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The Myth of Gear: Its not the Weapon, its the Warrior
a meditation on the Myth of Gear in modern climbing culture: over-reliance on equipment (especially by novice climbers) in the twin worlds of mountaineering & rock-climbing. You might have heard of the debate on big mountains about “expedition-style” vs. “alpine-style” ascents. In short, the first is how they did it in the olden days —…
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Why do We Risk Our Lives to Climb Mountains?
My recent adventures on the slopes of Mount Whitney (see 1 the initial summit & 2 the redemption mission), and the dancing with death that were a result of both, has me deeply thinking about the why of mountaineering. And not just for me — for Alex Honnold, for Scott Fischer — for anyone who chooses…
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Redemption: Whitney Gear Retrieval Mission : Doing it Right
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Mount Whitney Mountaineers Route is Very Real. Adventure. (Winter 2024)
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Rock Climbing 101: Key Findings from Joshua Tree 2024
I recently did a tech-free (well, aside from my camera) adventure in the blissful playground of Joshua Tree National Park. Casually led by 2 seasoned climber friends, we explored a number of rock climbing routes inside the park. I learned a few things. Read as both literal and metaphor. 1. Going Down is 3x harder…
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Roberts Five Laws of Robotics 2024
If you haven’t seen the writing on the wall — like this shiny Optimus robot model that is showing up in Tesla showrooms around the world — AI-driven humanoid robots are coming. And they’re going to need some prime directives. In tribute to Asimov, lets call them the Five Laws of Robotics. Musk states that…
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The Astonishing Age of Abundance : Quantum Compute, Fusion Energy, and UBI 2035
Welcome to 2024, Humans. The aim of this post is to set the stage for Human + AI + UBI optimism going into the new year. There may indeed be an AI Tsunami that radically shakes up human culture, politics, and economies… but that event (theoretically) ushers in the coming Age of Abundance. Whether this…
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The Rise and Fall of SF : A Modern Dystopia c.2023
I’ve lived in SF several times (1998, 2009, 2012, 2016), under several types of economic circumstances (millionaire, homeless, couch-surfing…), and with several “moods” (ecstatic!, curious, dark…) across the decades. And in all that time, I’ve never seen anything even remotely like what I’ve witnessed in the past year: lets just call it what it is:…
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AI and DNA 2030 : The Final Frontier
So, I had this vision of how AI and DNA would interact, many many years ago. I never actually published, so this is a first. Lets explore. When we have a broad swath of the human population sequenced, and we have superpowerful pattern-recognition AIs that can eat Big Data (petabytes? exabytes?) for breakfast, AND we…
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the Hollywood AI Writers Strike: a wild test flight for UBI v0.1
Hollywood AI. This odd portmanteau means many things to many people. Who thought it would, however, actually be the tipping point that pushed us materially towards a UBI (universal basic income) future? It all began with a simple Writers Strike. One of many issues on the agenda was “Hollywood AI Writers vs. Humans.” Astonishingly, the…
