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To The End Of The World - Blaise Cendrars
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
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This, the latest to arrive in my Cendrars binge, good, his writing is excellent, only perhaps I've read a bit too much of him lately.
Opening with an 80 year old French Dowager getting railed by a member of the French Foreign Legion, so hard that she coughs her teeth onto the floor, and from there...
Well, a little time capsule of Paris at a certain age, enjoyable, better written that Maughm or Hemmingway, and certainly a lot more descriptive. Now I've "The Confessions of Dan Yack" to get through, but I'll think I'll head back to Antarctica for a bit and see how the ponies are doing...
Anxiety...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
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Now, I have been as of late been filled with an unaccountable feeling of impending doom.
Not doom, per se, maybe dread. My Tarot reading for the New Year was not so pleasant, accurate, perhaps (Current situation, blocked by the inverted Death Card, meaning I'm resisting necessary change), but change is coming.
And the last few days, the news, the news, it's coming quicker than the horsemen of the Apocalypse...
A few nights ago, woke rousted from unpleasant dreams, that a friend (no one I knew) had attempted an assassination on the Orange Menace south of the border. And I was forced to flee with him, and ended up in a cave...
Having successfully avoided the news I'm once again lured into the cycle, and it's one of never-ending despair. The Orange Menace, threatening to annex Canada, Greenland, Panama, his henchman Musk wanting to buy off UK Politics (why? well, apparently in Europe he's facing some charges), Facebook's (META's) new promise to remove Fact Checking (Again, at the Orange Menace's recommendation).
I mean, we're fucked. Reading the threads on Reddit, there's no spin on current world events in which we win or break even. None whatsoever. And when you're not taking in the multitude of generally intelligent opinions (not all in agreement as to what will happen, but all in that it won't be good) you suffer through scrolling past the Trolls, who promise to welcome us into the States with open arms...
No thank you very much.
And Pierre Poilievre, the idiot's alternative to Trudeau (don't get me wrong, Trudeau had to go, but now who will replace him? Especially at this time? Not a job to be wanted).
I knew these days were coming, have known for a while, and unfortunately have no bunker filled with weapons to retreat to. I should have prepared better.
The news, it's like I'm a turtle that popped it's head out of it's shell to realize that maybe I should have just stayed put...
Dan Yack - Blaise Cendrars
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
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Antarctica, again, I can't seem to get away from it.
Anyways, the first of 4 more of Cendrars books I ordered arrive, giving me hope the rest are still tied up in the mail.
About an English Shipping Magnate, in St. Petersberg, who having been thwarted in love after an bacchanal at a cabaret wakes up at the feet of a sculptor, a composer and a poet...
...after eavesdropping for some while upon their conversation he conspires to bring them with him for a year to Antarctica to explore the further limits of the Human Condition.
And, Antarctica, I'm beginning to know it as well as if I'd discovered it myself. Things here though turn out very different than they did for Scott, Cherry-Garrard and Shackleton, but I'll wait until the next volume in the series arrives, the "Diaries of Dan Yack", which should apparently clear up any confusion arisen in the first book.
A curious read, not my favourite (it is possible I've had quite enough of the polar climes), back to Cherry-Garrard. Halfway through and I'm thinking it'd be easier just to plant the god-damned flag myself and be done with it, or expire trying...
AI Models collapse when trained on recursively generated data
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
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An interesting article on Nature.com about how AI Models collapse when trained on recursively generated data.
Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07566-y
Now, reassuring to us that they still need a diversity of inputs, hence the "I" part of "AI" is not yet complete. In human terms think of it as the conspiracy oriented wing-nut who gets his/her news from a single source and begins to parrot the most God-Awful theories, and even (god forbid) create his own.
What would be interesting is to create robots - in the likes of Boston Dynamics, have them "experience" the world - touch, sight, temperature, sound, taste, etc - and then see what they can tell us - so much of our own perception is based upon our own personal, cultural and even biological biases. What truths underpin the universe that are apparent when we strip those aside? And then monitor their interactions with each other and see how they learn/assimilate other robots "truths".
Reading between the lines there are some curious experiments being done, I'm sure, as we speak.
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