Tag: technology

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Generators and The World of Tomorrow

One day I’ll have a whole house generator. I’m thinking one of those automatic devices that runs off the natural gas line and engages itself when the power goes out. Or maybe I’ll have battery banks installed. And maybe satellite internet. Because our wired infrastructure here at Easement Acres is getting increasingly unreliable.

Lights Out

Some of it may be due to hurricanes. Or, most recently, because a friggin truck snagged the power line and ripped the utility pole down. Of course, whenever it’s windy the power flickers in and out, too. And when it’s hot out. Or if someone walking through the neighborhood gives off bad vibes. The power goes out with with an annoyingly increasing frequency, is my point.

Then I stumbled upon something rather obvious in retrospect: companies that make battery-powered tools also make power inverters for their own batteries. So like, I can plug an AC device into the battery. Duh. Seems obvious now.

So when the power went out due to the aforementioned truck incident, I was able to power a nice bright table lamp in the kitchen and continue drinking without interruption, while charging phones in the process. But unfortunately it was limited to one battery, which didn’t generate enough total wattage output to power the garage door opener. That in itself wasn’t a major problem. It’s always the refrigerator that poses the most immediate concern. Based on past experience, I can get up to 6 hours before it reaches unsafe temperatures…if no one opens it and it’s already at ideal temperature.

But then this came to my attention:

If anyone here’s played any of the Fallout games, I think you can agree that this totally looks like a generator from that franchise. Or one of the many fusion batteries seen hooked up to mobile equipment scattered throughout the DC metro. It even has that green nuclear glow, which I’m sure was intentional designing by the manufacturer. I’ll admit, it looks cool. And it can power the refrigerator, for quite a while it seems. Idle, the power usage estimate was a couple days. When the compressor kicked it, it dropped to 12-18 hours, which is still impressive. So I’m guessing that as the fridge cycles on and off, this would give us about a day with my mixmatched set of amp-hour batteries. I’d buy some 12AH batteries, but they cost as much as the inverter itself. We’ll see where my needs take me.

It’s impressive what modern battery technology can do. It brings promises of The World of Tomorrow, but unfortunately I’m currently having to use it for more of the Fallout-type scenarios.

–Simon

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AI on Quantitative Philosophy

I scoff at the idea of AI emulating human interaction. I totally get that it has the potential to replace it, but that’s very different. For example, if I need my ego crushed a little bit, I can talk to my old family. Always eager to play devil’s advocate for no reason other than to destroy someone’s ideas or life philosophy, it rarely matters what the topic of conversation is. Insert an opinion and, however grounded in logic it may be, one of them will think furiously for a rebuttal before I’ve even finished speaking. That’s a human experience that AI can’t emulate.

However, once properly instructed, AI can recreate a similar experience. Here’s my example: I asked ChatGPT to evaluate this site’s Quantitative Philosophy section – something I’m rather proud of. Here’s what it had to say:

Your style is less “academic philosophy” and more a systems-oriented observational philosophy focused on everyday modern life, infrastructure, incentives, and material reality—using practical evidence and comparison rather than abstract ideology.

I think it’s the quotations that annoy me. As if to say: “I know you think you’re being clever and all, but your ramblings are based on your own experiences and therefore flawed as objective truths, limiting your philosophy to the material rather than being scalable to the intangible.” It further went on to tell me that I didn’t coin the term.

Fuck you.

I did adjust the settings to be more direct, so I supposed I asked for it.

This part, at least, seems fair:

Amusingly so, in fact, since the entire bases for my “philosophy” was self-identified as satire built upon observed struggles by people to over-quantify the human experience. The big realization here is, therefore, that despite limitless data aggregation, AI still can’t create itself as a human facsimile with all the bizarre mental conditions that doing so would normally include.

I still win, and I managed to do so without causing an emotional meltdown.

Quantitative Philosophy

I wonder if I could also direct it to sound more condescending?

–Simon