Sketchfab & Cannon Mountain

Sketchfab looks fun & calls itself "The leading platform for 3D & AR on the web". The free plan may be enough to get you started, but anything after that is $15 / month.

Here's an example: Cannon Mountain (New Hampshire)

Yep: Summars Are Getting Longer!

Here's the short version & here's the long version (behing paywall).

GIS Certificate @ CCSU

Looks like they are running a 3-course GIS Certificate:

• Beyond the Map: Advanced GIS in Action
• GIS Advanced Certificate course
• GIS Essentials Certificate - Course 1 Fundamentals

They seem to have an Introduction to GIS & an Advanced GIS course - not sure what the 3rd course required course this.

Back in the days: a Bachelor's degree was 120 credits, the Gen-Eds were 40 credits, the Major was 40 credits, the Electives were 40 credits, a Minor was 18 credits,  a Certificate was 12 credits, and 1 full-semester course was 3 credits. Yes, there were some variations, but that's about what you could expect a normal public college or university.

Now the trend is towards 90 credits for the Bachelor's degree (completed in 3 years), Minors with 15 credits, and Certifciates with 9 credits.

AI For Science

Which AI model is best for scientific questions? Ai2SciArena offers a way to test & compare AI models in this context. And the results? See below!

• Try it here: Ai2SciArena
• More Information
• Nature, 10 July 2025

Academia = Rotten!

Says Sabine: Things are not looking good for the future of science publishing. Researchers are leveraging AI, paper mills are churning out more fake papers than ever, and people are constantly coming up with new strategies to abuse the peer review system. Let’s take a look at how the world of science publishing is struggling with the growing issue of science fraud.

I disagree...this video & her message sound like clear examples of cherry-picking & confirmation bias to me. Plus: physicists always know everything better than anyone else...

Carl Sagan (1995)

 “I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…”

More @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World

I Got a Drone!

Fun series from John Nelson!

1. I Got a Drone, part 1: Unboxing & Goals