Creeping myself out by getting an AI to describe a photo

Just because I am curious about different AI capabilities, I was looking around at some of the lesser discussed ones (in the mainstream media, at least) and ended up trying Kimi, a Chinese based open source service which seems to be getting favourable comments online by the tech people who make a living by talking about AI.   

I am just doing a free trial at the moment, and I am not even sure if I can continue using it for free after that.  (It is, though, one of the cheapest models to pay for, if I am inclined.)   

Yesterday I tried it on describing a photo, as it seems to sell itself as being very good at dealing with visual stuff.

I uploaded this photo (which appeared in a recent post):

and got this description:

This is a beautiful winter photograph of a traditional Japanese temple or shrine blanketed in snow.

 

Main Subject

 

The central focus is a two-story wooden temple building with classic Japanese architectural features:

 

Curved, tiled roofs with upturned eaves (karahafu style)

 

Dark wooden beams and structure with intricate joinery visible under the eaves

 

Snow-covered roof creating a striking contrast against the dark wood

 

An open entrance on the ground floor revealing a dark interior with what appears to be a small orange/red offering or light inside

 

Setting & Atmosphere

 

Snow-covered stone pathway leads directly to the temple entrance, creating strong leading lines and symmetry

 

Deep snow banks line both sides of the pathway

 

Stone lanterns (tōrō) flank the entrance, also dusted with snow

 

Snow-laden trees visible in the background, suggesting a forested or garden setting

 

Overcast, pale sky giving the scene a serene, muted atmosphere

 

Composition

 

The photo uses central symmetry with the pathway drawing the eye straight to the temple entrance. The cool color palette of whites, grays, and dark browns creates a peaceful, contemplative winter mood. The wet stone path suggests recent snowfall or melting, adding texture and subtle reflections.

This appears to be a well-known temple, possibly in Kyoto or another historic Japanese city, captured during a quiet winter moment.

I don't know - if it had just said "looks like a temple, probably in Japan" it wouldn't have struck me as anything too special.  But the detail in that description is what freaks me out, a little....

(I subsequently talked to it about the exact name of the temple, and asked whether it could train itself on our conversations, so that it might recognize the specific temple if another person ever uploads a photo of it.  It said no, it doesn't train on conversations, and doesn't remember them, unless I ask it to for my own account.  So each conversation is "fresh".  I guess that's a good thing?) 

A word about appearances

After many years of not fiddling with the blog's appearance, I have spent a few days changing the details, with questionable results.

Google hasn't had much interest in blogger as a platform for years and years, and so the ways in which you can change themes and layouts hasn't changed for ages.   It seems to me to now be a bit buggy, too:  certain changes make certain things disappear and I can't work out why it's happening.

The end result I think looks good on a desktop; but the theme changes on mobile version have it look unduly pink! But changing to other colours is making the blog title turn white.

I'm not I can be bothered looking at the HTML to work out what is going on.  Maybe I should ask an AI service to look at it for me!  (If the blog disappears, you will know why...) 

Economists, hey?

The Washington Post has an article that says there is now some debate over the basic question of whether the US economy has only grown because of massive AI spending.   Some economist apparently say it hasn't contributed at all - which sounds rather implausible.   

It’s clear that the huge spending on AI is adding to the U.S. economy, but the available economic data doesn’t neatly capture its effects. The debating economists and the slippery data suggest that if the technology does start to reshape the economy, it may be challenging to detect and clearly measure. That may leave political and corporate leaders to choose the numbers that fit their preferred narratives on how AI is changing American life and work.

The struggle to even measure what is happening today suggests there may be years of bickering ahead over whether AI is creating a golden age of prosperity or a path to mass unemployment and impoverishment.

The high-stakes quibbling over AI’s current economic impact largely hinges on how to account for the foreign-made computing equipment and components inside the expensive data centers that AI companies are building across the nation.

Economists who argue that AI’s contribution to U.S. growth is overstated calculate that much of the money spent to equip AI data centers drags down economic growth rather than boosting it. 

That’s because the $31 trillion in yearly U.S. gross domestic product, the widest measure of the economy, tallies only the final value of products and services produced domestically. Spending on imports and foreign made components is subtracted because it boosts the economies of other countries, not that of the United States.

If a U.S. store paid $500 for a sofa made in China and sells it for $1,000, U.S. GDP mostly records the $500 difference, said Hannah Rubinton, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The sale of a $50,000 American-made truck with $10,000 worth of foreign parts counts as a $40,000 lift to the U.S. economy.

Roughly three-quarters of the cost of an AI data center is for the computer gear and parts such as computer chips that go inside of it, technology analysts estimate. America’s AI champions, including the computer chip pioneer Nvidia, manufacture many of their products in Asia — despite efforts by the Biden and Trump administrations to reduce U.S. dependence on essential chips made overseas.

Other economists say the contrarians are too pedantic and looking too narrowly at AI’s contribution to the economy. And some forecasters say that the U.S. government’s economic data is a poor measure of the impact of AI and that alternative calculations show the current boom is an even bigger boost to economic growth.

But even some of those not in the AI-zero camp agree that the narrative of the technology propping up the economy was overblown. 

 

Odd gods

This beautiful Zen temple is in Takaoka, about a 25 minute local train ride from Toyama.  Here are the basic details:

Zuiryuji Temple (瑞龍寺, Zuiryūji) is a Soto Zen Buddhist temple in Takaoka, recognized by the Japanese government as a national treasure. The temple was completed circa 1659 to mourn the death of the retired local lord, Maeda Toshinaga. His mausoleum is situated approximately one kilometer to the east from the temple.

Zuiryuji has a symmetric layout with corridors connecting its buildings in a manner typical of Soto Zen monasteries. The temple is comprised of various buildings, including its imposing Sanmon Gate that meets visitors on their way through the temple's inner grounds. 

As you can see, it was a very snowy day on this visit, and that can interfere with the clarity of photos...

One of the most interesting aspects of the complex is that they are very proud of their old statue of a toilet deity: 

A rather unique deity worshiped at the temple is Ususama Myo-o, a guardian of Buddhism. A large statue of Ususama Myo-o stands in the Hatto Hall, while a smaller one stands at the entrance to the public washroom. Ususama Myo-o is regarded as the guardian of the washroom and is accredited powers to purify and prevent diseases. 

The statue above is a replica of the real, old statue, which is in another part of the complex, and while you can photograph the replica, not so the original.  (Which, by the way, is not as brightly coloured as the replica.)  

I have now read a delightful and detailed explanation of toilet gods in Japan at a podcast website, and it turns out there was a Shinto, home-grown toilet god, as well as one imported via Buddhism:

You might hear it go by: Kawaya-gami/厠神, Benjo-gami /便所神 or Toire no kamisama/トイレの神様..

There was also the belief that the Benjo gami didn’t like to be seen, so before you entered the outhouse you’d have to cough once to let it know you were there before opening the door so it could hide. Where would it hide? I’ll let you use your imagination on that one.

The god was also thought to be blind. I wonder if that has something to do with where it was hiding? Seriously. These jokes write themselves. I read also sometimes the god wasn’t only blind but also had a red spear. Not sure at all what’s up with that. But a courtesy cough before entering, so the god can hide sounds like the polite thing to do. Oh, one more, another site said the god had no hands.  

As for the Buddhist import:

Ususama Myouu wasn’t born out of Japanese history, he originated in India and is recognized in several sects of Buddhism: Tendai, Shingon, Zen, and Nichiren. In Tendai he is one of the great five gods or Myou. In Nichiren he is worshipped as both a toilet god and the fire god. In Indian mythology the god is called Agni, the god of fire. Fire purifies. Toilets are considered places that are unclean and thus need to be purified. So there ya go.

Ususama Myoou is one of the great guardian kings, their names all ending in Myoou. Myoou are super cool, fierce, dramatic, scary. Compared to the other Myoou, Ususama has more varied appearances. Sometimes having six arms, holding various implements, rings, beads, a sword. Tools you’d probably not want to see and contemplate while sitting on the pot. But then again, the Kawaya-gami had that red spear.

You can identify Ususama Myoou because he stands with one foot raised high off the ground, almost as if he doesn’t want to step in something. Ringed in fire, his hair often looks like fire and is blowing upward. He’s got a very angry expression on his face.  

Back to my visit to the statue of Ususama Myoou in the temple:   while in the room with the real statue, I was a little surprised to see a Japanese man, perhaps in his 50's or 60's, saying a prayer to it.   

Now, the Japanese make prayers at Shinto shrines (and Buddhist temples) of all kinds, and I find it one of the more charming things about the country.   Much has been written about whether this should count as spirituality, or mere superstition.  (After all, it's said that most Japanese will say they don't believe in God, and are "non-religious", but see no contradiction in continuing to offer prayers and buy "good luck" charms and carry out other good fortune seeking rituals at their shrines and temples.)   

So, while it is clear that the Japanese don't worry much about the objective reality of the figure they are praying to (or, in the case of Shinto, how a place became "holy" in the first place), it was still a bit surprising to see a deity as unusual as that one, which appears to have a near comical "what have I stepped in?" pose, receiving devotion.  

This is typical across so many Asian countries though:  in Vietnam, you see prayers being offered to deified old rulers or heroes - some of dubious historicity - with their altars in Buddhist temples; no one has an interest in the historicity of (say) Amitabha Buddha despite him being the key figure of Pure Land Buddhism; and of course there's the whole matter of Hindu gods, none of which (unless you are an Indian PM who thinks Ganesha was the result of advanced ancient Indian surgical techniques) seems real.   

Even within Catholicism, a lot of devotion to saints has also had next to no reliable history behind it.

So, if I don't have a problem with, and in a way find it charming that, (say) half of the world's religious people pray to mythological figures, why does it bother me when Christians (like the St Mary's rebels discussed in my last post) fully endorse a "non-realist" version of Jesus or God?   

I think - and this is a tentative view - is that Christian non-realism feels like it has a different character to the non-realism of the Asian religions, probably because it undoubtedly started with a strong sense of historicity being at its core, whereas it feels like it was never at the core of the others?

I don't really understand how thoroughly mythological religions create their gods - it has always amused me a little to think that somewhere, someone invented the idea and appearance of their specific household god in ancient Rome, not to mention the more elaborate major gods;  but it just seems it must have been a very different process from interpreting the cosmic significance of a living person and their apparent sayings in a way that was very concrete, which I think you can say is the most plausible way Christianity got going.

Anyway, I've been thinking about this for decades now, and I am still not precisely sure where it leads me...   

Fading rebels

For no particular reason this afternoon, I thought about the "rebel" liberal Catholic church regime at St Mary's in South Brisbane that led to a couple of priests being chucked out of the church, and the supporting parishioners and former priests heading off down the road to conduct very, very socially aware services in the Trades and Labor Council building.   I wrote about them a few times around the time of the crisis, and hadn't looked up for some time whether they still existed, and indeed, if former priest Peter Kennedy was still alive.   

To my surprise, it turns out that Philippa Martyr, who I used to like disturbing when she joined in threads in the old era Catallaxy blog, wrote about them a year ago  in her weekly column in The Catholic Weekly (evidently, a very conservative Catholic publication, seeing it hosts Philippa.)    She was inspired to write about them because the Guardian had a (rather sympathetic) piece about them.

 Turns out Peter Kennedy is about 88 now, and retired.  The other former priest, Terry Fitzpatrick, is 67 or so, and still active in the community, but the whole theme of the Guardian article was that their alternative spiritual community (or whatever you might call it) has clearly not attracted new membership, and the average age of those attending now is apparently above 60.   Certainly, it is hard to see from photos in the article, or when viewing their online liturgies, any participant without grey hair and wrinkles.

Of course, all churches (except perhaps the pop music performance based mega churches) have ageing average attendees, but with St Mary's rebels, it's gone exactly as I expected - a rebellion that fizzled out, as making belief in God completely optional in a group devoted to vaguely following the liturgies of a Church that, at a minimum, did believe there was something real to worship beyond the material universe, kind of doesn't make a lot of sense.  

Update:   I've changed the way I worded the last paragraph.  This is a topic (the significance of "realism" in religion or spiritual practice) that still comes to mind a lot after learning more about Buddhism and Asian folk religions in all of their varieties.   More about one example of that in my next post!

 

A good point from the NYT

Michelle Goldberg is thinking the same things I am, about the current weird state of Washington:

I never imagined I’d miss being lied to by George W. Bush and his henchmen.

When the Bush administration wanted to go to war with Iraq, it undertook a full-court press to propagandize the American people. Administration officials leaked false information about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to exist. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a deceptive presentation at the United Nations. In Congress, many Democrats, succumbing either to relentless public pressure or their own hawkish instincts, joined with Republicans to authorize an invasion.

This mendacious campaign was shameful and despicable, and helped create today’s national atmosphere of corrosive cynicism and nihilistic paranoia. But it was, in retrospect, a tacit acknowledgment that public opinion mattered, that a president couldn’t start a war without convincing Americans it was necessary. It was a manipulation of democratic deliberation rather than a negation of it. 

Whereas now:

Most reporting indicates that the White House is planning for a campaign far more intense and sustained than last year’s bombing of Iran or the abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. But we don’t know if Trump and his team are after regime change, and if they are, what they think comes next. This is how an autocracy goes to war, without even a pretense that the consent of the governed matters. 

Information for the future

I always like reading about research into really, really long term data storage methods, and have posted about it before.  It's nice to see it's still a pursuit, and that Superman's crystal storage methods may be real:

In the digital age, the need for data storage is ballooning. But current magnetic tapes and hard drives are ill-suited for long-term data storage because they degrade in about ten years. This “impressive” glass-based alternative could “in principle, act as near-permanent archival storage for backup of critical data,” says Mark Bathe, a biological engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

The Microsoft team used a high-energy laser to imprint deformations into a 3D chunk of borosilicate glass, the kind used in ovenware. Each deformation encodes data that can be read out using a microscope.

A 12-centimetre wide, 2-millimetre-thick square of the glass can store 4.8 terabytes of data, the equivalent of around 2 million printed books, the authors demonstrate in their paper published in Nature on 18 February1.

Writing and reading the data is considerably more convoluted than opening a file on a hard drive, but the information is much more secure. Tests suggest that the data would survive for 10,000 years at a temperature of 290 ºC and potentially for tens or hundreds of times longer at room temperature, says Richard Black, a computer scientist who led the initiative known as Project Silica at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK.

Although the glass method requires specialist hardware to write and read data, the paper demonstrates that glass storage has gone beyond a materials experiment and is now a “deployable archival system”, says Long Qian, a computational synthetic biologist at Peking University in Beijing.

“By showing a complete system … they have shown how this technology can truly revolutionize the data-centre industry,” says Peter Kazansky, a researcher in optoelectronics at the University of Southampton, UK, and a previous collaborator with Microsoft on glass storage.  

Trip photo blogging...

Nagano, in and around the Zenkoji temple grounds...

Some notes about Nagano:

 

*  It has lots and lots of foreign tourists milling around in winter, obviously for the skiing and snow sports.  The train station is always packed.   Very different from the town we were in before that - Toyama (about which I am yet to write) - where I barely can recall seeing a foreign tourist (or at least, a Caucasian one.)

 

*   The biggest tourist attraction in the town itself would have to be the Zenkoji temple, which is on large, beautiful grounds, and has a very attractive street leading up to it.

 

*   The history of this temple is pretty interesting, and includes a mystery statue which is supposed to still exist, but as it seems no one has seen it for about 1,400 years (give or take), who knows!?: 

The history of Zenkoji temple started in 642, when Yoshimitsu Honda enshrined a Buddhist Image at the present site.
The main image was created in India and introduced into Japan with Buddhism via Paekche in Korean Peninsula in 552. It is called “The Image of Sangoku Denrai” in Japanese.
The image has been believed to lead all the people to the Buddhist Pure Land regardless of their status, gender or creed. It has been earnestly worshipped by many people from those in power at the time to the common people.
The main image was completely hidden from the people in 654, and since then no one has ever been allowed to see it.
The temple name “Zenkoji” literally means “Yoshimitsu’ s temple”. It is read as “Zenkoji” by another way of reading of the Chinese characters. 

 The Wikipedia explanation goes into more detail: 

Zenkō-ji was founded before Buddhism in Japan split into several different sects. It currently belongs to both the Tendai and Jōdoshū schools of Mahayana Buddhism, and is co-managed by twenty-five priests from the former school, and fourteen from the latter. The temple enshrines images of the Amida Buddha. According to legend, the image, having caused dispute between two clans, was dumped into a canal. It was later rescued by Honda Yoshimitsu. The temple was thus named "Zenkō," according to the Chinese transliteration of Yoshimitsu's name.

The main Buddhist image is a hibutsu (secret Buddha), a hidden Buddha statue, not shown to the public. This hibutsu is rumored to be the first Buddha statue to ever be brought to Japan. The commandments of the temple require the absolute secrecy of the statue, prohibiting it to be shown to anyone, including the chief priest of the temple. However, a replica of the statue (Maedachi Honzon) has been created which can be shown publicly once every six years in spring, in a ceremony called Gokaichō.

I'm finding it hard to track down a photo of the replica hibutsu, actually.

 

But, I would love to know more about where it is supposed to be locked away.

 

*   The main hall (rebuilt after a fire, like so many old Japanese temples, in 1707) has a pilgrimage gimmick, I think you could call it - a dark tunnel you grope your way through under the main altar.  

 

After paying your respects before the altar, take the stairs down to the underground passage located under the main hall. Once inside, you are in complete darkness, only able to move forward by touching the wall beside you. Somewhere along the path, you’ll find the “Key of Enlightenment,” a metal latch fixed directly below the temple’s hidden Buddha statue. Touching the latch is believed to create a direct connection with the hidden Buddha statue of Zenkoji and bring good fortune.

I think I successfully touched it - although I did not fully understand the significance that I am now (possibly) enlightened.  

It reminded me of the other famous temple "gimmick" - crawling through "Buddha's nostril" (not literally!) at the awesome Todaji Temple in Nara.   (If you had to see the ultimate Japanese temple, that would be the one I recommend.)    

*  Bear in mind - visiting the temple in winter involves removing your shoes, and your feet will quickly turn to blocks of ice and encourage you not to linger too long inside the temple, and tunnel.

*  There is a museum with lots of interesting Buddhist artwork, but again, no shoes, no photos - makes a winter visit a bit of an ordeal!

So, all of the photos here are around the temple complex. 

If you enlarge the sign, you will see the bell is from 1667 - and although it doesn't say where it was made, there is a good chance it came from Takaoka City, near Toyama, which we had been in the day before.

 

That city is home to another, smaller but very beautiful Zen temple with its own idiosyncratic figures, and I will have to post about that... 

Isn't it weird that no one seems to know what's going on with respect to Iran?

In other times, wouldn't the US media be highlighting a lot more grave concern about the opaque intentions of their government?   

The BBC says:

Iran has said it has reached an understanding with the US on the main "guiding principles" to resolve their dispute over Tehran's nuclear programme.

Why aren't there (some? any ? more?) commentators saying "wait a minute. I thought the Trump strikes on their nuclear facility was supposed to have shut it down?"

Why can't I be bothered talking about Australian politics now?

When I look back at previous years of this blog, I'm sometimes surprised at how much I was thinking about Australian politics, especially at the Federal level.   

But as should be clear from the greatly reduced frequency with which I comment on it now, I have been finding it somewhat boring since the replacement of the awful Morrison government with a bland, but basically competent, Labor government.   

Sure, it was fun watching the Liberals think that the charmless version of Mr Potato Head Peter Dutton could win over voters, as well as his getting badly burnt by being associated too much with the poisonous Trumpian politics of the USA.  But it has also felt dull watching the deeply unappealing Susan Ley try to straddle to internal chasms within the Right side of politics here and paint a new picture of how Liberals really were for everyone.

As for all the talk of One Nation polling so well - we all know that they have no organisation skills of any depth, are based on the (alleged) straight talking appeal of one ill educated but resilient woman, and just attracts the disgruntled old "Australia isn't what it used to be, with all these foreigners on the streets" vote.  Just wait to see they perform in an election campaign before counting the eggs in the basket - I expect it won't go well.

 I've been saying for years and years that the fundamental issue on which the Coalition needs reform - to show it is in fact a credible and unified party that believes in real things and hasn't become culture warred into believing nonsense - is climate change.   The tensions that such a key issue to various aspects of policy keep causing just keep resurfacing, to be pushed down again with unconvincing "no, no, we really do believe it - or most of us do, and those that don't, well, we're a broad church, aren't we, and that's a good thing, right?" excuse making just keeps coming back to ruin their overall credibility.   

Turnbull had a chance to bring it to a head, but didn't.  I wonder if he regrets that now?   

Angus Taylor is, of course, exactly the way to keep this lack of credibility going.   

So, it looks likely to continue being kind of boring.

A very reliable actor

Robert Duval has died, and while I wouldn't say that his presence in a film or show would always make me want to see it, it was always clear that he was an extremely reliable, quality actor.   We seem to have fewer of that type of actor around these days - or is that just generic, semi-nostalgic, early geriatric, views forming in my head?  😐    

What a photo...

As I have mentioned over the years, there's a gap below a balcony at our house that possums from time to time use as a nest during the day, and it's particularly charming when it's occupied by a mother and young offspring.  Hence, I can sometimes be sitting on the sofa watching TV, look up out the window and see a furry tail, and know that we have a lodger.

Or, as has been happening recently, I might hear a plop and look out to see a young possum has fallen off the perch, so to speak, and is on the ground; sometimes clawing at the glass window, sometimes in the nearby bush.  When the baby looked too little, we went out and picked up it and put it back up with its mother, which tended to gaze down from above but not often make a move to recover said offspring.  (I suspect they have a big fear factor about being in the open in daylight.).   And even if no one is sitting near that window when the fall happens, our dog has a few times alerted us (by going nuts at clawing and barking at the glass to try together to the furry thing that probably resembles a rat to her part Jack Russell brain) that the baby possum is on the ground again.

Which is all by preamble to posting this recent photo, taken by my daughter, of the young possum in the bush, before it's Mum actually did come down and carry it back up.  (It is, in fact, now big enough to scramble up the bricks itself.)

What a pretty creature, hey?

My daughter sent it to friends, and apparently some said "ooh it's  so clear it looks likes AI", which annoyed her.  "AI is making taking a good photo pointless, if people can't tell if it's real anyway" she grumbled.

So yeah, I guess a clumsy possum has helped, in a very small way, to encourage the "anti AI slop" views of at least two humans. 

I hope this is an adequate palate cleanser to the previous post.  

The "Masterpieces" That Left Me Cold: Why I’m Done Pretending

We’ve all been there. You’re sitting in a theater (or on your couch), the credits roll, and you’re left wondering if you accidentally watched a different movie than the critics did. At the Opinion Dominion, we don't give out participation trophies for "ambition." If the engine doesn't start, the car doesn't move—no matter how pretty the paint job is.

Today, I’m putting two "untouchables" on the chopping block.

1. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

The world called it a "symphony of motion." I called it an exhausting, two-hour desert trek that forgot to pack a script.

I’m told the "visual storytelling" is the point. I’m told the practical effects are the hero. But at some point, I need a reason to care about the people inside the vibrating metal boxes. Without a narrative pulse, Fury Road is just high-budget noise. It’s a technical achievement, sure, but as a movie? I’m still waiting for the plot to kick in.

2. The Truman Show (1998)

This is usually the part where someone says, "But the philosophy! The allegory for the media!" I get it. The idea of The Truman Show is fascinating. But the execution? It’s a tonal mess that collapses the moment you ask a single logical question. We are expected to believe a global corporation spent thirty years and billions of dollars on a simulation that could be ruined by a falling light or a localized rain shower?

Jim Carrey is doing his best, but the movie is so busy being "profound" that it forgets to be believable. It feels like a high-concept "Twilight Zone" episode stretched thin until it breaks. I didn't feel enlightened; I felt preached at by a movie that wasn't as smart as it thought it was.

3. Uncut Gems (2019)

Critics praised this movie for being "stressful" and "anxiety-inducing." Since when did a panic attack become a substitute for a good story? Watching Adam Sandler’s Howard Ratner make the same catastrophic mistake for two hours isn't "visceral filmmaking"—it’s repetitive and irritating.

There is no character arc here; there is just a man shouting over electronic music until the movie finally, mercifully, ends. If I wanted to feel stressed and annoyed by someone else's bad financial decisions, I’d just check my Twitter feed for free.

 

---

The Bottom Line: A "great concept" is just a sketch. A "technical marvel" is just a demo. If the soul isn't there, I’m not buying the ticket.

I know, I know—I’m "missing the point." Or maybe the point just wasn't that sharp to begin with. Which "classic" do you secretly (or loudly) despise? Let’s burn some bridges in the comments.

 

An experiment

Inspired by this video by a very, very angry guy in the US who found Google dropped his company search result ranking dramatically, only to get it back to No 1 by following Google AI's re-write suggestions, I thought I would ask Gemini to make a post that would attract views here.

I expect it will definitely not work - it seems to think (perhaps swayed by noting today's post about The Pitt?) that I primarily write about movies and TV and such like.   It suggested the "contrarian opinion" post, and I nominated the three movies that came to mind as awful, even though critics liked them.  The views expressed do sum up pretty well why I think they are terrible - but the writing sounds nothing like me.

But I'll just post it and see what happens.  

The Pitt, noted (with spoilers if you have never watched it)

I've never commented about The Pitt, the first season of which I watched at the end of last year, and I'm a couple of episodes into the new season.

Of the first series, I would say it wasn't 100% flawless, but it was extremely likeable and addictive.

The flaws:   the whole Dr Robby freaking out with guilt on the anniversary of his mentor's (I think) death a few years ago seemed a bit heavy handed and unrealistic to me - as was the framing device of the season that made it seem like doctors at this workplace pretty much routinely consider suicide at the end of each shift!  The black doctor who stoically continued at work despite having a miscarriage - seems to be pushing credibility a bit too.   And a pedant might also argue that Dr Robby is too good to be real - but the season gives him some flawed moments too, and Noah Wylie is such a charismatic actor, he really sells the character.

As to why I like it a lot is pretty much down to the quality of the ensemble acting, some of which felt a bit "clunky" in the first few episodes, but that feeling had gone entirely by about half way through the season.   You really, really start to feel that they are real, and the subtly of some of the interactions - where a mere look on their faces can convey so much meaning - gives me a lot of pleasure.   As does the superb choreography of the camera moving around the set.   I bet Spielberg, the master of "blocking", loves it too.

There's also the fun of whether or not you'll be grossed out (or surprised in some other way) each episode by the extreme care they have taken to depict surgery, injuries, body parts (or childbirth!) realistically.  There must some Hollywood props company that specialises in human bodies and body parts that must be making a great income from this show. 

I also love how it incorporates obviously real issues in the American health system - which probably makes MAGA types think it's being too "political".   (They probably hate the sympathetic way it portrays  multiculturalism in the workplace too.)   

So, overall, it's a fantastic modern update of ER, and a couple of months ago, the New York Times had a long article on the career of Noah Wylie which paints him as a nice guy who really deserves the success of this show.  (He is a co-producer too.)

So, I strongly recommend it.   

      

Suspect this is true

From an article in the Atlantic (mostly behind a paywall, though):

Many people think that they have a set type, and that all they need for eternal bliss is to find someone who matches it. When people peruse dating profiles, they’re often looking for someone who has specific interests, qualities, or hobbies. But according to a growing body of relationship research, many people end up marrying someone with few of their must-haves and a lot of “haves” they didn’t think they desired. A person might say that they’re looking for a partner who’s funny and conscientious, but then end up in a happy relationship with someone who is neither of those things. “People don’t know what they want,” Samantha Joel, a psychologist at Western University in Ontario who studies relationships, told me, “and people don’t know what they’re going to like until they meet someone.”

About the new photo under the title

It's been many years since I changed the photo at the top of the blog (and I think it's only visible on the web version, not the mobile version, anyway); but I just wanted to say that it is cropped from a photo taken on the recent Japan trip, looking towards the mountains around Nangano.

What caught my eye about it is the way the two "background" clouds look very much like they are were put there by two strokes of an ink brush.  

That is all.

Major media warnings on American recreational drug use are on the rise

It has seemed to me for a while now that there is something of a pushback on the easy access to (and overuse of) recreational drugs (of the "other than alcohol and nicotine" kind) being reflected in the big US news sources I subscribe to.   (And it's funny how they are classified by Rightists as "too far Left", even today.)

First, the New York Times editorial board:

It’s Time for America to Admit That It Has a Marijuana Problem

Some of the highlights:

This editorial board has long supported marijuana legalization. In 2014, we published a six-part series that compared the federal marijuana ban to alcohol prohibition and argued for repeal. Much of what we wrote then holds up — but not all of it does.

At the time, supporters of legalization predicted that it would bring few downsides. In our editorials, we described marijuana addiction and dependence as “relatively minor problems.” Many advocates went further and claimed that marijuana was a harmless drug that might even bring net health benefits. They also said that legalization might not lead to greater use.

It is now clear that many of these predictions were wrong. Legalization has led to much more use. Surveys suggest that about 18 million people in the United States have used marijuana almost daily (or about five times a week) in recent years. That was up from around six million in 2012 and less than one million in 1992. More Americans now use marijuana daily than alcohol.

This wider use has caused a rise in addiction and other problems. Each year, nearly 2.8 million people in the United States suffer from cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, which causes severe vomiting and stomach pain. More people have also ended up in hospitals with marijuana-linked paranoia and chronic psychotic disorders. Bystanders have also been hurt, including by people driving under the influence of pot.

The article does not argue for re-introduced prohibition, though, but makes a very reasoned case that the legalisation in the US has happened with far, far too light a hand on regulation.   (Something that has been obvious to outside observers - like me! - from the start.)    

The rest of the piece makes some good, practical suggestions, the first of which (significantly raising tax on joints) I bet will have induced some fury in the comments.  But the second point is so obvious, it's baffling why it hasn't happened already:

A second step should be restrictions on the most harmful forms of marijuana, which would also be similar to regulations for alcohol and tobacco. Today’s cannabis is far more potent than the pot that preceded legalization. In 1995, the marijuana seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration was around 4 percent THC, the primary psychoactive compound in pot. Today, you can buy marijuana products with THC levels of 90 percent or more. As the cliché goes, this is not your parents’ weed. It is as if some beer brands were still sold as beer but contained as much alcohol per ounce as whiskey.

Not surprisingly, greater THC potency has contributed to more addiction and illness. The appropriate response is both to make illegal any marijuana product that exceeds a THC level of 60 percent and to impose higher taxes on potent forms of pot, much as liquor is taxed more heavily than beer and wine.  

 Anyway, it's well argued.  Let me dip my toes into the comments section, which (if past experience is any guide) might be full of users naysaying that there is a problem at all.  

Well, blow me down:  I've probably scrolled though to about 50 - 100 comments, and I would say those supporting the editorial are running at about 7 or 8 out of 10.   Seems to me there may be something of a real sea change going on.

Another couple recent articles of interest appeared at the Washington Post, written by a doctor, warning of the dangers in the rise of recreational use of the fly agaric mushroom (you know, this one):

 

 

which, it turns out, is toxic and can kill.  Again, a significant part of the problem is the America capitalist system that gets away with making exaggerated or false claims because of the slowness of government to regulate: 

Despite those dangers, a fast-growing consumer market has taken hold. Vape shops, convenience stores and a cottage industry of online retainers now sell harvested amanita mushrooms and products containing their main psychoactive compound, muscimol. These products are frequently marketed with sweeping and baseless health claims, from curing anxiety and depression to enhancing creativity, improving sleep and offering a “safe” psychedelic high. ...

Eric C. Leas, a public health professor at the University of California at San Diego, believes the surge is partly due to consumers conflating these mushrooms with psilocybin. That confusion is amplified by aggressive marketing and distribution. “A lot of companies are looking for a new edge in the competitive market of loosely regulated psychoactive substances and trying to capitalize on consumers’ interest in mushrooms,” Leas told me.

Then she wrote about "microdosing" on hallucinogens such as psilocybin, MDMA and LSD.   

 

I've always been a skeptic about that practice, and yeah, predictably, it has no proven benefits at all:

A 2026 meta-analysis of 14 studies found no overall cognitive benefit from microdosing psychedelics. In fact, users showed a significant decrease in cognitive control.

People who choose to use these substances for lifestyle enhancement should understand that the current evidence does not back up the promised effects. If the goal is better mood and improved mental sharpness, they should consider evidence-based approaches, including regular physical activity and strong social connections.

Good to see some pushback on silly trends, often pushed along by greed.

 

On another topic related to libertarian views on drug use:   I've noticed that despite the best effort of the tobacco industry to morph itself into a "tobacco and vape" industry, Asian countries seem to be emphatically not buying it.   (Sinclair Davidson must be crushed.   Also - is he still doing blockchain twaddle research for a living?   Along with "I'm the nice one from the IPA" Chris Berg?  Yeah, seems so.  Still, cool that they decided to go in a "let's limit our profile and influence by going into a field that will soon be considered a bit of puffery with next to no practical use" path.  I'm sure it provided some nice conference holidays, but at what cost of relevance to anything real?)

 

Anyway, I digress into bitchiness!

 

The reason I'm talking about vaping in Asia is because I've noticed how widespread the vaping ban now is: 

Major countries with strict bans include

Singapore, Thailand, India, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Brunei, and several Middle Eastern nations like Qatar, Oman, and Bhutan.  

And don't forget Japan, which has something approaching a ban, but one a bit more complicated than other countries.

 

Good to see...  

A few Musk observations

*  Honestly, if you don't look at X, you are underinformed as to what an awful, awful person he is.   (And you don't need to follow his account - he'll make sure you see his deep thoughts anyway.)   

* As he has many times before, his grandiose plans seem to suddenly be set aside, or re-arranged massively, with his priorities now said to be to build a city on the Moon instead of Mars.  Now, while I have suggested at this very blog for the last 20 years (!) that the Moon could indeed serve a "lifeboat" function to recover from planetary disasters that could strike the Earth, I suppose I should be grateful that the richest man on the planet's priorities now align at least closer to mine.   But - he's still obviously over-promising to give a thrill to his followers: it won't be anything like a "city" on the Moon for (I would guess) another century or more.   And it doesn't need to be.   It will be more like Antarctic research station(s), perhaps a few in different locations:  but no one's going to be calling them "cities".   And it will indeed be an interesting time while the surface gets explored up close, in sufficient detail, as to work out the best sites for long term, permanent outposts.   Confirming water near the poles, and/or structurally solid lava tubes, will be quite exciting for those of us keen to see people (or robots) doing useful stuff on the Moon.  We could have been doing this already if NASA and Musk didn't continually muck around with their priorities.

* Of course, perhaps in compensation for pulling back on Mars, Musk decided to go over the top in another proposal - that he'll go all in on data centres in orbit.   Again, I've seen stupid gaga followers immediately endorse the idea as if "of course it will work, he's a brilliant visionary".   But count me firmly on the side of "this is never going to happen, to any significant extent, in this century, if ever" corner, because it fundamentally doesn't make any sense.   I mean, even O'Neill with his grandiose solar power arrays to power the Earth scheme (I used to like the idea, as a teenager, but that was before the advances in rocketry slowed down to a 50 year crawl) basically argued that it really only worked if you made the solar panels from Moon dirt flung into space from a lunar mass driver - and no one knows how hard that is to do yet.  (Yes, Musk has said something about a mass driver on the Moon - but I would bet my last dollar that no one has seriously worked out how much a workable one would cost to set up on the Moon.)

Look at this headline at Fortune, which is just pure BS:

The details in the article:

 Musk said getting all that AI and solar capacity in space will require about 10,000 launches a year—or a launch in less than an hour every day. SpaceX is the most prolific rocket company and set a record last year with 165 orbital launches.

SpaceX could pull off a 10,000-per-year launch cadence with 20 to 30 Starship rockets, he added, though the company will make more than that, enabling perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 launches a year.

He pointed out the airline industry has much quicker throughput than that. The number of daily flights around the world tops 100,000. 

In case people hadn't noticed:  rockets aren't airplanes, and there is zero practical proof that Musk's Starship will ever have the turnaround ease with which he pins his "hopes".   The space shuttle was supposed to be able to turn around between missions with relative ease - it never happened.   

AND BESIDES - putting massive solar arrays in orbit is just going to make the risk of Kessler syndrome events far, far more likely - and the concern of Kessler himself is that the risk has already soared very high with Musk's Starlink satellite constellations.  (Anyone who watches Sabine Hossenfelder would know this - she was only talking about it last week, I think just before Musk's hyped his AI dream).  If it happens, Musk will go down in history as the idiot who bought his way into creating a disaster that slowed down humanity's colonisation of any other body due to making it too hard to get safely through low Earth orbit for a 100 years or more.

So yeah, I think it is pretty outrageous that there isn't a more assertive condemnation of Musk promising stuff that the strong consensus of experts would say he cannot possibly deliver.   

Update:  this guy gets it exactly right, I reckon:

Meanwhile, satellite technology consultant Christian Freiherr von der Ropp says that SpaceX’s plan belongs “more to the realm of speculative vision than near- or mid-term engineering reality.” He pointed to other hurdles such as shielding the data centers from radiation and the economics when it’s easier to maintain and upgrade ground-based data centers.

“Launch, replacement, and station-keeping costs for vast numbers of high-power, short-lifetime compute platforms (in space) would likely exceed the cost of building and operating ground-based data centers supplied by cheap renewable energy,” he said. 

Still, von der Ropp suspects Musk’s ambitions are also about marketing. “Proposals of million-satellite 'data centers in space' appear far more aligned with long-term narrative building than with executable infrastructure planning. It is reasonable to interpret such visions as strategic storytelling that highlights technological ambition and future AI compute potential,” he said.   

 What bothers me, though, is the politeness used, rather than speaking the blunt truth, which goes like this "Elon Musk, like Trump, is a long term bullshit artist who makes ridiculous claims in the interests of building his personal wealth and power.  He now has a coterie of fellow tech billionaire in the AI/chip business who won't speak honestly about his self serving narrative, because it suits their wealth and power ambitions too.   Honest engineers have a duty to speak bluntly about this, instead of just watching how it affects their stock investments and then saying 'could have told you that a decade ago' when the schemes evaporate, again."  

Snowy scenes and more

OK, so let's talk about these photos.

In the mountains outside of Toyama, which is North West of Tokyo and on the Sea of Japan, there are the "historical villages of Gokayama", known for their old, thatched roof houses.  I think it fair to say most  people probably visit them in any season other than winter, and it seems you certainly won't be overrun with other tourists if you do go while they are covered in snow:  

In the smaller village we went to, there was a house set up as a small museum (second photo above), and it contained this example of old style "winter footwear".  I am curious as to how warm they might keep feet.  

Truth be told, I thought the effort put into the on site history stuff was pretty minimal, but it was interesting to learn that the local industry in these old settlements used to be silkworm raising (in the attics of the houses), and making saltpeter for use in guns.

 

I didn't go into the mini "saltpeter museum" house, but this is how it was made (and the process is very  different from what I would have guessed): 

Below the floorboards, around the irori sunken hearth, people would dig holes 2.7 meters deep, and fill them with soil, mugwort and other mountain plants, and silkworm waste. Over the following four years, this mixture would decay and undergo further processes, eventually becoming saltpeter. Saltpeter was then used as the main ingredient for gunpowder for rifles. 

I need to understand this better: 

Traditionally, one of the main industries in the Gokayama region was the production of
saltpeter (potassium nitrate) from the mineral niter, an essential ingredient in
gunpowder. The saltpeter industry operated for over 300 years during the rule of the
Kaga domain in Gokayama, growing exponentially after the introduction of European
matchlock guns in 1542. The production of saltpeter in the area was kept secret even
from the shogunate (the ruling military leadership of Japan) in order to strengthen the
defense of the Kaga domain, which bought up large amounts of saltpeter every year.
Gokayama was an ideal location for secret niter production as the area was isolated and
much of it remained unexplored.

 

Saltpeter was created in a hole up to 2 meters deep under the irori fireplaces of the
gassho-zukuri (steep thatched roof) houses of the Gokayama region. The hole was filled
with a mixture of materials including straw, soil, mugwort, and silkworm excrement,
then left to ferment for around five years. The irori fireplaces were used to keep the
materials warm during the fermentation process, and the materials in the hole were
mixed together once a year to expose them to air and to add in extra ingredients. Over
time, calcium nitrate formed in the soil through the nitrification of bacteria. To extract
potassium nitrate from the soil mixture, water and soil were mixed together, and the
water into which the calcium nitrate had dissolved was concentrated through heating.
Grass and wood ash were then added to the concentrate to remove impurities. The
potassium carbonate contained in the ash reacts with the calcium nitrate in the
concentrate to form potassium nitrate and calcium carbonate. The calcium carbonate
precipitates because it is insoluble in water. The liquid is then filtered, boiled down and
condensed, and then cooled to obtain coarse saltpeter crystals. The collected saltpeter
crystals were sold to the Kaga domain and delivered to their warehouse in Kanazawa. 

 

Man, that's complicated!  And who worked that process out??   The Wikipedia entry is very badly written, and doesn't explain it.   In fact, it's rather hard to get a single site that explains it clearly - this one notes that England got the manufacturing idea for it from a German engineer (who got paid by Elizabeth 1 for the process);  this site says China invented gunpowder, and Japan got the use of it in guns from the Portugeuse, but doesn't explain how the Japan learnt the method of in-ground fermentation for making saltpeter.  

 

Oh well, I digress.

 

Another nearby town had several guesthouses you could stay in, and as such, the place seemed a little more "lived in" than the first small village:  

 

 

It's all very, very pretty, of course.   I might add more photos later...