Climatopias

The latest in climate adaptation for the privilged: climatopias. Imagine flood-resilient settlements, amphibious communities, or floating cities that allow the rich & wealthy to continue to live on the water. 

This is a technological fantasy that distracts from sustaiable climate change adaptation. This may work in niche situations and for 'normal' fluctations in sea level, but these settlements remain extremely vulnerable to extreme events.

Read more here: Can floating homes make coastal communities resilient to climate risks?

Nate Silver: The River

Not sure I want to read the entire book, but I like the metaphor he uses: Imagine the world as a river = an ecosystem of people, ideas, and more. All of us are trying to best navigate this river and the associated currents of strategy, chance, and uncertainty.

A Different Perspective

 

Superblocks

Superblocks could be a way to create more pedestrian-friendly urban environments while still allowing for effiecient vehicle access. More here: https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2024/03/05/are-superblocks-future-urban-living

A.I. ‐ Humanity's Final Invention?

 

Great video - basically the story/history of intelligence & artificial intelligence.

• The general trend: narrow to general.
• Key step: self-learning by combining the power of super computers & Big Data.
• Then came ChatGPT, but that is still narrow AI: it can write and write well, but does not understand what it is writing.

But what about General AI = intelligence that is broad like human intelligence?

• This is now referred to AGI.
• AGI = humans, but much faster.
• AGI is not limited by the physical & biological limits of humans.
• AGI can be copied millions of times at an instant.

This then could lead to a self-improving AGI & a so-called Intelligence Explosion to create a Superintelligence Entity that is much much more intelligent than humans. Here's a scary quote from the video: "And We have not been  Kind to what we perceive less Intelligent beings.”

For now, the limiting factor in the development of AI / AGI seems to be electrical power - there is just not enough available these days - need nuclear fusion!

How Smooth Is The Earth, Really?

How Smooth Is The Earth, Really? is a cool 3D animation of Earth's topograhy (both to-scale & with vertical exaggeration). This would be great as two amimated GIFs to show side-by-side.

I actually like the chart even more - showing the layers of the Earth to-scale & showing how insignifcant Earth's topography is relative to the size of the Earth overall.

Data GIF Maker

Cool: the Data GIF Maker (by Google) is a super-simple animated GIF maker for data / charts.