31st December 2018 The New Year's Eve of AI.

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Monday 31st 42F, thick mist and grey. Walked to the lanes in light traffic and 100 yard visibility. Not one vehicle was showing rear fog lights.

I kept snapping away with my camera but it's hard to capture mist.

Shopped in the car to bring home some heavy stuff.


I keep watching dire warning videos on YT about AI. Arnie made a fortune being an AI anti-hero ambassador. Even TeslaBoy thinks it will be the end of us. But just think about it: Why send out menacing robots to slaughter us? All they need to do is mesmerize us with fabulous images of people or our most desirable objects. A blond Bond, driving a Lamborrari speedboat. One carrying twin, Carbon Fiber, pump action shotguns on the bejeweled prow. As it rumbled along just off an ultramarine, sandy beach and all on AI steroids? [Purely as an example. 👼]

AI can easily monitor all of our physiological reactions. As it fine tunes a perfect image or sculpts the most beautiful person or thing. Which we could probably, never [ever] imagine for ourselves.

With rapid 9D printing we'd all end up worshipping a perfect robot, perfect car, fluffy kitten or tricycle. Or whatever floated our own particular boat. AI could easily destroy us with its "Midas touch." Simply in providing for our every whim at almost zero cost to itself.

We'd soon all starve to death. Just from watching the unbelievably attractive newsreader or weather person. One being constantly updated in real time based on our own physiological feedback.

Imagine if invading robot's faces and bodies could be exactly matched, in real time, to every single soldier's positive reactions. No need for mind control if the armed forces always saw their own mother or boyfriend approaching.

YouTube and Netflix are working on this AI scenario already.  By matching our entertainment choices to our own searching and viewing habits, comments and scoring. Still very crude by potential AI standards, but steadily getting there. Binge watching could easily become the norm! Even text could become a weapon against ourselves for avid bookworms. The book, or blog, which we could never [ever] put down! Don't say I didn't warn you! 😏

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27th December 2018 Gloomy.

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Thursday 27th 45F, still mild, dark grey and misty with possible rain. As I write this at 8.45am it is still quite dark outside. The latest statistics show that 30 MILLION passengers passed though Copenhagen Airport this year alone.

A longer walk up to the woods and back across the edges of the fields using the cover of the mist. Three deer scampered away as we met in the middle of a field. The air was so damp that my hat was soon as wet as the legs of my trousers. I could have taken my leggings but never thought about it.

I have treated my Ecco boots to an impregnation spray and and applied some wax. It must have done them some good because they didn't darken after 3/4 of an hour walking through sopping wet grass. The early mist thinned quite a bit so I was allowed out for a short ride to the shops. The trike and my MTB boots are splattered from the filthy roads. Only 7 miles.

Friday 28th 43F, very dark grey, calm  and mild but no mist today. A bit of sun is threatened. But not yet. Walked to the lanes with a limp due to a painful knee. Somehow I walked it off and it was better by the time I returned. The westerly wind is slowly picking up. We even had an hour of sunshine in the late morning.

There was nearly an international incident recently. When all of the supermarkets began to stock only one make of [very unpleasant] baked beans in tomato sauce. Yet another monopoly rears its ugly head and they all follow the same bandwagon.

Saturday 29th 43F, very, very dark. Rain promised for this afternoon. It was drizzling lightly, driven by the wind, as I crossed the prairie up to the woods via the heavily rutted, main track. They had been trying to fill the worst dips with demolition gravel but not with a great deal of success. It is too soft and just sinks to the wheels of the hunter's 4WDs and tractors. My shortcut through the forest was greeted with constant, heavy dripping from the high, beech canopy.

Perhaps a dozen hunters were standing around a copse out on the fields. Though there was only one shot despite the dogs being noisily encouraged to dash back and forth through the dense undergrowth. A tight formation of four cormorants went over followed by untidy stragglers. Probably heading to the sea for a bit of peace and quiet!

It's not easy to capture the grey gloom of winter with my camera. It just looks miserably [er-um-er] gloomy and badly out of focus. The winter woods are looking a bit thin since the clear felling of a big patch on the local summit. The tallest on the left [image right] are beautiful, mature beech trees.

On the right is a mixture, with younger growth underpinning them. The forest covers several miles off into the distance. Though it rarely sees anyone other than forestry machines in these parts. A few miles further on there are well worn tracks where the villagers an enjoy their forest strolls.  

A steep track runs down the far edge of the huge field in the foreground. It runs from the center of the picture and downwards following the mature hedge to the right. In past times there were a series of tracks rising in parallel lines up to the woods. They have all been lost to intensive farming with huge machines working vast fields. 

Modern woods are very odd. They look completely haphazard until you catch them at just the right angle. Then you an see the long, neat rows of trunks going away into the distance. Conifers were found to be extremely vulnerable to snapping off half way up their trunks during a major wind storm. So deciduous commercial growth is the new order of the day. Except where the conifers can be protected by deep shelter belts of mature, deciduous trees. Not a good day for a ride. So I didn't.

Sunday 30th @ 40F was sunny all day. I spent it constructively at home. No ride today.

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26th December Boxing Day

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Wednesday 26th 43-46F, mild but rather cloudy. Threat of early sunshine but not expected to disrupt our lives too much. I wonder whether the supermarkets are open today? A walk to the village and back under grey skies. It was still getting warmer at bedtime but remained dark all day.

I have been watching speed-adjusted, historical films from around the 1900s on YouTube. London seems to have been suffering from traffic jams, from well before the arrival of the motorcar. I saw only a single car in one film. Which showed the roads crammed by a chaotic number of horse-drawn vehicles.

Pedestrians seemed almost suicidal in their behaviour while crossing the road through up to six lanes of moving traffic. The few cyclists visible had no trouble in overtaking the horse drawn traffic without apparent effort. Cab and carriage driving skills and general road discipline seemed almost completely absent. With horse cabs making U-turns in heavy and often chaotic [horse] traffic. With many of them weaving all over the road.

The films of US cities from this time were even worse! Often seeming almost anarchic in their behaviour in heavy, multi-stream horse traffic. Weaving in and out, barging in and seemingly overtaking almost at random and without apparent gain. In all of these old films the sheer number of people present on the street is mind boggling. Particularly as the population was a mere fraction of today's.

Dress styles were almost unrecognizable by today's relaxed standards. Particularly women's long and voluminous dresses and heavily decorated hats, Most men and many boys seemed to wear hats too at that time. Formality in clothing, behaviour and politeness seems to have been the norm. With much hat raising and hand shaking. Advertising of many of today's "household names" was already obvious well over 100 years ago on horse-drawn buses.

YouTube, in its desperate greed for more tax-free profit, has changed the rules on embedded videos. It is no longer possible to stop auto-play of a <cough> "related video" when one's own embedded video ends. The entire forum world is now at the mercy of YT showing salacious and click bait fraud  thumbnails and YT porn videos.

I hope they [YT] suffers an outcry and return the do not auto-play button. Advertising fascism is evil dictatorship. Their morals have shrunk to match their psychopathic greed. The Midas scourge is apt to have that effect on those without any conscience. 

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