A crash course on AI

Update 1: a collection of AI "art" on Flickr 

Update 2: a French look into the future of AI

- new: incl. an AI-driven comic

Update 3: added a note on AI Summaries

Update 4: a manifesto of sorts closes this brief

Ongoing: add items of interest under "AI-ding Tool"

New twist: look for AI-assisted story-telling below

New blog header: Web maps & AI for the public good

Have I mentionned that AI will need skilled writers more than skilled coders? Forbes wrote here about a US efforts in that regard. The one thing AI won't replace,  acc. to the starred "AI-ding Tool" example below is curiosity:  it mirrors Steve Jobs' "stay hungry, stay foolish" at Stanford 2005 Commencement Address here.

This post follows on my last AI trial: a long conversation here and a short one here; let's see more updates, shall we?

Science, Science Fiction, and AI

This essay was improved using Lia27 app here (see more on AI assisting in writing here, as well as author Rie Qudan in next post here).

A journey linking the "three arts" of the 21st century: let's try to expand the mind and thought at a human speed and depth in this world of "fast food", "fake news" and "brain rot"; the current media trend which, contrary to Montaigne (Wikipedia), makes a head well-filled rather than a head well-made! "Brain rot is a term used to describe the perceived negative cognitive and emotional effects of excessive consumption of low-quality or unchallenging online content leading to reduced attention spans, impaired critical thinking, and mental fatigue." The following demonstrates how a ''head well made'' is of paramount importance:

Science is also demonstrating forward thinking. As such, Andras Kovacs, Jussi Lindgren, and Jukka Liukkonen have proposed a way to unify the theories of gravitation and electromagnetism into a unified field theory. Very roughly speaking, light and gravity are four-dimensional waves in space-time, but light is compressed back and forth, and gravity is compressed up and down. Is it one step towards "Einstein's dream of a unified field theory accomplished"? (Phys.org)

One last map request

Note: this blog won't die... monthly hits almost 20K mid-April! Seen on desktop here, that also lists top reads.

Update: added a new map adding to an existing Antarctic project at the bottom

Pyrenées

When visiting the nearby village of Pontacq (Flickr & village site), the glorious sunshine showed the Pic do Midi de Bigorre (Wikipedia) so clearly we could see the observatory atop! It's the left peak in the central massif below.

Reposting stories from original website

As I prepare to end this blog, let's follow on recent updates: 

Aug. '24: A return to my roots
Oct. '24: "Where in the world...", updated
Oct. '24: Global sea level rise revisited
Oct. '24: Northwest Passage Reloaded
Nov. '24: Cumbria classic revisited...
Dec. '24: Exhuming my thesis area... & Jan. '25: update
Jan. '25: London Thames Barrier... & Feb. '25: update
Feb. '25: Beechey Island update
Feb. '25: East Anglia Peatlands revisited

A conversation with AI (long read)

Update: a short read on Medium tells "the story behind the story" of American & French Revolutions.

Shakira YouTube channel posted this video #LMYNLWorldTourCDMX: 

How a confusion between CDMX (Ciudad Mexico) and MCDX (1410 in Roman numerals) lead to a far-ranging AI chat thru culture, geography, career and climate activism. MSFT Copilot (here) transcript (Italics: me, regular: Copilot):

East Anglia Peatlands revisited

Update1: see clipped oroginal and working vector datasets posted as detailed at bottom.

Update 2: added DIY map-mapping workshops & notes to help citzen science

Update 3: here at the end is the relevance of this sort of effort in a broader context

As news abounds about Arctic Permafrost & Peatlands degrading faster than thought (Copilot), this may be a good time to bring back some Natural England and Environment Agency data under Open Government License (OGL, National Archives). The upshot is that returning peatlands to their original state is the biggest climate change mitigator in the UK detailed here & here: briefly, peatlands either degraded thru neglect or converted to farm land, not only shrinks & stops being floodwater catchment, but it converts carbon sinks through sphagnum moss into carbon emitters thru windborne dried peat. In other words, re-watering peatlands dwarf efforts from other mitigation of climate change (see sources at bottom).

Beechey Island update

Update: see aerial shots from 1968 posted on Facebook Group "Remembering the Franklin Expedition" here

 A previous blogpost here almost 7 years ago showed how to use a niche product to create detailed elevation model of Beechey Island. Posted on Google Earth here (download & open it in Google Earth, see 'GE' below), it allowed to add a Parks Canada photo of the Franklin Expedition landing site: it was the first one uncovered by University of Alberta's Owen Beatty in 1984, the year before I spent a summer in the Arctic 'nearby' the other side of King William Isl. on the west shore mid-Boothia Peninsula... We were in fact told to report any unusual findings!

London Thames Barrier update

Update 1: here is the transcript of Hansen's latest "in plain English" (alt. here)

Update 2: here is the Climate Cultures article this map was used in, thanks Lola Perrin.

Update 3: here at the end is the relevance of this sort of effort in a broader context

Two weeks ago I recreated Sea Level Rise (SLR) and Risk of Flooding (RoF) maps for the lower Thames River near the Thames Barrier (blog) for a WhatsApp Group considering the future of its ageing infrastructure w.r.t. recent climate extremes. This week came a global and urgent update affecting Sea Level Rise, by James Hansen who sounded the alarm ~ 35 yrs ago (go to 1981 & 1988 in Medium): a paper incl. supplementary materials "Global Warming Has Accelerated" (Columbia) c/w companion webinar (Columbia).

A brief web history of mine

Update: re: my last paragraph, I restored my personal portfolio as a re-post of my original www.zolnai.ca here and my professional portfolio as a free-tier for developers here.

As I wind down my blog posts and I quit socials, perhaps this may be a good time to reflect on my Web journey that started almost 40 years ago (a recap of my IT journey is here)...

But wait... Tim Berners-Lee didn't invent it til just over 35 years ago (Wikipedia)! That's because I had a site dubbed HTTP in 1986, see inset below:  "world wide web" hadn't been coined yet, but I knew as a student at late 70's University of Calgary of Ted Nelson's failed Project Xanadu (Wikipedia), to try and link all forms of knowledge via hypertext; it failed partly due to Nelson's eccentricity,  partly because there was no global network to carry it. 

London Thames Barrier revisited

Update 2: see renewed Sea-level Rise extents according to new information here 

Update 1: see addition at bottom... thanks to our indefatigable London climate activists!

Further to my original blog post 3½ yrs. ago here, I was asked to share maps of the area surrounding the Thames Barrier (Wikipedia): A WhatsApp group considered the necessity for a second barrier under Climate Change that increases both flooding and sea level seasonal elevations. 

Exhuming my thesis ... an update

Update: an article here confirms plate tectonics 1.1-1.3 B yrs. ago, where plate movements helped concentrate the iron ore.

By the way, "exhuming my thesis" was an inside joke: the geology and tectonics both in my area in N Ontario and the inspiration paper in Alaska talked about "exhumed terranes"; continental blocks that were buried and metamorphosed, displaced and then exhumed back to the surface to their current location.

New Years Eve 2000 racing by Greenwich Meridian

Update: note a dash of AI mixed in at the bottom for fun

Our TV rung in 2025 live in Paris in my time zone, and six hours later in NYC dropping its ball in Times Square; nothing matches however this cracking event in London to usher in the New Millennium: barges were aligned in the middle of the River Thames, spaced exactly 1 s. apart as the earth rotated past midnight GMT in London, from the Meridian at the Millennium Dome to the east, to Vauxhall Bridge to the west.