ChatbotGPT

I asked the Open AI chatbotGPT how to make the best compost. Here is what it told me. 

 "To make the best compost, you will need to follow these steps: 

•  Start with a balanced mix of carbon-rich materials, such as dry leaves and twigs, and nitrogen-rich materials, such as grass clippings and kitchen scraps. 
• A good rule of thumb is to aim for a mix that is about two-thirds carbon-rich materials and one-third nitrogen-rich materials. Moisten the materials with water until they are damp but not soggy. 
•  Mix the materials together thoroughly to ensure that they are well-combined and that the moisture is evenly distributed. 
• Place the compost in a bin or pile, and cover it with a layer of soil or compost to help retain moisture and heat. 
• Turn the compost regularly, at least once a week, to aerate it and help speed up the decomposition process. 
•  Monitor the compost for temperature and moisture, and add more water or carbon-rich materials as needed to maintain the optimal conditions for decomposition. 

 When the compost is ready, it should be dark, crumbly, and free of any recognizable pieces of the original materials. By following these steps and being patient, you can create high-quality compost that will provide valuable nutrients for your garden and plants."

  Chatbot GPT stands for - Generative Pretrained Transformer

Here is the link to the chatbotGPT. In many ways, it feels more engaging than Google and Wikipedia combined, so far. It has limitations. I tried to ask it for some technical details about certain physical properties (like the extinction coefficient) of certain chemicals I work with and it basically said it is not allowed to access the internet directly to look up specific technical details, but when I asked it if there were dietary changes I could make to improve my creativity it suggested eating foods good for overall brain health and gave examples like fish and nuts and other foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids.

Update: I asked ChatbotGPT - "Is OPenAI a private corporation?"

Here was the response:

"Yes, OpenAI is a private corporation. It is a for-profit organization that conducts research and development in the field of artificial intelligence. OpenAI was founded in 2015 by a group of high-profile entrepreneurs and researchers, including Elon Musk and Sam Altman, with the goal of advancing the field of AI and making it more widely accessible. OpenAI is funded by a combination of private investment and grants from organizations such as the Open Philanthropy Project." 

FYI

Cheers,

Kristopher Hite

Arthur Miller on collective suspicion

Anand Giridharadas interviewed

My favorite theme in this interview is discussion the enlightenment-era orginias of our universial social saftery systems and how the extremely rich tend to justify undermining them - as in constantly seeking lower tax rates and so on. Thanks to David Klausa for sharing this!

Hank Reichman Discussing Academic Freedom

I met Hank Reichman this summer at the Biennial Conference of the AAUP. He was truly a delight to interact with and animated while reading excerpts from his book. He was generous with his time and advice for young faculty concerned with preserving and building the principles of Academic Freedom.

 

Professor Jonathan Pettitt on the Significance of Population Size Regarding Natural Selection

Peter Godfrey-Smith Talk at Google

 

Early Morning Mind-Swirl

 We call it the mind-swirl. The phenomenon of waking up at 3:30, or 4:45, or worst of all, 5 AM and thinking about all the things that need to be done in the coming days, weeks, months, years.

• File that annual report and be sure to have the budget details nailed down, and justified.
• Finish writing that book chapter
• Re-write the entire lab-manual
• Build a raised bed for vegetables
• Pack for vacation
• Make sure to enjoy your vacation
• You're too heavy, do some serious cardio
• Scroll on social media and see an article that says you can not just decide to be a different person
• Contemplate if you should subscribe to the Atlantic
• Find print copies of the New Yorker you have not read for months
• Decide you should not subscribe to the Atlantic
• Make sure to channel the loving spirit of your parents
• Mourn the loss of the last few year's worth of joy due to the Pandemic
• Realize the overwhelming joy you have experienced over the last few years despite the pandemic.
• Be more charitable after reading an article about a meal shared between Jose Andres and Ron Howard in one of those neglected New Yorker magazines.
• Log on to your computer to start working on that annual report.
• Write a silly blog post on Tom Paine's Ghost instead
• Are you sick?
• Is it DayCare funk?
• Yes.

And here I am back to writing terribly but doing it so I can cultivate the feeling of keystrokes in a dimly lit basement with the white of the computer screen lighting up the keyboard.

OK, I'd better go figure out how to use Microsoft Teams and R.

Bye-bye.

Spider and the Web

The interwebs are not what they used to be and I guess that is OK. Just now I caught my mouse, I mean my eyeballs, I mean my brain, hovering over a clothing advertisement on a large social network's website. Each night while my 3-year-old watches his favorite cartoons I scroll through reels or TikToks or whatever for far too much time. NYU Marketing Professor Scott Galloway sums up what the internet is becoming now in the video below. TikTok is winning and I do not see it stopping this colossal run. Sometimes you just gotta go with the flow. It is strange to me how somehow we stop using technologies while others ramp up. I can not even recall the last time I sent a g-chat and yet for so long g-chat was part of my daily life. The same goes for AOL instant messenger. What is my point? Back to the title of this blog post (hahahaha anachronisms make me chuckle). We are all prey voluntarily flying around a predator's web. Each day we wake up and flock to the web mostly to see each other without seeing each other. At some point, we had debates online. For me, this has mostly stopped. There is no reward for arguing online so I stopped. At the end of this semester, I saw someone share a nonfiction bestseller list from Canada. Manufacturing Consent, a book published in 1988 written by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman topped the list. I have a copy, somewhere, given to me by my old friend Tera. It struck me that this 34-year-old book was a current bestseller so I went to YouTube to watch old interviews summing up the crux. Here I posted about it. When Netflix came along I was in college and then graduate school. At this time it was a "DVD by US Mail" service. This was great as I could mostly avoid advertisements. It had an edgy feel, bucking a system that traditionally drew eyeballs to the trough of entertainment and enlightenment through television and movie theater screens. Anyone who puts on makeup to deliver you a message probably wants some money in return. Netflix was no different, they were just more upfront about it. Pay us a monthly subscription fee and we'll spare you all the previews and Coca-Cola ads. And now at the dawn of a Netflix with the ads put back in I see the end of an era that started about 20 years ago. An era to free us from the manufactured consent Chomsky railed against so hard back in the 1980s. We could's handle that kind of freedom. Some of us could, maybe, for a few years just out of college. But then Donald Trump was elected. The pandemic came, and the companies wanted all their advertising revenue back. So then came TikTok and Mountain Dew paid Charlie Day to sing along to piano tunes for the kiddos. They were awful but novel enough for me to mention. And now here I am reverting to an outlet that was once my home. My place to spew my mind and feel like it was my house online. It was a fun exercise. Thanks for reading. I'd like to keep going. 

@profgalloway You are one of 1.6 billion monthly active users #tiktok #fyp #instagram #facebook #chartoftheweek #profg #scottgalloway ♬ original sound - Scott Galloway

Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger Commencement Address 2022

George W. Bush accidentally tells the truth...

@travisshreffler Broken Clock, etc etc #leftist ♬ original sound - Travis

The Problem with Jon Stewart