Fasten your seat belts as today my own personal “Wayback machine” is taking us all the way back to March of 2003. At the time the Iraq war was still only two weeks old, and Republican law makers in the U.S. had their sights set on critically important decisions.
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I came across an article on Wired during Blaugust of 2024 and thought I should write something about my own introduction to coding as a teenager. I sort of forgot to follow up until today, so here we are.
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Two years ago Wilhelm had some well-considered words to say (TAGN) regarding the state of blogging in the 2020’s. A couple of years have passed and I have considered my own thoughts on the topic. And then I came across this post over on the Dead Parrot BBS, which inspired me to assemble my thoughts into a post here.
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I was going through my notes from a year or so ago and came across a reference to this post from Axxuy on the topic of longevity as measured in blog posts. There are a lot of ways to calculate a lifespan: how many times will I shave before I expire, how many rolls of toilet paper will I use, or how many sunrises will I actually see. All of these calculations start with assumptions about how long you will live.
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Ten lions have been killed with poison in an attack on the wildlife in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation area. It is yet another incident where human factors outweigh the survival of the animals we share the planet with.
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Bhagpuss published a post a few weeks back about AI and how we feel about it. Not about the hard crunchy aspects of AI, but about feelings and attitudes towards what may one day be a new form of actual intelligence we have to share the world with. I have some thoughts on the topic that I could either make into a long comment or a short post, so here we are.
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Late last week Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay calling for the AI industry to be regulated for reasons of safety. It is a long read and I will be honest: I only skimmed it, and read a summary of the discussion around the issues on Gizmodo instead. But my limited understanding of the situation is that Amodei says the pace of AI development is putting us all at risk, and needs to be controlled with government oversight.
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I have missed the actual birthday of Star Trek- September 8- by a good week. I have a good excuse as I was away visiting friends and touring around Radium Hot Springs at the time. I could have posted something I suppose, and I definitely felt the urge to do so when I saw Wilhelm (TAGN), Roger (Contains Moderate Peril), and Bhagpuss (Inventory Full) post their thoughts. But here I am, delayed but still adding my two cents worth of thought to the topic of Star Trek with my own experiences.
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I refuse to name the man here today who has called for the closure of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (CBC) in Washington. But he is the one who rules from on high south of our border, the man who hasn’t met a monument, airport, or national treasure that he hasn’t immediately wanted to put his name on.
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My best friend Chris reached out to me at the end of June with a plan to meet up at a midway point between his home in Edmonton and our home in Castlegar. He would be travelling with his significant other Billie and his brother Richard, and I would aim to bring Irene along for the trip. I had enjoyed our similar gatherings in the past and so plans were made.
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