For some reason "AI is just like watching Netflix" is back in my feeds so I took that as a sign to update my data tracking for Netflix. The company's energy use rose 1% from 2021 to 2024.

Compare that to:

Google: 71%
Nvidia: 88%
Meta: 96%
Microsoft: 119%

Where are all the multi-gigawatt, tens-of-megatonnes gas-fired data centres being proposed by Netflix? Are governments frantically rushing fast-tracking laws for video streaming?

Happy second day of spring! (And blep.)

#dog #dogs #dogstodon #dogsofmastodon #spring #humor #humour

Yesterday I had a unique hiking experience. A music student from a local university composed an hour-long piece of music with more than 8 instruments. The music was based on the noises of different creatures in the wild as recorded by local wildlife researchers. So a different instrument was assigned to each noise. Yesterday, several musicians were placed in the valley of this hiking trail where the noises had originally occurred but that were now replaced with the sounds of their instruments. While this occurred, a small group of us hiked the trail.

It really did feel like the musicians were wild animals occasionally making noise in the wild. It was also an interesting experiment in keeping time with other musicians at great distances and playing off of each other. (There was an element of improvisation as well.) It ended in a culmination of them playing together, like the forest coming alive.

I wouldn’t buy the album, but I loved the wackiness and uniqueness of the experience and I feel like we need more of this in the world.

#BeSilly
#WackinessNow

EDIT: Adding a video sample.

If you take a Petri dish, castor oil and some ball bearings and put all in an electric field, you might happen to spot an interesting behavior: self-assembling wires who appear to be almost alive

[📹 Stanford Complexity Group]