I've got to start things off today with Israel Kamakawiwoole or Iz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwkNSnkDRzE This particular video wasn't my introduction to his music but I'll admit I just want to be the old guy in the white hat in the video so...
At some point in waiting at the hospital while my Father was being admitted for a minor stroke my Mother and I had a bit of a discussion about people you see who are incredibly overweight. Izzy died 20 years ago this coming Monday the 26th. Both he and his brother, seen in some of the earlier videos, died of complications from their weight. It is an odd reality that people can possess talent that requires practice and perseverance and thus clearly have strength of character but have such obvious failings in life. My mother and I had to empathize at a most basic level while admitting our own complete lack of will in passing by a bowl of peanut M&Ms. (My Mother's Day gift this year to her was a 2 lb bag! She didn't say no nor leave it behind when she left the cookout and I figure at 92 if a person craves heroin don't waste time offering them a beer!!).
I guess I mention this as I should be weeding and using my time to accomplish a thousand different things. But I'm not, I'm indulging my lazy side. It could be the trips to the cabin to check items that need to be done off the list is kicking my butt. I considered making today's topic "Serving Two Masters" but too many of you actually know Biblical verse and I would certainly have missed the target. It could also be the heat of the last couple of days has sapped my energy. Yet that's a hard one to let myself pull out of the excuse bag as I'm not big on cold weather either, and what am I some delicate flower that can only accomplish my purpose if conditions are just right! Yeah I'll give myself a pass with the mental distraction of my Dad in the hospital but not from accomplishing so little. So much easier to judge others for their failings than fix my own and the pay seems about the same.
The garden hasn't done anything amazing this week. More just done what it should, grow. Deb and I have been eating great salads each night and perhaps that will make up for some of the M&Ms. I have managed to drop a few bags of lettuce with some neighbors and touch base as neighbors 'should'.
Shawn the gardener up the street really bumped his garden to the next level this summer. He had been working for some time to clear out an area of the backyard of various junk vehicles. They had been left behind by his Mothers former husband/boyfriend who left to drink himself into oblivion. Shawn having cleared the area found on the local free section of Craigslist four truck loads of soil. When I saw the soil it looked like a giant pile of hockey pucks. It was from the pots of a grow operation and would need the roots and remaining stems broken down but was a top quality potting soil used once. I guess that's one of the added benefits of being a 'legal' State. Oddly he was having trouble getting wood chips delivered, urban gardening has it's twists.
I've been filling a bit of time watching YouTube videos and trying to learn about artificial intelligence (AI). I won't offer any links as none have blown me away. The subject does however fascinate me. As will happen my thinking about the subject has blended with other thoughts both deep and shallow. I hope you'll forgive me if I pull that thread a bit to help sort it out in my own mind.
I have an old Mazda pick up truck. With a garden a pick up is an irregular necessity as you'll only put a load of manure in your trunk once and Uber will probably outright say no and add it to your customer profile and good luck getting a ride anywhere! Perhaps that is a niche market "Pick Upbers". Heck I heard about a local company trying to do it with private planes and have to think next trip we take I'll check it out. Direct check in beat the TSA line and violation of my Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution . But I have strayed way off the point I was talking about my truck. Mazda exploded on the scene as a brand with a revolutionary Wankel rotary engine. It was incredible logical when compared to a standard piston engine with things moving up and down and cam shafts and the like.
I had to break away to pick my Father up at the hospital. He may be slow to get himself to a hospital but I'm surprised he wasn't sitting on the curb when I arrived. When he wants to get out he goes.
With my arrival home the the cloudy day is looking to turning a thunder storm and has cooled things down quite a bit. Thus two of my excuses for laziness today have slipped away. I'm hopeful that resetting YouTube with Izzy's music will allow my Hawaiian mindset to return. We''ll see.
My Mazda has a standard piston engine. The Wankel engine if it still exist it does so barely in concept vehicles. I mention all that because history is littered with great technologies and paths not taken. Once a technology or idea takes root inertia pushes equal or even better ideas to the side.
I wasn't going to but I will offer you this AI Ted-x YouTube video. Not exactly on point but as you watch think about the ramifications of the "goals and constraints" given to the AI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR5N2Jl8k14
New ideas do explode onto the scene and the first idea in a category doesn't always become the long term winner. Like walking down a path that generally is taking you in the right direction people tend not to go back to take the superior short cut. They might look for a crossing path that leads them over to the short cut but backing up is rare.
I mention all of this with regards to AI because right now early AI is making decisions. Decisions that will carry forward further and further into our future. Perhaps some whimsical choice you make when interacting with say YouTube will have a small but disproportionate effect in future selections the program offers you. Any system trying to be user friendly will certainly note Hawaiian music and gardens to define you. Perhaps that won't mean much maybe you'll be offered a bit more Rachel Maddow and a bit less Rush Limbaugh or visa versa. That's where I want to veer hard off this thread to an adjacent one.
Because of the nature of most AI driven websites they want to offer you more of what you like. Thus more and more you find yourself in an echo chamber of ideas. It might not be dangerous when your buying sandals on-line but politics and ideas.... People have long segregated themselves in ghettos and groupings both physically and mentally. That has an effect. As we become overwhelmingly digital our politics is becoming segregated not simplistically as in Fox News or MSNBC but more deeply as in "listens to Hawaiian music and gardens". Doug Casey suggests that this and some other factors will be the death of the nation state and the rising of groups based more naturally around our interests. I hope he is right because the dystopian twist on that is a nation that continues to exist in it's ability to mess with your life but swings wildly back and forth on philosophical perspective. That is ugly.
Time to make a big salad for dinner. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2zTrBmI1nIDoug A.
At some point in waiting at the hospital while my Father was being admitted for a minor stroke my Mother and I had a bit of a discussion about people you see who are incredibly overweight. Izzy died 20 years ago this coming Monday the 26th. Both he and his brother, seen in some of the earlier videos, died of complications from their weight. It is an odd reality that people can possess talent that requires practice and perseverance and thus clearly have strength of character but have such obvious failings in life. My mother and I had to empathize at a most basic level while admitting our own complete lack of will in passing by a bowl of peanut M&Ms. (My Mother's Day gift this year to her was a 2 lb bag! She didn't say no nor leave it behind when she left the cookout and I figure at 92 if a person craves heroin don't waste time offering them a beer!!).
I guess I mention this as I should be weeding and using my time to accomplish a thousand different things. But I'm not, I'm indulging my lazy side. It could be the trips to the cabin to check items that need to be done off the list is kicking my butt. I considered making today's topic "Serving Two Masters" but too many of you actually know Biblical verse and I would certainly have missed the target. It could also be the heat of the last couple of days has sapped my energy. Yet that's a hard one to let myself pull out of the excuse bag as I'm not big on cold weather either, and what am I some delicate flower that can only accomplish my purpose if conditions are just right! Yeah I'll give myself a pass with the mental distraction of my Dad in the hospital but not from accomplishing so little. So much easier to judge others for their failings than fix my own and the pay seems about the same.
The garden hasn't done anything amazing this week. More just done what it should, grow. Deb and I have been eating great salads each night and perhaps that will make up for some of the M&Ms. I have managed to drop a few bags of lettuce with some neighbors and touch base as neighbors 'should'.
Shawn the gardener up the street really bumped his garden to the next level this summer. He had been working for some time to clear out an area of the backyard of various junk vehicles. They had been left behind by his Mothers former husband/boyfriend who left to drink himself into oblivion. Shawn having cleared the area found on the local free section of Craigslist four truck loads of soil. When I saw the soil it looked like a giant pile of hockey pucks. It was from the pots of a grow operation and would need the roots and remaining stems broken down but was a top quality potting soil used once. I guess that's one of the added benefits of being a 'legal' State. Oddly he was having trouble getting wood chips delivered, urban gardening has it's twists.
I've been filling a bit of time watching YouTube videos and trying to learn about artificial intelligence (AI). I won't offer any links as none have blown me away. The subject does however fascinate me. As will happen my thinking about the subject has blended with other thoughts both deep and shallow. I hope you'll forgive me if I pull that thread a bit to help sort it out in my own mind.
I have an old Mazda pick up truck. With a garden a pick up is an irregular necessity as you'll only put a load of manure in your trunk once and Uber will probably outright say no and add it to your customer profile and good luck getting a ride anywhere! Perhaps that is a niche market "Pick Upbers". Heck I heard about a local company trying to do it with private planes and have to think next trip we take I'll check it out. Direct check in beat the TSA line and violation of my Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution . But I have strayed way off the point I was talking about my truck. Mazda exploded on the scene as a brand with a revolutionary Wankel rotary engine. It was incredible logical when compared to a standard piston engine with things moving up and down and cam shafts and the like.
I had to break away to pick my Father up at the hospital. He may be slow to get himself to a hospital but I'm surprised he wasn't sitting on the curb when I arrived. When he wants to get out he goes.
With my arrival home the the cloudy day is looking to turning a thunder storm and has cooled things down quite a bit. Thus two of my excuses for laziness today have slipped away. I'm hopeful that resetting YouTube with Izzy's music will allow my Hawaiian mindset to return. We''ll see.
My Mazda has a standard piston engine. The Wankel engine if it still exist it does so barely in concept vehicles. I mention all that because history is littered with great technologies and paths not taken. Once a technology or idea takes root inertia pushes equal or even better ideas to the side.
I wasn't going to but I will offer you this AI Ted-x YouTube video. Not exactly on point but as you watch think about the ramifications of the "goals and constraints" given to the AI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR5N2Jl8k14
New ideas do explode onto the scene and the first idea in a category doesn't always become the long term winner. Like walking down a path that generally is taking you in the right direction people tend not to go back to take the superior short cut. They might look for a crossing path that leads them over to the short cut but backing up is rare.
I mention all of this with regards to AI because right now early AI is making decisions. Decisions that will carry forward further and further into our future. Perhaps some whimsical choice you make when interacting with say YouTube will have a small but disproportionate effect in future selections the program offers you. Any system trying to be user friendly will certainly note Hawaiian music and gardens to define you. Perhaps that won't mean much maybe you'll be offered a bit more Rachel Maddow and a bit less Rush Limbaugh or visa versa. That's where I want to veer hard off this thread to an adjacent one.
Because of the nature of most AI driven websites they want to offer you more of what you like. Thus more and more you find yourself in an echo chamber of ideas. It might not be dangerous when your buying sandals on-line but politics and ideas.... People have long segregated themselves in ghettos and groupings both physically and mentally. That has an effect. As we become overwhelmingly digital our politics is becoming segregated not simplistically as in Fox News or MSNBC but more deeply as in "listens to Hawaiian music and gardens". Doug Casey suggests that this and some other factors will be the death of the nation state and the rising of groups based more naturally around our interests. I hope he is right because the dystopian twist on that is a nation that continues to exist in it's ability to mess with your life but swings wildly back and forth on philosophical perspective. That is ugly.
Time to make a big salad for dinner. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2zTrBmI1nIDoug A.
I used to play his music as background sometimes during intense work periods of my 5th grade math classes. Israel Kamakawiwoole. Each time I see his (last) name I start to cherry-pick vowels and consonants (sort of how I read Russian novels once: "... doctor K--V--kov gazed out on the steppes" and "... V--R--K--insk stared at the axe in his hand") and then say to myself "wait a minute... I can sound this out and remember it". Then I do and then I can't. Did it again this time. "Ka-ma-ka" then "wi-wooley" whats so hard about that. I remember "Engelbert Humperdinck", right. But I think I will lose it once again. Why is that I wonder. I assume it is a set of sounds that my scots-irish brain just can't hold.
ReplyDeleteI had always read that he and his family had an inherited genetic syndrome responsible for the obesity. His was a sweet sound discovered in an amazing way and lost too soon. That could be the case with the M&M's as well (in a way that nicely blurs the border between personal choices and biological destiny) since I went through a period (working for Stone & Webster in Boston as a Programmer) when lunch was a 3/4 pound bag of M&M with nuts... carefully staged over the afternoon to keep the sugar crash off until I left.
So true how people have always segregated themselves into contained communities of language, food, religion, ideas... But it bears suggesting that the use of the specific word "ghetto" throws me off since I think that was historically more of a case of people being essentially herded together by oppressive forces. I don't want to be the language police here but we would not want to say any Nisei segregated themselves to the deserts of Oklahoma back in 1942...
Of course some of it, if you look at barrios and so-called "ethnic" neighborhoods in cities, is just because thats where you can get the food you like and are used to and hear the music and voices you are comfortable with. Interesting to think that this trend might be one thing that suburbs could have prevented and actively worked against if they had not ultimately failed (I know - have to wait and see on that prediction) due to their stretching of the human spirit in other ways beyond the breaking point. I thought of this after visiting my sister-in-law in California whose typical, cul-de-sac rich neighborhood is splattered with neighbors from around the world - and she is very casual about "the (Chinese, Afghan, Indian, Burmese) family down the street." But it does not look like Chinatown or the Barrio... just a street of small, well-kept houses.
For fun type "buy pink Cadillac" into a google search and click on a link. Then wait 2-3 days and watch what starts to pop up on your Amazon or other "ad content rich" screens. I actually have not done it until just now. (Will report back).
Thanks for your more than thought provoking reply. I've got to begin at the end "buy pink Cadillac." I think we should promote the idea as a sort of Luddite /April Fools smash the AI looms. As every great movement needs a catchy name I would suggest Fais do do. With the "Fais being an acronym for F*** the AIs. I will be typing in Buy Pink Cadillac!
DeleteYou are of course correct about "ghetto" having both an oppressive force aspect along with it's more benign personal choice derivation. It would be quite a dissertation to really give depth to the word. But a couple of brief thoughts: Here in Denver the 5 Points neighborhood was definitely 'created' by force of law regarding where Blacks/ African Americans could live. Little Italy in Boston was more a case of ethnic choice (within a framework of economic realities). Following the removal of the race laws (mostly through court decisions) 5 Points lost most of it's reason for existence and has struggled for vibrancy. Little Italy remains vibrant. I would thus suggest choice is naturally more resilient.
Suburbs are a choice as well as a planning scheme or theory with an underlying subsidy of legal encouragement. Thus I would suggest that some will be resilient as the underlying subsidy disappears while others will struggle and crumble. Again tho' much more in there than a simple reply would allow.
The nature nurture thing really is quite simple. My bad habits that I can't control are nature. Your bad habits should not interfere with my life and are really just a sign of laziness on your part and you should stop it. And if you want to pretend that it's genetic we should obviously edit the gene pool ;~) Just saying!