Featured Links - August 26, 2025

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

Front yard hyacinths. 

The Super-Weird Origins of the Right’s Hatred of the Smithsonian. "The Trump administration has stepped up its antagonism of America’s treasured museums. But conservative antipathy toward the institution began long ago—with the bones of Bible giants."

Scientists Propose a Smarter Way to Hunt for Alien Radio Signals. "We might find intelligent aliens by looking for them the same way they’d find us."

Covid and Our Arteries. "A new study on acceleration of vascular aging adds to the body of evidence." Yet more reasons to do whatever you can to avoid catching COVID.

4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC. "A lawyer representing the online message board 4chan says it won't pay a proposed fine by the UK's media regulator as it enforces the Online Safety Act."

The 9 Worst RFK Jr. Decisions to Date. "By every measure, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s tenure as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been — and continues to be — a disaster. His actions undermine scientific progress, public trust, and the health of millions. In a mere matter of months, his agenda has left lasting scars on America’s public health infrastructure, while reverberating globally by undoing decades of progress in vaccination and disease prevention."

Sadopopulism and the Fascist MAGA Ethos. "Trump’s policy is to inflict pain, even upon his own voters. But why does this work, and what will stop it?"

Five Ways to Fight Trump's Fascism. "People are constantly asking me — what can I do? Between now and the 2026 midterm elections, here are five practical steps you can take to make a difference." YouTube video from Robert Reich. 

We Are All Lisa Cook. "Nobody is safe from weaponized government."

The “Peace in Our Time” Moment. "Why Trump’s Deal With Putin Echos Munich 1938." The similarities between now and 1938 are clear. 

Dude, you broke the Future! A talk by SF author, Charlie Stross, from the 34C3 conference in 2017. It's eight years old now and still relevant. (YouTube video)

Photo of the Week - August 24, 2025

This week's photo is of construction for the new Ontario Line, a major subway project in Toronto. Construction is well underway, and if I'm lucky and Metrolinx doesn't screw up the way they did with the Eglinton Crosstown line (which is still not open after more than a decade), I may live long enough to ride on it around 2030. I believe this is the site of the East Harbour station on the east side of the Don river. 

I took this with my Pixel 8 Pro on the way downtown, shooting through the Go Train window, so it's not the greatest quality, but it is an interesting scene. The scale of construction on the way into Union Station is very impressive. 

Ontario Line construction in Toronto

Saturday Sounds - Tedeschi Trucks Band - August 12, 2025

This week's musical treat is a video of the Tedeschi Trucks Band at the fabled Greek Theater in Berkeley, CA on August 12, 2025. They're one of the best bands touring right now and this video catches them on a good night. There are many highlights but I'll note just one: the encore of Angel from Montgomery > Sugaree. 

This is a pro-shot video, probably from a webcast, and the sound and video are first rate. Enjoy.

SETLIST

The Letter

Laugh About It

I Am the Moon

Little by Little

Do I Look Worried

1999

I Want More

Come and Go Blues

Future Soul

Keep On Growing

Devil Be Gone

Midnight in Harlem

The Sky Is Crying

Made Up Mind

Encore:

Angel From Montgomery / Sugaree

Let's Go Get Stoned

List of AI Writing Tells

The internet is becoming polluted with slop, content that's been produced by AI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini. The problem with that kind of junk content more than just slpppy writing; large language models can and often do hallucinate, inventing facts that seem plausible but have no basis in reality. 

This is a real problem for Wikipedia, whose purpose is to provide accurate information. To combat this, Wikipedia has created a list of AI tells, things that will help its editors spot content that's been produced by AI and hence requires closer scrutiny. 

This is a list of writing and formatting conventions typical of AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, with real examples taken from Wikipedia articles and drafts. Its purpose is to act as a field guide in helping detect undisclosed AI-generated content. Note that not all text featuring the following indicators is AI-generated; large language models (LLMs), which power AI-chatbots, have been trained on human writing, and some people may share a similar writing style.

The listed observations are empirical statements, not normative statements (except notes on how strong an indicator something should be taken to be). The latter are contained in Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Any normative content about what kind of formatting or language not to use in articles is not topical here; it might belong in (and is probably already present in) the Manual of Style.

Here's just one item from the list. 

Rule of three

LLMs overuse the 'rule of three'—"the good, the bad, and the ugly". This can take different forms from "adjective, adjective, adjective" to "short phrase, short phrase, and short phrase".

Whilst the 'rule of three', when used sparingly, is considered good writing, LLMs seem to rely heavily on it so the superficial explanations appear more comprehensive. Furthermore, this rule is generally suited to creative or argumentative writing, not purely informational texts.

Examples

The Amaze Conference brings together global SEO professionals, marketing experts, and growth hackers to discuss the latest trends in digital marketing. The event features keynote sessions, panel discussions, and networking opportunities.

When I was working at the TSX, I used Paul Beverley's wonderful FRedit Microsoft Word add-in to scan my documents for words and phrases that I would review and likely change. It could easily be adapted to catch many of the AI signatures (in poker terminology, tells) in a document. Some of Paul's other tools would also be useful in analyzing documents to spot content that has been produced by an LLM. 

What I'd really like is a browser extension that would flag web pages that appeared to be AI-generated. I know there are such tools and may do a bit of digging to find one that would work for me, preferably one that's open source. Suggestions are welcome. 

Featured Links - August 19, 2025

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

Seven swans on the bay

• NordSpace breaks ground on new Atlantic Spaceport in Newfoundland  "Complex just outside of a small fishing town to support Canada’s first commercial space launch later this month."
• Ford’s Plan to Dig a Tunnel under Highway 401 Is Almost Certainly Doomed. "At this point, what do you even say about a guy like Doug Ford? His latest commitment to doubling down on blasting a tunnel under Highway 401, the busiest in North America, ought to disqualify him from the Ontario premiership."
• Supervolcano shows signs of waking up, which is not a good thing, but scientists have a plan. It looks like a massive eruption is unlikely but smaller eruptions are certainly possible. 
• New Brain Interface Interprets Inner Monologues With Startling Accuracy. "Scientists decoded the silent inner thoughts of four people with paralysis, a breakthrough that could transform assistive speech."
• Antarctica’s Ghost Hunters: Inside the World’s Biggest Neutrino Detector. "Physicist Carlos Argüelles-Delgado gives us an introduction to this one-of-a-kind facility, one of the most successful neutrino detectors in the world."
• The Republican campaign to stop the U.S. EPA from protecting the climate. "An audacious effort to destroy climate regulations is likely headed for a showdown at the Supreme Court."

2025 Hugo Award Winners

The winners of the 2025 Hugo Awards were announced at the Seattle Worldcon Saturday evening. These are the fiction winners.

• BEST NOVEL: The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey, Hodderscape UK)
• BEST NOVELLA: The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler (Tordotcom)
• BEST NOVELETTE:  “The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea” by Naomi Kritzer (Asimov’s, September/October 2024)
• BEST SHORT STORY:  “Stitched to Skin Like Family Is” by Nghi Vo (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 57) 
• BEST SERIES: Between Earth and Sky by Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga Press)
• BEST GRAPHIC STORY OR COMIC: Star Trek: Lower Decks: Warp Your Own Way written by Ryan North, art by Chris Fenoglio 

I have not read The Tainted Cup though I suspect Nancy will be interested in it. I am glad to see that Ray Nayler won the Best Novelette award for The Tusks of Extinction, which I have and will be reading soon. I am almost finished his first novel, The Mountain in the Sea, and recommend it unreservedly.

Photo of the Week - August 17, 2025

This week's photo is another one of a farm north of Oshawa. I'm impressed by the industrial scale of some of these operations; something that most people don't associate with farms. I don't know what this complex is; my guess is that it's for processing corn. It was taken from our car with my Pixel 8 Pro, No, I was not driving!

Industrial farming north of Oshawa

Saturday Sounds - Radiohead - Hail to the Thief (Live Recordings 2003 - 2009)

There was a time, about 20 years ago, when I was quite a big fan of Radiohead. Their music isn't what I typically listen to, but something about it clicked. I never did manage to see them live, which is probably just as well given the abysmal acoustics of the Air Canada Centre (now Scotiabank Arena). 

This week's musical treat is a just-released live album consisting of most of the tracks from Hail to the Thief recorded between 2003 and 2009. It definitely reminds me of why I liked them at the time. You can  read more about it in this article from Rolling Stone. (paywalled but the Reader View extension will show it to you if you are using Chrome). 

We're Toast 62

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. 

Golfing while the world burns

Note: I created the image above Microsoft's Copilot AI tool. I wanted an image of Trump golfing on the White House lawn while Washington burned. It refused to do that but offered sevral alternative suggestions of which this was one. 

He Asked a Chatbot How to Start a Pandemic. It Answered. "A former UN weapons inspector brought the results to the White House. The message: anyone can do this now."

Phoenix Is Facing A Heat Crisis. Here's A Glimpse of Our Climate Future. "Phoenix is experiencing record-breaking, prolonged extreme heat driven by climate change, pushing the city into uncharted territory with growing risks to health, infrastructure, and daily life."

Trump Administration Moves to Destroy Satellite That Monitors Greenhouse Gases. "The Orbiting Carbon Observatories have been a game-changer for agriculture and climate science. Now, NASA is under pressure to terminate them." Farmers use the information from these satellites to check on how well their crops are going. 

The Republican campaign to stop the U.S. EPA from protecting the climate. "An audacious effort to destroy climate regulations is likely headed for a showdown at the Supreme Court."

The Drying Planet. 'Now, a new study that examines the world’s total supply of fresh water — accounting for its rivers and rain, ice and aquifers together — warns that Earth’s most essential resource is quickly disappearing, signaling what the paper’s authors describe as “a critical, emerging threat to humanity.” The landmasses of the planet are drying.'

Scientists raise red flags after observing concerning new whale behavior: 'We're seeing conditions that suggest a continuation'. "So far this year, 47 gray whales have been stranded across California, Washington, and Oregon — already well above last year's total of 31, with peak migration not expected until the end of June. Cascadia Research reports that most of the stranded whales showed signs of malnutrition, including depleted blubber oil, missing fat reserves, and empty digestive tracts."

Rising Seas Could Displace Millions, Triggering Global Migration Crisis, Study Warns. "Scientists issue a dire warning that even the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming target is too high and will have catastrophic consequences for coastal populations."

Nuclear Winter Would Be Even Worse Than We Thought. "The consequences of nuclear catastrophe extend far beyond the initial explosion—it could dismantle global food security for decades to come, a new study suggests."

Featured Links - August 12. 2025

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

Summer flowers looking a bit wilted

Bullets in the windows. "Until now, it was only a metaphor." This is horrifying and should have had more prominence in the news. 

Scientists reveal Alaska could get up to two minutes’ warning before the next big quake. "A new study suggests Alaska could get 10–120 seconds of warning before major quakes, with more seismic stations adding up to 15 extra seconds. Researchers emphasize challenges like harsh winters, remote sites, and alert transmission delays, but say the benefits could be lifesaving."

The War for the Web Has Begun. "One of the internet's biggest gatekeepers has accused a rising AI star of breaking the web's oldest rules. The explosive feud could change how we all get information online."

 A Valid HTML ZIP Bomb. "Many sites have been affected by the aggressiveness of web crawlers designed to improve LLMs. I’ve been relatively spared, but since the phenomenon started, I've been looking for a solution to implement. Today, I present a zip bomb gzip and brotli that is valid HTML."

2025 Aurora Awards. "The Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (CSFFA) today announced the winners of the 2024 Aurora Awards for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror in an online awards ceremony."

Why Are We Funding This? "People often wrongly believe that scientific progress is made by a few “great geniuses” working on a few “big questions,” and that those geniuses have some sense in advance of what the answers are going to be. In reality, knowledge is advanced by many independent teams of people working on chipping away at the boundaries of knowledge a little bit at a time. Sometimes doing so leads to a world-changing discovery. Other times it just tells us one more thing that doesn’t work, a vital step toward eventually learning what does work."

Saturday Sounds - Go Ride the Music - Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service

This week's musical treat is another trip back to the 1970s featuring two of San Francisco's greatest bands: Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service. The video was originally broadcast on PBS in December 1970 and features songs from both bands. 

I watched it on a black-and-white TV when I was in university. I tried recording the audio with a mike in front of the TV using a portable reel-to-reel from the student radio station where I was a DJ but unfortunately misthreaded the tape. In any case, I've had an audio bootleg of it for years, but this is the first time I've seen original video. 

There are very few good recordings of the Airplane playing live, even if it was in a recording studio, so this one is special. Quicksilver were past their prime by this time, but still enjoyable. The audio quality is very good but the video could use some upscaling. 

I have a request: If you have some across a recording of the Airplane's performance at the East Towne Theatre in Detroit in November 1969, please let me know where I can find it. 

Featured Links - August 5, 2025

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

A farm north of Oshawa

• The 10 apps I can't live or work without - on Windows, Mac, and mobile. I've been reading Ed Bott's articles and listening to him on podcasts for years. You can trust his research and his opinions. You might also want to read this article he wrote about the comments section for the article. 
• Midcentury Dreams. "Chesley Bonestell and Willy Ley's The Conquest of Space". I remember that book fondly, and the movie that was based on it.
• Flourishing chemosynthetic life at the greatest depths of hadal trenches. Life at 9 km. deep in the ocean. This might bode well for the prospect of life in the outer icy moons of the solar system. 
• A perfect storm (gift link). "As wildfires and storms fuel climate worries, the rise of weather content on social media shows there's a fine line between preparation and obsession."
• I Trusted Gemini With a Web Search and It Sent Me Straight to a Scam. "AI is creeping into more parts of the internet, answering search queries, recommending downloads, and even deciding what emails deserve your attention. But just because it sounds helpful doesn’t mean it always knows what it’s doing."
• Dennis McNally’s Last Great Dream: Memories of Working with the Grateful Dead, Tracking Kerouac and Exploring How Bohemians Became Hippies. I definitely want to read this.
• De-Google Project Update. "I introduced this family project in the spring of 2024. I won’t reproduce those arguments for why we’re working on this, but in the current climate I feel like I hardly need to. Since that post, our aversion to Google dependency has only grown stronger. Progress has been non-zero but not fast."

Off for the Long Weekend

It's another long weekend up here in the Great Green North, this one known as Simcoe Day in Ontario. July was ridiculously hot and humid with episodes of wildfire smoke, so enjoying the outside was difficult. This weekend looks more pleasant so I'm taking the weekend off to enjoy it and give my heat-stressed yard some TLC. I'll be back here on Tuesday.

In the meantime, here's a photo of another farm north of Oshawa baking in the hot July sun. I hope they've gotten enough rain because it's been pretty dry here.

A farm north of Oshawa

Review: The Lion King

Nancy and I went to see The Lion King in Toronto last night at the Princess of Wales Theatre. I am not a big fan of the original cartoon and I haven't seen the live action remake, but the stage musical is wonderful. The story line is standard Disney, warmed over fairy tale, with African elements but the staging and production raises it to another level. It's by far the most complex show I've ever seen staged and it's beautifully done.

Our seats were up in the balcony so it wasn't be best experience for me as far as seeing the details of the costumes and sets, but it was good for appreciating the staging. The actors, the music, and the sound were all first rate and the costuming and puppetry were exceptional.

It's showing until the end of August and tickets are still available. The lady sitting next to us got same day rush seating. I suspect most of the floor seats are taken by now, but the theatre isn't that big and balcony seats are fine.

The Lion King curtain call

Movie and TV Reviews - July 2025

 Movies and TV shows that Nancy and I watched in July. I do these posts mainly so I can keep track of what we've been watching, so the reviews are cursory. Now that it's baseball season, there will probably be fewer items here.

Movies

• Mickey 17: I had high hopes for this one, having heard the book was good, but about halfway through it pretty much fell apart. (Amazon Prime)
• Heads of State: Quite reminiscent of the "x Has Fallen" series, but even worse. Well made, but dumb, cliché ridden, and jingoistic. (Amazon Prime)

TV Shows

• The Art Detectives: A police procedural about art theft and fraud. Definitely on the lighter side of the genre but enjoyable. (The documentary series, Art Dectives, is etter.) (Acorn TV)
• Severance (season 2): Even more confusing that season 1 but watchable until about halfway through the season. I lost interest by the end. Kudos to the production's team for the quality of the cinematography and Apple TV+ for the streaming quality, which is the best of any of the services we subscribe to. (Apple TV+)
• The Librarians: The Next Chapter. Light fantasy about a library of supernatural objects and the librarians who are tasked with keeping them secure. (Crave) Shot in Belgrade so the settings are interesting. 
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (season 3). It's getting time to retire the franchise, I think. It's gotten too self referential and the stories are getting buried in glitzy effects. (Paramount+)