Update: Trucking
September 12, 2020
What started as a couple weeks of much-needed vacation turned into a long-term refuge away from the state of California, as wildfire smoke made our already-hobbled city almost unlivable. We're back home now, but the smoke came back with a vengeance right around the time that we did. This coming Monday, California---and much to the west coast---will have been burning for four straight weeks. Given that this is just the beginning of fire season, there's no end in sight.
So, I'm hunkered down here at home, with all the windows shut, and the HEPA filter running full blast, working on One Hour One Life. We can't go outside to get exercise, because the particulate count is so high. We're somewhat safe indoors, but with five people breathing away in a small, sealed house, our CO2 level has peaked above 3700 ppm. Yeah, that's "cognitive decline" levels of CO2. Please forgive any typos.
And so, with all that context, I bring you delivery trucks, which is something that I've been joking about in relation to One Hour One Life since the very beginning (from rocks and sticks... all the way up to delivery trucks!)
Not only can they hold a lot, but I've also been rethinking vehicle fueling, and these new trucks will last an entire lifetime (hour) on just one fill-up. That means that if you find an abandoned truck, you'll probably need some diesel to get it running, but if you're actively using it, you will be able to depend on it as long as you need it. This change in thinking may eventually trickle down to make the Crude Car more useful as well.
But besides updating OHOL this week (finally), and generally running from the smoke, what else have I been doing over the past two months? I've been working on a vacation project, which is live now:
http://projectdecember.net
This is the first publicly available interface that allows you to converse directly with the world's most advanced artificial intelligence. Over the past nine months, AI has become so good that it has gotten spooky. However, since it requires a full-time super computer to run it, it's pretty much out of reach for the average person. I've figured out a way to make talking to it affordable (just $5 to get started, as we collectively share the costs of the underlying supercomputer).
When you're talking to it, the sense of an intelligent presence is palpable. I never expected this to happen in my lifetime, but it's here, now. And it's really, really weird.
This week's VOG Shot features Malin Snow and her daughter Ida traveling along the very long road:
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