In the last two weeks:
Visited a friends newly made and inhabited beehive and learned about the complex reproductive and social/work structures of bees. Spoiler, it's not at all a good analogy for what the "the birds and the bees" is supposed to be an analogy for. It's totally alien to our human way of doing things, and even our anthropomorphization of bee's is fairly incorrect. I won't go into detail, but it's probably worth researching if you're interested in weird science.
Started working in earnest on the homework that is due for my Montessori training come summer. Just finished a story of a mathematician, or in this case, mathematical theorem: Bayes Theorem. (probably too advanced for any but the oldest and smarty-pants-est of the elementary kids, but really fascinating and a fun challenge to try and tackle, for any that it does appeal to. And an essential understanding for statistics and probability, that few people really understand.) In any case, while researching its uses, which include creating high quality AI's, I stumble across the AI generated pictures of celebrities that don't exist. They are super high resolution and impossible to distinguish from real pictures and people. It's... I don't know how to feel about it. Cool, fascinating, creepy, worrying. Looking at the progress of what AI's can do over the last 7 years or so, it's like watching an artist progressively getting better at drawing until they are photo-realistic. You're going to be able to fake... anything. They've animated the mona-lisa, to make a video where she's talking. Fake news just became way harder to distinguish. You could have video's of trusted people doing and saying things they did not do. Generated by AI's.
Fascinating fact: one of the most powerful AI structures is what they call... I forget the name... GAN's? oppositional networks: that is, one AI tries to make a realistic face, and the other tries to spot the fakes. You have them grow in proficiency at about the same rate, so they're both learning from each other and getting smarter from each other. This takes out the human element, where you need a real live person telling the computer, "no, that looks weird." And so the evolution can happen much more rapidly. Another fascinating thing they're doing, is... again, I forget the exact name, but self-awareness programs, where the program checks in with itself, about what it's already done, to help it figure out what needs to happen next and if it makes sense in the context of the whole (whole picture, in this case)
Suzannah made pizza! Normally we get a frozen pizza and add our own toppings, but this time she made the dough from scratch. It came out great! I love having such a creative person as my partner. She's been gardening, making things carpenter style, knitting... I feel like she is even more into my homestead/permaculture lifestyle that I've dreamed of, than I am. Certainly in her actions, though I took a break from pursuing that to get clear on my job situation. At some point, when that's settled down, I look forward to getting back into that kind of stuff more. I'll probably come at it more from the primitive skills and permaculture perspective, which is very complementary. We are very complementary, in so many ways. It's something I often think of with gratitude.
Everything is blooming and sprouting. It's beautiful, it's no longer cold, but also not hot. It is the most beautiful time to be in Fairfield.
The deer are eating Suzannah's garden, despite an extensive fence. She is preparing to shore up defenses. Really what we need is a friendly neighborhood cougar to hunt them. Their population is out of control.
I'm so greatful to have a bit more time that usual, even though I'm back to work. I've had a backlog for so long, it feels wonderful to finally be making headway with it, rather than just adding to the pile. I think as a society we work too much. It's not healthy. Not healthy for our bodies to sit that much, or healthy for our families to have so little time for them. Not healthy for our society, or earth, that gets neglected in the face of overwhelming personal concerns.
At the same time, I think there are some people who have figured out a system whereby they delegate, ignore the unimportant, and efficiently do the important, and somehow manage to get everything done on time without chaos or burnout. I'd like to become one of those. I think I'm working at it, but it's currently not top of my priority list, though perhaps it should be, since it's one of those foundation skills that will translate into better performance with everything else I do... kind of like I set out to learn how to learn/grow effectively a while ago, and learning that skill has been incredibly helpful for the rest of my life. (Though there's still plenty of improvements I could still make)
OK, I think that'll be all for this week. Take care everyone. It's a strange time: we have lots of extremes: some people are out of work, doing nothing, some are working harder than they've ever been with an extra serving of stress. Some are having a vacation experience, others are on the verge of death, or worried about the death of a friend or loved one. Nobody knows what to do, or what's going to happen. But we still have each other, we can still go for a walk under the blossoming fruit trees. We can play and laugh and count our blessings, we can help each other and love each other, though mostly from 6 feet or more away.
Love and peace,
-Isaac
No comments:
Post a Comment