto: Criminal Intent. I may watch this again, just to see some of the Toronto locations, but I never much cared for original series, and my feelings haven't changed. (City TV)
• Unforgotten (season 1): Another good British police procedural focusing on cold cases. Good acting, twisty plot, and gritty settings. (BritBox)
• Death in Paradise (season 13). Murders in the beautiful Caribbean setting continue. (BritBox)