Wednesday, October 30, 2019

The size of space | time killer to the max :)


The Size of Space is a time killer to the max showing us rubes just how enormous space truly is.

Enjoy.

Had to add another


And we haven't even reached galaxy size in any way, shape or fashion. :)


Except now. :)


What lies beyond? No one knows, do one? - Fats Waller 

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

3 Times greater ...


2050 portends a world radically different from the one we see now based on new projections of the extent of water level rise never thought possible until now. The NYTimes Vietnam image, in particular, simply stuns yours truly given just how intense GW will become as man movers further into the 21st century.



We are so screwed.
Bangkok & Alexandra goes away as well.

Warms the cockles of one's heart doesn't it.


Addendum ...

The US also gets hit.


Miami Beach in 2050



Miami Beach/2050 - Vertical view



New Orleans, like southern Vietnam, is basically gone. 

Any questions?

Happy Halloween/NASA Style :)

Close encounters ...

Friday, October 25, 2019

The Telescreen ... looms


BRT has written a great deal about AI with one segue leading to the telescreen, the infamous device used by Big Brother to track the Winston Smiths of the world in Orwell's masterpiece ... 1984.

Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

Now, in 2019, one can see the telescreen writ large whereby said tech not only watches one but also tracks emotion using one's webcam to make it happen.

Levenson decided to base his next film project on this idea. “I thought, given all this access we’ve given them to our faces, what is the most hypothetically awful thing they could possibly be doing to harm us?” he says. He imagined companies potentially analyzing users’ photographs to determine their emotions in each one, then combining this with other data to draw sweeping conclusions about people’s thoughts and preferences. “What if they correlated [the emotional analysis] with other inputs: your location via GPS or maybe the content you’re consuming,” he says. “They would know something about the way you felt about some place, some thing—or maybe even someone, if they examine your text history.” Then the tech giants could turn around and sell these data about your behaviors and opinions to other parties.

It gets better.

So Levenson began researching emotion recognition technology—and quickly realized its use might not be entirely hypothetical. “When I started googling around, I discovered the patents revealing that the tech companies had kind of beat me to it,” he says. “They had clearly been thinking about precisely the same thing for at least like five years now.” He incorporated this research into his new “interactive documentary.”

When a person watches Stealing Ur Feelings (available here) online, the viewer’s own face—frequently festooned with virtual sunglasses or other digital stickers—appears onscreen at the same time as stock imagery such as cute animals, pizza and random humans. These visuals speed by as a narrator cheerily discusses how emotion recognition works and how tech companies could use it. To demonstrate what this technology can do, the video applies it to viewers: Levenson adapted open-source code into a program that uses a device’s Web cam to analyze the viewer’s face as it reacts to the other on-screen imagery.

In other words, as you watch this video, it watches you right back.



The Telescreen ... looms.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Burnin Down the House ...


Burning down the house by Talking Heads is not the raison d'ete of this blurb but rather the gathering storm known as global warming and the increasing impact it's having on the world, in this case, California, the dry land of brush and scrub forest, complete with intense winds, a Petrie dish made for devastating fires of the wild kind.

SAN FRANCISCO — Facing down 600 wildfires in the past three days alone, emergency workers in California rushed to evacuate rural areas of Northern California on Thursday and warned residents that the high winds currently propelling an out-of-control blaze could become even stronger in the coming days.

Remember, it's just the beginning of a long term disaster of our own making.

All this is happening after three straight years of record breaking fires that researchers say are likely to continue in a warming world and which raise an important question: How to live in an ecosystem that is primed to burn?



Interesting question without question is it not?

Surrounded on All Sides :)


Another gem from Dinosaur Comics. Enjoy. :)

The Singleton


Mirror Beach | a piece by yours truly, depicts, in indirect fashion, the looming spectre of AI and what it means for mankind as neural net driven technology is open-ended and intrinsically unknowable as this code learns about its domain independent of the creators who built it in the first place. With this in mind, the notion of a singleton governing the world is no longer fantasy given just how pervasive AI is becoming due, in large part, as to just how much money is being made on an evolving tech that is no longer under our control.

To whit.



The question to ask ...


Something to consider without question.

Click What is a Singleton? to learn why Bostrom's take on civilization 's possible future rings true. 


Future Tense ...


Bubbles of a different kind :)


Yours truly has written copiously about Quantum Foam and how it relates to reality, a take on same that actually seems to be relevant given that said writer's ability with math is limited to say the least. :) With that being said, I must say this Vice article supports, in part, what this rube has written over the years BRT has been in existence.



It gets better ...






Ain't science grand? :)


Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Avian Soundboards



And of course, the Superb Lyre Bird :)



Nature never disappoints. 

Non Sequitur or ... Once in a Lifetime :)


In a very odd way, Once in a Lifetime | Talking Heads, applies.



[Verse 1]
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, "Well... how did I get here?"

[Chorus]
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground

[Verse 2]
And you may ask yourself, "How do I work this?"
And you may ask yourself, "Where is that large automobile?"
And you may tell yourself, "This is not my beautiful house"
And you may tell yourself, "This is not my beautiful wife"

[Chorus]
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground

[Bridge]
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was

Any questions?

Invisibility cloak becomes real ...



Harry Potter's invisibility cloak becomes real. Hyperstealth rules ... for now.

Here's another clip. Metamaterials and AI, a heavy combination without question.


Hyperstealth Invisibility Cloak 9 Minute Promotional Video from HyperStealth Corp. on Vimeo.

Any questions?

Saturday, October 19, 2019

Night Walks


Patterns


Archway


Night for Day


Open for Dinner


Red Moon Rising

Fractured Geometry


Fractured geometry, with yours truly's feet purposely left in, shows, in indirect fashion, how tech is generating uncontrolled feedback loops and reality distortions fields to the max, thus driving the US populace into the madhouse as uncontrolled recursions can make one mad, especially when viewing the never-ending regurgitation of news 24/7 with particular emphasis on politics and what it means for America. 

To whit ...



Read the rest of Kunstler's piece to see the ramifications of a looming Constitutional Crisis of biblical proportions as we move ever closer to the year of our lord 2020.

Thursday, October 17, 2019

A Constitutional crisis looms ...



This illustration by Victor Juhasz truly represents the inner character of The Donald. If one goes to Rolling Stone, one will see other Juhiaz gems of the esteemed POTUS but ... as my loyal readers know, this blurb isn't about a great illustrator but rather about impeachment and what it means for America.


On most of these issues, yours truly agrees but to this writer, the real transgressions lie with the denial of science, the gutting of the EPA and Trump's muzzling  of NOAA/NASA regarding hurricanes or the adverse impact of global warming on the world, as these acts compromise the well being of the country's people and, to me, constitutes the real reason for impeachment (not Ukraine or Russiagate) 

Being above the law also applies  ... 

There have been earlier impeachments and interferences with democratic institutions in our history, but nothing like this one. In this, as he likes to say, Trump truly stands alone. He has assaulted American democracy, claimed he has the authority to do so, and dared anybody to do anything about it, dismissing with contempt Congress’ clear constitutional authority to oversee and check the executive branch. He thinks he can use the office of the presidency as a personal instrument, along with private emissaries, to desecrate the rule of law and then protect himself from the consequences. He even declares in public that he is the law, claiming that, according to Article II of the Constitution, “I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” Not even the most corrupt and criminal of our previous presidents has tried to pervert our most sacred institutions as openly as Trump has.

Question ... If impeachment does succeed, the stellar Mike Pence becomes god's warrior for America. Warms the cockles of one's heart doesn't it?

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

The betting pool says ...


The betting pool says, in IMHO, that life on Mars is a given.

NASA’s reservation against a direct search for microorganisms ignores the simplicity of the task accomplished by Louis Pasteur in 1864. He allowed microbes to contaminate a hay-infusion broth, after which bubbles of their expired gas appeared. Prior to containing living microorganisms, no bubbles appeared. (Pasteur had earlier determinted that heating, or pasteurizing, such a substance would kill the microbes.) This elegantly simple test, updated to substitute modern microbial nutrients with the hay-infusion products in Pasteur’s, is in daily use by health authorities around the world to examine potable water. Billions of people are thus protected against microbial pathogens.

This standard test, in essence, was the LR test on Mars, modified by the addition of several nutrients thought to broaden the prospects for success with alien organisms, and the tagging of the nutrients with radioactive carbon. These enhancements made the LR sensitive to the very low microbial populations postulated for Mars, should any be there, and reduced the time for detection of terrestrial microorganisms to about one hour. But on Mars, each LR experiment continued for seven days. A heat control, similar to Pasteur’s, was added to determine whether any response obtained was biological or chemical.

The Viking LR sought to detect and monitor ongoing metabolism, a very simple and fail-proof indicator of living microorganisms. Several thousand runs were made, both before and after Viking, with terrestrial soils and microbial cultures, both in the laboratory and in extreme natural environments. No false positive or false negative result was ever obtained. This strongly supports the reliability of the LR Mars data, even though their interpretation is debated. - Gilbert V. Levin, Experimenter of the Labeled Release (LR) life detection experiment on NASA’s spectacular Viking mission to Mars in 1976.

So why wasn't the LR on Curiosity or installed on the next rover, scheduled to land on Mars in 2020?

Sunday, October 13, 2019

When tragedy becomes farce or ... god has a plan


When tragedy becomes farce ...



Or better yet, god has a plan



One cannot make this up.

Saturday, October 12, 2019

A simple matter of measurement, right???



Yours truly loves science. Why, because, when done right, it's a discipline whose theories are designed to be disproved, something seen in a "simple" matter of measurement, in this case, the Hubble Constant and how it relates to our understanding of the universe.

We're getting something wrong about the universe.

It might be something small: a measurement issue that makes certain stars looks closer or farther away than they are, something astrophysicists could fix with a few tweaks to how they measure distances across space. It might be something big: an error — or series of errors — in  cosmology, or our understanding of the universe's origin and evolution. If that's the case, our entire history of space and time may be messed up. But whatever the issue is, it's making key observations of the universe disagree with each other: Measured one way, the universe appears to be expanding at a certain rate; measured another way, the universe appears to be expanding at a different rate. And, as a new paper shows, those discrepancies have gotten larger in recent years, even as the measurements have gotten more precise.

"We think that if our understanding of cosmology is correct, then all of these different measurements should be giving us the same answer," said Katie Mack, a theoretical cosmologist at North Carolina State University (NCSU) and co-author of the new paper.


It's not all bad as new physics might be at hand. :)


Thursday, October 10, 2019

Hidden passage???


Physicists conceptualize black holes spin at almost the speed of light. With this being said, it stands to reason that the extreme inertia generated by such spin rates could transform black holes into wormholes, a notion being seriously studied by researchers checking out the supermassive black hole residing in our Milky Way galaxy.


Seems BRT's take on black holes possibly being wormholes is not too far fetched after all. :)


We live in interesting times.

Something's afoot/rev XX


Something's afoot applies here as there is not one drop of blood nor are there any tracks to cattle mutilated in Oregan.









Something;s afoot indeed ...

Captain Chaos ...


As most intelligent people know, The Donald is Captain Chaos to the max, As long as everything centers on him, it's ok, as long as people's lives are not on the line, a situation not the case with people in combat, where coolness of temperament, combined with battlefield competence, is key to keeping people alive under the most trying conditions possible. With this information is factored into the equation, people in the know know that Trump is not qualified to be commander in chief in any way, shape or fashion.

To whit.


It gets better ...




Read the entire Atlantic piece to learn why this guy doesn't cut it as CIC.


In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. - Erasmas

Monday, October 07, 2019

GB without a doubt ...

State of the Art ...



State of the Art says it all regarding Pixar and 3D animation. Years ago, yours truly beta-tested Pixar code from the user perspective. Something altogether amazing without question. :)

Lin was interviewed for FMX's Professional Spotlight series in 2016, in which he explains what exactly he does as a DP for animated films. This video offers some real clues as to why he insists on making the cinematography in Pixar's films as true to life as possible. When asked if his cinematic approach changes between live-action and animation (around the 1:40 mark in the video below), he responded:

"I think it's exactly the same between a live-action shoot and computer animation in terms of the sensibility, because what our goal is is to tell a story visually, and the way to do it is exactly the same. How you set up a camera, what kind of lens you use, what kind of camera angle you use...it doesn't matter if it's live-action or an animated film, the technique is the same."

Brilliant artistry without a doubt.





Artistry to the max indeed.

This clip shows how Pixar's tech has evolved over the years. Interesting without question.



Saturday, October 05, 2019

Cat 6 & counting ...


Dorian deserves to be a Cat 6 hurricane,
the first of many to come as civilization moves further into the Anthropocene.




Cat 6 candidates to date ...


It's just a matter of time.


Thursday, October 03, 2019

Defending Science


BRT has long questioned the Trump administration's adverse take on science and it's 24/7 push to subvert or politicize the same for political gain and/or corporate profits as needs warrant but people are resisting because turning one's back on science guarantees the slow demise of any country as the world moves ever forward into the 21st century.

To whit ...

In recent years, the norms and expectations that once ensured that our government was guided primarily by the public interest rather than by individual or partisan interest have significantly weakened. There are now far fewer constraints to deter abuse by executive branch actors. This report focuses on two distinct areas: the growing politicization of government science and research and the breakdown of processes for filling key government positions.

It gets better.

Now, we are at a crisis point, with almost weekly violations of previously respected safeguards.

Dangeville without a doubt. Click here for the full National Task Force Report.