u/jamcultur

I just ran across this news story about hi-tech companies digitizing and then destroying books. It reminded me of Vernor Vinge's 2006 book Rainbow's End which won the 2007 Hugo Award.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3rprx2wl4o

>When court documents were unsealed last month it also emerged books were being destroyed in the process of training Anthropic's AI chatbot, Claude.

>They insisted sourcing books for training was a widely used approach across the AI industry.

Aron M80 video

The Aron M80 is a wing-in-ground-effect craft developed in South Korea. In America, it is distributed by Patriot3 for military and special ops. Powered by a Pratt & Whitney PT6A-34 turboprop, it has a cruise speed of about 100 knots, a range of about 350 nautical miles, and a useful payload of over one ton. Certified as a ship in Korea, it is much faster and more fuel efficient than conventional ships.

I bought it in California, maybe 15 years ago. I was told at the time that it was from a west coast glassblower. It's 16 inches tall and has an 18mm joint. There's a decal on it that I can't read. I think the last two letters are BG, the first letter looks like J? Since the decal wraps around the tube, it's impossible to get the whole thing in one pic.

The magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake killed 63 people and caused billions of dollars in damage in northern California on October 17, 1989. I've sonified the data recorded by 70 USGS seismographs during that earthquake. This 4 minute Bandcamp album includes 10 short examples. Details on how I did it are in the Bandcamp album. Every track sounds different because each seismograph captured the resonances of the structures they were in along with the ground shaking. Sometimes the seismic waves sound a lot like water waves. Sometimes I seem to hear human voices or acoustic instruments in them, especially in the Seismic Mix tracks. I'm working on a piece of music where all of the sounds are derived from the Loma Prieta earthquake.

Free to listen to online at Loma Prieta Earthquake Sonification Examples