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"Our very strange search for 'sea level.'"

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Russ Roberts (https://hawaiisciencejournal.blogspot.com).

 

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In today’s newsletter, learning to live between tides, and then: • Is A.I. making mothers obsolete? • Harris is winning at the Internet • A tech C.E.O. murder-mystery dinner party Our Very Strange Search for “Sea Level” As the oceans ebb and surge, staggering ingenuity has gone into inventing the measure. By Brooke Jarvis Illustration by Alexander Glandien In the mid-fifteen-hundreds, a Swedish peasant named Nils lived on an island called Iggön in the Baltic Sea. He was known to his neighbors as Rich Nils, apparently because of the plenitude of fish in the waters near his home and, even more lucrative, the seals that showed up to hunt them. There was one rock in particular where seals liked to haul themselves out of the ocean to rest and bask in the sun. Nils, for his part, liked to visit this rock with his harpoon. Eventually, though, Nils noticed that the seals had begun gathering on a lower part of the rock, rather than on the high point, as they once did. It seemed that the water level no longer gave them access to the very top. This was a troubling development for Rich Nils’s income: the high point now obstructed the path of his harpoon when he approached the rock from the shore. Keep reading Annals of A.I.  Annals of Artificial Intelligence Was Linguistic A.I. Created by Accident? Seven years after inventing the transformer—the “T” in ChatGPT—the researchers behind it are still grappling with its surprising power. By Stephen Marche Books Is A.I. Making Mothers Obsolete? Helen Phillips’s new novel takes place in a dystopian world where the environment has been devastated and humans have outsourced their best selves to tireless, empathetic robots. By Katy Waldman If you know someone who would enjoy Science & Technology, please share it. Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up. Kyle Chayka Illustration by Ariel Davis The Harris-Walz campaign’s TikTok team comprises five staffers under the age of twenty-five—and they’re crushing it. Maybe it’s because their bosses are decades younger than the opposition, maybe it’s just the over-all vibes, and maybe none of the posts will make any sense in the near future, but, as Kyle Chayka writes, “the moment is what matters.” Read more » Cartoon by Maddie Dai Dept. of Diversions Sketchbook Supplies Needed for a Tech C.E.O. Murder-Mystery Dinner Party A megayacht that emits smog clues, a candlestick that can testify before Congress, and more. By Ali Fitzgerald More from The New Yorker  Letter from the South Among America’s “Low-Information Voters” Donald Trump has dominated in polling of people who pay little attention to political news. What do they have to say? By Charles Bethea  Open Questions Should We Think of Our Children as Strangers? A new line of inquiry asks us to imagine them as random individuals who just happen to live in our homes. By Joshua Rothman P.S. This week’s blue supermoon occurrence is unlikely to happen again until the year 2037. But celestial obsession will carry on. In an investigation of the race by large countries and private companies to establish a permanent presence on the moon, Rivka Galchen comes across a poem by Neil Armstrong: “There were rocks and hills and a remarkable view / Of the beautiful earth that you know. / It’s a nice place to visit, and I’m certain that you / Will enjoy it when you get to go.”

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