SeniorJunior

  A two-paragraph AI summary of a four page draft. and a guess at the plot It was (sorta) spot on.  Working on the sequel to Lucas 2.0, I'm sweating out a chapter that moves several currents of the story simultaneously,  and I'm having a tough time of it. Purely for distraction (i.e. procrastination), I decided to put the current draft up for a little AI commentary; it might confirm I'm getting the points over I want to. I've read that's the way some writers are using AI. This little exercise was done with  Copilot , MS Bing's version of ChatGPT 4.  I uploaded the chapter and used this prompt: " This is a segment of a chapter in a sci-fi novel. Please give a two-paragraph summary and briefly take a crack at what the premise of the book might be." Speed reading's my thing. Co-Pilot read the chapter, thought about it long and hard, wrote the summary I requested, and did a considered speculation on what the rest of the book might be about. All that i...

Talk About Production Volume! Check out these vast Chinese solar farms. (Almost) As Far as the Eye Can See. "Cover the hills with solar panels:" Xi MASSIVE PRODUCTION:   In2023, China installations of renewable energy included adding 216 gigawatts of solar capacity. 216 gigawatts added  in one year are more than the total of all solar power in the United States. Whew!   That's roughly 900 million (check my arithmetic) panels, manufactured  annually in China,  My favorite American solar manufacturer is Qcells . Their annual output is about 6 gigawatts. And that's 30% of the total American manufacturing capacity. In 2021, China's solar panel manufacturing capacity was estimated to be around 160 GW! Now that capacity and new sales barriers (tarriffs) plus murderous  competitive  urges have resulting in huge dumps at prices nobody can match.  They've wiped out several western panal manufacturfers - thus the tarriffs.* ALL IN ON THE LONG HAUL I'm ...

Solving Super Problems As you possibly know, I wrote a sci-fi book about Superintelligence (several notches up from current AI) exploring what such a self-aware, self-motivating, self-improving artificial intelligence would actually do with all that "brain" power.   Check me out HERE Being a giddy optimist, I had my Supe, named Lucas, use its mighty Mind to work on humanity's overwhelming problems. Whoo boy, did he ever get to work. One of the big probs he (OK, AIs don't have gender -- unless they want to) went to work on what was actually two problems that he lumped into one solution. PROBLEM ONE:     12 million hectares of agricultural soils are lost globally through soil degredation every year, becoming  unproductive and often abandoned. Looking at you, monoculture! Just try growing something in me. HAR! PROBLEM TWO : The fast-developing sargassum plague.   Climate change and direct human impact have led to an explosion of new rotting seaweed accumulating o...

(Theory Belief/Hope about)  Aging Itself The Geroscience Hypothesis Duff, another of your rants on senolytics? In a nutshell:  Aging is caused by many things, but the buildup of senescent cells as we age is one that is both a CAUSE and and EFFECT of aging. Circular, no?  As time goes by, compounding damage happens to cells that causes them to become senescent -- no more dividing and replicating but they don't die,  they just hang around and emit SASP* which has inflammatory and other nasty molecules that speed up that long slide to death by "natural causes."**  Old people build up a LOT of senescent cells. They weaken the immune system that clears them out in younger people, more circular deterioration. GETTING RID OF SENESCENT CELLS WILL POSTPONE THAT.  ` As I read more about it,  I started blasting out blog posts in late 2017 . I was smitten by this paragraph: “Aging is the main risk factor for many chronic degenerative diseases and cancer. Increased...