Expert systems are already better able to diagnose illnesses than doctors. Have been for many years.
My contention that if allowed to expert systems would be far better at picking long-term partners than we ourselves are.
The future might once again be arranged marriages — but marriages arranged by machines, that nearly everyone participates in because they are so superior to what we’d choose ourselves.
One of my photos from ages ago, when I used to shoot models. This was shot on real black and white film, and developed by me in an actual dark room. I believe this was on Agfa 50 ISO film which was fantastically expensive but lovely, for any of you other old-schoolers out there.
The grain is intentional, for any of you used to the digital world — the whole idea of the photo was the distinction or lack thereof between the world and the body. Or some other pretentious shit like that; anyway, I like the photo even after all these years.
I was going to make a joke about Ram Dass, but not sure anyone would know who he is.
Anyway, I have a collection of burned CD- and DVD-ROMs that are from five to 13 years old. Remember how those things were marketed as good long-term backups?
Not so much! Of course that has been known for years.
But it’s true; of the oldest ones, about half the data is readable. A few of the disks do not work at all (though I tested them all when burned). Not the first byte can be read from them.
These are mostly photos I took on my old digital cameras, so no great loss. But still, if you have any older CD-ROMs or DVD-ROMs, pull the data off them now before it’s too late.