Aaahh... can you feel that ? Spring is in the air. And about time too, cause winter was behaving like a forgetful grandpa , constantly returning to pick up things they forgot. Overstaying their welcome. Its my favourite time of the year.. just warm enough to be outdoors, but cool enough to still have a light jacket on. Goes nicely with coffee.
And bikes ! Spring is undoubtedly the best time of year to get riding again. The humble bicycle should be mankind's finest inventions. It solves problems, is fun to use, and needs close to zero maintenance, and no charging (looking at you e-bike users). Bikes are virtually free, and require no insurance, registration, license, parking spaces, or any other hassle. They are so easy to own, and so incredibly useful and beneficial, with absolutely no drawbacks whatsoever to ownership. And yet somehow, there are adults out there – millions of them, ..... – who don’t even have a bike.I have been riding one since.. I turned.. 5 , I think ? Can't remember. And it surprises me that most people still don't have a bike.
Bikes are virtually free, and require no insurance, registration, license, parking spaces, or any other hassle. They are so easy to own, and so incredibly useful and beneficial, with absolutely no drawbacks whatsoever to ownership. And yet somehow, there are adults out there – millions of them, ......... who don’t even have a bike.
The fact is that the bicycle is still the world's most efficient way to travel, 52 years after it was first proven. Back in 1973, Scientific American magazine published an article written by S S Wilson, then a lecturer in engineering at Oxford University, in which he argued that the bicycle’s purpose was to “make it easier for an individual to move about, and this the bicycle achieves in a way that quite outdoes natural evolution.”
And along with that article was a graph, which charted the weight vs efficiency of most things that move on this green planet. The classic graph, reproduced countless times by engineers and cycling enthusiasts, has inspired figures as diverse as Steve Jobs, who famously compared the personal computer to “the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.” In the latest edition, the magazine have now updated that for modern times. This graph :
There are few things more nerdy that hearing an engineer waxing on the benefits of riding a bicycle: and Wilson does an excellent job staying true to form. He explained that while an unaided walking human consumes a fair amount of energy per distance traveled, a cyclist using a bicycle reduces energy consumption to roughly a fifth. In Wilson’s words: the cyclist “improves his efficiency rating to No. 1 among moving creatures and machines.”
Wilson also outlined practical ways to encourage cycling in cities: cycleways to reduce conflicts with automobiles, bicycle parking stations, transport of bikes by rail and bus, and public bicycles for “park and pedal” services. “Already bicycling is often the best way to get around quickly in city centers,” he noted.
His prescription for global challenges of transportation, health, and resource efficiency? “Cycle and recycle.” Wilson even applied his ideas practically, helping develop the Oxtrike cargo tricycle for developing countries.
The bicycle, as both Wilson and modern science attest, remains a triumph of efficiency and human ingenuity—one pedal stroke at a time.
But the biggest benefit of cycling ? Its just fun.
This is more of an open question, than a rant, though it might read more like the latter.
30 November 2022. According to Google, that is when Open- AI launched their flagship AI model : Chat-Gpt. We all know what happened next, the initial versions were full of bugs, and problematic, but eventually it improved. In the coming months, other competing tech companies release their own versions of AI models and applications.
So, By the end of 2025, humanity would have lived and coexisted with generative AI for three years. And the landscape has been permanently changed.
But how ? Well, lets see, there is still a lot of AI slop, incorrrect data and biases in the answers generate by AI, but things have slowly improved maybe ? But the real impact can be seen in the real world now, and some of the people most impacted are the folks who helped build AI in the first place.
Unemployment has grown. The first impacted were artists of all kind: painters, musicians, singers.. and even actors. The abundance of art available online was used to (sometimes illegally) to train AI models, which can now efficiently recreate original works, but heavily influenced by human artists. Work which was traditionally given to artists, everything from posters on the street, ads online to vfx and entire movies, are now delivered by AI. This resulted in a big strike in hollywood in 2023. After 5 months, an agreement was reached in hollywood on how to use AI, without replacing the human artist.
The next impacted seem to be everyone else: more and more office/desk work can now be automated via AI bots/agents, which can easily be trained to take over from a human. And the folks in technology seem to be hit pretty hard. The problem can be seen amplified in countries that do not have labour laws protecting the employees in place. Earlier this year, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) axed 12,000 employees in its largest-ever layoff round. Rival Infosys is touting AI bots it says can slash manpower needs by up to 35 per cent.
As of now, it is the youngest employees joining the workforce that are most impacted; and how ! They were keen on gaming the system by using AI, but seem to be losing at the final level. At first, students were excited about using AI to complete their course homework. Then the professors caught on: they started using AI to assign tasks , create new challenges, and even grade students work. But in the endgame, new graduates from universities are unable to land their first jobs. The reason: companies are now using AI to automate those entry level jobs, which were done by fresh graduates upto a few years ago.
This pattern , and problem, is now being reported from about every country in the world, and there does not seem to be an fix anytime soon. The reason probably is that companies do not see it as a problem in the first place, they are happy with the lower costs of running things, without the added 'baggage' of human resources. But eventually , the problem is going to overflow from fresh graduates, to even experienced working professionals.
So that got me thinking: what is the end game of this flow ? The way the world economy is setup, human beings are an necessary part of the whole flow.
It is the humans that consume goods and services, everything from groceries to 3k smart phones and millon dollar homes.
It is the humans that travel and spend on things they do and do not need.
It the humans that pay taxes, and vote in elections, and pay for utilities and services.
If every human being can be replaced by AI, who is going to buy all the goods ? You know, the same products that these AI embracing companies are producing. Banks need people to take out loans, that is what generates its revenue. Hospitality companies need poeple to travel, for work or pleasure, or their whole business will collapse, as was seen during the great COVID lockdowns. And every other private company is trying to sell something to a human a the end of their supply chain.
So eventually there are going to be things to be sold, but no one who can buy. Which is the technical definition of a recession.
Which is likely where governments are going to wake up to reality. The private companies are definitely going to self-regulate, it is in their best interest to profit off replacing humans. The most likely stop to this mess will likely come from federal governments stepping in to slow, and eventually stop the carnage. Some political party will have to take a hard stand, and work for the human again. You know ,the folks who actually vote and pay taxes.
This weekend is August 2, Saturday; and August 3, Sunday. For fans of Malayalam movies, these dates might stir memories from the plot of the 2013 Malayalam hit, Drishyam. In the second half of this trend-setter, the (antagonist) police investigation try to prove that the protagonist family were home on the 2nd during a crime being committed. The family, led by the patriach Georgekutty, consistenly prove that there were not home , and were visiting and stayin the nearby town.
So it finally happened. years later, they made a 6th sequel to the original Jurassic Park movie, trying to steal every dollar from us viewers. I had stopped watching the movies after the massive disappointment of movie 4. And had vowed never to watch another sequel in the theatres again. But you know life..is strange.
Now as I write this, the reviews of this new movie is polarised - 50-50. And that is so spot on. Some of the sequences in this movie are the silliest, and cheesiest of the entire franchise, much worse that the whole weaponizing-the-dinos bit. But some other sequences in this movie are the stuff of horror, easily the scariest bits of all the Jurassic movies so far. Its as if the movie was directed by two completely different people. But the bits I liked the most are parts where they clearly went back to Michael Crichton's original two novels for inspiration, and ..uhh..found a way to bring back that charm.
Like the whole T-Rex river sequence - my favourite part of Rebirth.. That whole plot point is from the first Jurassic Park novel. In the book Alan Grant and the two kids find a way back to the main complex. We are an inflatable boat on a river for hidden tunnels through a waterfall. (Fun fact: in the first novel, Lex is a 4 year old little girl crazy about baseball, and always carries a pitchers glove. Tim is older, an nerdier elder brother, protective of his little sister; they switched it around for the first movie. ) . To make this work in this movie story had to create an entire new family of father and two daughters and a straggler boyfriend. And they have re-created that sequence exactly as mentioned in the book. And it works, it really works. Then entire theatre watch completely silent for the entire seven minutes sequence.
And the whole supermarket mutadon sequence was clearly a callback to the kitchen sequence of the first movie.
But right in the opening minutes, they have copied a plot point from the second Jurassic Park novel. The secret facility is shown undone by a chocolate wrapper. In the book "The lost world" a character attracts velociraptors because they dropped candy wrappers.
And cue in the wonder - the inspiring , iconic music of the first movie returns in all its glory. But the sequence on which it is shot is just director Gareth Edwards copying off his first monster movie - two huge creatures embracing each other.
And red flares. Lots and lots of red flares.
If this movie works it entirely because they've gone back to their roots. There is something scary about bunch of humans visiting a monster infested island. Like King-kong, like the anaconda movies, even those alien predator movies - a bunch of silly humans in the territory of bad animals is just the recipe of a summer movie. But I am surprised that it took the studio so long to realise this and come to their senses. There is no place for logic in it, and is best enjoyed with that part of your brain turned off. And in a theatre with a huge screen.
Crichton had a genius idea. And Spielberg gave it wings. But everyone else is just making things worse with every sequel.
