Blog – Page 4

11/19/24

On Leaving Facebook

I’m leaving Facebook by Jan 20th.But in the process of moving to Bluesky (I’ve been on Mastodon for about 2 years), I realized there’s a gap in the kinds of public writing I like to do, a gap that FB filled — micro-blogging or long-form content where I would write short essays, 200-1000 words, not long enough for a podcast… Read More

12/31/23

How to Join the Fight for a Better World

WORK INSIDE YOUR CIRCLE 🌎🌱 What’s the most important way to fight climate change? I hang out in eco-spaces and I see this question asked a lot. But what people really want to know is… What can I *personally* do to help in the climate fight? And the very best answer to that is: whatever you’re passionate about. Anything you… Read More

07/02/23

A Note on Wildfire Smoke From an Aerosol Scientist

Pittsburgh, Summer 2023 These are the worst fires in Canadian history… and the smoke will be here (in the US, intermittently, depending on which way the wind blows) all summer. I didn’t expect the PhD in aerosol science to come in quite so handy for everyday life, but knowing a lot about tiny particles (aerosols) has been pretty useful the… Read More

05/04/23

The AI Hype Machine

The public is getting played. Played HARD. By corporations and the AI community. Please, smart people who are my friends, do not fall for this. There are three teams right now in the AI community: the RED TEAM, the BLUE TEAM, and the ETHICS TEAM. You’re not hearing much from the Ethics Team because they’ve all been fired by the… Read More

04/09/23

The Growing AI Backlash

The first thing to understand about AI is that the tech industry is incredibly savvy at manipulating the human psyche — they’ve spent decades honing their skills at getting you to click, scroll, give them all your attention, and accept technology as unstoppable. The second thing is that many of the people at the top are on a mission… and… Read More

03/29/23

The Poison of Doomerism

I watched a (long) video last night that basically reviewed 50 years of dystopian movies and said we were stuck in a doom loop that was killing the future. Exactly so, my friend. Even better, they reviewed Tomorrowland, where the whole premise is “scaring” people about a horrible future in an attempt to “wake them up” to the problem and… Read More