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Some pictures of my (Manuel) expedition to Antarctica Strange Sounds Today, I thought I would show you some pictures I made in 2006 in Antarctica during a scientific expedition. Me… A long time ago… During a quiet and sunny day in Antarctica… About me: I am Canadian and Swiss. I have 2 happy kids. I graduated in geology (this is why you get a gemstone if you subscribe!). Then, I wrote my PhD in cosmochemistry (study of the early processes in the solar system based on isotopic measurements of radionuclines in minerals found in meteorites) in Paris. After working in the private sector for a few years (as a geological and concrete engineer at different big tunnel construction sites in Switzerland and around (Gotthard, Lötschberg, Linthal 2015, Lyon-Turin ferroviaire, among others…), I quit everything, fed up, and started a website (StrangeSounds) which then led to the creation of this newsletter. I am very happy with that decision… Let see where it will bring us!... It is so peaceful… Again everyday, you are part of the whole… You are one with the universe… MORE: https://strangesounds.substack.com/p/some-pictures-of-my-expedition-to Thank you very much for all your writings, Manuel! Could you come here and help us? That would be wonderful!

A billion-dollar startup wants to bring back to life the dodo and the woolly mammoth within 4 years Colossal Biosciences is adding the famously dead bird to its de-extinction agenda… Yes, the billion-dollar startup wants to bring back the dodo and the wholly mammoth to life. They plan to re-incarnate the mammoth within the next 4 years… This actually means 5 years until the black market for Dodo/ Mammoth Meat and Mammoth Ivory becomes a thing… A Dodo: The last time the species was seen alive was in the 1600s, and now Colossal Biosciences says it will one day bring the birds back. By Colossal biosciences A biotechnology startup that promises to resurrect woolly mammoths within the next 4 years is now the first “de-extinction unicorn,” with a valuation said to be over a billion dollars before bringing back a single lost species. Colossal Biosciences, the Dallas-based startup, is making public a new round of investment this week that will help fund its effort to bring back perhaps the most famously extinct animal of them all: the dodo. Reintroducing mammoths to Alaska or dodos to Mauritius sounds unrealistic, even silly, and has drawn skepticism from paleo-geneticists and other experts who worry that the effects of de-extinction would be unpredictable. Yet Colossal has continued to draw support from investors, including celebrities, and on Tuesday announced another $150 million for a total of $225 million since 2021. A person familiar with the company said with the latest round the startup is valued at about $1.5 billion. ...“When you’re doing big things like this, who knows what you’re going to discover along the way.”... MORE: https://strangesounds.org/2023/02/a-billion-dollar-startup-wants-to-bring-back-the-dodo-and-the-woolly-mammoth-within-4-years.html

Thank you! So don't forget the Pretty Detox Posts - page 41 here:

I have been using the Basilisk 55 Moebius for a long time.

Thank you Mina, but today, now, the latest version at the bottom is: v0.8.1 [2020-11-01 17:15:00] - sadly... EDIT: - yes, click at this latest version's link,so that you have all the old versions in front of your eyes... There was problem I have, download link is absent for v0.6.3, latest download link is under v0.8.1 link...

After a six-day search, authorities in Australia have finally found the missing radioactive capsule that fell off a truck last month. This thing is a tiny, pea-sized, dangerously radioactive piece of equipment! Western Australian Department Of Fire And Emergency Services/Handout via REUTERS Here: https://notthebee.com/article/tiny-highly-radioactive-capsule-lost-found-side-road-australia

Tifanny Studio lamp called of Wisteria Tifanny Studio in the creation of unique and expensive jewellery is considered one of the most outstanding from the beginning of the 20th century. This original lamp called of Wisteria, and its founder is considered to be Clara Driscoll (1901), who was inspired by the work of floral motifs and Japanese culture. The lamp is made up of 2,000 pieces that in ensemble create an image of a hanging wisteria. It was sold at Sotheby's auction in December 2015 for $790,000. It is known that a similar lamp was sold five years earlier for twice the price.

Richat Structure Aka Eye Of The Sahara (40 km in diameter) Rishat Structure Aka Eye of the Sahara is a geological formation with a circular relief, located in the Sahara Desert (in Mauritania), near the settlement of ouadane. The site topography, located in the middle of barren desert in the form of concentric circles with a diameter of 40-50 km, can be seen even from space. According to the research, the scientists came to the conclusion that the Sahara eye is purely geological origin, although for a long time it was believed (and some think so to this day) that this natural site was formed by a meteorite falling to Earth. For a long time it was believed that its appearance this amazing natural site is obliged fallen hundreds of years ago, a meteorite on the surface of the Earth. However, after a series of studies that theory had to admit unconfirmed, and it was replaced by a different - a full geological origin of the Sahara's eyes. mybestplace.com picture: An exaggerated topographical map of the structure. Brown=bedrock, pale yellow = sand, green = vegetation, blue = salty sediments=blue. Credit: NASA/JPL/NIMA worldtop10thingz.blogspot.com picture For a long time, ever since the first space missions, Rishat structure served as a landmark for astronauts in orbit, as among the vast expanse of unremarkable desert was our well-visible object. Structure Rishat is not followed by the fall of an ancient meteor as many thought and still think. These concentric circles, in fact of alternating layers of sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rocks, formed as a symmetrical anticline by erosion. flickr/Stuart Rankin It is believed that the Eye of the Sahara was formed in the period between the Late Proterozoic (2.5 billion years) and Ordovician (480 million years). The most ancient ring about 600 million years. The original version of the origin in a collision with a meteorite later changed version fully geological origin of these concentric circles. Despite the extensive field and laboratory studies that have been conducted, scientists, geologists could not find conclusive evidence that would indicate that the impact of an extraterrestrial object. Moreover, there is a ring-shaped structure Rishat depression that characterizes the place of a meteorite of this size. From meteorite crash site Sahara Eye also differs in that sedimentary rocks are deposited in it in the usual, "pristine", not the inverted form. According to the latest analytical study breccia (a rock consisting of cemented rubble of one or more rock) Rishat structure, carbonate-rich silica rocks formed under the influence of hydrothermal waters, and the structure itself requires special protection, and further study of its origin. Here: https://desertillusion.blogspot.com/2016/07/richat-structure-aka-eye-of-sahara.html Too: https://skunkbear.tumblr.com/post/114055936050/the-richat-structure-or-the-eye-of-the-sahara-is ..then: http://worldtop10thingz.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-eye-of-sahara-richat-structure.html ..and: https://mybestplace.com/it/article/richat-structure-locchio-gigante-del-deserto-del-sahara

Egypt plans to green its desert What is hidden under the sands of the Sahara? Incredible facts about this desert The Eye of the Sahara(Richat Structure) and Evidence of Catastrophic Floods in Africa Lost Roman Map has ATLANTIS at Eye of Sahara Africa! (Richat Structure)

Decoding the Hype About AI A conversation with Arvind NarayananBy Julia Angwin January 28, 2023 Hello, friends, If you have been reading all the hype about the latest artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT, you might be excused for thinking that the end of the world is nigh. The clever AI chat program has captured the imagination of the public for its ability to generate poems and essays instantaneously, its ability to mimic different writing styles, and its ability to pass some law and business school exams. Teachers are worried students will use it to cheat in class (New York City public schools have already banned it). Writers are worried it will take their jobs (BuzzFeed and CNET have already started using AI to create content). The Atlantic declared that it could “destabilize white-collar work.” Venture capitalist Paul Kedrosky called it a “pocket nuclear bomb” and chastised its makers for launching it on an unprepared society. Even the CEO of the company that makes ChatGPT, Sam Altman, has been telling the media that the worst-case scenario for AI could mean “lights out for all of us.” But others say the hype is overblown. Meta’s chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, told reporters ChatGPT was “nothing revolutionary.” University of Washington computational linguistics professor Emily Bender warns that “the idea of an all-knowing computer program comes from science fictionand should stay there.” So, how worried should we be? For an informed perspective, I turned to Princeton computer science professor Arvind Narayanan, who is currently co-writing a book on “AI snake oil.” In 2019, Narayanan gave a talk at MIT called “How to recognize AI snake oil” that laid out a taxonomy of AI from legitimate to dubious. To his surprise, his obscure academic talk went viral, and his slide deck was downloaded tens of thousands of times; his accompanying tweets were viewed more than two million times. Narayanan then teamed up with one of his students, Sayash Kapoor, to expand the AI taxonomy into a book. Last year, the pair released a list of 18 common pitfalls committed by journalists covering AI. (Near the top of the list: illustrating AI articles with cute robot pictures. The reason: anthropomorphizing AI incorrectly implies that it has the potential to act as an agent in the real world.) Narayanan is also a co-author of a textbook on fairness and machine learning and led the Princeton Web Transparency and Accountability Projectto uncover how companies collect and use personal information. He is a recipient of the White House’s Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Our conversation, edited for brevity and clarity, is below. Caption:Arvind Narayanan Angwin: You have called ChatGPT a “bul***** generator.” Can you explain what you mean? Narayanan: Sayash Kapoor and I call it a bul***** generator, as have others as well. We mean this not in a normative sense but in a relatively precise sense. We mean that it is trained to produce plausible text. It is very good at being persuasive, but it’s not trained to produce true statements. It often produces true statements as a side effect of being plausible and persuasive, but that is not the goal. This actually matches what the philosopher Harry Frankfurt has called bul*****, which is speech that is intended to persuade without regard for the truth. A human bullshitter doesn’t care if what they’re saying is true or not; they have certain ends in mind. As long as they persuade, those ends are met. Effectively, that is what ChatGPT is doing. It is trying to be persuasive, and it has no way to know for sure whether the statements it makes are true or not. Angwin: What are you most worried about with ChatGPT? Narayanan: There are very clear, dangerous cases of misinformation we need to be worried about. For example, people using it as a learning tool and accidentally learning wrong information, or students writing essays using ChatGPT when they’re assigned homework. I learned recently that CNET has been, for several months now, using these generative AI tools to write articles. Even though they claimed that the human editors had rigorously fact-checked them, it turns out that’s not been the case. CNET has been publishing articles written by AI without proper disclosure, as many as 75 articles, and some turned out to have errors that a human writer would most likely not have made. This was not a case of malice, but this is the kind of danger that we should be more worried about where people are turning to it because of the practical constraints they face. When you combine that with the fact that the tool doesn’t have a good notion of truth, it’s a recipe for disaster.... MORE: https://themarkup.org/hello-world/2023/01/28/decoding-the-hype-about-ai

Princeton computer science professor says don't panic over 'bul***** generator' ChatGPT by Sindhu Sundar ChatGPT, a AI chat bot, has gone viral in the past two weeks. A Princeton professor told The Markup that "bul***** generator" ChatGPT merely presents narratives. He said it can't be relied on for accurate facts, and that it's unlikely to spawn a "revolution." ChatGPT creator OpenAI will reportedly help Buzzfeed produce work like quizzes. A professor at Princeton researching the impact of artificial intelligence doesn't believe that OpenAI's popular bot ChatGPT is a death knell for industries. While such tools are more accessible than ever, and can instantaneously package voluminous information and even produce creative works, they can't be trusted for accurate information, Princeton professor Arvind Narayanan said in an interview with The Markup. "It is trying to be persuasive, and it has no way to know for sure whether the statements it makes are true or not," he said. Experts who study AI have said that products like ChatGPT, which are part of a category of large language model tools that can respond to human commands and produce creative output, work by simply making predictions about what to say, rather than synthesizing ideas like human brains do. Narayanan said this makes ChatGPT more of a "bul***** generator" that presents its response without considering the accuracy of its responses. But there are some early indications for how companies will adopt this type of technology. For instance, Buzzfeed, which in December reportedly laid off 12% of its workforce, will use OpenAI's technology to help make quizzes, according to the Wall Street Journal. The tech reviews site CNET published AI-generated stories and had to correct them later, The Washington Post reported. Narayanan cited the CNET case as an example of the pitfalls of this type of technology. "When you combine that with the fact that the tool doesn't have a good notion of truth, it's a recipe for disaster," he told The Markup. He said that a more likely outcome of large language model tools would be industries changing in response to its use, rather than being fully replaced. "Even with something as profound as the internet or search engines or smartphones, it's turned out to be an adaptation, where we maximize the benefits and try to minimize the risks, rather than some kind of revolution," he told The Markup. "I don't think large language models are even on that scale. There can potentially be massive shifts, benefits, and risks in many industries, but I cannot see a scenario where this is a 'sky is falling' kind of issue." The Markup's full interview with Narayanan is worth reading, which you can do here: Decoding the Hype About AI: https://themarkup.org/hello-world/2023/01/28/decoding-the-hype-about-ai HERE: https://www.businessinsider.com/princeton-prof-chatgpt-bul*****-generator-impact-workers-not-ai-revolution-2023-1?IR=T

But most of these are available in up to 1080p resolution, you should get the same results in all of them at one common resolution (select it explicitly!), so 720p or lower. Sure, all these three videos are on Quality Auto (480p) already one common resolution. With other videos, I normally get 30/50 dropped frames from 2000/5000. See for yourself...

"Be grateful."... I'm grateful... Thank you!

Neither desperate, nor depressed, nor terrorists: nihilism is not what you have been told 1/31/2023, 12:17:14 PM Nihilists do not think that everything is meaningless. The philosopher Jesús Zamora Bonilla reflects in his new book the evolution of this philosophical current so modern A broken shell.CS0523183 (Getty Images/iStockphoto) A fairly neutral definition, but one that for that very reason allows us to fit into it almost all the forms of nihilism that have ever been considered, I would say that this current is something like the following: "Nihilism is the loss of confidence in anything from which absolute values could emanate, above all moral or existential values, that is, values that give meaning to our existence”. A way to further summarize this definition would say that nihilism consists in believing that existence is meaningless. Of course, nihilism does not consist in "believing in nothing", nor even in "believing that everything is nothing" (although some people, I don't quite understand why, can actually believe such an absurd thesis, and there is no problem in calling them nihilists as well), but rather consists in not believing in anything, well understood that the "beliefs" to which these definitions refer are not of the type "I think I have entered the mobile password wrong", Rather, it is above all moral beliefs, beliefs about what gives meaning to our lives and to human history. In other words, nihilism consists in the belief that nothing has absolute value (that is, there is nothing that has absolute value). What nihilism does not consist of is the belief that "the only thing that has absolute value is nothingness", or something like that, since as perceptive nihilists we know perfectly well that there is nothing that is "nothingness"..... MORE: https://newsrnd.com/news/2023-01-31-neither-desperate--nor-depressed--nor-terrorists--nihilism-is-not-what-you-have-been-told.H1HG6dO83i.html

Polar Stratospheric Clouds (PSCs) are supposed to stay inside the Arctic Circle. Last night they broke out and made a rare appearance over Scotland: By Alan C. Tough @ Elgin, Moray, Scotland… TARANTULA NEBULA Alan Tough - Flickr photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/7776810@N07/

Visiting the COLDEST CITY in the World (-71°C, -96°F) YAKUTSK / YAKUTIA Visiting the World's Hottest Place (159°F, 70°C) LUT DESERT

Abduction and strange lights: UFO stories from the northern coast of São Paulo By Guest writer January 27, 2023 By Reginaldo Pupo In the last few months, several reports of UFO (unidentified flying objects) sightings in the cities of the northern coast of São Paulo have been spreading among residents and tourists in the region. The first reports appeared more intense in November last year when several lights were sighted by residents and civil aviation pilots in Porto Alegre (RS) for one week. Videos and photos of UFOs in various parts of the world have also been spreading on social networks in recent months. César Miglioranza shows the direction in which he saw a flying saucer approaching on the Porto Novo beach, in Caraguatatuba, in 1996 (Photo internet reproduction) Although the sightings on the northern coast have intensified recently, according to ufologists, the first records in the region date back to the 1920s. Still, according to experts and residents, there are records of OSNIs (unidentified underwater objects) occurring at sea. According to witnesses, the phenomena appear in parts of the Serra do Mar and over the sea, a few meters from the beaches. The lights in the sky, which evolve rapidly in all directions and with varied colors, have already been seen in Caraguatatuba, Ilhabela, São Sebastião, and Ubatuba. The last case recorded by ufologists occurred on Dec. 31, shortly before New Year’s Eve, around 11 pm. Resident Guilherme Miranda observed and filmed a UFO at Perequê-Açú, about 1.5 kilometers from downtown Ubatuba. He said it was a solid reddish light in the sky, unlike an airplane or a drone. He and a friend pointed a laser toward the flying object, which, according to them, “started shaking and suddenly disappeared”. Toninhas Beach in Ubatuba, on the northern coast of São Paulo (Photo internet reproduction) Late last year, a resident of Caraguatatuba also spotted a UFO from the window of the building where he lives in the city center. The intense light was hovering over the sea on the beach avenue. For almost 20 minutes, the object remained stationary in the air, making movements eventually. Miranda had enough time to take videos and photos of the UFO. The images show a whitish light hovering over the city. UFOLOGISTS BELIEVE IN AN UNDERWATER BASE Ufologist and researcher Edison Boaventura Junior has been investigating UFO sightings on the northern coast of São Paulo for 40 years (Photo internet reproduction) “There is a high incidence of these unknown objects entering and leaving the sea, which suggests the existence of some underwater base of operations in the region.” “This hypothesis gains strength when we come across dozens of cases of witnesses who describe the entry and exit of these devices in the waters of the beaches on the northern coast,” explains ufologist Edison Boaventura Júnior, director of GUG (Grupo Ufológico de Guarujá), who has been researching the phenomena in the region for about 40 years. According to residents who live on the islands of Búzios and Vitória, which belong to the Ilhabela archipelago, the objects frequently enter and leave the sea in a stretch of the sea about four kilometers east of Sumitia Island, located near the first two islands. The GUG says that it has already registered and cataloged approximately 400 cases that took place along the northern coast and in some municipalities of the southern coast, involving various degrees of contact that occurred from the 1920s on. Not included are the apparitions witnessed by locals and tourists that were not reported to ufologists. Boaventura says he believes that many sightings are not publicized because witnesses fear being ridiculed. UFOs frequently appear in the northern coastal region, with several witnesses, but they end up not divulging it so as not to come across as crazy. Generally, they only tell relatives and close friends.... MORE: https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/nosubscription/abduction-and-strange-lights-ufo-stories-from-the-northern-coast-of-sao-paulo/ Read Without Subscription category: https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/category/nosubscription/ Curated Alternative Narratives category: https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/category/modern-day-censorship/ HOME page THE RIO TIMES: https://www.riotimesonline.com/ logo

Trending: criminal scientists cheat with artificial intelligence By Guest writer January 27, 2023 By Martina Frei “These schemes are spreading like cancer. We are heading for a crisis. We can’t just let this continue,” says Bernhard Sabel, and in doing so, the Institute of Medical Psychology director at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany, sounds seriously concerned. At the end of 2020, the professor heard about “paper mills” for the first time. These writing rooms, of which no one knows who is behind them, offer their services to scientists. The customers can choose those who have completed their research project and hand over their data to the “paper mill,” which then writes the manuscript and arranges for publication in a scientific journal. “That costs about 1,000 euros,” says Bernhard Sabel, who has looked at various offers. For 26,000 euros, you can get a freely invented “scientific” publication For around 8,000 euros, the “paper mill” unceremoniously creates a manuscript, writes it, and publishes it in a scientific publishing house. The customers act as authors. “All the prospective author has to do is name a specific field, possibly include a few keywords or methods, and select a journal,” according to an article in“Labor journal.” According to Sabel, the “all-around package” is available for 17,000 to 26,000 euros (US$17,000 to 26,000). At the end of 2020, the professor heard about “paper mills” for the first time. These writing rooms, of which no one knows who is behind them, offer their services to scientists. (Photo internet reproduction) For this price, a “paper mill” provides the design for a research project, supposedly conducts the experiments – which in reality never take place – writes a manuscript with the invented data, inserts pictures and graphics, and sends it (contrary to general practice) to several scientific journals at the same time – and gets the go-ahead for publication from an editorial office. With more than 50,000 scientific journals, the choice is vast. A REAL INDUSTRY HAS DEVELOPED THERE “The more prestigious the journal, the higher the price,” says Sabel. “To be sure, fakes have always existed and always will. But the mass, global, industrial production of completely fabricated scientific articles – that’s new and very worrying. In recent years, an entire industry has developed there.” These fake studies and articles are written by artificial intelligence (AI) trained on millions of articles. Sometimes scientists provide editorial assistance. “The texts are so sophisticated that no one can tell anymore.” Bernhard Sabel, director of the Institute of Medical Psychology at Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg, Germany “I was shocked to learn at a recent congress how well AI writes such technical articles,” Sabel says. “In the past, manuscripts written by AI still contained linguistic or logical errors – now the texts are so polished and of such high quality that no one can tell anymore.” Another ploy of the “paper mills”: they translate Russian technical articles, for example, and submit the translation to an English-language journal. Sabel knows of an AI test in the U.S. in which a scientific publication that helped Italian nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi win the Nobel Prize in 1938 was translated with AI, edited, and sent to a prestigious journal. “It was accepted as worthy of publication, but not published because the whole thing was only meant as a test.” DOZENS OF SPECIALITIES ARE AFFECTED Paper mill articles were a big problem, especially in medicine and computer science. “These are not isolated cases,” says Sabel, who is involved with the issue on the extended executive committee of the German Academic Association. ]He says dozens of other disciplines are also affected, including psychology, sociology, business administration/marketing, agricultural sciences, and philosophy. Shortly after he learned about “paper mills,” Sabel discovered that 10 to 15 of about 200 articles reviewed had been problematic in the neuroscience journal he is editor-in-chief. “We were more affected than I could have imagined. It did worry me.” Sabel estimates that about ten percent of published articles in neuroscience journals are “highly suspect.” Clear proof that a paper comes from a “paper mill” is only possible in individual cases. In most cases, this is not known with certainty, says Sabel. OF 1,000 MEDICAL ARTICLES, 238 WERE PRESUMABLY FABRICATED... ...MORE: https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/modern-day-censorship/trending-criminal-scientists-cheat-with-artificial-intelligence/

ChatGPT isn’t the only AI-powered website… Here are 14 AI websites that feel illegal to know about (but NOT interesting to me...): https://en.rattibha.com/thread/1618243548108701697

As far as I can see, the number of dropped frames only depends on the recording quality of the video... I have found some videos with (almost!) no dropped frames, starting with 0 dropped frames from 2000/5000... see for yourself these 3 videos:

Complex solar halo in North Dakota, USA on January 19, 2023… like above, from: https://strangesounds.substack.com/p/wait-wait-whats-this-yes-its-just Home page: https://strangesounds.substack.com/archive ...AND: Extreme tornadoes ravage parts of Texas on January 24, 2023… Footage of a destructive tornado in Texas! Storm caused massive damage in Pasadena and Deer Park by World Is Dangerous ...and you, legacyfan, al is OK with you?...

Eruption of the Fuego volcano (Guatemala, January 17, 2023). ...and thank you Manuel!

Huge (ball-sized) hail damages hundreds of homes and cars in Villa Mercedes, Argentina Context: Climate change... Thank you, Manuel...

26.01.2023⚡️Thunderstorm in the province of San Luis Argentina (0:30) Thanks to Manuel for this one too, from: https://strangesounds.substack.com/p/wait-wait-whats-this-yes-its-just

Global warming - the continuation (RARE snowfall in Oman)