Xcentric Diffractions

Technology

Explaining the Unexplainable

For the first time in history, humans have created machines -- large language models (LLMs), like ChatGPT, Claude, and xAI -- that function in ways no one can understand or explain – even the creators themselves. The internal combustion engine, the vacuum tube, the transistor, the laser, the integrated circuit? These

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Commentary

Supreme Court Sides with Trump, Affirms Unitary Voter Theory

Nature

Old Woods

I was sitting by the edge of the meadow when I heard it fall. Just sitting, in a Zen sort of trance, in one of those folding camp chairs, the kind that has some nylon pack cloth strung onto an accordion frame of lightweight metal tubing, which can articulate open

Nature

Bifurcations

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler -- Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken A bifurcation is the point at which a dynamic system undergoes an irreversible division into two separate pathways with qualitatively different behaviors. It results from

Nature

For a World in Flames

"IC 405?" asked Max. "Are you sure?" "The Flaming Star Nebula. Yes, I'm sure. I need to see it." "Okay," he replied. "It does seem appropriate." And then, as an aside, he added, "You know, you could

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Commentary

$$$ You Too Can Make Billions $$$

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Commentary

A Modest Proposal

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Commentary

The Reign in Maine

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Commentary

Agriculture Secretary to Test All Farm Animals for Bovine Serum Albumin

Commentary

The Disconnect

Xcentricdiff's first law of politics: A body in Congress tends to stay in Congress Unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. (Apologies to Sir Isaac.) This won't come as a surprise to any of you, but the U.S. Congress is getting old. By the session.

Nature

Restore the Lagoon

What you see depends on your point of view. From his observatory in the Hôtel de Cluny in downtown Paris, May 23, 1764, Charles Messier must have had some excellent points of view. The southern-most object in his catalog of deep sky objects, M7, known as Ptolemy's Cluster,

Commentary

The Embrace of Ignorance

What you don't know won't disappear just because you don't know it The early June evening had turned a little more moderate after heat and drought. The broccoli leaves looked a little less sad. A little less droopy. And so I broke for the

Commentary

More Judgment Fun(d)

Some lose ends from the vault today. After writing, a couple of weeks ago, about Trump paying the French energy conglomerate TotalEnergies not to do wind turbines, I became kind of fascinated with the Judgment Fund. The Judgment Fund, remember, is that permanent, indefinite, never empty piggy bank that US

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Commentary

We're Very Close to Having a Very, Very Good, Strong, Powerful Deal

Environment

Judgment Fund Day

The banner image above is a map, by country, of the fraction of electricity generated by renewable energy sources. If you look in the rear view mirror, the US can be seen receding into the distant past. While the Trump Regime forces us to "Burn, Baby, Burn!" the

Nature

A Missing Messier Mystery

"There's a trick with M102," said Max. "A trick?" I asked. "What do you mean a 'trick'. It's a galaxy. The 'Spindle' galaxy." "Come on, let's go, and I'll show you.

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Commentary

Make It a Dummymander

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Commentary

Trump: Mexico Will Pay For Ballroom

Garden

Dancing With Entropy

They remain acceptably useful for an acceptably useful length of time. About four or five years. By which time my once sturdy 2" x 10" pine boards, set to frame the garden, gradually decay away. Melting into the garden soil, brought low by warmth, water, dirt, and microbes

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Commentary

"I Don't Think It Means What You Think it Means"

Environment

The Trump Regime is Pissing Into the Wind

How much offshore wind energy potential is there in the US? The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) carried out a coastal resource analysis in 2022 to answer that question. Combining near shore anchored platforms and deeper water floating platforms, NREL identified a total of 4.3 terawatts of production sites,

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Commentary

The Absurdity of These Priorities

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Commentary

Old Signs

Garden

Lettuce Rejoice

It was a rare soft March afternoon. The sunlight gave warmth to old shoulders and the incessant roar of the wind through bare tree branches had died down, after weeks of dominance, such that I was newly aware of birdsong filling the woods. On the roller-coaster of spring weather, we

Nature

An Epic Clash of Epochs

Our destination wasn't listed anywhere in the deep space catalogs. That was the interesting thing. At least, that was the interesting thing for me. Up until now, we just needed to type the name of some deep space object, like "Andromeda Galaxy," and its coordinates would