Loving Owls

 

Tesla's Bot Video

In the wake of Agility Robotics announcing their intention to scale production to 10,000 bipedal humanoid robots every year, Fourier Intelligence, a technology-driven company specializing in exoskeleton and rehabilitation robots, released a new video showcasing its GR-1 humanoid robot and production facilities.

Set in Salem, Oregon, “RoboFab”, Agility Robotics’ 70,000-square-foot robot factory is slated to open later this year and manufacture the company’s bipedal robot Digit.

“When you’re building new technology to improve society, the most important milestone is when you’re able to mass produce that technology at a scale where it can have a real, widespread impact,” Agility Robotics’ co-founder and CEO Damion Shelton said.

With recent developments in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotics engineering, the prospects for a human-esque robot capable of performing the actions of real people have been better than ever before.

Fourier Intelligence’s GR-1— first unveiled at the 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai— is equipped to assist patients from their beds to wheelchairs and pick up objects, boosted by the ability to carry loads of up to 110lb (50kg).

The newly released video flaunts Fourier Intelligence’s production prowess, custom-built actuators, and body parts that are being 3D printed.

And it isn't just Fourier Intelligence seemingly interested in reminding the public of their existence.

Optimus not-at-its-prime.
Tesla issued an update on its take on a humanoid robot, Optimus, with a video that eerily looks CGI-like.

What seemed like a half-baked idea from Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk when first announced was not helped by an underwhelming demo organized by the company at Tesla AI Day last year.

Optimus, barely able to walk about and wave wearily at the crowds, has since gained strength and credibility, reported Electrek.

The new video released by Tesla depicts the bot autonomously sorting objects by color amidst human interruption and self-calibrating its arms and legs.

The humanoid leverages vision and joint position encoders to locate its limbs in space, which allows for precise calibration and efficient learning of tasks. Optimus now trains using a neural network that runs entirely on-board.

The company claims Optimus' capabilities to include learning new tasks such as un-sorting and ended the video with the bot flaunting its dexterity. “Time to stretch after a long day of work,” the company captioned.   READ MORE...

USS Enterprise Filming Model

 

Revolution

 

Ancient Human Remains in Spain

Human remains are found in a cave, and unearthed to be analyzed by Tibicena, an archaeology company, in Galdar, on the island of Gran Canaria, Spain March 13, 2023.(photo credit: Tibicena Arqueologia y Patrimonio S.L./Handout via REUTERS)



Ancient human remains that were buried in caves in Spain have been shown to be modified prior to their burial, according to a recent study.

The research, published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE on Wednesday last week, examines the Cueva de los Marmoles, one of the most important cave contexts from southern Spain.

The significance of this cave is that it "returned a large number of commingled skeletal remains suggesting its funerary use from the Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age," the study said. However, the reason why these buried remains were modified still remains a mystery to researchers.


Researchers in the study also explored the fragmentation patterns that characterized different skeletal regions and took both macroscopic and microscopic analyses of whatever modifications were made to the human remains.

Radiocarbon data
The study concluded that through radiocarbon data, the remains date back several millennia, and also estimates that the minimum amount of people's remains discovered number up to 12 - seven adults and five children. 

The research does acknowledge that caves have been used as burial sites in the Iberian Peninsula for thousands of years, with its practice being originated in the 4th millennium BCE.  READ MORE...

Trump

 

How To Live Your Life

It is so easy today, because of social media, to become influenced by celebrities whether they are from Hollywood or athletics.  For some reason we look up to these people and I for one cannot figure out why.

• Yes, they are rich
• Yes, they are attractive
• They overconsume alcohol
• They overconsume drugs
• They are obsessed with tattoos
• They have multiple marriages
• They have multiple children
• They believe the law does not apply to them

Is this who you really want to emulate?

What's wrong with who you are?

So, the first lesson to living a successful life is accept who you are and stop worrying about who you would like to be.

Next, forget about following the advice of your parents, your teachers, your preacher, your peers, or your friends...

So, what the hell do I do now?

Well...  use the internet to find out what you want to be and what it takes to get there.

There are lots of jobs that will provide you with a financially safe future if you just look for them and put your preconceived ideas and biases behind you.

Go to college if you want to but be smart about it.

Go to a community college your first two years.

Work while you go in order to pay for your next two years or sometimes your employer will pay.

Start out small and work up.  I talked with a restaurant owner the other day who told me he started out as bussing tables.  He worked his way up and eventually became the manager and then the owner.  He is financially well off and has no college loan debt.  His life has been happy, and he feels successful.

So...  what's wrong with that?

The second lesson to a successful life is always give 110% even when you don't feel like it.  In so doing, you will begin to look for things that need to be done, rather than being told what to do.  While you work for someone else, you are actually managing yourself not the other way around.

The third lesson is kind to people.  Do unto others what you would like them to do unto you EVEN WHEN THEY DON'T DO IT...  It is easy to get made and want revenge, but it is difficult to walk away and let it pass.  You want to control anger and not let anger control you...  regardless of the situation in which you might find yourself.

The fourth lesson is learn how to balance your life so that you can give everyone, INCLUDING YOURSELF, what they/you need.  That includes, work, family, friends, and rejuvenation of self.  You must learn to sharpen the saw...  the saw being yourself.  You also must learn to focus.  When at home, don't think about work and when at work, don't think about home.  There is a time and a place for everything...  it will take a little time to learn that.

The fifth lesson is learn to enjoy life.  See life as something that is positive rather than negative.  Tun negatives into positives.  Plan for the best but expect the worst.  In other words, have contingency plans.  The better you are at planning the better your life will be.  Don't make a plan and file it away.  Execute that plan every day and revisit the plan every week.

Don't look back - always look ahead.

Monster

 

FedEx's New Robot

FEDEX UNVEILED A two-armed robot called DexR this week that’s designed to automate one of the trickiest tasks facing the company’s human employees—loading a truck with packages.


The new robot aims to use artificial intelligence to stack rows of differently sized boxes inside a delivery truck as efficiently as possible, attempting to maximize how many will fit.


That task is far from easy for a machine. “Packages come in different sizes, shapes, weights, and packaging materials, and they come randomized,” says Rebecca Yeung, vice president of operations and advanced technology at FedEx. 

The robot uses cameras and lidar sensors to perceive the packages and must then plan how to configure the available boxes to make a neat wall, place them snugly without crushing anything, and react appropriately if any packages slip.


“A few years ago, AI was not at a stage where it was smart enough to handle this kind of complex decision-making,” Yeung says. DexR is currently in testing, ahead of a wider rollout at FedEx at some point in the future.


While generative AI tools like ChatGPT have created a sense in many industries that AI technology is ready to take on just about anything, handling objects in the messy, unpredictable real world still poses formidable challenges for algorithms. 

Most industrial robots are designed to carry out highly repetitive jobs with extreme precision, but no variation. 
READ MORE...

We Didn't Start It

 

Worlds Largest Cruise Ship

 

Tachyons Are Cosmic Engines of Time Travel

A reactor core gives off the blue glow of Cherenkov radiation — one of the few ways in which a tachyon may be detected.   Image by Argonne National Laboratory.

Interstellar travel is the greatest challenge mankind will ever face. Not only because it’s so grandiose and marked by impressive shimmering spacecraft — tall and boundless, scaled by materials born of human ingenuity — but because it’s a necessary step in exploration and understanding of the cosmos. 

It becomes ever more necessary as time goes on, and ever more difficult. This is the complication we face.

Soon, even speeds approaching that of light may not be enough as our universe continues to expand at an enormous rate. The light of our closest star systems and galaxies will struggle to make their way to us, their existence visible only in our books and our computer programs which will have to remind us that the surrounding sky didn’t always look so empty. 

At lightspeed today travel between star systems would take years for a one-way trip. As much of a feat as luminal speeds are, they may someday prove to be insufficient themselves. But where the speed of light has presented to us an obstruction, so too is there a peculiar hope. There are, after all, two sides to every limit.

A comment Einstein makes in his 1905 paper reads, “…velocities greater than that of light have no possibility of existence.” 

But modern science and mathematics have found clever ways around this, loopholes which permit superluminal speeds without contradicting the theory of relativity.  READ MORE...

Puppies

 

Filing Our Taxes

Every year on or before April 15, we met with our tax preparer to file an extension.  We file this extension not because we want to delay paying so we can earn more interest on our money but because we don't receive the K-1s that are needed to support our taxes.  They are typically not sent out until August or September of that same year.

The extension gives us an extra 6 months before we have to file our taxes for the previous year.  That new deadline is October 15.  So, sometime around the end of September, we get with our tax preparer with our K-1s to file our taxes.

Many people prepare their own taxes to save the money of having to pay a tax preparer...  but we pay our tax preparer $100 so it saves a lot of hassle for just a little amount of money.  This year we get back $120 and paid out $100 plus a little bit of our time.

While we were there we asked if she could project out taxes for the next year.  After making a few assumptions, it took her 5 minutes to get the answer.  Yes...  next year we will be paying a hell of a lot more in taxes than we paid this year.

REASON:  We made a shitload of money by investing in high yield CDs over a period of 18 months although we are only looking at 12 of those 18 months.

The way that it will work out for us is that our taxes will represent about 11% of what we earned.  This means, we will be able to keep 91% of our earnings which is not a bad return.

Because we are in the state of Tennessee, our Social Security is not taxed.

If we calculate the taxes we will pay as a percentage of our total income for that year, it will be 6%.  Again, we will be able to keep 94% of our total income for that year.

Our positive situation is directly related to the amount of money that we have been able to save over the course of our lifetimes....  or at least up until we retired.

The money you earn while you are working is typically used to pay a mortgage, school loans, food, utilities, insurance, car payments, etc.  More often than not, couples today do not save money for retirement.  They also acquire lots of debt that must be serviced before they retire.

POOR FINANCIAL PLANNING leads to a devastating retired lifestyle...

LEARN TO BE FINANCIALLY SMART WITH YOUR MONEY...

 

Mountain Lake

 

Inbreeding Can Be Beneficial

The Svalbard reindeer, despite significant inbreeding and low genetic diversity, boasts a robust population of over 20,000, having adapted to Arctic conditions with unique traits like smaller size and the ability to digest mosses. Although they have evolved rapidly to past environmental changes, scientists fear the pace of current global warming may outstrip their capacity to adapt, posing a serious threat to their survival.



Reindeer have endured for over 7,000 years on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. Will they be able to withstand climate change?


Despite the challenges of inbreeding and limited genetic diversity, the Svalbard reindeer have remarkably adapted to harsh living conditions in an extraordinarily short period, a situation researchers term a genetic paradox. However, the question remains: can they withstand the impacts of climate change?


“Of all the subspecies of reindeer found in the high north, the Svalbard reindeer has the most inbreeding and the lowest genetic diversity,” says Nicolas Dussex, a postdoc at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) Department of Natural History.


It was only 7000-8000 years ago that the first reindeer migrated to Svalbard, most likely from Russia via Novaya Zemlya and the islands of Franz Josef Land. Perhaps there were no more than a few animals that established themselves on the Arctic archipelago. Evolutionary theory suggests this is a poor starting point since inbreeding can quickly lead to an accumulation of harmful mutations and genetic variants followed by disease and death.


But this has not prevented the Svalbard reindeer from evolving into what is today a viable population of more than 20,000 animals.

“Despite the low genetic diversity, they have managed to develop a number of adaptations to life in the High Arctic. They are, for example, smaller in size and have shorter legs than other northern reindeer and caribou subspecies,” says Dussex.

The ability to digest mosses in the absence of lichens, and to adjust their circadian rhythm to the extreme seasonal variations on Svalbard, are also traits the Svalbard reindeer have developed over the relatively short time they have lived isolated on the archipelago. 

Now, researchers at NTNU and collaborating institutions have analyzed genetic samples from 91 reindeer to see how they differ from their relatives on the mainland.  READ MORE...

Ghostrider Gunship

 

Stingrays

 

Classic Sunday Morning Newspaper Cartoons

 

The Aging Process

Today, represents the first day of October in the year 2023.  Like all months, once the month is over, it will never be seen again unless it is in photographs...  such is the movement of time.

Time moves forward.  Each day that passes, we age a little more.  As our age increases, the passage of time seems to move faster, even though its rate has not changed at all.

We try to maintain our youth with:

• exercise
• diets
• cosmetics
• surgery
• pills and creams
• hair transplants
• tonics

Some people continue to lift weights and take steroids to keep their bodies lean and mean up until the age of 80 and sometimes beyond...  But eventually, bodies break down and muscles atrophy and turn to fat...  it is inevitable.

Yet, we pursue this dream and fantasy nonetheless as if we can somehow manage to evade our destiny.

My hair began to turn grey in my twenties and in my forties, I began losing my hair.  I just accepted what was happening.  I had no desire to try and regrow my hair or change it to another color in an effort to make me look younger.

While I have always been active most of my life until about age 60, I was able to maintain a lean body with a flat stomach, regardless of what I ate or how much of it I ate.  That too changed at age 60 and I started gaining weight.

My immediate response was to start exercising...  but several physical therapists and doctors told me the only way to lose weight was not by exercise but by reducing the amount of food I ate each day.

As one ages one's metabolism changes and one needs to eat less in order to maintain one's current weight.  If one maintains their level of eating, they will automatically gain weight.

I exercise because it helps my heart function properly and because it is a necessary function of recovery from having back fusion surgery.  It is not how long I walk but how often I walk.  I should be walking for about 15-20 minutes 3 times a day.

Walking used to be a normal easy activity for me to accomplish.  I loved to walk and had no problems walking uphill or downhill or flat.  I did not walk fast but I did walk at a normal pace.  I could walk for a long time like that unless it was unusually hot or cold.

After my back surgery, walking was a chore, and it was like I had to force myself to walk.  It was no longer enjoyable.  The surgery was successful because I could walk but it changed how I walked.

All this is part of the aging process, and it is something with which we have to accept and move on...  otherwise, getting old will leave us miserable.

Somewhat Political

 

Einstein Was Wrong About Gravity

Einstein's theory of gravity—general relativity—has been very successful for more than a century. However, it has theoretical shortcomings. This is not surprising: the theory predicts its own failure at spacetime singularities inside black holes—and the Big Bang itself.

Unlike physical theories describing the other three fundamental forces in physics—the electromagnetic and the strong and weak nuclear interactions—the general theory of relativity has only been tested in weak gravity.

Deviations of gravity from general relativity are by no means excluded nor tested everywhere in the universe. And, according to theoretical physicists, deviation must happen.

Deviations and quantum mechanics
According to a theory initially proposed by Georges Lemaître and widely accepted by the astronomical community, our universe originated in a Big Bang. 

Other singularities hide inside black holes: Space and time cease to have meaning there, while quantities such as energy density and pressure become infinite. These signal that Einstein's theory is failing there and must be replaced with a more fundamental one.

Naively, spacetime singularities should be resolved by quantum mechanics, which apply at very small scales.

Quantum physics relies on two simple ideas: point particles make no sense; and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which states that one can never know the value of certain pairs of quantities with absolute precision—for example, the position and velocity of a particle. 

This is because particles should not be thought of as points but as waves; at small scales they behave as waves of matter.  READ MORE...

AI Revolution

 

A New America

 12% of the population (black) are bitching and moaning because they claim that 60% of the population (white) are controlling through white supremacy...

The Republicans have a slim majority in the House and are fighting among themselves for power rather than coming together as a single voice to do battle with the Democrats...

The Democrats have managed to get mainstream media on their side along with the DOJ and the FBI who are not supposed to be political, to take power away from the Republicans...

The citizens of America will soon realize, if they do not already that there are more of them than there are law enforcement personnel whose job it is to force Americans to obey the laws of the land...

The laws of the land, DO NOT APPLY to all the illegal immigrants flowing across our southern borders - If they are willing to break the laws to get here, do you really think they will obey all the other laws once they are here...   (Rhetorical Question)

There is a huge push to do away with gasoline vehicles, substituting them for electric vehicles - however, there is currently no infrastructure in place to support all those EVs - this is putting the cart before the horse...

There has been a HUGE INCREASE in illegal drugs and crime in the USA ever since Joe Biden became President - there appears to be a direct correlation here that we are trying to ignore...

Colleges and Universities have diluted and dumbed down their courses so that there are no failures and they can protect their streams of revenues...

China's threat at dominating the world is largely being ignored by the USA authorities because of our nuclear arsenal - they fail to see that this domination will be economical in nature...

The billionaires of the world have a HIDDEN AGENDA that they do not want to share with the rest of the world but it involves destroying the system that made them wealthy in the first place...

Fast Forward

For Over Thirty Years Now

I have been in a relationship that turned into a marriage where I do very little other than what I need to do around the house and want to do for my pleasure.

Let me explain:

• My wife does all the shopping
• My wife writes all the checks
• My wife balances the check book
• My wife plans out our vacations
• My wife researches for new vehicles
• My wife landscapes the yard outside
• My wife decides on inside decor
• My wife selects all appliances and furniture
• My wife does all the cleaning
• My wife does all the washing and ironing
• My wife does all the interior painting

This not to say that she does not ask for my opinion because she does...  so, you could say we decide together, but my responses oftentimes are those she wants to hear.

The reason why she does all of this is because she says her work is better than mine.  Whether or not her work is, in fact, better than mine, is not the issue...  the issue is that she does it.

I am not in a female led relationship because she has no control over me sexually.  I do not sit at her feet waiting for her commands, nor do I share her body with anyone else.

Because she thinks she is better than a man, she does most of the work, they males have typically done in the past.

I mow the lawn and weed eat.  I carry stuff into the house and around the house that is too heavy.  I do all the driving on the interstate and in places where we have not been before...  BUT, when we are at Myrtle Beach, she does all the driving in town.  Not sure why or how that got started but it did.

I tell her that she can spend whatever it is that she wants to spend, just don't get us into debt without my agreement, and leave some money left over for me if and when I want to buy something.  I typically purchase my laptops and tablets but before I retired from working, I had a subscription to AUDIBLE so I could listen to books in the car while I was driving.

It seems like it is a lopsided agreement especially since most husbands manage the money.  Sometimes, the wife and husband will have their own bank accounts and contribute equally or proportionally to monthly expenses...  All of our money is in one checking account and one saving account.

Not all women want to be treated like this, but our arrangement has worked out just fine.

Stone Skimming

 

ESV: A Lithium Free Battery

Nickel-hydrogen-based batteries that have long been used by NASA for its space missions are now making their way to power the grid. California-based EnerVenue is building large Energy Storage Vessels (ESVs) that could be used to power the grid using renewables, a press release said.

With the world making a major transition to renewables, energy storage solutions are the need of the hour. Lithium-ion batteries have been our best bet so far but making large-scale storage solutions is turning out quite expensive and cumbersome.

Li-ion batteries are prone to thermal runaway and large energy storage solutions need additional facilities for cooling, ventilation, and fire suppression to be built to prevent a major mishap. This is where nickel-hydrogen-based batteries could help.

How does a nickel-hydrogen battery work?
A nickel-hydrogen battery is much like any other battery with stacks of electrodes but held inside a pressurized gas tank. The cathode is made of nickel hydroxide, while the anode is hydrogen. When the battery is charged, the reaction produces hydrogen gas, which is oxidized during the discharging process to form water.

The energy-storing process, which involves the production of highly combustible hydrogen gas and a pressurized tank to contain it, raises doubts. However, the peak pressure inside the tank reaches only five percent of that in a hydrogen fuel cell. Moreover, if the pressure of the gas increases further, it results in the conversion of the gas into water again.  READ MORE...

Scruggs and Baez

 

Decisions... Decisions...

We spend our entire lifetimes making decisions...  to make that claim may sound rather simplistic, but it is probably something that we do not think about often.

We decide quite early in life whether or not we want to follow our parents' advice or not.  In so doing, the decision sometimes works to our advantage and sometimes to our disadvantage.

Later when we are in school, we make the decision of whether or not we want to listen to our teachers and whether or not we want to do the homework that we have been assigned to do.

For those of you who grew up with only one parent, those decisions were influenced differently than those who grew up with two parents.

After high school, we made decisions about:

• college
• marriage
• children
• divorce
• military
• employment
• relocation

Of course, there were hundreds if not thousands of decisions that must be made over the course of one's lifetime, involving a variety of areas, not just the ones listed above.

Every four years, we get to make a decision as to which person we believe will be the best one to lead our nation...  sometimes, that decision has already been made for us, because we have affiliated ourselves with a political party, and agreed to vote for the party not the person.

However, there are those of us who have made the decision to vote for the best person, regardless of their party affiliation.

For me, I was solidly a Democrat and voted for the party not the person.  When I entered the mid point of my life, somewhere around the age of 40, most (but not all) of my values turned conservative.  Not sure why that happened but it did.

With that said, I am not a Republican, nor am I a Democrat, nor am I a Socialist.  I suppose an Independent would be the best description, but I don't feel that I am that either.

I am liberal as well as conservative.  I don't like government, nor do I like the government telling me what I should or should not do.  I want to make up my own mind about owning or not owning a gun, or thinking that the government has the right to tell me what I can or cannot do with my body.

Today, I am faced with a decision that is not just uncomfortable but one that I cannot avoid.  I don't want to vote for Biden for President, nor do I want to vote for Trump. Of all the other GOP candidates, I don't want to vote for any of them.  I detest having to make a decision based upon the lesser of two evils.

Perhaps this is one of those times, where one decides to vote for the party and not for the person?

Thankfully, I have a year before I have to make that decision and, in the meantime, there will be hundreds of other decisions that I will be making.  Some difficult, some relatively easy.

Our decisions mold who we are and/or what we have become.  Our decisions influence our future because our past influences the decisions we make.  To avoid making a decision, is like hiding from the truth and when one hides from the truth, the truth always comes back and bites one in the ass.