Hunger Stones

Hunger Stones

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Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine – “If you see me, then weep”

Inscription on a rock in the Elbe River near the northern Czech town of Děčín, close to the German border

Not only is Europe battling astronomical fuel prices, but also one of the worst droughts in almost 500 years. How bad? Historically bad – and we know because it’s literally written in stone.

Water levels are at their lowest in decades – and rocks are appearing from under the shoreline with grim and frightening inscriptions. These rocks inscribed with dates and warnings even have names. They’re called Hungerstein or Hunger Stones. These stones were embedded into a river during droughts to mark the water level as a warning to future generations that they will have to endure famine-related hardships if the water sinks to this level again.

The earliest readable year on the Děčín stone is 1616. Traces of inscriptions relating to much earlier droughts, including 1417 and 1473, have been largely eroded over time. Ten later dry years, between 1707 and 1893, are also recorded. Most hunger stones are found on the Elbe, which flows from the north of what is now the Czech Republic through former Bohemia and then Germany before reaching the North Sea near Hamburg. Others appear on the Rhine, Danube and Moselle.

Links:

Where Zillow’s AI went wrong

Where Zillow’s AI went wrong

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What went wrong with Zillow’s $500 million AI-based home purchasing program? It was a host of factors, but it highlights a unique problem in AI.

It turns out you can’t just set up an AI model and let it crank for years. You need to pay attention to something called drift. There are ways of telling if your AI model is drifting by monitoring model accuracy, outputs, and inputs on an ongoing basis and re-balancing them.

RKC Sleep Shop – A Local Secret?

RKC Sleep Shop – A Local Secret?

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Need a new mattress but don’t want to pay the highway robbery prices of mattress stores that are often about as honest as used car sales and mattress review websites that are basically paid ads?

I was going to try out RKC sleep for my next mattress as a local option (I heard good things about a the Beautyrest Black hybrid). I’ve been told they sell top brand mattresses at amazing discounts – often well below wholesale. If you don’t mind the no-frills shopping experience in search of top name mattresses for super-cheap – give them a shot.

The Tattooed Monk

The Tattooed Monk

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If there is something that is unique about spiritual life – is that the inner hunger we all experience for meaning and love is universal.

Six years ago, Mount Angel Abbey’s serene hilltop campus shook, as leather-clad Bobby Love rolled in on his motorcycle. Love removed his helmet revealing pierced ears and a mop of dreadlocks. With tattoos on his hands, arms and neck, he looked like an extra on “Sons of Anarchy” not a someone attending a retreat for those who might become Catholic monks.

Learn more about his unique path here. Or, check out the recent movie that takes place partly at Mt Angel – Father Stu It is also a great example of how God calls even the most unlikely people.

Elite Overproduction Hypothesis

Elite Overproduction Hypothesis

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Did we produce too many frustrated college grads in the early 2000’s? It’s a really interesting question. Noah Smith plots the changes in college major enrollments and finds some interesting patterns – and some even more interesting potential fallout that include patterns with socialist revolutions. Something we’re seeing here in Portland. When people are promised entry into the top 20% of culture via a degree, the disappointment of unmet expectations alone can lead to serious violent outcomes.

The Atlantic also did similar analysis, but argues that just because grads are seeking degrees in fields they think will bring them better financial outcomes doesn’t mean it will.

Next 10 years of AI

Next 10 years of AI

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Andrew Ng is one of the biggest names in AI. He makes a few predictions, and I thought the article had some good observations.

His current big focus is using AI in manufacturing. Andrew Ng founded Landing AI in 2017. His focus was primarily consulting, but after working on many customer projects, Ng and Landing AI developed a new toolkit and playbook for making AI work in manufacturing and industrial automation. This led to Landing AI and the development of a data-centric approach to AI.

“In consumer software, you can build one monolithic AI system to serve a hundred million or a billion users, and truly get a lot of value in that way,” he said. “But in manufacturing, every plant makes something different. So every manufacturing plant needs a custom AI system that is trained on their data.”

The challenge that many companies in the AI world face is how to help 10,000 manufacturing plants build 10,000 customer systems. In short – scale.

In manufacturing, there is often no big data to go by. The data for manufacturing different products is unique. Their first observation was to see it makes more sense to keep the models relatively fixed while focusing on quality data to fine-tune the models rather than continuing to push for marginal improvements in the models.

This uniqueness of data also means there is almost never enough images of faults or cases to train models. The only way out of this dilemma is to build tools that empower customers to build their own models and let product experts engineer the data and express their domain knowledge. Ng and Landing AI do that through Landing Lens, which enables domain experts to express their knowledge with data labeling instead of constantly tweaking the models.

Worth a read.

Documentaries and how far we’ve fallen

Documentaries and how far we’ve fallen

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I wrote about the use of Save the Cat as a way to use form and style to communicate any message you want via film/tv.

It appears Paul E.T. has noticed many kinds of emotional and intellectual manipulation in just about all modern documentaries you’ll find in this comedy skit. He shows how just about anyone can make a documentary about anything – and how easy it is to manipulate you into believing as the host does.

If you want to see how far we’ve fallen away from objective reporting, compare your average modern news reporting to something from even 20-30 years ago below. Sure, that era had it’s own problems, but note a few things:
There were no talking heads editorializing and telling you what you should think, they use professional and educated language that isn’t charged with bias/emotional appeal, doesn’t inject race, sex, or other assumed political bias into the report, features much more footage of direct interviews with people involved and not summarizing it with their own opinions.

Best Chernobyl Coverage

Best Chernobyl Coverage

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This is probably one of the best videos covering the work that was done by scientists after Chernobyl was first sealed up – but the details of what happened were still unknown. Nova was by far my favorite tv show when I was a kid.

Notice how different reporting was done just 30 years ago. It was just fact reporting from the people who were there – without dozens of talking head experts editorializing and telling you how to fell about it. Just compare this to 99.9% of ‘documentaries’ today that can be made by anyone and are basically thinly veiled propaganda pieces where the creators opinions aren’t even veiled.

When looking up facts and information about Chernobyl, it’s surprising how soft details are to find on the internet these days. I remember lots of much more graphic and revealing stories, videos, and facts in 90’s era web articles.

A good example is this NOVA documentary about the scientists that went in to find out what happened. Now you’re hard pressed to find information like this. Most of the time details about radiation rates and actual events are glossed over without the details that used to exist.

Another great site is Elena from Angelfire. She did some of the very first civilian infiltrations and documentations of the Chernobyl zone and still has a Youtube channel.

Armed Portland Protesters

Armed Portland Protesters

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It doesn’t get a lot of press, but Portland protest groups are much more routinely armed and open carrying firearms and assault rifles.

This is not a picture of the Proud Boys (who also bring weapons), but local Portland protesters part of Antifa:

In July 2024, BLM protesters showed up in a residential neighborhood equipped with assault rifles loaded with large capacity magazines – despite the fact Measure 114 had passed banning large capacity magazines in any public space.

Unfortunately, more and more armed people are showing up at these events – which took a deadly turn when protest confrontations have turned to shootings in 2022: