One of my favourite reads so far this year was Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter. It’s a brilliant book, structured with all sorts of documents instead of the “standard” novel. I loved it so much.

So I wanted something like it, and an article mentioned this book.

It’s an interesting read, in it two students help their professor prove the innocence of the person convicted of a murder in a small town by studying all the documents related to the case.

This is why the story consists of mostly emails and chat logs, interspersed with other messages and newspaper articles and such.

I did like the book, and read it in almost one sitting, but there was something missing for me. I, for one, disliked most of the suspects. Some of them were just such awful people!

And then the ending didn’t really convince me, which one would expect given the evidence.

All in all the book feels to me like it’s mostly the start of the story, with a really short middle and end, and I found it rather unsatisfying in the end.

But, as I said, I kept reading because I wanted to know how the story ended, so it’s not a bad book. Just not for me.

I’ve spent my waken time this weekend mostly outside doing stuff.

Now I’ve got this tired feeling which feels pretty good, even though I know I’ll be working tomorrow. I’ll be a scrum master this next week (that means I’ll be sharing my screen presenting the jira scrum board. (I must not forget to put „scrum master“ on LinkedIn.))

I’ve not started no new jobs yet, likely that will be after vacations. Therefore nobody knows nothing yet about that I’ll be quitting. Or some people do, they are in my circle of trust. So basically everyone except the manager.

I don’t enjoy disappointing people and since I’m such a great guy, it’ll be a hard blow for sure when I drop the bomb, and maybe having it dragged out like this hasn’t been optimal for my well being, because my strategy, apart from being strange, is to face my problems head on immediately and deal with any and all consequences as soon as possible, so that I may put it behind me. Like Solomon Kane.

Here I am ill adviced to do any rash thing before I have my future more clear as I have such a short notice period and for all I know they could end me prematurely and thus could create a vacuum in between jobs which I would rather avoid because I’ve got expenses.

We’re planning vacations

This should have been posted a month ago, but I've been going back and forth on whether or not I wanted this much potentially identifing info about me out there in internet land. As I am posting this, I guess I got over it.

Despite my reservations, not writing about my attendance to my state's library conference feels wrong, especially as this is a library centric blog.

Anyways, I spent the week of April 16-19 attending the Texas Library Association's annual conference in San Antonio. This year marks my sixth time attending TLA. It is always an enjoyable and revitalizing experience.

Each year, as conference season starts to come around, I feel that I'm beginning to feel worn down by the profession. I spend the whole year narrowly focused on my library, maintaining the day-to-day, building programming, etc... It can wear one down. But some magical rejuvenating thing seems to occur each year at TLA and by the end of the week, you're bursting at the seams with energy and ideas for your library. I think it's being surrounded by like minded professionals, all wanting to build upon and improve library services for their individual communities. It's invigorating. I hope that this revitalizing trend of conference attendance continues for me as time presses ever onwards.

So, what does one do at library conference? Each year, it's a little different for me. The sessions I want to sit in on vary depending on where I am in my career and what I am hoping to take away. I used to attend sessions on children's programming when I was in youth services. These days, my conference sessions focus on leadership and management with a heavier dose of networking.

As I climb higher up in the library hierarchy, I am repeatedly reminded how important relationship building with other librarians in similar positions is. It's great to be able to pick up the phone and text a fellow librarian and ask for advice. So, this past year at conference, I spent a lot more of my time talking with others, having working lunches, and attending early morning coffee socials. These activities have already paid dividends for me in the month since TLA.

Other than networking, I did attend several sessions.

One of the big things I noticed with this year's conference was the sheer number of sessions related to AI. I attended a few of them and learned many interesting things about AI and how libraries can, and are, leveraging this new tool for things like workforce development, grant writing, program planning and more.

I have dabbled a bit with ChatGPT for drafting letters, creating policy, fleshing out grants, and writing press releases. It's very helpful in generating ideas, getting those first drafts out of the way.

On the unprofessional side, I have found ChatGPT to be excellent at coming up with mixed drink recipes. Just plug in your liquor cabinet supplies, and it will spit out as many drink ideas as you ask it for. Anyways....

I haven't used any other AI program, but it is definitely something that interests me. Going forward, I think librarians will be able to play a unique role in public education when it comes to AI tools. Especially as we have been trained to help with questions and find answers to those questions. I think librarians will be especially skilled at AI prompt writing.

On the tech side, I also attended a session on library web design as I handle our library's web maintenance. I am by no means a web developer, but I'm not afraid to get in there and fiddle around. Besides, if I can't figure something out, I know someone else out there has already run into the same problem, and the answer is on Google somewhere. You just have to go digging to find it.

Other than AI, I attended a few sessions on leadership and management. One particularly good session was on how to have difficult conversations with one's staff and bosses. I took many notes in that session, and I'm sure I will be referencing them soon when I have to do staff evaluations as the new director.

There were several great speakers this year too. Comedian Leanne Morgan opened the conference at General Session 1. I have not seen her Netflix special, but she was quite funny. Another great speaker this year was the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. She worked for LBJ and had some amazing stories to share about herself and her husband's time in the Whitehouse. I have yet to read one of her books, but I am a big Teddy Roosevelt fan, so I may have to pick up her book Leadership: In Turbulent Times on Roosevelt and Lincoln.

I know I'm missing and forgetting things, but I feel like this post is getting to be quite lengthy, so I will stop it here.

Until next week.

#blog

#librarian

#libraries

#conference

#txla24

#management

When I started my internal healing journey, my goal was to stop worrying about everything while not being afraid of simply existing anymore. To that end I was intuitively guided through a process of self-mastery, which taught me how to better manage myself in the experience.

Ultimately I learned how to stop worrying about things and not to be afraid of what was going to happen next. I learned how to trust myself to handle my life more than anything. This work completely changed my life.

I did, as part of it, become much less reactive to my surroundings because I wasn’t in a constant state of survival anymore. The adrenaline wasn’t pumping 24 hours a day, but I didn’t learn to be completely non-reactive to people.

Well, that’s the new goal that’s been unlocked.

Non-reactivity.

What does that mean?

Not reacting to your reality or the people around you is not the same as not caring about the people and the world around you. We have this idea in society that if you’re not busy getting mad at people and things all the time, it means you don’t care. But that’s not true. You don’t have to emotionally react to care or to solve problems. Non-reactivity is actually the next level after learning to manage your emotions.

Why did I decide to go down this path?

Because isolation is a thing. You see, I no longer wanted to deal with people and their problems. It was making me want to never talk to anybody again. But that’s not really really realistic. It took me a minute to realize that I could shift myself, I didn’t have to fix the outside world. What would have to change for me to be okay in a world that just offers me problems and pain all the time? My ability to stay balanced within myself, regardless of what others were offering me.

If I were a tarot card, it would be me fully embracing my inner High Priestess. People bring her things. She deals with them, but does not react. Eckhart Tolle has also mastered non-reactivity. I figure I’ll channel a bit of him too. It is the ability to maintain full internal balance regardless of what’s happening around me. That’s essentially what we’re going for.

When I first started understanding how to release worry and fear, I was terrified of the adventure. I didn’t know what I was getting into. I didn’t know what would happen. I didn’t understand that it didn’t mean not caring about anything. I just didn’t know what that was going to look like or feel like.

This time, I’m excited! I love the idea of learning how to maintain internal balance all the time. I can find internal balance, even when I’m out in the world. I walk around with a smile on my face. I’m happy and friendly and the result is that people are friendly back. I’m excited to learn how to maintain that in every situation I find myself in.

The idea of completely changing or running into pain within myself isn’t a scary prospect like it used to be. I remember being terrified to heal. It wasn’t fun. But now healing is fun because I understand the value of the reward on the other side of the work. I understand that I can handle the process. Nothing is going to come up that I can’t manage. Complete change just sounds good to me.

Yes, I’m the weirdo that enjoys healing and gets excited by the idea of doing the work on myself. Why? Because I am forever grateful for what it gave me the first time I went down the path. I can only imagine what it will bring me this time.

So, stay with me as I share my adventures in becoming less reactive and more fully balanced within myself. I’m excited about what’s going to show up and curious about how this will change things for me.

Thanks for reading!

Love to all.

Della

Regularity and irregularity. Decodable and tricky words. Learnability and surprisal. Predictability and randomness. Low entropy and high entropy.

Why do such tensions exist in human language? And in our AI tools developed to both create code and use natural language, how can the precision required for computation co-exist alongside this necessary complexity and messiness of our human language?

An Algebraic Symphony of Language and Meaning

In our last post, we examined how there is a statistical and algebraic nature to language that drives the power of LLMs, and that the form and meaning of a language may be much more intertwined than we assume, given just how much meaning LLMs are able to approximate via computation of statistical arrays alone.

This interlacement of form and meaning is in relation to where and how words show up repeatedly in sentences and texts, not simply in the form of words themselves. Because all languages contain words that have the same form but different meanings. Some words that share the same form have entirely unrelated meanings (homophony), while other words with the same form have closely related meanings (polysemy). Yet LLMs are able to use them in a more or less “natural” manner due to the high dimensional mappings of word parts in statistical relation to one another – such that word analogies can be calculated mathematically:

“For example, Google researchers took the vector for biggest, subtracted big, and added small. The word closest to the resulting vector was smallest.” –Large language models, explained with a minimum of math and jargon, Timothy Lee & Sean Trott

That the algebraic and statistical relationship of words in natural language can drive computational models' generative capabilities suggests that language itself may reflect the limitations and potential of AI. And the thing with natural, human language is that while it is endlessly generative, it also tends to be imprecise. For our human usage, gestures and the context of our social interaction, who and when we are speaking to, plays a big role. As long as we get our main message across, we’re good.

Human language is fundamentally communicative and social, and there’s feelings involved.

The Imprecision of Human Expression

Imagine yourself in a bustling restaurant in an international airport, surrounded by people from diverse linguistic backgrounds. You're trying to communicate with a traveller whose language you don't speak. What do you do?

You resort to body language. You gesture hyperbolically and make exaggerated facial expressions. You point to objects, mime actions, and mouth simple words you hope the other person might use as a basis for basic understanding.

Depth, nuance, and complexity are not possible (beyond each individual’s imagination) in this most elemental of interactions.

So what is required for depth, nuance, and complexity?

A shared language, whether spoken, written, or signed. In which a small set of sounds, letters, or signs are concatenated in a wide assortment of ways, both commonplace and surprising, to convey a wide assortment of ideas and feelings.

Yet a shared language, while providing a platform for greater depth, may still remain imprecise. What is meant to be conveyed is not always exactly what is understood.

There are furthermore gradations of precision in language, beginning with the ephemeral and contextual nature of spoken and signed language, moving into the more ossified form of written language, in which spelling must be exact and word selection must be more intentional. There is also a movement from the language we use with our family, with frequent, commonly used words, to the language we use when writing an academic paper, with domain-specific, rarer words. In education, we often refer to this type of language as Tier 2 or 3 vocabulary.

If a person is equipped with more of that academic, domain-specific language, then greater precision in communication can be achieved. Yet the challenge of whether the listener hears and interprets what is intended remains. For example, in this article in Scientific American, “People Have Very Different Understandings of Even the Simplest Words”, they discuss how the more abstract a word, the more it can be tied to an emotional valence and someone’s identity and experiences, rather than a precise meaning.

The Computational Imperative

But in some ways, this inherent fuzziness of our language may be a feature, rather than a bug. It gives us a complex adaptive system for navigating, creating, and communicating in a world of complex adaptive systems.

For computers and computations, however, exactness and precision in language is required – either a line of code input runs the correct function as an output or it doesn’t. So it’s quite interesting that one of the most immediately powerful use cases so far of LLMs seems to be as a natural language interface to develop and review code.

Stephen Wolfram, in a long and interesting explainer on how LLMs work, “What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?”, explores some of this tension between computational and natural language.

“Human language is fundamentally imprecise, not least because it isn’t “tethered” to a specific computational implementation, and its meaning is basically defined just by a “social contract” between its users. But computational language, by its nature, has a certain fundamental precision—because in the end what it specifies can always be “unambiguously executed on a computer”. Human language can usually get away with a certain vagueness. (When we say “planet” does it include exoplanets or not, etc.?) But in computational language we have to be precise and clear about all the distinctions we’re making.”

Computational Irreducibility and the Limits of Predictability and Learning

One of the limitations Wolfram raises between human and computational language is what he terms “computational irreducibility,” a term he uses to describe the difficulty in making accurate predictions for a highly complex system, such as for weather or climate systems. For such systems, it would require performing step-by-step computation based on an initial state, and thus can’t be swiftly calculated by compressing data.

In some ways, this “compression” of information is what we are doing with language as we use more “Tier 2” and “Tier 3” – or academic – words in our speech or writing. There is a greater density of information provided in academic speech and writing, in which more abstract words are used to convey complex concepts, and our sentences tend to become more compound and complex. The simpler, more frequent words, phrases, and sentences we use in our everyday speech are more regular and thus, more learnable.

. . . there’s just a fundamental tension between learnability and computational irreducibility. Learning involves in effect compressing data by leveraging regularities. But computational irreducibility implies that ultimately there’s a limit to what regularities there may be.

. . . there’s an ultimate tradeoff between capability and trainability: the more you want a system to make “true use” of its computational capabilities, the more it’s going to show computational irreducibility, and the less it’s going to be trainable. And the more it’s fundamentally trainable, the less it’s going to be able to do sophisticated computation.

Irregularity and Regularity in Language

What’s interesting to note here is that all languages have constructive tensions between regularity and irregularity. This tension may be a process of language being honed over time to be more learnable within our cognitive constraints. We’ve explored some of this before in our post, Irregularity Enhances Learning (Maybe), in which we examined a paper by Michael Ramscar that suggested there is some level of tension between language forms that show up again and again, and the language forms that are more infrequent, but thus inherently gain more of our attention. This relates to the theory of “statistical learning” with which we not only learn language, but also when we map a language to its written form.

For Wolfram, that LLMs are as powerful as they are suggests that human language is actually more statistically regular than we may have thought:

“my strong suspicion is that the success of ChatGPT implicitly reveals an important “scientific” fact: that there’s actually a lot more structure and simplicity to meaningful human language than we ever knew—and that in the end there may be even fairly simple rules that describe how such language can be put together.”

And instead what we should conclude is that tasks—like writing essays—that we humans could do, but we didn’t think computers could do, are actually in some sense computationally easier than we thought.

In other words, the reason a neural net can be successful in writing an essay is because writing an essay turns out to be a “computationally shallower” problem than we thought. And in a sense this takes us closer to “having a theory” of how we humans manage to do things like writing essays, or in general deal with language.

And so thus far the unrealized potential, for Wolfram, is that with a greater underlying capability in AI for computational language, it may be able to bridge our more “computationally shallow” human language with the precision required for more complex computations:

”its very success gives us a reason to think that it’s going to be feasible to construct something more complete in computational language form. And, unlike what we’ve so far figured out about the innards of ChatGPT, we can expect to design the computational language so that it’s readily understandable to humans.”

Decontextualized Language: The Pathway to Precision

On this pathway towards integration of human language and computational language, it’s interesting to consider how in our own language development, we are able to better “compress information” and develop greater precision in our thinking and communication as we learn and incorporate rarer and more abstract language into our own. We’ve spoken before about “decontextualized language” – the language that takes us beyond the immediate context and moment, and how such language can take us beyond our own delimited feelings and experiences, and into a realm of interpersonal and cultural thought, knowledge, and perspectives. This is the language of storybooks, of science, and – at it’s greatest extreme – of code. We begin teaching this form of language when we engage in storytelling with our children and reading with them and talking to them about books. It becomes increasingly dense and complex as we move into disciplinary study.

There is some evidence that training LLMs on this specific form of language is more powerful – such as this study training a “tiny LLM” on children’s stories. And if you think about what LLMs have been getting trained on thus far – it’s a corpus of written language, not training on conversations using everyday language. As we’ve explored in depth on this blog, written language is not synonymous with oral language – by nature of it being written, it is already more “decontextualized,” and requires more inference and perspective-taking. That LLMs are trained on such a corpus may be, in fact, why their algebraic and statistical magic can be so surprisingly powerful. There is a greater density of information in the written forms of our languages.

Implications for Teaching and Learning

What might all of this say about teaching and learning? Well, so far, one of the facets we’ve highlighted from LLMs is that the statistical nature of language alone can take us pretty far, which suggests that alongside of social interaction and peer engagement and communication, we want to increase the volume of that language exposure and use. And in terms of the nature of the language we want to increase: the more that the form of that language combines precision with abstraction, the greater computational power it can provide. Turning up the dial on decontextualized language use and exposure – in other words – providing our children with “textual feasts,” to use Alfred Tatum’s term, may be the key to enhanced learning.

Sources for Further Exploration

If you are interested in further exploring some of the tensions we began this post with – between regularity and irregularity in language, here’s some further interesting reads to geek out on:

• “Source codes in human communication” by Michael Ramscar
• “Expectation-based syntactic comprehension” by Roger Levy
• “Cognitive approaches to uniformity and variability in morphology” by Petar Milin, Neil Bermel, and James Blevins

#language #computation #algorithms #learning #LLMs #cognition

Some things I’ve been thinking about

..

The death (again) of the internet as we know it by Noah Smith

On AI slop:

”What is the point of images of kids driving cars made of plastic bottles? What is the point of nonsense recipes? The answer is: There doesn’t have to be a point. Since the marginal cost of producing this stuff is essentially zero, and there’s at least some nonzero chance that any one of these random things will catch on and become a meme and get people to subscribe to a channel and make some ad dollars, it makes sense to spam as much of this slop into the world as you can.”

..

This is what the internet looks like now by Ryan Broderick (mentioned in the previous article)

AI slop still feels too uncanny valley for me, but I do love a niche, absurd video like the one featured of a goth girl arriving at her prom in a casket. Maybe the difference between the two is that AI slop is engineered for maximum engagement whereas the rest unites people around a specific interest or brand of humor. There’s human solidarity knowing you enjoy something that someone else enjoys, especially if it’s strange. Or maybe there is no difference and I’m just fooling myself into believing that I can outsmart the algorithm. Put AI slop behind a human influencer and I’ll probably be done for it.

..

“André 3000 is At Peace (For Now) by Hanif Abdurraqib

“So then, sacrifice becomes about risk assessment. Not just for the Black musician or celebrity, but, to a different degree, the Black retail worker, who knows the way they are treated by coworkers or customers isn’t right, but also knows they’ve got rent due. There’s a cost to be paid, not only to an audience, but at times, to self. And it has to be measured. Is the truth that may be revealed actually worth what might be lost in the process?”

“He mentions that he’s played New Blue Sun for Big Boi, in a series of people he’s played it for, with mixed results. Two people cried. One director friend thought it transcendent. He took it to his old hood, and one of his old friends fell asleep while listening. This same friend, he tells me – hardly able to finish the story because he’s laughing so hard – woke up and shouted, You gonna put some beats on that shit?”

I love the idea of pursuing a craft just because you feel called to it or because you feel called to evolve and surrounding yourself with people that’ll help you get there.

..

Gael García Bernal’s Four Favorites w/ Letterboxd

• Memorias del Subdesarrollo
• El Discreto Encanto de la Burgesía
• Back to the Future
• Jamón Jamón

..

Photo dump

Am petrecut acest weekend la Satu Mare, la un concurs de șah. Rezultatele nu au fost grozave – am fost un fel de porumbel al păcii (4 remize, chiar și în poziții net câștigate).

S-a întâmplat să ajung la un meci de fotbal între CSM Olimpia Satu Mare (fosta primă divizionară) și CSM Sighetul Marmației. Având în vedere sursele de finanțare, putem spune că au jucat primăriile din cele două orașe.

Spectacolul a fost ceva mai reușit în repriza a doua. Echipa din Sighetul Marmației avea nevoie de victorie ca să ajungă la primul meci de baraj pentru accederea în Liga 2 (nu știu detaliile, dar este un fel de semifinală). Și am avut mult dramatism în ultimele secunde (mult mai puțin decât ultimul minut) când echipa oaspete a marcat golul victoriei și s-a calificat pentru semifinala despre care discutam anterior. Vor juca miercuri cu Primăria Bistrița.

Până acolo, fiecare echipa a marcat din câte un penalty.

Nu am mai fost de foarte mult timp la un meci (live) și chiar de și mai mult timp la un meci de Liga 3.

Impresiile unui spectator neutru: – Foarte bună organizare. Accesul destul de bine controlat și mulți oameni la meci. – Destul de mulți spectatori pe un stadion amenajat rezonabil la tribuna oficială și un pic în jurul ei; restul tribunelor sunt în paragină și dau imaginea unei competiții de duzină. – Lângă noi un suporter local a înjurat în ambele limbi, tot timpul. Pur și simplu, nu a tăcut niciun moment și limbajul a fost de mahala. În jur era plin de copii și mă întreb cu ce curaj vin părinții acestora la meciuri? – Evident, la final, localnicii au fost supărați pe arbitrii, dar nu s-a întâmplat nimic deosebit în afară de tradiționala scandare “hoții! hoții!” – Jocul a fost de o calitate foarte scăzută. Nu am reținut nicio o fază lucrată- toate realizările au fost rodul întâmplării. În plus, era evident pentru mulți jucători că nu au condiția fizică să ducă o partidă întreagă, chiar cu un ritm scăzut. – Superficialitatea jucătorilor este invers proporțională cu pretențiile – gazdele au ratat câteva ocazii în repriza a doua cu o nonșalanța incredibilă. – Portarul gazdelor este fratele celebrului Horațiu Moldovan. Spectatorii îi atribuie ceva calități, dar, din păcate pentru tânărul jucător, a cam greșit la golul din ultimul minut. – foarte mulți străini pentru Liga 3. Am numărat 4 la oaspeți și 2-3 la gazde. Foarte greu să înțeleg ce nevoie au aceste echipe de jucători străini? Nu ar fi mai interesant să fie folosiți juniori crescuți local, dacă tot cheltuim banii primăriilor?

Per total, o experiență interesantă doar din perspectiva că am văzut și așa ceva. Voi repeta experiența? Puțin probabil și cu siguranță nu în viitorul apropiat.

#001696 – 27 de Abril de 2024

Primeira aula de surfskate e descubro não só o talento de quem ensina mas outras pessoas com um gosto partilhado pelo surf, patins, skate. Um vislumbre de comunidade.

My current Homelab server rack:

• Turing Pi 2 cluster, now with 4 x RK1 3588 8-core arm_64 CPUs with 32GB RAM each (not shown in pictures below), 6 TOPS NPU, in a 2U Silverstone rack-mount case, fans, 8-bay hot-swappable SSDs, 4TB SSDs x 4
• a bunch or Raspberry Pi 4s (4GB x 2, 8GB x 1, 1TB NVMe SSDs in Argon One cases)
• Radxa Rockchip 5B 16GB RAM, 4TB NVMe. 8-core arm_64, 6 TOPS NPU + case
• Argon Eon, RasPi 4, 4GB RAM 4 x 4TB SSD
• Radxa Penta NAS kit with RockChip 4 4GB + 4 x 4TB SATA SSDs
• UPS + surge protection, because we had a power surge during a storm here a few months ago that destroyed one of the RasPi CM4s I had in the Turing Pi 2, a power supply, and a 15” portable LCD monitor… expensive power surge! It’s the 21st century… you’d think these things wouldn’t happen any more, but they do.

This is all instrumented by a Portainer/Docker Swarm setup running:

• Nginx-Proxy-Manager (Simple reverse proxy manager)
• DuckDNS (Dynamic DNS)
• Minecraft Server (suranyami.duckdns.org:25565)
• Awwesome Self-Hosted Browser link (no login required)
• Excalidraw (FOSS collaborative drawing webapp, no login required)
• Homarr (Home page for all my services)
• Home Assistant (IoT control for smart devices)
• Jackett
• Joplin Server (Knowledge Base)
• Netdata monitoring on most nodes
• Ollama + Ollama WebUI (really slow ATM… installing NPU drivers this weekend, coz the RockChip 3588s have 6 TOPS of neural processing)
• Overseer
• Plex Media Server
• Radarr
• Sonarr
• Tautulli
• Tdarr
• IT-Tools (No login needed). Check it out! It’s very useful!
• Transmission (Torrents)
• Uptime-Kuma (Uptime monitoring)
• WG-Easy Wireguard VPN management
• GlusterFS distributed File System with 2 x redundancy, 1 unified storage volume of 18TB in total

We finally ended up going to SkyZone, which was a blast in it’s own. I’m glad I can finally cross that off my bucket list. We afterwards briefly went to barnes and nobles, and while I already have a book I want to finish, I wanted to get something physical so I can keep it as a memory of the day. I ended up getting a bookmark, and while looking at them I found one that for some strange reason brought me almost to tears. There was nothing notable about the bookmark, but it just reminded me of when I was a young child, it was the art I used to see. It reminded me of when Mama would say those sweet words, like “I love you so much.”

After a few seconds of being stunned by it, I realized I was tearing up. On the ride back I was thinking about it, and it really hit me how my parents are going through life for their first time too. I’m sad for all the things that happened to me, and the things that didn’t. But also, they’re figuring life out too. I can’t blame them for anything, how could they have known any better.

#рабочие_заметки

Хотя я живу в месте, которое некоторые местные любят называть центром Европы, поездка в другую страну для меня все еще значимое событие. Почему так сложилось, пожалуй, объясню в следующий раз, а сегодня хочу записать несколько заметок о рабочей экскурсии Австрии. Заодно приоткрою занавес на то, чем я занимаюсь в рамках своей работы.

Австрийские деревни аккуратные, красивые и утопают в зелени. Мы побывали в нескольких из них, чтобы узнать, как там работают энергетические сообщества. Если вы не связаны с энергетикой и устойчивым развитием, то, скорее всего, не знаете, что такое. А это интересная концепция, о которой не без гордости говорят люди из категории экологических активистов. Коротко говоря, её смысл заключается в локальном производстве энергии. Это, кроме того, возможность получать электричество с обновляемых источников, не имея никакой электростанции.

В этот раз без пива. Зато в семейной винодельне Winzerhof Holzheu вино означает жизнь и благополучие (Wohnen-Wohlfühlen)

— Я вот себе на крышу установил солнечные батареи и собираюсь делиться излишками энергии с сестрой.

— И это экономически выгодно для вас?

— Для моей сестры это разумеется выгодно, потому что она получает какое-то количество электричества от меня бесплатно и таким образом сэкономит, скажем, около 30 процентов. Для меня, как вы можете понять, передача излишков выгодной не будет...

(Из разговора с попутчиками в машине по дороге в Австрию).

Итак, допустим, некий господин, скажем, Войтех Борувка (обычное чешское имя), владеет солнечными панелями. Он договаривается со своим другом/родственником о том, чтобы тот передавал ему часть энергии. Он может делать это бесплатно или за какую-то денюжку. Господин Борувка может предоставлять электричество другим людям и организациям или наоборот, принимать от своей семьи, работодателя, города и кого угодно. Фантазия не ограничена.

Сами активисты называют такую систему революцией. Осмелюсь сказать, что это даже не преувеличение. Хорошая идея нуждается в хорошем воплощении на практике, поэтому нас, как членов UKEN – Союза общей или общинной (как перевести слово community?) энергетики, интересовал экономический смысл подобного решения. Общинные проекты в Австрии набирают обороты с 2021 г.

По словам господина Хоффмана, председателя местного энергетического сообщества (Energiegemeinschaft) Göttweigblick, не только деньги играют роль. Нужна определенная доля энтузиазма. И людям в сообществе его хватает на экологические и демократические инициативы.

— Здесь мы производим электроэнергию нон-стоп, и это экологически чистая энергия. Когда спрос выше и электричества не хватает, приходится покупать более грязную энергию... например, из Чехии, – рассказывает владелец гидроэлектростанции, пока мы стоим на берегу Дуная и удивляемся, насколько мала эта электростанция.

Дунай, маленькая да удаленькая гидроэлектростанция и солнечные панели, под которыми посадят абрикос

Дунай — это большая река, вторая по протяженности и полноводности в Европе. Вдоль реки построены сотнигидроэлектростанций, и у нее есть значительный потенциал для гидроэнергетики. Однако местные сообщества не только используют энергию воды, но и дополняют ее фотоэлектрическими установками.

В данном случае солнечные панели установлены прямо на берегу и на крыше будки, где находится генератор. Гидроэнергия активно производится зимой, а летом солнечная энергия дополняет ее. Это позволяет смягчить один из главных недостатков возобновляемых источников — зависимость от погоды.

— Вы сказали, что у вас есть данные о реке за 800 лет. Но я предполагаю, что 800 лет назад здесь не было электростанции.

— Верно, сама электростанция здесь стоит не так долго :) Но на этом месте всегда была мельница. Так что технологии работают здесь уже несколько веков.

У некоторых из нас возник вопрос, почему фотоэлектрическая станция стоит на таких высоких стержнях. В этом бы не было смысла, если бы владелец не имел бесплатное железо, и не хотел посадить под ней абрикосовое дерево. В Чехии такие приколы, когда земледелие совмещают с энергией, тоже на слуху. Всюду вокруг нас инновации, так что не отставайте.

Неприятная ситуация для владельцев гидроэлектростанций наступает, когда приходит засуха, и в горах мало снега. Нет воды — нет энергии. Самое время слегка затронуть тему изменения климата, хоть она иногда утомительная. Изменение климата — это не только яростные лозунги госпожи Гретты Тунберг, но и экстремальные явления, кажущиеся мне более интересными. Засуха уничтожает урожай, наводнения разрушают поселения, а клещи перебираются в новые края, где стало теплее. Вот и производство энергии не обходится без климатических влияний. Мне нравятся такие маленькие примеры.

А сейчас мы находимся в Кунштеттате. На крыше частной компании установлены солнечные панели, а деньги на них собирали местные жители через краудфандинг. Хоффман снова говорит о инновациях и красивых планах, а меня завораживает этот вид:

Господин Хоффман также планирует построить зарядные станции для автомобилей

Сколько лет и столетий солнечные лучи согревают эти холмы и дают урожай обширным виноградникам? Благодаря солнцу здесь разливают вино. Теперь его энергия питает электромобили или обычные лампы в домах жителей. А помимо света, австрийцы используют силу ветра, воды и производят газ из биоотходов. Мы словно в каком-то мультфильме, наподобие Винкс, где каждая из фей обладает своей природной магией.

Это и наше будущее. Однажды мы тоже сможем контролировать эти силы. Нам только не хватает времени и технологического прогресса, потому что такие нестабильные ресурсы нужно грамотно управлять. У меня возникает желание оставить здесь какую-нибудь цитату, но в голову ничего не приходит. Поэтому напоследок покажу табличку внутри гидроэлектростанции:

Все говорили: «Ты не можешь этого сделать». Но потом появился тот, кто ничего не слышал и просто сделал это.

Here are sixty fully fleshed out Half-Elf characters for Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised:

Class	Equipment pack
Half-Elf Fighter/Magic-User	Elf Fighter/Magic-User
Half-Elf Fighter/Magic-User/Cleric	Fighter/Magic-User/Cleric
Half-Elf Thief	Human Thief or Elf Thief

Halfling Fighters and Thieves coming soon.

P.S. Human classes and equipment packs can be found here; dwarven here; and elven here.

#Resource #SW #OSR

My stress levels are lower in the morning. I'm trying to wake up a bit earlier every day to reduce my IBS symptoms.

Spent 3 hours in the mall with a friend last night. It was truly fulfilling, but the place was super crowded. Sometimes it feels like I should get checked for autism or ADHD.

Is it normal to get so drained after socializing?

Prayers, etc.: • 05:00 – Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel • 06:00 – the Angelus • 07:30 – The Glorious Mysteries of the Holy Rosary. Followed by The Memorare • 08:10 – May 17, 2024 – Canon212 • 08:50 – 1088: Is 3rd Secret of Fatima Fake? Catholic Church Crisis with Fr. Dave Nix – Dr. Taylor Marshall Podcast • 14:40 – the Angelus • 18:00 – the Angelus • 18:40 – The hour of Compline for tonight according to the Traditional Pre-Vatican II Divine Office, followed by Fr. Chad Rippberger's Prayer of Command to protect my family, my sons, my daughter and her family, my granddaughters and their families, my great grandchildren, and everyone for whom I have responsibility from any demonic activity. – And that followed by the Saturiday Prayers of the Association of the Auxilium Christianorum.

Health Metrics: • bw= 221.20 lbs. • bp= 144/75 (71)

Diet: • 07:00 – ½ pb&j sandwich • 08:45 – sausage, hash browns, biscuit & jam, scrambled eggs, pancakes, Rice Krispies snack bar • 12:40 – pizza • 15:45 – bowl of home made meat and vegetable soup

Chores, etc.: • 07:30 – bank accounts activity monitored • 09:50 to 11:50 – 2 hrs. of yard work, trim front lawn, etc. • 12:00 – follow PGA Tour Golf • 14:40 – tuned to the Tampa Bay Rays vs Toronto Blue Jays MLB Game • 17:00 – after the exciting Tamp Bay win, I've tuned to Cleveland Sports Radio for the warmup show before the Guardians vs Twins MLB game • 18:00 – have turned away from the Guardians vs Twins game to listen to Texas Rangers Radio before their night game vs the Angels. 1st pitch is scheduled for 18:15, so I may catch the 1st inning and maybe a little more before leaving the game for tonight's Svengoolie.

Chess: • 14:30 – moved in all pending CC games

posted Saturday 18/May/2024 ~18:50 #DLMAY2024