On the Sound of Silence
This evening I'm dealing with a bit of (comparative) insomnia. Hardly major as even now it's only 12:30, but I am normally quite regular in being able to lay down and immediately fall asleep around 10pm. So, as I wait for my body to realize that it is tired, I'm on the computer doing what I do - futzing with code and listening to music.
I've been usually hitting songs I know and like. Or songs suggested to me from my YouTube history via the algorithm. Nothing new. But I did find a new video for a song I know well.
I came upon this video of a voice coach's reaction to Disturbed's Sound of Silence. While the video is wonderful and enjoyable, the thing I most loved was seeing this comment from it:
The beauty of this version is that it sounds less like a “new” version than a progression, something that I think Paul Simon felt when he gave the seal of his approval to David Draiman. Someone said that the original “Sound of Silence” was a plea to the world, a warning, and this version is the anger that the warning was ignored, which I think says it all.
What a perfect description of it in contrast to the original. Gives me chills.
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"10 Facts About the History of LGBTQ Pride Month"
Not just a listicle, some great segments and content in this.
2. The Stonewall riots were not America's first LGBTQ uprising.
In May 1959, a group of LGBTQ individuals who were fed up with being mistreated by the police fought back at Cooper Do-Nuts in Los Angeles. According to Out, the group, which was led by several transgender women, “pelted officers with donuts, coffee, and paper plates until they were forced to retreat and return with larger numbers.” It is believed to be the first documented LGBTQ uprising in U.S. history.
A Guardian Editorial points out the huge disparity in a hunt for five rich people in a submarine vs. drowning migrants at sea off Greece
Look, I hope the people in the sub get saved. But, also, the editorial is 1000% right.
A massive operation is under way to find and save a stricken vessel and its passengers. As time passes, anxious families and friends wait with growing fear. The US coastguard, Canadian armed forces and commercial vessels are all hunting for the Titan submersible, which has gone missing with five aboard on a dive to the wreck of the Titanic in the north Atlantic. The UK’s Ministry of Defence is also monitoring the situation.
It is hard to think of a starker contrast with the response to a fishing boat which sank in the Mediterranean last week with an estimated 750 people, including children, packed onboard. Only about 100 survived, making this one of the deadliest disasters in the Mediterranean. Greece and the EU blame people smugglers, who overcrowd boats and abuse those aboard them. But both have profound questions to answer about their own role in such disasters. Activists say authorities were repeatedly warned of the danger this boat faced, hours before it went down, but failed to act.
Washington state has highest gas prices in country
Experts say Washington's price surge is linked to the state's latest, most-ambitious efforts to battle climate change, specifically the new carbon-pricing program launched this year that charges businesses for the greenhouse gases they emit. The first two quarterly auctions of emission allowances raked in more than $850 million.
Now oil companies are choosing to pass on the compliance fees, the experts say. Those costs add up to about 50 cents per gallon for the consumer, according to the Oil Price Information Service, a Dow Jones company that collects fuel-pricing information for many clients, including AAA. The state Department of Ecology, which oversees the carbon-pricing program, says it's aware of oil companies passing on the costs but has no power to stop it.
And here-in lies the rub. When the businesses are not things people can easily opt out of, they are rife for this sort of exploitation.
Jan. 6 rioter gets 12.5 years for using taser on police officer
Two important things came to mind as I read this:
First, these articles are important, but only if they are being seen by the right people. Showing the ongoing prosecution and jailings of the rioters is great, except the bubbles which now exist mean a lot of people who support it aren't going to see these sentencings.
Second, the convicted rioter is 40 years old. At most 16 months older than me. An elder-millenial like me. Not my parents' generation. Not Gen X. People who grew up in the same world I did.
I wonder what we can see about AI's impact on Wikipedia already. Has there been an uptick in edits? What posts are getting the most attention? How are the bad actors cloaking themselves?
So far, I can't find anything useful in Google about it right now. The top responses are an article about internal division on how to handle AI on the site, which is important but not ultimately what I'm looking for. Then found a few older pieces which talk about AI in relation to the site, but usually either as part of their spam fighting efforts, or what people are doing with bots on the site.
I, like others, have concern about the AI impacts on content. I think of it as the rounding the corners and softening the content.
I recall coming across an article where someone talked about how they bought a physical copy of an Encyclopedia in response to their similar concerns regarding the post-truth era. Sadly I can't find it again.
I do kind of want to get an archive of Wikipedia for personal storage, though I've wanted this even before AI's surge. Mine is more of a sort of digital 'prepper' sort of motivation. That, and also I enjoy the idea of having a Kindle on my shelves which functions as an encyclopedia for us.
Timeline of the far future
While surfing Wikipedia this evening, I came across this interesting article.
While the future cannot be predicted with certainty, present understanding in various scientific fields allows for the prediction of some far-future events, if only in the broadest outline. These fields include astrophysics, which studies how planets and stars form, interact, and die; particle physics, which has revealed how matter behaves at the smallest scales; evolutionary biology, which studies how life evolves over time; plate tectonics, which shows how continents shift over millennia; and sociology, which examines how human societies and cultures evolve.
Automated Archives for June, 21st 2023
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Chess For the Day
Record: 2-0-1
Net Elo Change: +6
Games Played
- HDA369 - WIN
- evg13535759 - WIN
- JoeRad - LOSS
Blog Posts On This Day
- 2021-06-21 (1 post)