July '23
Greek models, the ethics of Meta, and inter-galactic travel
Greek model Theopisti Pourliotopoulou (who got famous after posing for the Venice soccer club Venizia). Welcome to the thirst trap :D
The News
Meta Begs For “Ethos”
Meta has been doing a series of PR announcements and feature releases to quell disquiet and explain how the “algorithm” works when catering Instagram & Facebook content to you. Albeit I think its a good thing when tech companies are forthcoming about what they are doing (yet harbor series doubts when they present their intentions). That said, Meta goes in depth and provides not only explanations for how their AI systems work, but also details as to what “signals” are used as primary drivers for their models. For example, they walk through the process of “ranking stories” here.
On top of this, Meta is even going as far as releasing datasets from their platform — warranted that its limited to their “public” profiles.
Now, I want to pause for a moment and let this serve as a warning to all those who have public profiles. As of this week, anyone on the internet (whether that be friend or nefarious dark web actor) now has access to your profile data. As someone who is a software engineer by trade if you were to ask me how I’d use “your data” my immediate thoughts would be:
Your pictures could be used to generate fake passports + driver’s licenses + etc
The NSA can now attribute photos + social connections (aka your followers) to your identity (this fits in nicely with all the text messages, phone numbers, Google/Apple map data they already have harvested on you)
Next time you get pulled over for speeding the officer will be able to pull up your license number, get your name, and have your date of birth + Insta photos + hobbies all linked in seconds.
Yeah — this is some Bladerunner-esque dystopian-ism — welcome to the brave new world everyone.
Ideas
One Liners
Just some random notes I keep on my phone each month.
If time is relative to the speed of light, then its no wonder summer flies by.
What if the old women cutting hair are sculpting us in styles they find attractive? Are we mere caricatures of a cougar’s desire?
Water across rock. Caffeine for the soul.
Man’s reach exceeds his imagination
Generating Electricity
My senior year of high school I was obsessed with electricity and was confounded as to how it was created. I understood what electricity was and how it moved through wires but could not wrap my head around how electricity is created by mechanical motion. Therefore, I’m gonna give you all the rundown.
When I say “power generation” you probably think of a power plant or maybe even one of those stationary bikes where you spin the peddles and it says on the screen how many watts of energy you are actively creating. The idea is the same. That spinning motion is at the root of how mechanical motion is transferred to electrical energy.
To start with, electricity is nothing more than electrons (the particles that spin around the nucleus of the atom) running through a given material. Things like metal (especially copper) are good conductors of electricity hence why there are often used. So to “create electricity” we can think of it as “how do I get these electrons in this piece of metal to start moving?” and the answer comes back to the “spinning” motion eluded to earlier.
You remember from middle school science class where you placed two magnets together and the ends repelled each other when the polarity was the same (N + N or S + S) and attracted when opposite (N + S)? Now imagine what happens when you put a magnet next to a piece of wire. One end of the magnet is going to “push” the electrons away (remember that electrons are negatively charged) and the other end is going to attract them.
So by pushing the magnet towards the wire and then pulling it away you create this steady flow of “pushing than pulling” on the electrons which ultimately results in them flowing steadily and hence we have electricity.
TL;DR — Spin a magnet around some metal and you create electricity.
And incase you’re wondering “how does electricity move my Tesla” or “how does electricity turn the blades on my fan” the idea is the exact same just in reverse. Aka, the electric current in the wire pushes on a magnet causing it to spin which can be thereby applied to any downstream mechanical process.
Schoolteachers of Yesteryears
Schoolteachers used to be the most educated members of the local community. Most folks, with whatever degree of schooling they had, dropped out early and took up work on the farm, with their family business, as a laborer, etc. Yet some graduated high school, went east, and came back well rounded and studied in mathematics, literature, and science. They than took up teaching at the local day school and brought forth the knowledge of the world to their community’s people.
What happened between then and now? Not to say the schoolteachers of today are uneducated, but they are instead trained on a specific subject (such as math or history) and are seldom the most educated in their community in comparison to the many others that go to college for various disciplines.
Is it simply that the common standard of today is that most folks go to college? Or is it the accessibility of information in today’s digital age? A combination of both? Just something to think about.
The Practicalities of Inter-Galactic Travel
If any of you (like me) watched Interstellar and oft-crave the investigation of far flung galaxies than you are in luck. Today, we deep dive the most “practical” means of reaching nearby galaxies.
The Facts
The nearest star (other than our Sun) thought to have a habitable planet is Tau Ceti which is 11.9 light-years from Earth
We’d have to travel at the speed of light for 11.9 years to reach it
The farthest humans have sent a spacecraft is the Voyager 1 which is now about 18 light hours from Earth
It’s been traveling for 37 years
The Cool Shit
Option #1: Thermonuclear Fusion
Put forth in 1968 by Freeman Dyson. Imagine setting off a hydrogen bomb (continuously) in order to propel a ship through space:
The estimated theoretical speed of such a spacecraft (assuming the science catches up in the next couple hundred years) is ~1/10th the speed of light. So it’d take 11.9 light years / (1/10) = 119 years to reach the nearest (possibly habitable) solar system. You can read more about “fusion rockets” here.
Option #2: Laser Beam + Light Sail
Proposed by Robert Forward in 1962. An assembled array of solar-powered lasers focus its beam through a lens at a massive “sail” — thereby pushing it forward.
Theoretical estimates show the light sail could pull a ship through space at ~1/5th the speed of light. So traveling to Tau Ceti would take 11.9 / (1/5) = 59.5 years. That being said, laser and solar technologies are far from being close enough for this sort of technology in the 21st century.
Option #3: Black Hole Gravitational Slingshot
Proposed by Kip Thorne, is a “slingshot maneuver” around two black holes.
The impracticality of such a method being that we’d have to find two black holes that are orbiting one another and aren’t too close together (otherwise the tidal gravity forces between the two would destroy the ship).
Most of the above comes from referencing ‘Far-Future Technology’ per the book “The Science of Interstellar” by Nobel Prize Physicist Kip Thorne.
The Internet: A Temperature Check for the Masses
Until the advent of the digital age, our understanding of “the people” was surfaced through lackluster means. The folks you went to high school with, the members of your church, and maybe your extended family. This was your immediate social circle and “the masses” being everyone else.
In this particular setting, your given understanding on the opinions and sway of “the masses” was left to things like your regional newspaper or the television set in your home. Mediums such as op-eds written by columnists, TV shows, and movies were the penultimate representation of the culture and its people writ large.
Then came the internet.
Now every individual retains the ability to voice their immediate thoughts and opinions with the tap of a screen or the shutter of a camera lens. And likewise, we the people can garner a deeper understanding of “the masses” by simply going online and scrolling Reddit + Twitter + Instagram.
I heard this aphorism years ago that sums this up rather well: “Before the Internet, every village had their idiot and folks did their best to avoid them. Now the village idiots have a platform to broadcast to the world — which makes them harder to avoid.”
Some Literature
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
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Lord Tennyson (The Eagle)Thanks for reading my Substack! Feel free to share if you’d like.
Link to this post: https://aidanjude.substack.com/p/july