c2lem.com Weeklies Feed

November 10, 2024

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Science

AI Stuff

Trip Planner
iMessage Secretary – started playing with this. For example I asked to to give me updates on three updates daily on SOLUSD (my only little crypto bag) which worked whereas it did not know what to do to track “Solana”. I am also letting it track my reading – to what end I am not sure.

Nerd

A video breaking down the tech stack and implementation of a really fast catalog site. I used to stay on top of this stuff so it was a nice review for me.

Hippie BS

Secret of Here

Who Knew?

Pretty Colors

Nile Green
Mayan Blue
Mauve (This is from Sesquitica a vocabulary blog that I return to frequently.)

Ran-do

Your guide to Egyptian Gods (thank you British Museum)
R Speen is a nice looking vanity blog (for a possibly fictional person) that actually seems to be regularly updated. I got here looking for a Steely Dan lyric explanation (can’t remember now) and this site has SD reviews/commentary as one (of several) loci of interest. This is the sort of blog that sounds great in theory to start but quickly (IMHO) becomes a PITA to maintain relative to the rewards; hence I am tantalized by the cussedness of whoever is behind this.

Investing

Men Faber Interview

Politics (Kinda)

Enshittfication and Stuff (I read Cory Doctorow regularly. Doctorow seems, at first glance, like a Tech Lib-Hippie with a Beard but is surprisingly sane, realistic and clean shaven to the best of my experience.)

November 17, 2024

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Internet Greybeard Stuff

Gopher coulda been the Web

Science (eeerrr Math)

Largest Prime Number discovered. (For now of course.)

Politics: Make of it what you will

I already voted with my feet by leaving California but this article has ideas for better liberal economic policies.

AI Stuff

AI Grandma to Frustrate Phone Scammers

Las Vegas, Nerd

The city of LV may be a libertarian, gambling fueled, hell hole but the government does some cool stuff occasionally. For example: classes in 3D Printing along with publicly available 3D Printers (at least one I am told.) They, 3D printers that is, are also available to access in our public libraries.

Makes Me Smile

The Forest Jar came to me by way of TikTok and now I follow it on Patreon. More people need to see this stuff.

Social Media

Bluesky is open and I assume I am late to this party. Anyway, over there on that thing, as of 23 hours ago, I am @c2lem.bsky.social. So far it feels remarkably not annoying or, in other words, its a giant libtard echo chamber and I am right at home.
Also some things that Bluesky can do that I have not tried yet.

November 24, 2024

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Extreme Emotions

An NIH article entitled, “Why I hate the index finger.”
An old (no, really old), pretty, yet category-appropriate song I saw on Tiktok.

Media

A video about Youtube sponsors being (in general) kinda evil that is available on Youtube. Which, of course, checks out and at the same does not prevent my hypocritical self from linking to Google’s money-printing machine.

Science

A laser (light, that is) casting a shadow!?!?
I saw this (a fragment of) moon orbit video a la Randall Munroe on Tiktok.

Woooh, Trippy

Apparently the CIA has explored advanced meditation techniques to achieve altered consciousness and thus to help one better manifest one’s will on the universe. And if that sounds like some risible, Leonard-Nimoy-In-Search-Of BS then you can stop right here. But otherwise, here is the Monroe Institute for your investigation, edification and/or media-purchasing pleasure.

Peace, Love & Understanding

Buckminster Fuller’s World Map manages to project the continents onto an icosahedron (eg 20-sided die) so that the size distortion is minimized and, as a handy side effect, has the land masses arranged in an almost continuous fashion such that you can more easily keep in mind your connection to humankind (land dwelling creatures) all over the world. (sorry about the tiny image – this what Mr Fuller’s Estate provides)

AI

I just put in my CC # for a free trial of this newsletter from The Verge. They want $7.00 a month or one hypothetical expensive beverage from Starbucks. Color me cautious.
A longish article about how AI is used in protein engineering and what problems remain to be solved (TBH at least 50% of the article is beyond my ken).
Just a reminder that AI image generation (for civllian-use anyway) is not quite perfect yet. The prompt in Image Playground (Apple’s new AI iphone app) was, “A happy, smiling crocodile riding a 10-speed bicycle”. The result is better than I imagined it would be, but getting AI to generate any image requiring true creativity or simply understanding of anatomy or topology, just ain’t there yet. Or, says MIT, maybe its coming.

Social Media

I discovered that Bluesky allows me to verify myself to this domain (website), which seems like a pretty elegant way to avoid the fake celebrity accounts problem. To the point where I don’t understand why twitter/X didn’t, from the get-go, verify accounts this way. (but imma civilian I shouldn’t second-guess.)
And a nice explainer, b/c Bluesky seems too good to be true so far, as to how they intend to make money while not being evil. (long story short, they don’t know how to make money right now but they are working on it.)

Greedy Corporations

A possible lawsuit against potato-processors (Lamb-Weston, Simplot et.al.) for price-fixing. (you ever wonder why french fries ain’t cheaper?)

Cooking

A Step-saving Kitchen brought to you in 1949 by the US Government and then put on youtube and eventually on Tiktok by Jess at JuicedKitchens. I wish my kitchen was “step-saving.” Anyway, filed under cooking/nostalgia. Thanks Jess.

December 1, 2024

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Food

I have enjoyed various breakfast foods from China, congee for example, and now I am tempted to try making it for myself.
Roberto’s Tacos (ancestor, allegedly, probably, to all other “ertos”) has an origin story.

Social Media

Bluesky has bugs just like any other piece of new software. Only interesting to me b/c its a bug with the DNS account verification feature I only discovered (and started using) last week.
I guess it’s possible, to host a website on Bluesky.
More in depth about how blusky.app moderates free speech (eer who has the power to censor, label, block or mute.). They seem successful so far, but how is this going to be attacked?

Pretty Colors

Pyrrole, aka Ferrari Red
All these videos with pretty color palettes.

Harkening back

R Speen seems to be the home of a certain Randy Russell podcast that seems to be about artists, creators who hail from the upper midwest. His restaurant reviews are certainly Milwaukee-centric. Why does this make me so happy?
This CIA memo is a nice follow up to the Whoa Trippy post from last week.

AI

This article about LIDAR is AI-adjacent.
Is this creative? Do I need to walk back my statement from last week (already!!!)?
(courtesy of tiktok/nate.b.jones). Supposed to be building an OS for AI agents, but If nothing else, they have a cute landing page.
Do you want/need to take an AI (machine learning) class? I can definitely recommend this one. I took it in 2012(?). Back then we weren’t using python and there was no TensorFlow (cos it didn’t exist).

UI

Just Like Paper. Screens and keyboards can not replace paper and pencil because there is something primal in the way writing connects with our brains IMHO.
Another super interesting user interface. (an immense understatement)

December 8, 2024

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT

AI (yet again)

The Browser Company the dudes who build Arc (my current browser) are recruiting devs to build a new web browser based on …… you guessed it.
Why did I not link to an article about vocabulary before now? (really this is helpful)
Waymo autonomous taxi service is expanding to LA. This is a real reason to eventually break up the Alphabet Behemoth. (or cynically invest in it)
What Vernor Vinge thought about AI in 1993!!!
State of AI 2024 which I found in this article.

Scepticism

A City on Mars is a book that I somehow missed last year.

Miracles and Wonders

The painstakingly proven existence of fish brain microbiomes (say that three times fast) implies the possibility of mammal/human brain microbiomes.
MIT’s ion powered plane

Rat Holes

I had never heard of kidney suet until I saw this chili recipe and then this one. And I found both of these recipes at textfiles.com, which appears to be a platonically perfect internet rathole.
Need a 3d printable for a fainted Charmander? Gumroad has you covered.

Sad

Because of course AI-pimping is a thing – it will be the word of the year in 2025 – you read it here first.

Happy

Christmas Decor for mac users.

Organizing

I use Apple Notes …. to keep notes (because you-know, mac + iphone.) Anyway, a guy has made a disciplined system to organize said notes and, because this is a universe that follows patterns, he sounds German.

Zeitgeist

is currently, apparently kinda bloodthirsty

Baking/TV

Fergalukecious says that they are shaking up the cast of the Great British Baking Show. Its on Tiktok so it must be true. Of course they are keeping Paul Hollywood; his handshake is the real prize.

December 15, 2024

Sun, 15 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Pretty Colors

Mocha Mousse (maybe not)
Medieval
“oklch” is the new HSL (to learn … if you are designing …. for computer monitors)

Farewell

Childhood Memories

Awesome

AI

(Bloomberg via Yahoo) Hiring Experts to label data for AI
Red Teams and Danger! (Free from WSJ)
Chatbot Arena (also from WSJ)

Crypto

Debanking(?): I enjoyed this really long article which puts the current crypto mafia’s, “we need a bank” argument, into context, and I suspect, that it provided a pretext to put the phrase, “ROGUE BODEGAS”, in print.

December 21, 2024

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Pretty Colors

Incredibly Kleinish Blue (from WSJ and may not allow access) (so, as fallback, here is Stuart Semple.)
Here is more on color spaces from an interesting, if infrequently updated, blog.

Random

Point Nemo

AI

Science

Slow Week

Maybe I’ve been avoidoing.

December 28, 2024

Sat, 28 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Awesome

Playing games on school-issued Chromebooks (when you should be studying)

Math

All of modern math in a nutshell. (jk)
I wound up at the above article while trying to understand the background of this article about alleged new types of infinity. (but still not sufficiently educated)
Yet more math. This technique generates leaf-like images.

AI

Can AIs do math? Sorta. Maybe. I don’t know. Anyway we need a test.
Synaesthesia. or an excuse to give Christmas music suggestions.
Confabulation. is a thing that happens.
Rant

Miracles and Wonders

Lungs in a Box
Its one thing to understand the concept of CRISPR; its another to use it on a patient in a hospital.
.Hibernation

Books

Literary Fiction is Dead
I am really trying to read my first Brandon Sanderson book but I have trepidation.

January 5, 2025

Sun, 05 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

(sorry for the lateness, family stuff… needs must … etc)

Animals

AI

Unlocking Ancient Texts
Hacking an LLM by using its own rules against itself. Kinda like in that episode of Star Trek that I remember vaguely.

Investing

AI Trading Arena is where AI bots compete at stock trading. I suppose I could have filed this under “AI” but greed wins in this case. This is a little sketch because the site has no supporting documents explaining, for example, how the three bots are prompted. But on the other hand each bet has an expiration date. This morning (1/6/2025) I see that one of the AI bots sold something after only a day. Definitely a little sketch.

Random

People apparently spend a great deal of mental energy on Sudoku and this article shows how much I did not know about these puzzles.

January 12, 2025

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

AI

They squandered the Holy Grail
Here is a smart cane that was at CES.

Yikes

Voice Phishers are a Real Thing and I know it because I got called by one today saying that someone in Germany was trying to change my gmail password.

Superpowers

A New Superpower

Miracles and Wonders

A new cell type has been discovered (!) and it may lead to better plastic surgery outcomes.
We seem to be making great progress towards making the Moon a space hub.
But on the other hand here is a book debunking any over-enthusiasm about cities on Mars (or the Moon).

January 19, 2024

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Sci-fi

Believe it or not, I had not heard of Dyson Trees before
Nor have I heard of Barry Malzberg

Gadgets

This paper-like tablet looks like something I almost need.
I need a gadget like this to match all the pretty colors.

Creativity

Charles Darwin’s kids put drawings on his manuscripts that are pretty adorable.

Education

Sooooo many free classes and I found one on Jack Kerouac.

Random

An Encyclopedia of Unknowns is just what I needed to fill my day.

Nerdery

A game developed by a computer (even the name is computer generated): Yavalath!

Social Media

All sorts of Bluesky info here.
Heres sticktock for sharing tiktok vids w/out tiktok.

January 26, 2024

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

AI

AI in a Browser
A specific DNA language model has discovered (probably) 70,000 new RNA viruses from existing samples (returning false positives only 0.014 percent of the time).
And now here is Deep Seek.

Pretty Colors

Psychedelic Edition …err graphics programming

Space

Oxygen on the Moon is something we will def need in order to build a lunar colony.

Cool

The definition of cool is building a castle from scratch.

Modern Life

I really won’t have to worry about my digital afterlife but for a significant number of people that is now a concern.

Home Economics

This week I added a fire stick to my 65" TCL (mounted to the wall in the living room) that has horrible Google innards. Horrible means: that it forgot how to stay on WIFI at least once a day (requiring me to unplug/plug it) and that button-push response time was just barely ok. Now and my life is noticably nicer: WIFI just works and buttons do things without delay). No need to buy a new TV!!! I am pretty sure a Roku stick would be just as much of an improvement but there I was on Amazon…

February 2, 2025

Sun, 02 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Nature

Today I learned that giant clams have a symbiotic relationship with algae
A long article about Central Asia’s climate disaster and how the wildlife, though it has changed radically, continues in spite of the near apocalyptic conditions.

AI

Predictions about Invidia’s future in light of Deepseek.
The fastest Deepseek host is currently Cerebras

Mac

Your basic perf stats in the menubar app that I was having a hard time finding just three weeks ago.

Philosophy

A lecture whose main idea is that we can think of the entire planet as a computer.

Tech

I really wish we had sweaters that would heat up when exposed to the sun. (At least right now in February.)

Pretty Colors

How good is your color vision?

February 9, 2025

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Crypto

Grifters Gonna Grift is the easy title, but this is really just a typical memecoin-pump-and-dump.

Useful

I am definitely late to the party for the Marginalia Search Engine, but it looks intriguingly noncommercial and non-AI-oriented.

Sci-fi

Here is an ongoing class on the Octavia Butler.

Black Studies

I found the Octavia Butler class from the HillmanTok Curriculum page.

Language

I am sure somebody needs this game for learning Cantonese.

AI

A bunch of scrolls from ancient Pompeii decyphered using AI.

Wildlife

TL/DR: there are 20 quadrillion ants on earth(Actually its a pretty short article)
The Mount Lyell shrew has been photographed.

Pretty Colors

Palettes from various pieces of pixel art.

Internet

The Ladybird Browser built from scratch and independent of both Chrome and Firefox.

Music

Do you like jazz?

Food

What even, is a perfectly cooked egg?. The article, in figure 4, has a nice graphical explanation and, indeed, it seems like a very nice egg with a jellied, soft yolk and a cooked white, however, achieving this requires 30 minutes and way too many steps; at least compared to breaking the egg into a glass, adding a half cup of water then nuking for 30 seconds.

Cool

An analog tank-simulator.

Things I want

A utility bike with two chains and two gears.

Archeaology

A newly discovered pyramid in Peru.

February 16, 2025

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Math

A nice visual walkthrough of a Fourier transform.

Cartoons

An interesting read about Tom and Jerry.

Miracles and Wonders

A war-robot as your DJ.

Games

The game of Figgie, which is supposed to help you understand the stock market.
Not a lot of content here this week and thats at least partially because I have been playing Civ VII

WTF?

“Quadrobics” is an exercise regime where you imitate the movements of animals (for example trying to run on your hands and feet like a cat.) and some people like to do it in appropriate animal costumes. The Russian regime is not in favor.

Pretty Colors

Actually the colors aren’t incredibly pretty, but this is the kind of stuff I might write up in a blog if I were very obsessive.

AI

Anthropic’s attempt to quantify the economic impact of AI.

February 30, 2025

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Book Club

FWEET is the “Finnegan’s Wake Extensible Elucidation Treasury”; a twee website dedicated to commentary about a book I may never be brave, bored or stupid enough to tackle.

Algorithms

This here site attempts to explain Markov Chains visually and at first glance its just super clean and educational.

MacOS

Tips & Tricks – definitely worth the price of admission! (At least for me, but I am not a hardcore user like I was back in the day.)

Long Read

This article about the Zizians gives the facts about and tries to give you the flavor of this weird cult.

Emotions

… and how to manage them. It has suggestions for tactics that were new to me (and hence seem clever).

AI

Another article about AI apocalypse.
Whisk an experiment from Google.

Mythos

… of the Greek variety.

Pretty Colors

here.

Miracles and Wonders

Robots that flow like water and can also create load-bearing structures.

March 6, 2025

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Slow week y’all sorry.

Science

What is the smallest amount of light that will still support photosynthesis?

Gadgets

A dude who has developed a prototype flatpak toaster and looking at it, I really want one of these things.

Math

Superpermutations

Games

Balatro is my favorite!

March 16, 2025

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Math

The Neurology of Zero vs the neurology of nothing.
A book on History of Maths

AI

It seems everybody thinks that AI can break really difficult codes when really, no.

Miracles and Wonders

Is this E-Taste or Smell-o-vision?
Memory Transplants. Thank you Adrian Tchaikovsky for the pointer.

Discovery

Thousands of previously unknown species in the Mariana Trench.

COVID

This means (I think) better vaccines. Thank you Nick Harkaway for the pointer.

Language

This is an analysis of animal sounds (onomatapoiea) across many languages.

Extreme

An article that mostly clearly explains the non-intuitive dangers of plutonium exposure and concludes that “our fear of plutonium is overblown”. The article is quite unsettling to me.

Paranoia

A font about fear of surveillance and censorship. True story: in the late 80’s, when the internet was tiny, one of my aging hippie co-workers had email .signature file that routinely added a list of marijuana-LSD-drug-related keywords on the assumption that the CIA/FBI was reading email.

March 23, 2025

Sun, 23 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Pleasant

A substack about music that just seems enjoyable.

From My Brother-In-Law

A blog entry which includes a list of criteria for public projects put forth by Ursula Martius Franklin, a person I have never heard of before, but yes, my brother-in-law thinks its important so, there ya go.

ELI5

In case you’re (like me) wondering how a rice cooker works.

Politics

How to support your local library.

AI

Deepseek runs really fast on Groq and Cerebras chips.
Jaron Lanier on AI Lovers is not super upbeat. And I can’t give you all a gift link to the New Yorker, sorry.

Real Intelligence

Progress studying why babies don’t seem to remember anything.

March 30, 2025

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

AI

Physics-based entropy generators are very important in certain AI problems and Extropic.ai is developing these things.. If you believe the hype, it means orders of magnitude improvements in AI scalability. Of course this technology is above my paygrade.

Applied Math

MIT has the developed the math to predict when crowds become disordered.

Sanity

Are suffering from news opinion fatigue? An (at least partial) solution is using an RSS reader. On my mac I am have reeder ($10 a year) which I have configured to get (amongest other things) news feeds. The articles are served without adds and without commentary threads which is itself is a relief. I have feeds from WSJ World News, WSJ U.S. News and News Nation Now

History

A fun blog about renaissance history meant to hype up a book.

Biology

Have scientists discovered a new branch on the tree of life?
Hollywood and Monsters

Music

Fake Books and Real Books

Pretty Colors

Pink

April 6, 2025

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Quakers!

Quaker meeting house raided in London! I was raised Quaker and this just seems silly.

Animals

Specifically invertebrates; vote for your favorite. Also, your voting choices include creatures I had never heard of before.

Organize

A tool to enable fuzzy-searching Apple Notes

Astronomy

An Einstein Ring photograph.

Coffee

Rescuing it from extinction.

Sci-fi

Looks like China Mieville has a new book coming out.

Pretty Colors

Or not.

TV

From all over the world.

Neurology

The Interesting Brains Project at MIT.

April 13, 2025

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

(slow week y’all)

Innovation

An article describing how Rive (an app for vector-based animation), had to innovate past the SVG standard in order to animate gaussian blurs with reasonable efficiency.

Punctuation

I think this speaks for itself.

Pretty Colors

Thomas Kinkade

Fantasy

Got no time, place, or buddies to meet once a week to get your Elf-fighter-magicuser (or Cthulu-soon-to-be-dead-or-insane-investigator) adventuring swerve on? Well the modern world has you covered: PBM RPG (play-by-mail roleplaying games) allow you to play on your own time from the comfort of your laptop and its free, Free, FREE!!! (not even any extras to pay for.) The link drops you into the gamer’s tavern thread where game masters are recruiting for new players.