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Knife Fighting Advice

Two people find each other in a bar, have words, and are told to take it outside. One has a knife, the other does not.

Political Advice

The need to find a name for everything, especially in the midst of context collapse – government that relies on its own impunity, media beholden to access and corrupted beyond its ability to notice – finds its gloomy audience. The cynicism of artificial everything takes the degradation of beauty as license for further spoils. People who profess faith in a universe governed by a monarchy do not care about the state of democracy. Capitalist buzzards scavenge the carrion so much begins to resemble.

Slow down.

The rush constitutes a critical element in the systemic failures, which while calculated and tangible only accelerate via failures of imagination. The first thing to go, assumed to be light, harmless, perhaps fun but inessential and so left unguarded while the currencies get blast-proof doors and laser alarm matrices. But crushing the capacity for imagination has always been priority. Note the uncomfortable complicity in putting away childish things at our peril.

Consider how little attention has been paid. How much agency remains? Where to start with such a disfigured capacity to imagine? No wonder. Little wonder. Disordered priorities. Go back. Name a recent wonder. A glimpse, a moment handed over to wonder. Everything is there.

The subconscious renders, speaks beyond language, as much older than language, flickers with light, premises lightness, joy, love.

Own the lapses, welcome fears. Correct them. Re-order indicates a new, different hierarchy that understands exact necessity. Smells of earth and wild garden fragrance always near the top.

Oh, and always bring a knife just in case.

Image: Fifth Avenue skyscraper blocking the view of the Empire State Building.

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If it has sentience

it’s being used to protect us? Now that is thoughtful:

Imagine a medical-advice chatbot that lists fewer diseases that match your symptoms, because it was trained on a narrower spectrum of medical knowledge generated by previous chatbots. Or an A.I. history tutor that ingests A.I.-generated propaganda and can no longer separate fact from fiction.

Just as a copy of a copy can drift away from the original, when generative A.I. is trained on its own content, its output can also drift away from reality, growing further apart from the original data that it was intended to imitate.

In a paper published last month in the journal Nature, a group of researchers in Britain and Canada showed how this process results in a narrower range of A.I. output over time — an early stage of what they called “model collapse.”

Apparently, visual artists have been attempting to poison the models for a while now, to the point where they can’t tell the difference between a cat and a cow. Turns out even in Plato’s Cave you need people who know things.

But using itself to replicate itself is, shall we say, projecting deformity.

Hapsburg AI, indeed.

Image: Based on research by Ilia Shumailov and others.

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Recycled Oil Rigs

So as the Obama administration delays a Bush faux-solution to expand torture drilling, the Interior department is focused on developing offshore wind power. Coincidental to this, researchers report that one “unexpected quirk” of climate change is that wind speed is picking up off the coast of England.

Based on information taken from Nasa satellite images, the research found that average annual wind speed in the southern part of the North Sea had increased from about 7.5 metres per second in 1990 to 8.5 metres in 2008. In contrast, wind speeds in the northern part of the North Sea, off the coast of Scotland, have remained constant during this period.

If these trends continue, in a decade the south could be windier all year round than northern areas and double the power generated by wind farms off the coast of East Anglia and Essex.

For those poised to make a buck, why not jump in where you can make three? Apparently the sites off the Nantucket Sound are attractive not only because of significant sustained winds, but the shallow waters keep installation costs down. A major cost of installing the turbines is the offshore foundations themselves, such that the British government just launched a £20 million competition to accelerate a 30% cut in costs for deep water foundations. But, wait – we just read that

Until now, developers have relied on wind-speed levels taken on oil and gas installations or have used meteorological masts planted offshore. The Met Office has only limited satellite data to track offshore wind speeds in the North Sea but is working with wind-farm developers to produce a comprehensive set of data of the last 30 years. A spokeswoman admitted it would take two years to develop.

Duncan Ayling, head of offshore renewables at the British Wind Energy Association, said: “There have been wind-speed measurements on oil and gas installations that give some localised historic data, but a lot of the rest of it is extrapolation. If this technology provides an accurate measurement, it would be very exciting. More wind equals more money for projects. It would enable wind-farm developers to more accurately forecast revenues and have more certainty about the expected return on their investment.”

Emphasis mine. Oil and gas installations that are…  already out there in the windy North Sea, in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of California and elsewhere. Many of these are abandoned or likely to be tapped out soon. What happens to them when the spigot from down below runs dry? Can’t they be topped with a wind turbine, gigantic and lovely? Doesn’t fix everything or end the discussion, though we stipulate that neither of these is the point; also, far superior to highly-stylized schools of thought centered around 1) doing the same things and expecting different results and 2) Let’s Do Nothing!

Plus reuse is PR gold so this fulfills the implicit double entendre requirement for what green means. Please make checks payable to the editor.

Posted on

Recycled Oil Rigs

So as the Obama administration delays a Bush faux-solution to expand torture drilling, the Interior department is focused on developing offshore wind power. Coincidental to this, researchers report that one “unexpected quirk” of climate change is that wind speed is picking up off the coast of England.

Based on information taken from Nasa satellite images, the research found that average annual wind speed in the southern part of the North Sea had increased from about 7.5 metres per second in 1990 to 8.5 metres in 2008. In contrast, wind speeds in the northern part of the North Sea, off the coast of Scotland, have remained constant during this period.

If these trends continue, in a decade the south could be windier all year round than northern areas and double the power generated by wind farms off the coast of East Anglia and Essex.

For those poised to make a buck, why not jump in where you can make three? Apparently the sites off the Nantucket Sound are attractive not only because of significant sustained winds, but the shallow waters keep installation costs down. A major cost of installing the turbines is the offshore foundations themselves, such that the British government just launched a £20 million competition to accelerate a 30% cut in costs for deep water foundations. But, wait – we just read that

Until now, developers have relied on wind-speed levels taken on oil and gas installations or have used meteorological masts planted offshore. The Met Office has only limited satellite data to track offshore wind speeds in the North Sea but is working with wind-farm developers to produce a comprehensive set of data of the last 30 years. A spokeswoman admitted it would take two years to develop.

Duncan Ayling, head of offshore renewables at the British Wind Energy Association, said: “There have been wind-speed measurements on oil and gas installations that give some localised historic data, but a lot of the rest of it is extrapolation. If this technology provides an accurate measurement, it would be very exciting. More wind equals more money for projects. It would enable wind-farm developers to more accurately forecast revenues and have more certainty about the expected return on their investment.”

Emphasis mine. Oil and gas installations that are…  already out there in the windy North Sea, in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of California and elsewhere. Many of these are abandoned or likely to be tapped out soon. What happens to them when the spigot from down below runs dry? Can’t they be topped with a wind turbine, gigantic and lovely? Doesn’t fix everything or end the discussion, though we stipulate that neither of these is the point; also, far superior to highly-stylized schools of thought centered around 1) doing the same things and expecting different results and 2) Let’s Do Nothing!

Plus reuse is PR gold so this fulfills the implicit double entendre requirement for what green means. Please make checks payable to the editor.