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.
