Lightning verses Trees – FIGHT!

Simulating Lightning‐Induced Tree Mortality in the Dynamic Global Vegetation Model LPJ‐GUESS‘ (pdf) is a nice little read about simulating global tree death rates due to lighting strikes. The methods they use to validate their model are interesting and, while the number they come up with (301–340 million trees of a diameter of greater than 10cm) seems rather large, it pales when compared to their cited number of 50 billion trees killed by all combined natural causes.

‘Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script’

Another aide-memoire so that I have the link kicking around…

There used to be a somewhat famous ThinkGeek teeshirt called ‘Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script’ that, even now, gets periodically referenced on the more tech-ish end of the internet. With ThinkGeek now lost to the mists of time, it’s not as easy to Google for as it used to be.

Continue reading “‘Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script’”

Support Your Local Police Movie

A rather beautiful shot of Serpico and the Twin Towers headlining the article.

The heroes likewise are strung along a spectrum from the hippie cop Frank Serpico, who nearly paid with his life for exposing the corruption of the New York force, to the uncouth ‘Popeye’ Doyle

The BFI website has quite a nice reprint (if that’s what we’re calling these things…) of a Spring 1974 article on the early 70’s explosion of US cop movies. Many of the movies talked about are ones that have passed me by and appear to have faded from memory, but it is interesting to see how films like Dirty Harry and Serpico were viewed and evaluated at the time.

Read Support Your Local Police Movie at the BFI website.

Using Machine Learning for Geoglyph Detection

PNAS has an interesting paper on using AI and Machine Learning to try and identify new Nazca Pampa geoglyphs in the Peruvian Nazca Desert. It’s a fun little lunchtime skim with a few nice images of some of the newly found geoglyphs.

PNAS: AI-accelerated Nazca survey nearly doubles the number of known figurative geoglyphs and sheds light on their purpose