"Remarkably Bright Creatures"

I'm almost halfway through the book, looking forward to the movie when it becomes available.  So far the focus of the book has been on the background and the development of the principal characters, with very little "action" per se.  I suspect the book is similarly focused on the importance of relationships.  Here is the New York Times review of the book back in 2023. 

Time to start thinking about global oil reserves

I'm embedding a graphic I found in a May 2 Facebook post by Christian Decle (who apparently is a "digital creator.")  It's a slightly blurry probable screencap of a report from J.P. Morgan written by Natasha Kaneva last week.  I tried to track the original and found her on various J.P. Morgan web pages, but haven't seen the original report, which may have been distributed privately to clients.  

I've added two annotations of my own.  The first is a red arrow noting the point in the graph where the global oil inventory changes from current to projected future, extrapolated on the downward slope for the last couple months, and assuming the global drawdown stays unchanged at 5.5 million barrels per day (second annotation, circled).  I inserted the arrow because the color change from purple to green is subtle, and I wanted to note that the curent level is not critical - it is about the same as ten-year averages - but the steepness of the recent fall reflects an unprecedented severity of disruption and will quickly become critical if it continues.

This topic has been discussed repeatedly on the Bloomberg business televaion channel by hosts interviewing various specialists in business and economics.  Everyone wants to know what is going to happen, and there are a lot of assumptions that need to be made.

The author of the Facebook post concludes by saying "The UK has a fuel reserve buffer — measured in days."  I have no idea whether that is true.

But it is true that after Trump made the yet-unproven claim that the U.S. was escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz, Iran did launch some drone or missile attacks on the U.A.E., which damaged a refinery and threatens the U.A.E.'s route of bypassing the Strait via a pipeline to the Indian Ocean.  Brent crude is now back at highs, and no resolution is in sight.  

A glimpse of the future of AI-produced movies

Absolutely amazing.  Imagine being a human actor viewing this and wondering what your future holds re 

employment.  Imagine what fake celebrity porn must look like now.  Imagine how unsophisticated viewers can now be duped into believing false realities re their political leaders.  Imagine being able to create one of your own using generative AI...

Addendum:  I'm now seeing a "Video Unavailable" message in place of the video.  I'll see if I can find a workaround for the embed.  In the meantime, you can view it at this Reddit thread.  And if that disappears, try Googling "The AI movie Pi Hard shows Neil deGrasse Tyson teaming up with Sam Bankman-Fried to stop an evil Stephen Hawking from destroying the multiverse by dividing by zero. Bill Gates is a robot and Elon Musk is panicking."

Just found this on YouTube.  Don't know if it will stay up...  I gotta go do yard and garden chores.

The role of rare earths in future wars

Interesting development re AI in Chinese court system

Screencap from moments ago (Sunday May 3) on Bloomberg's The China Show.  The case was brought by a tech worker in Eastern China (Hangzhou) whose job was to evaluate the efficiency of large language models.  The company used AI to replace him.  He sued, and on April 28 the court ruled in his favor, saying that workers can be laid off because of external influences [presumably bad sales etc], but not if the company develops or purchases software to replace the employee.  

I wonder how American courts will rule when this (inevitably) arises.

Public service announcement

Viewers at Neatorama are advised by Miss Cellania that this brief video is a public service announcement, so I was alert to the possibility, but didn't figure out the message until the 3:40 mark.  I'm reposting it not so much for the message as for the artwork, which I find very appealing - especially the styling of the willow tree by the pond.

Huge losses by the U.S. in its war on Iran

I found a CNN video report on this matter, posted yesterday.  I've seen similar reports at Al Jazeera English and other miscellaneous sites; this seems to be the first one released on mainstream US media.

"Blind Faith" - a new Banksy

Cleverly conceived, and well-executed.  Not apparent from this view is that the subject's front foot is going to lead to him fallling off the plinth.

Addendum:  Side view of the statue stepping off its plinth -

- cropped for emphasis from the original posted at the BBC.  Hat tip to a reader for sending me the link.

7 + 2 = x + 6. Can you solve for "x" ?

Certainly you can.  Probably in less than 5 seconds, or you wouldn't be reading this blog.

But... one-fourth of incoming University of California San Diego freshmen taking a placement exam last year failed to solve for the x.

And... 3/5 of them failed to round 374,518 to the nearest hundred.

I found those numbers in the May 2026 Harper's Index, attributed to Akos Rona-Tas, University of California, San Diego.  A Google search led me to confirmatory editorial commentary in the San Diego Union Tribune.

"... it is so jarring to read a lengthy new report from UCSD’s Senate-Administration Working Group on Admissions that says many students can’t answer simple math questions. “Between 2020 and 2025, the number of students whose math skills fall below middle-school level increased nearly 30-fold, reaching roughly one in eight members of the entering cohort,” it stated.

Some 25% of students in need of remedial math training couldn’t figure out the answer to this equation — 7 + 2 = blank + 6 — the sort of problem that California first-graders are expected to master. And 61% were unable to round the number 374,518 to the nearest hundred — a basic task third-graders are drilled on..."

From what I've read elsewhere, it appears that UCSD students take the placement exam in order to assess what level courses they should enroll in in the STEM programs.  So the low numbers would seem to reflect science-interested students, not necessarily the liberal arts-focused students.

A number of potential causes are cited, including grade inflation during high school:

But the last cause on that list — high school grade inflation — is something that UCSD can’t fix. It is part of a far-reaching educational crisis that demands a much broader response.

The report said even the students admitted in 2024 who were most in need of remedial support had high school math grade point averages of better than 3.6 — and the difference in such GPAs between the least and most prepared entering students was very small.

If you're interested, here is one Math Placement Exam from UCSD, which you can take at home privately and for free.  It seems to start easy and get harder as you go along.  I didn't see these particular questions on this particular placement exam. 

Related:  Over the years I have hired a number of bright young neighborhood high schoolers to help me with yard and garden chores, and I sometimes challenge them with math and geometry puzzles from the mathematics category of this blog to ponder while they walk in diminishing circles behind a mower, or to take home to work out.  Last year I messaged a new puzzle to a high-school junior.  The correct answer came back in a few hours.  I told him I was impressed.  He said he and his friends couldn't figure it out, so they plugged it into ChatGPT...

New word for the day: neuston (or pleuston)

Fascinating video, and IMHO worth the time expenditure to watch.  As a child I was fascinated by the water striders and whirligigs in northern Minnesota lakes.  These "ripple bugs" are similar inhabitants of fast-flowing streams.  The role of hydrophobic legs has been documented long ago, but the details here re the fans and their deployment is awesome.

Now for the words and their etymology:

Neuston, also called pleuston, are organisms that live at the surface of a body of water, such as an ocean, estuary, lake, river, wetland or pond. Neuston can live on top of the water surface or submersed just below the water surface. In addition, microorganisms can exist in the surface microlayer that forms between the top- and the under-side of the water surface.

Neustons can be informally separated into two groups: the phytoneuston, which are autotrophs floating at the water surface including cyanobacteria, filamentous algae and free-floating aquatic plant (e.g. mosquito fern, duckweed and water lettuce); and the zooneuston, which are floating heterotrophs such as protists (e.g. ciliates) and metazoans (aquatic animals).

The word "neuston" comes from Greek neustos, meaning "swimming", and the noun suffix -on (as in "plankton"). This term first appears in the biological literature in 1917. The alternative term pleuston comes from the Greek plein, meaning "to sail or float". The first known use of this word was in 1909, before the first known use of neuston. In the past various authors have attempted distinctions between neuston and pleuston, but these distinctions have not been widely adopted. As of 2021, the two terms are usually used somewhat interchangeably, and neuston is used more often than pleuston.

Also interesting to note that "neuston" is both countable and uncountable, depending on usage.

Seeking address labels that support a charity

Many years ago I used return address labels from the National Wildlife Federation and other nature- and medicine-based charities.  Then I started printing my own labels using the Avery system of buying blank sticky labels and printing them at home with my name and address.  The last time I tried that, the process was hellishly frustrating, ending with the paper jamming in my printer and the sticky labels tangled in the gears.  I vowed in the future to buy directly from charities again.

But where?  A quick search this morning wasn't productive.  And my understanding of most label-printing services (like the Walmart pictured above) is that my $$ goes to Walmart or the check-printing company and not to the charity.  My "support" for the charity thus becomes having their name or logo microprinted on the label.  

I wonder if any readers are purchasing return address labels from charities.

Majestic irony indeed

For background reading on the meeting of King Charles with Trump.

"86" explained

This morning while doomscrolling I saw a headline indicating that the Department of Justice would be indicting former FBI Director James Comey "because he shared a photo of some seashells."  They are alleging that the "86 47" in the photo is indicative of inciting violence against the president.

Any idiot could look up 86 in Wikipedia:

Eighty-six or 86 is American English slang, generally meaning to "get rid of" someone or something.

In the hospitality industry, it is used to indicate that an item is no longer available, traditionally from a food or drinks establishment, or referring to a person or people who are not welcome on the premises. Its etymology is unknown, but the term seems to have been coined in the 1920s or 1930s.

There are multiple theories re the etymology, which you can read at the link.  Think of the countless hours expended by highly-paid attorneys on both sides, much of which comes at the expense of the public, and for no practical purpose.  I'm so tired of this shit.

A curious landscape feature in Italy

Explanation at the geography subreddit.

Iran's enriched uranium

Embedded above is a screencap from an impressive New York Times article explaining how Iran accumulated 11 tons of nuclear material.  

The graph depicts uranium at various "grades" from low-level (grayish) to enriched (darker) and weapons grade (blackish).

"As the stockpile kept growing, the Obama administration began talks to curb it.  In 2015, Iran and six nations led by the United States reached an accord that limited the purity of its enriched uranium to 3.67 percent and the size of its stockpile until 2030... Iran lacked a single bomb’s worth of uranium in 2018, when Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from the pact and reimposed a series of tough economic sanctions."

Continue reading at the link for more information.