Middle of the Year crisis
Oh crap its June already
June the first hits hard! The longest day of the year is coming up fast and then we make the U-turn and start heading back towards winter. What a crazy simulation… I mean what an amazing planet we live on! I have just gotten winter out of my head and started to focus on the summer/green season and here we are heading back towards winter. The beginning of June is always a kick in the ass. Better get moving at light speed on all the projects awaiting attention before it starts to get cold again.
Speaking of cold. It has been pretty damn cool here during May. April had some really warm days and then May was downright cold. What is June going to do….
Recommended viewing.
This long interview with Jeffery Sachs is a real classic. If you have watched a lot of podcasts with Jeffery Sach you could possibly skip this one, but even then there is a lot of “new” info about history, diplomacy, and even the events of the last few years. So I highly recommend this one. Jeffery is a truly amazing man and I always feel empowered and encouraged that good people will prevail over the crazy neo-cons in the end.
Prices are going up up and away….
On my way home from the barber shop today I stopped at the supermarket to pick up a few items. I went to grab one of my favorite veggies, an avocado and I glanced at the sign with the price and I recoiled like I had been burned! The sign said 250 yen before tax. Avocados, at least the ones I buy have been 198 yen for a long long time. There is often a large type that sells for about 298 yen, but I always thought that was too much and I bought the cheaper ones. Well, today I was shocked to see one of my staples go up in price that much. The prices are starting to jack up here in Japan and people are feeling the pinch.
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Want to hear more about the cost of living? I was shopping for some wood at the local Home Depot type of store. You are welcome to compare with the cost of 2X10 lumber where you are living!
AI is amazing… No wait its total bullshit!
I continue to “do my own research” concerning the rise of the AI and the soon to be AGI. LOL. Today I was painting some new signs for our store while listening to the YouTube video Essay linked below. It was a good take and opened my eyes to the shift from “Big Data” (which I recall hearing mentioned a lot) to AI the new Buzz word.
I understand now that Big Data was boring for us ordinary folks as there was nothing we could do with it. AI on the other hand is AMAZING. We can make funny pictures like the ones I have created above and we can ask it to write poems and stuff like that! Wow.
Anyway I try to be an early adopter and I am using Chat GPT probably more than most people, but the fact remains I am still hunched over a piece of wood painting while my back starts hurting. These signs will be used to advertise the coffee and food items we sell at our shop…
No AI can help me make a sign in the real world. It is only useful in the digital world so far and the digital world is mostly an overrated pump-and-dump scheme, as I learned from the video below.
Listen to the video below and I think you will agree. If not let me know why!
One more comment about the AI debate. There is always someone talking about how AI will take away 50% of the jobs etc etc., but I still can’t quite wrap my head around statements like that. First of all, I am using AI for my work, small things like illustrations and writing text, but I have not fired anyone. I just added it to my toolbox and continue to do the work. Until my clients figure out how to use the AI like I am doing no one is getting fired in this example. Then again does the client really want to sit around writing prompts to a GPT? Will they take the time to learn how to use AI so they can fire me to save a few bucks and increase their own work load? I don’t think so!
OK, what if there are a lot of people who lose their jobs? All the illustrators and copywriters etc., Will they go to work for Nvidia making GPU and motherboards? Will they go to work for the electric companies that are going to have to expand to keep up with the demand for electric power due to all this AI expansion?
I really think it will take the combination of robots and AI to see a massive wave of people losing jobs. Robots that can figure out how to paint a sign that say coffee so that more people come to our store to BUY coffee. I will need to sell a lot of coffee to pay for the robot subscription fee, if you know what I mean!
What do you think, who will be losing their jobs first?
The last “Undokai” or Sports Festival
Our youngest daughter is in 6th grade elementary school and each year we take part in the school’s sports festival. A series of simple games and contests with all 20 of the school kids split into two groups, the Red team and the White team. The school is closing and moving to join the middle school in the village at a new location so this was the last ever sports festival at this location. A bit of history was written as it was the 119th consecutive sports festival at the elementary school! Great weather made for a nice morning watching the kids compete. I love Japan but the endless short speeches by different people all saying the same thing over and over does drive me crazy. If you have lived here you will understand the repetitive nature. I will leave it at that and I will share some photos with you.
Yeah didn't they just rebrand matrix mathematics (replace numbers in the matrices) with words and chuck this into a compute cluster datacentre to string back a few sentences to make a poetic paragraph calling this "AI"? This would be the case for the LLM's. But for the image generation stuff, I believe that is just more compute power. I don't actually think there is any "intelligence" in it, I could be wrong!
Agree on all your comments. I learn something all the time reading your posts. Enjoyed the Undokai photos.