Global sea surface temperature in uncharted territory now.
Via @hakonnordhagen
#globalwarming #oceantemperature #ClimateChange
if you see anything, anything at all on the internet you think is cool, save it on your hard drive
companies will burn the library of alexandria twelve times over as to not lose fifteen cents, so it's likely whatever you've seen two, five, ten years ago is permanently deleted
"there are no algorithms in our software" is rhetorically isomorphic to "there are no chemicals in our food product"
Digital Graffiti and hyperlocal e-zines.
I bought a ton of tiny micro-controllers, in part because I want to work on some automated farming projects and they were a steal at $6/board.
Then I had another idea.
These micro-controllers can run tiny web servers and WiFi access points. They also require extremely low power, can be powered on an outlet or a small solar panel and battery, and can be hidden very easily, either in a 3D printed waterproof container, a rescued piece of litter, or more.
Inspired by @hydroponictrash 's posts on hosting and hiding banned libraries, I decided to start working on a similar project: spreading tiny micro-servers across town in hidden locations hosting zines, propaganda and links to banned books and such.
Now, these are microcontrollers here... we're not talking about high-powered computers. I'm not going to be able to handle hundreds of requests at once... likely, less than half a dozen. I'm not going to be hosting beautiful looking web apps in ReactJS, more likely just raw HTML/CSS (maybe JQuery? we will see) and I'm not planning on this just spreading like wildfire.
That said, I think the concept of e-graffiti (think hosting one of these with anti-police or anti-gov messaging right outside of city hall, hidden where they can't find it) and hyperlocal e-zines really neat.
I'm going to test this idea out and get back to you on it. The next iteration I think would be cool is finding a way to do this on recycled e-waste: think old phones, broken laptops, etc. Things that have a higher processing power can also do bigger tasks like hosting banned books for download, serving as wifi-repeaters to serve... "liberated" wifi connections, etc.
Whatever you're building right now that brings people together to make a small thing better, keep building it.
Whatever you're maintaining right now that supports your community, keep maintaining it.
May there be joy in that work.
Even if it feels useless, keep at it. You have no idea how far reaching the effects might be.
My spiritual practice became a lot less confusing once I realized that synchronicities and signs/omens are separate but overlapping phenomena.
Sometimes a synchronicity is a sign/omen of something greater, but not always. Sometimes a synchronicity is just a reminder of our connectivity and the oneness of this system, a reminder that you're still "tuned in."
Subscribing meaning to every synchronicity I experienced just muddied the waters and distracted me from the actual signs/omens that I was seeing.
Welp, I'm giving another talk on satellite pollution so I have to update the numbers in my slides.
*checks https://planet4589.org/space/con/star/stats.html and https://celestrak.org/NORAD/elements/table.php?GROUP=active&FORMAT=tle*
Oh crap, there are 150 more Starlinks than when I gave a talk on this topic 1 month ago.
3908 Starlink satellites out of 7545 total satellites.
52% of all sats now owned by one awful dude. Still with effectively no regulations. This is so bad.
an interesting study on custom engines used in the industry, from AAA to smaller indie teams. quite a few SDL, Ogre and Monogame based engines. https://gist.github.com/raysan5/909dc6cf33ed40223eb0dfe625c0de74 #gamedev
The gold standard for measuring mortality has always been excess deaths - how many more people actually died, compared to previous years. This data is slower to arrive but much less amenable to political manipulation.
WHO has been tracking excess deaths. Their data shows COVID has killed from 3 to 6 times the official numbers. Worldwide, while the official death count is around 5 million, excess deaths are more like 15 to 30 million.
Don't let the deniers fool you. We are still in a pandemic.
Really wish there was an OS that forced apps to decouple their data layer from their UI layer so that users could bring different UIs to the same data or combine multiple data providers in one Ui.
really good article on AI-generated imagery falsely reifying an Americanist understanding of emotional expression as universally, historically objective
https://medium.com/@socialcreature/ai-and-the-american-smile-76d23a0fbfaf
Back to #African #Fractals: Modern #Computing and Indigenous #Design, a book by #RonEglash.
https://galee.lacambretypo.be/s/gLjtsp8YRAssLaR
I didn't have "dystopian RSS reader" on my 2023 bingo card but here we are...
Interesting revelation from #gargron in recent interview on server choices for newcomers (https://www.theverge.com/23658648/mastodon-ceo-twitter-interview-elon-musk-twitter)
“However, I think that possibly going forward, we might rework the onboarding user experience into **presenting a default option as well as an advanced option, where all that stuff with choosing a server would basically be hidden away from the people who get intimidated by choice**.”
The AI moratorium letter only fuels AI hype. It repeatedly presents speculative, futuristic risks, ignoring the version of the problems that are already harming people. It distracts from the real issues and makes it harder to address them. The letter has a containment mindset analogous to nuclear risk, but that’s a poor fit for AI. It plays right into the hands of the companies it seeks to regulate. By @sayashk and me. https://aisnakeoil.substack.com/p/a-misleading-open-letter-about-sci
