Plucked from the Web, June 2020
A few things from the wide expands of the Internets which have caught my attention, in a positive way, this month: First, this article in the Antropocene magazine combines two interests of mine, environmentalism and machine learning/AI. Btw, the Antropocene is our current geological age, the age when the surface of the Earth is dominated by human activity.
First, the flying drones scout the landscape recording the swell of hills, the temperature and humidity of soils, the location of streams and rivers via radar and GPS data. This information feeds back into computers, which use
machine learning—recording the information in photograph after photograph after photograph—to determine the best locations for planting a species, whether a mangrove in south Asia or a pine in western North America… more
This article lays out how Science Fiction, my favorite fiction genre since I started to read books, has been a staging ground for libertarian ideas, the idea that man flourishes most when constrained the least by governments, authorities and hierarchies. Read it here…
And something cool (literally) & educational I watched on YouTube, the ascent onto the K2, the 2nd highest mountain in the world. I have no intentions to get into mountain climbing, ever (a bit hard at powerlifting jacked-up 110 kgs), but I have great respect for the men and women who engage in this dangerous sport. The documentary features beautiful footage from the icy high-altitude landscapes of the K2:
