You know, I find it quite odd to pass by that pickup truck I ride past most days on my bike with Missouri plates. Why on earth would anybody choose to move to New York from Missouri? The cold winter tundra, the expensive and highly regulated state?
Now I get that my notion of Missouri probably isn’t the lived experience of many if not most Missourians. Probably most are not off-gridders, don’t have burn barrels, cattle or hogs, own lots of guns, don’t live in little shacks, sheds-to-houses and other minimal ways of living close to the land.
Still it strains my imagination to think why anybody would move from Missouri to New York, especially Albany, NY. Especially somebody who own a pickup truck.
Because the lunar cycle is approximately 29.5 days, it is occasionally possible for February—which has only 28 or 29 days—to pass without a single full moon. This phenomenon is known as a Black Moon.
Between 1900 and 2100, the years without a full moon in February are:
The Metonic Cycle: This event typically occurs once every 19 years but not always due to leap years.
Double Blue Moons: Years with no full moon in February are almost always marked by having two full moons in both January and March (a “Double Blue Moon” year).
Time Zone Sensitivity: Because a full moon occurs at a specific global instant, a year might lack a full moon in one time zone (like the Americas) while still having one in another (like Europe or Asia).
Leap Year Rarity: It is extremely rare for a leap year (29 days) to miss a full moon; the last time was in 1608, and it won’t happen again until 2572.
I am pretty skeptical about all this Artificial Intelligence headlines in the news, maybe because I know from my study of machine learning that most of the large language models are just cute parlor tricks, that often produce overly soppy essays, half answers and broken code. But in many cases, it actually is pretty convenient way to get answers to questions on the internet, especially simple problems.
Often I forget how to implement a piece of code I’m writing, and I will put out a quick question to the Meta AI or nowadays more and more the Google AI website and it will spit out a mostly working solution to my problems. Or I just forget a specific flag or way of doing bash scripting, and rather then browse the man page or some internet forum, Google AI can put out a reasonably correct answer, especially when the question is fairly black and white.
Likewise, I have asked Google AI several times for information on various Ford SuperDuty trucks, what the different packages me and used it to explore some of my own thoughts on buying a big truck. While AI is overly deferential and arguably not questioning my own line of thoughts enough, I do see value in having a third party explore the pros and cons of various options. It’s a good way to cut through crap and get you answers, though it’s good to verify as AI as the disclaimers often note, makes mistakes.
I still have my doubts about AI being a know-all remote service covering the whole world’s vast knowledge as synthentized through the internet, when most knowledge really is localized. I don’t like being dependent on good internet access or a remote service to get answers. Indeed, I think many of the benefits of AI will become more practical when models are run locally, and AI becomes what it is best – not a generator but an indexer of content. AI makes a better search engine, it does not make a great essay or email drafter, and while the artwork it generates is interesting, I am not convinced it will ever replace humans. AI is a great starting point, a great reference, but ultimately there is something about the human brain and it’s creativity no model trained on vast data can completely replace.
On February 3, 1959, rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson were killed in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, together with pilot Roger Peterson. The event later became known as "The Day the Music Died", after singer-songwriter Don McLean referred to it as such in his song "American Pie" in 1971.
I did the bus thing yesterday, and it wasn’t fun running from the bus to the shuttle through the Capitol past all the Future Farmers of America, hoping I not get noticed for not wearing a suit and tie, trying to catch the bus in, and feeling morbidly obese when I got into the office for not riding my bike to work.
It was even crazier then that. 🤪 The Colonie Planning Board Meeting agenda item we were at Save the Pine Bush was taken off the agenda at the request of developer 🌲 who is trying to work with the Pine Bush Commission to mitigate concerns about them building on an important wildlife corridor for Karner Blue Butterfly 🦋 and other endangered species. And then after the meeting I got a bus 🚍 home, and there was a crazy black man pounding on the back door insisting “Let Me Out!” and then another equally crazy old black man muttering just werid random phrases as the bus slowly but surely made it way out to suburbs. 🚏Bless Betty, the driver who puts up with all that crap. Honestly, I was kind of impressed how much mitigation the developer was proposing for that proposal, but it’s a stinker of a proposal for neighbors, especailly as they want to take a gravel lot and turn it into a garbage collection and transfer station. Maybe just demolition debris and not rotten steak bites, 🗑️ but it still is an important connector parcel.
We got talking about one of Pine Bush volunteers from back in the day, 🚙 living out of their van in the cold in rural Saratoga County. I guess he’s pretty broke in his later years, doesn’t have much money 💵 but is making do on his land in the cold, showering at YMCA. 🚿 Then we got talking about Veteran who lives in the winter in a wheelchair 🪖 ♿ under the overhang at the Capitol, the one I sometimes see in Empire Plaza. I mean, kind of like me, winter camping, 🏕️ as the farmer asked if I was a Veteran. No, but I like spending time out in the cold burning debris. 🔥 In some ways, I’ m actually very sympathetic to that tough lifestyle – as I want to build an off-grid cabin / homestead eventually – and who knows how hard life will be before that goal is complete. I don’t really have a problem shitting in a bucket or outhouse in 20 degrees. Hell, I like the idea of composting all that poop 💩, having a smelly ol’ burn barrel and compost pile 🗑️ rather then an overflowing trash can each week packed in plastic mixed with apple cores, steak bones, junk mail, bottles and plastic wrappers. But don’t you recycle? ♻️ Butchering my own meat, own garden crops and stored food supplies like a prepper – a simple life without every day shopping and buying food wrapped in tons of stinky plastic to burn. 🐐 So many I’m more sympathetic then most to that kind of close-to-nature living like that homeless vet and the van-life, though I’m certainly not that poor as I look at big-assed Ford SuperDuty trucks. I just don’t like suburbia with all those houses covered with plastic, the overflowing garbage bins with their plastic garbage sacks full of plastic and rotting crap, and jap-crap SUVs and crap-Euro lux-o-mobiles. 🚗
Ran into my neighbor this morning running out to the store getting milk and eggs. 🐮 I thought he knew that I had retired Big Red but apparently not. I mentioned I retired Red because of body – I corrected myself frame issues – and planned to replace him in the spring. He asked if I was planning to get another Chevy. I said no, a Ford and left it at that. I wasn’t going to mention I was thinking of an big assed F-350 truck. He is apparently heading out snowboarding 🏂 today. Sounds like fun, going to be a beautiful day after such cold lately with tons of snow everywhere. 🥞 More apple and carrot pancakes 🥕 to start of the day, last night was kidney beans fried with some onion and remaining green pea soup, with some cornmeal and corn, kind of a garbage plate. Part of the onion rolled behind the stove with the mouse droppings 🐁 and mildew, that went straight into the compost bucket after I fished that out. Truth is I am kind of embarrassed about spending so much money on a big truck, but it will be great over the next 15-years. That said, I am still looking at a pretty stripper SuperDuty without much chrome, I do like that Ford XL Off-Road Package with the nubby tires and other minor improvements but also all work with zero chrome or carpet and vinyl everything inside the cab. Halogen headlights, the configuration used out on the oil field, ranches and Forest Rangers.
Should be a nice day for riding in, 🚴 already in the mid-20s with no wind and some hazy sunshine ☀️ as it pulls over the horizon earlier and earlier. Working on that sunrise and sunset 🌇 diagram yesterday, I was frustrated about emojis not working, and realized I should upgrade to Fedora 43, so I did and the emojis worked again but I had to recompile some of the packages in R. 🖥️ But I got my emojis back, which have been somewhat broken since I switched to Fedora last spring. ☺️ I also got playing with some different R scripts, coming up with new ways to process data. I’ve been working on a Moon Calendar like a sun one I posted the other day, and new weather diagrams. I do wish the snow was gone from the bike trail so I could ride both ways, but soon enough that will be the case. But I don’t see it warming up any time soon.
Indeed the weekend looks made cold, 🌬️ ❄️ so I might try to get out shopping tonight at Hannaford on my mountain bike after work. Probably come home on bus, 🚌 and then after dinner I will ride down to Hannaford. I don’t love riding Delaware Avenue in the dark, though I might go through the suburban subdivisions though it will be tough to ride all way on the back streets due to cut over being snow-covered. 📚 I guess the weekend is a good time to continue my study 🔎 of buying big-assed pickup trucks 🛻 and some of the other books I have out, but it’s fine as there is too much snow to do much hiking at Five River or anywhere else. We were discussing last night in car ride back to Downtown Albany how this has been one of longest cold periods the city has had in many years, and some of the worse for Big snow banks everywhere. Years ago it used to be more like this but with climate change, and the lower elevation of city, it usually doesn’t get this cold for this long. 🌡️
