Archive: March 20, 2023

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yay, Spring

Monday,  03/20/23  07:15 PM

Yay, it's Spring!  And I for one am ready.  This has been a cold, wet, cloudy winter, and I'm ready for some dry hot sun.

SpaceX launches two space missions in one day.  And of course, landed both boosters for reuse.  So cool that this has become so routine. 

In other news, I flew on two airplanes today, and both landed.  Yay.

Seth Godin: Shields up.  "What I want is a junkblocker. A big button on my browser that says 'shields up.'"  Maybe AI will give this to us, but there will always be the problem of who decides what is junk? 

Shelly Palmer: run 'ChatGPT' on your computer.  "Here’s something you probably won’t do today: install a large language model (LLM) chat application on your PC. That’s okay, I did it for you – in about 10 minutes.

Microsoft-owned Nuance adds GPT-4 to its medical note-taking tool.  This is a perfect application for GPT, I predict this will be huge.  One to watch. 

Powerline: why wind and solar will never work.  "They produce electricity less than one-half of the time, a fact that will never change."  If you think batteries are the answer, they have some statistics which make you think otherwise. 

So, what's the answer?  Last Energy signs deals worth $19B for nuclear plants.  Nuclear energy is the only one we have.

Kottke: The puzzling gap between how old you are and how old you think you are.  The gap keeps getting bigger.  My "how old you think you are" hasn't changed that much for many many years... 

Russell Beattie: Quick thoughts on Mark Twain's travelogues.  "Seriously, if you haven’t read anything else by Twain except Tom Sawyer, you need to do yourself a favor and read his non-fiction. It's all truly fantastic. "

 

 

global happiness

Monday,  03/20/23  07:18 PM

The indispensible Visual Capitalist today have given us:

I don't know all the details but I do know their measure of "happiness" was as perceived by the people in each country.  It may mean different things in different cultures!  In some, being "happy" may not be as important as others, and in some, it may be more relative than others.  But anyway it is a common concept, and an interesting measure.

I've mentioned before, I think happiness comes from liking yourself.  Maybe if someone was asking about your happiness for a survey about your country, you would answer based on whether you like the country as a whole, not sure.  But in some sense happiness is relative to your own expectations.

Does anything surprise you here?  My biggest takeaway is continents: Seems like the ranking is:

  1. Oceana (Australia + NZ)
  2. North America
  3. Europe
  4. South America
  5. Asia
  6. Africa

I'm also surprised that India - the largest country by population - isn't happier.  I think of it as a happy place, but clearly its people do not.  China is the second largest country, not happy, but that's not surprising.  Next in size are the US (happy), Indonesia (not happy), Brazil (kind of happy), and Nigeria (not happy).  Lots of work to do.

 
 

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