@ekongkaar@mastodon.world
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

ekongkaar

@ekongkaar@mastodon.world

I believe that life is to cultivate our human potential. Divine potential lives equally in all people. I believe that science and mysticism play in the same field. And that the earth is going through some changes. I study and teach Kundalini Yoga and Sikh philosphy. Am pursuing my MBA and am a hobby restorative gardener.

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WanderingInDigitalWorlds, to ai
@WanderingInDigitalWorlds@mstdn.games avatar

I am totally floored by the bold, drunk on LLM idea that Slack by Saleforce has right now: They want to compromise the privacy of customer data to train their implementation of an LLM.

This is beyond cursed because Salesforce has the audacity to make this scheme an opt-out instead of op-in to maximize the data accumulation.

I hope the uproar this will generate makes Slack step the hell back!

https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/trust/data-management/privacy-principles

ekongkaar,
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

@WanderingInDigitalWorlds Is there an article explaning this?

ekongkaar,
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

@WanderingInDigitalWorlds I have many reasons of my own to hate this shift to LLM. I am the ED for a nonprofit community website that has been online for almost 30 years. Overnight, Google has gone from a kind of business partner (we rank well in search engines) to our largest competitor. 30 years of community content absorbed into models without permission, compensation, anything - and it can now be "transformed" for Google's SGE. I am reeling from it all.

ekongkaar,
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

@WanderingInDigitalWorlds Wow - you have accurately understood my mindset for the last 24 hours. Thank you for that show of empathy.

davidho, to random
@davidho@mastodon.world avatar

Have you ever wondered where all the on- and off-shore wind turbines are in the US? Behold the searchable database with wind project information, and turbine technical specifications.

https://eerscmap.usgs.gov/uswtdb/viewer/#3/37.25/-96.25

ekongkaar,
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

@davidho Interesting.

longreads, to LongReads
@longreads@mastodon.world avatar

"His mum worries about how dangerous it is for Potts to take strangers into his home, some of whom have serious issues. But she can see how it gives him a level of stability and purpose that seemed impossible a few years ago." —Samira Shackle for The Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/30/stuart-potts-man-who-turned-his-home-into-a-homeless-shelter/?src=longreads


ekongkaar,
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

@longreads Moving article. Thank you for sharing.

longreads, to LongReads
@longreads@mastodon.world avatar

"The reason websites continue to load, bank transfers go through, and civilization persists is because of the thousand or so people living aboard 20-some ships stationed around the world, who race to fix each cable as soon as it breaks."

For The Verge, Josh Dzieza highlights the workers of the subsea cable industry who keep the internet running: https://www.theverge.com/c/24070570/internet-cables-undersea-deep-repair-ships

ekongkaar,
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

@longreads That was a fascinating and impactful story.

raindrops_and_roses, to Cats
@raindrops_and_roses@mastodon.social avatar

Feline friends in medieval times.

https://theconversation.com/cats-in-the-middle-ages-what-medieval-manuscripts-teach-us-about-our-ancestors-pets-195389

@histodons

ekongkaar,
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

@raindrops_and_roses @histodons What a lovely article. Thank you.

ekongkaar, to random
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

  1. Went post-Christmas shopping with hubs today at Land's End and scored some excellent 50% off seasonal clothing.

  2. Feeling good about life in general.

  3. Watched a lot of episodes last night of The Big Bang Theory and laughed a lot.

TheDinosaurDave, to LEGO
@TheDinosaurDave@sauropods.win avatar

This weeks is

Carl Linnaeus first classified us as Homo sapiens in 1735. Human on the other hand, can be used to describe any of the Homo species, extinct or extant.

Homo sapiens first evolved in Africa around 200,000 years ago.

There is at least two known independents hybridization events in our species history. This is evident in our DNA. Europeans interbred with Neanderthals, and people in Siberia interbred with Denisovans.

Human (Homo sapiens) skeleton at the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology, England.

ekongkaar,
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

@TheDinosaurDave Well that is just the coolest.

golgaloth, to ai
@golgaloth@writing.exchange avatar

So, CEOs...

#Capitalism #AI #work

ekongkaar,
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

@golgaloth

Yes. This. When I was first starting out as a writer, I found some excellent advice. "You have 1000 bad pages in you. Start writing." Wiring it a craft and large language models that can mirror language patterns cannot replace the craft. I don't believe so.

ekongkaar, to random
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

Three Good Things Today:

  1. I graduated with my MBA today.
  2. My husband, partner and best friend was right by my side.
  3. My sister and mother flew in to be part of the celebration.

Drdind, to random
@Drdind@mastodon.social avatar

23 years ago today, I sat dumbfounded and depressed in my car in a parking lot for hours after hearing the SCOTUS handing down the antidemocratic end to the FL recount that gave GW Bush the presidency over Al Gore who won the popular vote by 500000, about the size of Sacramento.

ekongkaar,
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

@Drdind I sometimes imagine the alternative reality we would be living in now if Gore had been declared the winner. For one - climate action would have begun 20 years ago.

ekongkaar, to random
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

  1. Nice dinner with my husband at Olive Garden
  2. A little late but started putting up holiday decorations today
  3. Graduating with my MBA next week - feeling excited.
ekongkaar, to random
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

Three good things.

  1. Hand made bread. I am coming to like the taste of the bread I make so much better than store bought bread.

  2. Blessings of being able to give gifts to family and loved ones this holiday season.

  3. Enjoyed a nice late lunch with my husband.

davidho, to random
@davidho@mastodon.world avatar

In case you want to read more about my CO₂ removal (CDR) as time machine analogy.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/07/1084606/carbon-removal-technology-time-machine/amp/

ekongkaar,
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

@davidho Thanks for the time travel analogy. Very helpful. I have been hearing about climate change since I was 14 years old. (That's over 40 years ago.) And here is the problem from my perspective. We understand the problem. We have had lots of solutions. But the politics is such that people do not have the will to change. Our issue is power, politics and changing how we live. That is why IMHO we have difficulty solving this issue even when we know so much about it.

ekongkaar, to random
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

  1. Hubs' robotics team did well at their first league match yesterday.

  2. I have started to feel a bit bored. This means that I am "caught up" and actually not under too much stress. I am choosing to let myself "go there" with boredom rather than inventing new things to do.

  3. Brunch with hubs at a local diner today.

ekongkaar, to random
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

  1. I am unbelievably about a month away from finishing a Master's degree that I started 3.5 years ago.

  2. Someone I know shared sweets and a gift for Diwali

  3. Meditation

timkmak, to Ukraine
@timkmak@journa.host avatar

Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.

But here we’ve been having some discussions about the future of .

Our Ukrainian staff have opposing views.

Myroslava is optimistic.

Ross is pessimistic.

But everyone is tired.

http://counteroffensive.news

ekongkaar,
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

@timkmak Thank you for all your work. I read both essays that you published today. I think Ross is prescient. This is not only an issue in Ukraine, but an issue world-wide around the dangers to democracies everywhere. Too many are letting the 20% do the fighting for the rest of us. We are in a different kind of war - a war of ideas, of communication, of influence which can lead to physical conquest. We all need to engage wherever we are to fight to preserve democracy and freedom.

Teri_Kanefield, to random

I have a new blog post ready:

https://terikanefield.com/can-democracy-work-in-america-part-1-there-are-no-yankees-here/

We all know that the current proliferation of misinformation is endangering democracy.

I plan to show that democracy-endangering conspiracy theories have also taken root among MSNBC / CNN / and left-leaning social media audiences.

At the end, I will answer the question: How can we solve the problem?

If you've been a regular reader, you will find some of the ideas in this introduction familiar, but . . .

1/

ekongkaar,
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

@Teri_Kanefield Half way through your essay and you are articulating something I have been telling myself for a while. The main way to protect democracy is to keep practicing democracy. The main way to uphold the rule of law is to practice upholding the rule of law. We have to strengthen those muscles no matter how tempting it is to abandon the norms to defeat authoritarianism.

ekongkaar,
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

@Teri_Kanefield Finished your post. I resonate with the proposition that the new "polluted" information landscape is causing people to shift more into authoritarian mode. Look forwarding to reading your additional blog posts on this topic. I am especially curious about what can be done about this.

ekongkaar, to random
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

  1. Beautiful rain outside - we have a sky light in the living room that makes it sound like I am outside under a tree.

  2. Hubs made mac n' cheese for dinner tonight for the both of us because I was too tired at the end of the day to even think about cooking.

  3. There are just so many interesting people in the world.

Private
ekongkaar,
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

@YetAnotherGeekGuy @histodons @CitizenWald @AHAHistorians That makes sense. The apartheid of the Palestinians is what has gotten their ire up.

ekongkaar,
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

@YetAnotherGeekGuy @histodons @AHAHistorians @CitizenWald An article that I wrote the day after Hamas's attack. From a Sikh-inspired theological perspective. Not a popular view, I am sure. but it is where I land with all of this. https://www.sikhnet.com/news/our-common-humanity

ekongkaar,
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

@CitizenWald @YetAnotherGeekGuy @histodons @AHAHistorians Interesting article. Thank you for sharing it.

ElleGray, (edited ) to random
@ElleGray@mstdn.social avatar

This is an interesting and often funny discussion on myths, fantasy, childhood and how stories come to exist. @neilhimself is always fun to listen to and learn from

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PzcHr74nm5Q&pp=ygULbmVpbCBnYWltYW4%3D

ekongkaar,
@ekongkaar@mastodon.world avatar

@ElleGray @neilhimself Appreciate this interview. Have been reading your work since the original publication of The Sandman Series. Have a lot of first editions. Great to hear you speak about story and mythology and human reality.

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