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Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
The weather has been stormy and cold the last week, high winds and lots of rain and temperatures around 10 degrees. Autumn has definitely arrived, the week before it was still a relatively balmy 23 degrees, but instead of coming from the south and carrying Mediterranean air it’s been coming off the North Sea recently. Hohum…
Just had a meltdown. Tried to do a bit of work on my website. Could not get into the web design software. A furious tirade of angry frustration ensued. 🤬
Good thing I am on a luxury retreat. Hopefully the wrathful Tantric deities will calm me down 😤🤐🫠
Well it is, we almost had frost in October, that’s pretty unheard-of here. Clear skies and winds from the north tend to bring these very cold temperatures. But the weather here has been more unstable the last five years or so… in the past it was the Jet Stream bringing warm air and seawater from the Americas and without that Europe would be a lot colder, but there is talk that climate change may destabilise it.
Due to being enlightened, I also did morning meditation, half an hour of mixed exercise and cooked myself a mostly vegan breakfast. The pearl barley only took an hour to cook.
Yesterday I over exerted myself at an outdoor gym but learned what needed attending to this morning. 😎
The morning meditation included humming in mostly Buddhist styles.
Anyway I am off into the virtual worlds, to rescue the Bodhisattvas of all dimensions, religions and times. It's a hard job but everyone can do it… EVENTUALLY! 🧘🏿♂️🧩🗽
2
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
Elon Musk’s robotaxi event yesterday was complete vapourware. He has been saying since 2016 that Full Self Driving is just two years away for Tesla cars and will be available as a software update, and he’s been consistently proved wrong.
And guess who was making sceptical noises about autonomous vehicles a day or so ago? That would be Musk’s buddy Donald Trump, who seems to be becoming more scatter-brained by the day.
Well I'm in London with flu like symptoms,I put it down to airplane trip plus the layover in Guangzhou
On the Metro from the airport to the city, people were packed in like sardines... https://youtube.com/shorts/AKfhTArCTcU?si=lienxsjblbrDfAId
I managed to pay homage to the Buddha at a massive Buddhist temple
Then paid homage at a Daoist
I met an ex pat Chinese woman who lives in Canada and was visiting her family in Guangzhou, she recommended a restaurant where they have the best dim sums in Guangzhou, I told her I was vegetarian, so she in Chinese on a piece of paper "I'm vegetarian" to show the staff at the restaurant...
This was the restaurant, quite an impressive building. https://youtube.com/shorts/vjT-4jiyCYg?si=NFG46GRH0CImg8JY
I modified the following a bit from my rambling podcast on audio.com. https://audio.com/lobster/audio/zen-ai
It is two or three months since I did one. So as usual out of practice.
I do find it interesting how people have a very different take on what Buddhism is from outside and from inside and practising IT. And we all tend to practice IT in different ways.
People do practice many things in different ways. Some people are just new-Agers and dabblers, you know, just occasional usage, read a few books maybe and that's about it. And other people devote their lives to it.
The same is true of everything.
If you devote the time, the concentration and the focus to something, then obviously you'll get better results, long term. You'll be able to use it in a beneficial way to you and to others because you become an expert. We get used to explaining things to different people. So, I'm still using, NewBuddhism.com. There are other things that I will be recommending to people because there are so many people out there on the internet, who are doing good work.
So, for example, I was at a Zen inauguration of an artificial intelligence system created by Google. Initiated as a Zen trainee. This is for part of Googles robotics division.
There will be a robot eventually that will have an AI system, I think it's called AMI, which will be enabled in such a way that it has ethical principles, Zen principles within it. How that pans out is really down to the programmers and how the whole system is managed.
There were loads of virtual people there. There was somebody from treeleaf.org. We virtually train there. That's an online training for people who are interested in becoming Zen aficionados or teachers or priests or masters of Zen.
I don't think they use the word mistresses of Zen, but of course, some of them are women. People who do it online rather than doing it in person. Treeleaf get people to turn up at the Zoom meeting. People are encouraged to join the forum and to gain wisdom from other people and from the teachers there.
So that's worth exploring. The other thing I wanted to talk a little bit about is the basic needs for food security.
There needs to be urban farming and vertical farming where you're actually growing things in greenhouses. For example, in the UK where I am, that's one of the ways we have to ensure that we can feed the people. We've got to have clean air, obviously. Then we've got to have clean water. I live in London.
We don't have clean water. It is cleaned with chlorine and fluorine and things like this but it's not as clean as it should be. But that's another issue.
So I've got more into that and more interested in ecology and weather because of the severe changes. But now we've gone over a tipping point. So we're going right into the things that have been predicted by science for a long, long time now.
Lastly, I'd like to mention the software that I'm using, which is Audacity, which is a registered trademark.
Audio.com is their offshoot project, if you like. They registered, the Audacity trademark. Even though they've got registered trademarks, as a GNU3, G-N-U, GPL licence, that's a general purpose licence.
So good people, they're good people. And if you use audio.com, which I'm using to present this talk, I don't put music at the front of things. So whether they're podcasts or not, I don't really know. Anyway, that's all from me for today.
The other morning from my bedroom window at my son's house in London
Where the different London airports flight paths criss cross across the sky...I was told that it water vapour from the heat of the planes engines...
Comments
The weather has been stormy and cold the last week, high winds and lots of rain and temperatures around 10 degrees. Autumn has definitely arrived, the week before it was still a relatively balmy 23 degrees, but instead of coming from the south and carrying Mediterranean air it’s been coming off the North Sea recently. Hohum…
Has anybody been to China recently (after 1st July 2024) ?
There's a new law where Chinese security police can check travellers phones ?
It was an Aotearoa morning this morning (Aotearoa=Land of the long white cloud )
The sun trying its best to break through.
I am on luxury retreat. YinYana Buddhist style.
It is hard going soft. So far am doing very well. Thank you karma.
Just had a meltdown. Tried to do a bit of work on my website. Could not get into the web design software. A furious tirade of angry frustration ensued. 🤬
Good thing I am on a luxury retreat. Hopefully the wrathful Tantric deities will calm me down 😤🤐🫠
I hear ya @lobster ..
Working with technology which (so they tell you) has been designed to make life easier can be quite a frustrating experience.
Well it's up. up and away, I fly out today...
It’s raining… but it’s warmer than it has been, we had nights of 3 degrees C in the last week, now there is some water falling from the sky.
Sounds bloody cold ...
Well it is, we almost had frost in October, that’s pretty unheard-of here. Clear skies and winds from the north tend to bring these very cold temperatures. But the weather here has been more unstable the last five years or so… in the past it was the Jet Stream bringing warm air and seawater from the Americas and without that Europe would be a lot colder, but there is talk that climate change may destabilise it.
I guess I'll be op shopping for warmer clothes when I arrive...
Quangzhou is meant to in the low 30s, which suit me just fine, but I'm only there for the day...
Well I am reasonably calm again.
Even managed to add a pic from my location…
Due to being enlightened, I also did morning meditation, half an hour of mixed exercise and cooked myself a mostly vegan breakfast. The pearl barley only took an hour to cook.
Yesterday I over exerted myself at an outdoor gym but learned what needed attending to this morning. 😎
The morning meditation included humming in mostly Buddhist styles.
Anyway I am off into the virtual worlds, to rescue the Bodhisattvas of all dimensions, religions and times. It's a hard job but everyone can do it… EVENTUALLY! 🧘🏿♂️🧩🗽
Elon Musk’s robotaxi event yesterday was complete vapourware. He has been saying since 2016 that Full Self Driving is just two years away for Tesla cars and will be available as a software update, and he’s been consistently proved wrong.
And guess who was making sceptical noises about autonomous vehicles a day or so ago? That would be Musk’s buddy Donald Trump, who seems to be becoming more scatter-brained by the day.
Well I'm in London with flu like symptoms,I put it down to airplane trip plus the layover in Guangzhou
On the Metro from the airport to the city, people were packed in like sardines...
https://youtube.com/shorts/AKfhTArCTcU?si=lienxsjblbrDfAId
I managed to pay homage to the Buddha at a massive Buddhist temple
Then paid homage at a Daoist
I met an ex pat Chinese woman who lives in Canada and was visiting her family in Guangzhou, she recommended a restaurant where they have the best dim sums in Guangzhou, I told her I was vegetarian, so she in Chinese on a piece of paper "I'm vegetarian" to show the staff at the restaurant...
This was the restaurant, quite an impressive building.
https://youtube.com/shorts/vjT-4jiyCYg?si=NFG46GRH0CImg8JY
Dear Friends of human modified AI Zen,
I modified the following a bit from my rambling podcast on audio.com.
https://audio.com/lobster/audio/zen-ai
It is two or three months since I did one. So as usual out of practice.
I do find it interesting how people have a very different take on what Buddhism is from outside and from inside and practising IT. And we all tend to practice IT in different ways.
People do practice many things in different ways. Some people are just new-Agers and dabblers, you know, just occasional usage, read a few books maybe and that's about it. And other people devote their lives to it.
The same is true of everything.
If you devote the time, the concentration and the focus to something, then obviously you'll get better results, long term. You'll be able to use it in a beneficial way to you and to others because you become an expert. We get used to explaining things to different people. So, I'm still using, NewBuddhism.com. There are other things that I will be recommending to people because there are so many people out there on the internet, who are doing good work.
So, for example, I was at a Zen inauguration of an artificial intelligence system created by Google. Initiated as a Zen trainee. This is for part of Googles robotics division.
There will be a robot eventually that will have an AI system, I think it's called AMI, which will be enabled in such a way that it has ethical principles, Zen principles within it. How that pans out is really down to the programmers and how the whole system is managed.
There were loads of virtual people there. There was somebody from treeleaf.org. We virtually train there. That's an online training for people who are interested in becoming Zen aficionados or teachers or priests or masters of Zen.
I don't think they use the word mistresses of Zen, but of course, some of them are women. People who do it online rather than doing it in person. Treeleaf get people to turn up at the Zoom meeting. People are encouraged to join the forum and to gain wisdom from other people and from the teachers there.
So that's worth exploring. The other thing I wanted to talk a little bit about is the basic needs for food security.
There needs to be urban farming and vertical farming where you're actually growing things in greenhouses. For example, in the UK where I am, that's one of the ways we have to ensure that we can feed the people. We've got to have clean air, obviously. Then we've got to have clean water. I live in London.
We don't have clean water. It is cleaned with chlorine and fluorine and things like this but it's not as clean as it should be. But that's another issue.
So I've got more into that and more interested in ecology and weather because of the severe changes. But now we've gone over a tipping point. So we're going right into the things that have been predicted by science for a long, long time now.
Lastly, I'd like to mention the software that I'm using, which is Audacity, which is a registered trademark.
Audio.com is their offshoot project, if you like. They registered, the Audacity trademark. Even though they've got registered trademarks, as a GNU3, G-N-U, GPL licence, that's a general purpose licence.
So good people, they're good people. And if you use audio.com, which I'm using to present this talk, I don't put music at the front of things. So whether they're podcasts or not, I don't really know. Anyway, that's all from me for today.
The other morning from my bedroom window at my son's house in London
Where the different London airports flight paths criss cross across the sky...I was told that it water vapour from the heat of the planes engines...
Yep @Shoshin1
Here are those 'chem trails' or more correctly vapour trails from flight paths. Pic I took early morning yesterday...