A nice obituary, by Alexis Petridis on the Guardian for Jon Hassell, a musician who blew me away in 1980 with sounds I couldn’t categorize. I still can’t. as Eno put it, “one overriding principle in Jon’s work [was] that of respect – he looks at the world with all its momentary and evanescent moods … [Read more…]
She Exposed the Truth About ‘Dirty Money’: It’s Everywhere By Mark Schoofs Mr. Schoofs is the editor in chief of BuzzFeed News and a visiting professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Last Thursday, President Biden vowed to make global financial systems more transparent so that individuals … [Read more…]
Over on the Guardian, a review of a retrospective on 80s design activists Matrix who, as the pull quote states: The female architects who fought back – Fed up living in a world designed by and for men, 80s design activists Matrix declared war on every urban obstacle in their way. And their impact is … [Read more…]
On IEEE Spectrum – a discussion on the Resource Curse Are Fossil Fuels Impoverishing Middle America? IEEE Spectrum 12-MAY-2021 In our analysis, what we have basically found is that for that entire region (Appalachia) — which has a population of almost a million people, if you aggregate all of the counties—we can only see evidence … [Read more…]
Lasers Could Clear Space Junk From Orbit Adaptive optics proposal would allow tracking and steering of small but still damaging orbital debris
Chad Kalepa Baybayan Seafarer Who Sailed Using the Stars, Dies at 64 He was a torchbearer for the celestial navigation art known as wayfinding, which ancestral Polynesian sailors used to navigate the Pacific Ocean. From a NYT obituary, May 15,2021
The Guardian, again, posts some good information about the Anthropocene effects on climate in Climate emissions shrinking the stratosphere, scientists reveal. Thinning indicates profound impact of humans and could affect satellites and GPS. Meanwhile, on the NYTimes, another study showing that the increase of CO2 is causing a thinning via loss of density in the … [Read more…]
This is a placeholder for web-pages on rules and regulations for AI and AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) Artificial Intelligence Embedded AI 04 May 2021 Too Perilous For AI? IEEE Spectrum EU Proposes Risk-Based Rules – Draft regulations splits AI applications into risk-based tiers and bans some
Over at Ars-Technia, an interesting view on “Chamise is kind of a crystal ball for understanding how badly California might burn. ” And nothing scares a fire weather scientist quite like a year with dehydrated chamise. If it’s dry, then that’s a good indicator that everything is dry. “Right now, these are the lowest April … [Read more…]
There are many people who have names which suit their occupations. Here is a short list I’ve found so far in 2021. There are others who have slipped by in the past but are unverifiable. According to Frank Nuessel, in The Study of Names (1992), an aptonym is the term used for “people whose names … [Read more…]