Blog

Since the Summer’s on its way quite allright already here on the N hemi.

An advisory note with its own wiki: this. Which for the intended audience was put into a vlog post here. And despite the warning to not take this too seriously.

For the others, the written notes after the pic for viewing pleasure, and after noticing this:

“
Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of ’97.
Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.
The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience…
I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.
But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked…
You’re not as fat as you Imagine.

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind.
The kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing everyday that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy;
Sometimes you’re ahead,
Sometimes You’re behind.
The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults;
If you Succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your
Life.
The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium.

Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary.
Whatever you do, don’t Congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either.
Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.
Enjoy your body, Use it every way you can… Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people Think of it,
It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own…

Dance… even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.

Brother and sister together we’ll make it through
Someday your spirit will take you and guide you there
I know you’ve been hurting, but I’ve been waiting to be there
For you.
And I’ll be there, just tell me now, whenever I can.
Everybody’s free.

Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good.

Be nice to your siblings;
They are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on.
Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard;
Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will Philander, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you.
Maybe you have a trust fund, Maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you’re 40, it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen…

(Brother and sister together we’ll make it through
Someday your spirit will take you and guide you there
I know you’ve been hurting, but I’ve been waiting to be there
For you. And I’ll be there, just tell me now, whenever I can.
Everybody’s free.)
“

This, lamenting the loss of relaxation that once was had.

E.g., after landing; when passengers were calmed after that scary episode of a flight by the “Nothing to worry about [anymore…]” music on a plane. ‘tWas there in the Seventies all right, but when did carriers stop playing such pleasurable-feelings-enhancing music as this or this or this, or even the monumental this or this (version)? (Can’t recall to have heard this on a plane though it would fit the ‘ticket’.) Certainly, it was before there was a phase with a need for anxiety-releasing (sic) applause on cheap charters to/from non-Western cultures (mostly).

The 1^st-linked title pointing towards some categories (hotels, F&B, reception desks) where one wouldn’t want this kind of music loop e-ve-ry hour of the working day, I know. But if not looped but unique (if only by a randomiser), wouldn’t it enhance many workplaces like open office farms (at work-at-home situations it works Great, I can tell ya), when at a suitably soft volume so general colleagues’ noise is drowned out and one can actually concentrate on one’s own work and conversations? We could ditch the music in malls, then. Like, you know, the physical all-you-can-order webshops of yestermillennium (err, not so much; how time flies!)..?

Too bad even in planes, such a thing is no more. Maybe, some party like @KLM (on a forum like this – should add to comments but on a site I’m all but inactive on…) could reconsider. At tiniest cost, it could keep people in their seats until docked and not have today’s bumrush (also in original meaning) in the aisles …

Never mind. I’m Old. And:

[When that was … somewhat as it is today, if you’re ‘free’. Not ‘shopped!]

It’s odd that there hasn’t been much more comparison of the Moral Machine mind games, to Sophie’s Choice (here and here).
As explained earlier, the MM reasoning may be off, for the purposes that it is applied to latter-daily. But also, what have we learned from the novel/movie …?

We might better think about Hobson’s choices for our auto, then. We need answers, not swooning over drama.
[Not meant derogatory to those that have faced real Choices, just denouncing those that think that armchair babble about the trivial analogies to them, is human high grounds!]

Well, onto more pleasant subjects:

[Unreachable the Illuminating Light is; Carnegie library Reims]

Referring of course to … I’ll get to that.

Surprising none that followed app-sci developments in statistics and their practical use after the Black Swan, this came flying by, and this [with a link].
I sincerely hope these aren’t beyond your comprehension, or you’ll have to make-do with third-hand interpretations…?

No, they’re not mere theoretical physics (let alone mundane rocket science), right Sheldon ..? Yes the linked has 253 pages. Maybe not all quotes but still.

But they are relevant. Might they be implicated in biases ..? E.g., whereby the brain does/doesn’t include, surreptitiously, unconsciously, some learned (deviation from, or not) appropriate statistics ..? Is the brain wired [not this] wrongly [linearly], or too simple in the (potential) capabilities of neurons, to cope with maths beyond the trivial?
[At an angle, this tweet to a masterly contribution.]

Oh well, and:

[Also, caught in survival mode; Zuid-As Ams]

Just a short note as I’m delivering three days of lecture to executive MBAs-to-be on, among others, this subject:
Fairness in AI is beyond mere (??) debiasing training data like here.
It’s more about: waddyamean, fairness? for which I happened to have found a very good overview [plus dabbling tool] here. When one cannot per se decide on principle, what happen with development of proper systems …?

I don’t know. Neither do you. And:

[Art, another difficult definition thing; Smithsonian DC]

Note’let: How would the world innovate, if we had paid better attention to what some of the great ones had to prophesize about our past/present ..?

As illustrated by the already onto himself most agreeable futurist Ross Dawson in this piece, on the above and his list in general. When we read now what laid in store for us, wouldn’t we have been better off if we had taken the sources and pointers from those, and tried to implement them, rather than finding out now what we could have known and achieved earlier in time?

Of course we learn from history that we don’t learn from history, mainly because history does repeat but in ways we don’t recognize.
But also because we apparently don’t want to take the wise insights that do get formulated into actual implementations.
We don’t learn the lessons that get spelled out for us. And we all know:
Lessons are repeated until they are learned.

May we learn now, please ..?
And for your learning pleasure:

[Correction of errors; Courts, of Justice, London]

Just a musing, along with some stories relating to the IPOing of ‘unicorns’ quod non that seems to have picked up recently – are the last ones of a generation cashing out, or is it a true longer-term sine wave thing, or what?
The musing being, that many reasons can be given. Like here. But Sinister Me had a hunch there could also be something in play somehow that relates to most tech (and other) giants’ ability to dodge taxes everywhere, and with any new huge-from-the-word-go fund, somehow new tax evasion opportunities open up for wily investors. Like in diversifying the portfolio, similar to holding a diversified portfolio of loss compensation vehicles.
Anyone can shed a light on this ..?

Yours,

[Once were expats working for Big Oil here, now …; Westpuntbaai Curaçao]

Deliberate qua skewspeak.

Was triggered by this article, with the pic of a sub. That is waaay over size, when one would consider not needing the space for hoomans (and no need for much oxygen ..?); redesigning a drone sub from scratch might give quite different results.
Smaller, probably. More flex. Less visibility, in all sound / electromag fields. Possibly, cheaper builds (no need to care for human safety ..?). Have a look at what free design did for aerial, fixed-wing drones à la Raptor.

Surely, the Navy already is experimenting with drones beyond the cable-attached, close-by controlled, kind ..? What about their designs, re-optimised (e.g., using genetic algos as here and here) with a considerably altered set of constraints or what?
Where are the pics ..? [Will sign an NDA…]

Plus:

[Already off-average, even when classically designed… analog pic at Twente AFB, when that still was]

Repairbotwho ..?

I posted about this idea in the recent past [this post written long before-the-latter-hand, to add a dose of confusion as if you needed that even more], and finally got some positive news …. in here.

Finally. Now let’s get this through, singularity-wise; like letting the self-learning improve, and copying it n times with n → ∞ so sloppy coding becomes a thing to aim for (given meticulous inefficiency versus scribbeling∧’auto’correcting efficiently).

Deal?
To sweaten it:

[Unconfusing your design …? Porto]

Awww, anyone with me on loathing the abuse of Language by

• Misstating the ownership of billion-dollar [last time I looked, still had some value; may have dropped any amount since typing this] companies. They’re not yours, they’re theirs. The 0.001%.
• Misstating the ownership of you yourself. Since you are completely p0wned by them.

That’s what you get when you speak/write of ‘my Instagram’ or ‘my facebook’ or even ‘my socials’. Hahaha, you just said the equivalent of ‘I completely destroyed my privacy and have given up all rights to human decency to money-grabbing companies that [literally] couldn’t care less about me or my normal free functioning in society after they sucked the value out of my personal data and then don’t care and throw me away like a discard squeezed lemon.’ If you’re lucky, you’ll end up in the Asphodel of some ML weights but probably nahhh.

Stop it. It being both the tragic language and the sharing.

On that happy note:

[Your privacy ship has sailed once you come to utter such language-mangling; Porto]