A wildfire, forest fire, or a bushfire is an unplanned, uncontrolled and unpredictable fire in an area of combustible vegetation.[1][2] Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identified as a bushfire (in Australia), desert fire, grass fire, hill fire, peat fire, prairie fire, vegetation fire, or veld fire.[3] Some natural forest ecosystems depend on wildfire.[4] Wildfires are different from controlled or prescribed burning, which are carried out to provide a benefit for people. Modern forest management often engages in prescribed burns to mitigate fire risk and promote natural forest cycles. However, controlled burns can turn into wildfires by mistake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildfire

see Global Warming (more)

What Is A Civilization? In elementary school I was taught it was any social organization meeting 3 criteria: (more)

series of TimeLine-s from Big Bang to the present. (more)

Rebecca Wirfs-Brock: Rebecca’s Web – Live your patterns! Life after PLoP 2024. The 31st Pattern Languages of Programs, People, and Practice (PLoP) conference is a wrap! PLoP brings together practitioners and researchers who share an interest in exploring the power of patterns. (more)

Cedric Chin is providing a beta access for case study library related to the Idea Maze. If the case library really works as intended, you should feel marginally more comfortable the next time you go out to build a new product or initiative. (more)

Cedric Chin: The Idea Maze is a Useless Idea. In 2022, I launched an experimental series of cases on the ‘Idea Maze’. The term ‘Idea Maze’ is a Silicon Valley (or tech industry)-ism ; it was originally coined by former Coinbase exec Balaji Srinivasan and then expanded on in a subsequent essay by venture capitalist Chris Dixon. ((2022-08-23) Chin The Idea Maze Cases) (more)

Drew Breunig: The 3 AI Use Cases: Gods, Interns, and Cogs. We talk about so many things when we talk about AI. The conversation can roam from self-driving cars to dynamic video generation, from conversational chatbots to satellite imagery object detection, and from better search engines to dreamlike imagery generation. You get the point. (more)

Zvi Mowshowitz: AI #86: Just Think of the Potential. Dario Amodei is thinking about the potential. The result is a mostly good essay called Machines of Loving Grace, outlining what can be done with ‘powerful AI’ if we had years of what was otherwise relative normality to exploit it in several key domains (more)

ex-Governor of Massachusetts (more)

Contra Jeff Bezos' dream of returning to the Glorious Bundle of the Newspaper, I think we need to unbundle Journalism itself. (more)

Jason Benn: Neighborhood Update #11: the Village Retreat, Treehouse, and Cohousing. ...a one-square mile community of communities in SF that aims to recapture the vibes of a university campus, but for all generations. We’re part of a movement composed of coliving (one big rented house), cohousing (multiple adjacent owned houses), third spaces (community centers), and good vibes (I bump into friends once every 40 minutes around Alamo Square and Hayes Valley) (more)

Christopher Alexander book: A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction ISBN:0195019199. I'll probably abuse Fair Use rules here shortly (at Alexander Patterns). Because it's not just about architecture, but about Design Thinking for kids, families, education systems, work, etc. (more)

book about management cybernetics by Dan Davies ISBN:1788169549 (see Accountability, Pathological)

Summary: summarize every business model you're considering in a one-pager Lean Canvas, to force you to be clear about your plans/assumptions. (more)

A remix is an alternative version of a song, made from an original version. This term is also used for any alterations of media other than song (film, literature etc.). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix (more)

taking a piece of.... see music, graphics, statistics, quality assurance, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample, see also remix

Brandon Gardner talks to Jon Grover about How Red Seagulls, White Elephants and Golden Geese can show you your ideal customer. Inspired by Richard Tripp? (more)

Past and present reads. Bolded-titles were faves. See esp. Greatest Books (more)

I saw a toot from someone saying they suddenly couldn't read their Kindle ebooks that they bought more than 5 years ago - they had to re-buy them, then contact customer service for refunds! (more)