Category: facebook

Discovering Free Bio Sludge Fertilizer at the Local Water Treatment Plant | May 06 2024, 18:35

Near our house, there’s a water treatment plant. It receives sewage water from all over the city. Today, I decided to stop by to see what those bags near the entrance were about. It turns out, they’re giving away free fertilizer, bio sludge. Essentially, it’s a by-product of the sewage water treatment process, and, apparently due to its by-product nature and relatively small quantities (and clearly the impossibility of scaling these volumes), they’re distributed for free. If you consider buying such fertilizer, there is a sign that suggests taking no more than 5 bags if possible. However, critics point out a slight potential toxicity of these fertilizers – apparently, they contain a slight exceedance of PFAS (polyfluoroalkyl sulfonates – chemical compounds also known as “forever chemicals” due to their durability and resistance to decomposition in the environment). But on the other hand, for fertilizing lawns, this isn’t really an issue, even if it exists.

Albert Anker: Capturing Timelessness Through Childhood Paintings | May 06 2024, 12:56

Albert Anker was a Swiss painter and graphic artist of the 19th century. He has about 500 paintings of children of various ages and social statuses. I hardly found a couple of his works where there are no children or old people—these are still lifes. His paintings look like a photo album from the past, and it becomes clear that not much has changed over the next 100 years in many parts of our world.

#artrauflikes

Assassins Game Craze Among American Students | May 06 2024, 02:38

In the USA, the game “Assassins” is popular among school kids and university students. The winner (typically a student) gets a few hundred bucks.

The essence of the game lies in participants attempting to “eliminate” each other over several days or weeks, using water guns that often resemble real ones. Each player receives a target, another participant they must “kill,” aiming to do so secretly and discreetly. Teams are also formed that play against each other.

The game spans weeks, and participants must be on their guard, as they can be “killed” at any moment outside of school or campus, which are safe zones or “out of game.” The last surviving participant becomes the winner. And because lots of people chip in a little, the prize pool may reach several thousand dollars. Players often hide in places where the “victim” appears, chase them down—all of which is quite emotional and vivid. Those eliminated are posted on Instagram, often with photos from the “crime scene.”

The rules vary slightly from place to place. For instance, glasses (if worn) might count as protection, but on some days they don’t work either. You cannot “destroy” by breaking the law, not even slightly.

Well, many adults, of course, do not like it. Especially the schools, as it only brings them problems (and they end up sending out letters like the attached one).

Everyone acknowledges that it doesn’t formally break the law, but it does cause inconvenience, and technically, in some cases, it might incur a fine.

Exploring Facebook’s LLAMA 3 AI: Local Processing with Promising Outcomes | May 05 2024, 19:03

I’m experimenting with LLAMA 3 from Facebook. There’s a modification called llama3-gradient:8b-instruct-1048k-q6_K, which has a context window of 1M tokens (that’s about 2 megabytes). And there’s even more. I feed it the entire book about Elon Musk (highly recommend it, by the way!) and it produces a pretty good summary—and does it quickly, any text from a screenshot is generated in about 40-60 seconds. And yet, it’s still relatively a weaker model (8B), while Facebook has a 70B. But the main feature here is that all this works locally on a laptop. No need to pay for API, it works quite fast, the script is small, fits on one screen.

Still, there are some rough edges—for example, for direct questions about the text (questions to which I definitely know the answers), the system does not always confidently provide answers. When you send significantly less text, it works fine.

Legacy of Alexey Isupov: From Italian Fame to Russian Museums | May 04 2024, 18:20

An intriguing artist, Alexey Isupov (1889 Vyatka – 1957 Rome), was a celebrated member of artistic circles in Italy from the 1920s, enjoying enduring popularity among the Italian populace throughout his lifetime. The official pretext for his migration from Russia in 1926 was a Soviet commission to create a monumental piece titled “Parade of the First Trade Union Holiday of Physical Culture” in Italy. Following his death, in 1958, Tamara Nikolaevna Isupova, executing her husband’s last wishes, transferred a portion of his oeuvre back to Russia. Approximately 300 works, comprising 80 paintings and over 200 drawings, were bequeathed to the art museum in Vyatka/Kirov (using both the old and new city names), an institution he helped establish. The artist’s widow gifted nineteen of Isupov’s works to the State Tretyakov Gallery. Among his creations are the self-portraits “With Braces and with a Dog”.

#artrauflikes

Adapting and Assessing “The Three-Body Problem”: A Reader’s Perspective | May 04 2024, 05:07

I finished reading “The Three-Body Problem” by Liu Cixin. It all started with Netflix—after watching three episodes, I stopped and ordered the book. It turns out, they had significantly reinterpreted everything. Netflix’s scriptwriters eliminated the main character of “The Three-Body Problem,” or rather, split Professor Wang Miao into three characters—an African American, a strong Brazilian woman, and an Indian named Raj. That’s the solution they came up with for the “three-body problem.”

Overall, the book is quite good, but if I were the author, I wouldn’t attach, let’s say, Morse code to the communication between aliens and earthlings. It smacks of comics for teenagers. For instance, they could have made the communication occur non-verbally—perhaps through dreams. While not more scientific, it would have been at least less naive. What’s more, the depiction of events on Trisolaris is somewhat anthropocentric. The author does not describe what Trisolarans look like, but logically, their society can’t have anything in common with ours. If I were the author, I would have highlighted that. What we know about the Trisolarans is just our fantasies stretched to fit our language abilities and familiar concepts, but on their planet, everything is so different that no parallel can principally be drawn.

But credit must be given where it’s due—the author’s imagination is limitless. The book is packed with details that could suffice for 2-3 works.

I read it in English. The English translation is highly praised—I’m very pleased with it, and so is the author, despite the translator (who is, by the way, a science fiction writer himself) admitting that he occasionally had to retell large portions in his own words because all other options worsened the outcome. Indeed, the Chinese language is quite unique.

Natalya Andreichenko: A Journey from Mary Poppins to YouTube Conspiracies | May 03 2024, 21:34

On this day, May 3rd, “Mary Poppins” herself, Natalya Andreichenko, was born. As they say, a real treat for dads. Seemed like she vanished for a while, so I did a bit of googling, and it turns out there are quite a few interesting facts.

It turns out she was the former wife of Maxim Dunayevsky (the movie’s composer) and of Oscar-winner and pianist Maximilian Schell. Turns out she lives in Mexico, but in 2022 took part in “Succession”. Turns out she recorded a vocal album Natasha & GooSee (“Natasha and the Geese”). Her YouTube is full of conspiracy theories, like the coronavirus being created by the global elites to control the world order. She also dipped into the info-business and sold her video course online “From Heart to Heart – Spiritual Secrets of Success” – “we live in an era of quantum leap, desires must be voiced, something about the Almighty, etc.” In short, granny is living life to the fullest.

— I hope your journey was pleasant?

— Utterly unpleasant, Mrs. Banks. Just like your children. Extremely unpleasant, Mrs. Banks.