Just the Anthropocene, rolling along
The photo above was shared in a group I’m in. It was photographed by ornithologist and naturalist Robert Ridgway in November 1875. The tree is identified as an American Sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) in the lower Wabash River bottoms of Gibson County, Indiana, across the river from Mount Carmel, Illinois, Ridgeway’s home town. He recorded a diameter above the trunk swell of 10 by 15 feet, a height near 160 feet, and a crown spread of over 134 feet. This made it one of the largest trees recorded in North America outside of California.
While the land under this tree and others like it was likely cleared for farming, the ~7.8 million board feet of lumber consumed per year at its peak by the Showers Brothers Furniture Company (largest of its kind in the world, it was claimed) here in Bloomington also contributed mightily to deforestation of southern Indiana in the early decades of the last century. Here’s how Showers Brothers looked in its prime:
Bayard Rush Hall describes the before-and-after of forest clearing in his time. So does this.
By the way, we support the Sycamore Land Trust, which is restoring and protecting these kinds of trees, and much else.
That was quick
Techcrunch says Matt Mullenweg is back in charge of Automattic. That’s behind a trackwall, so I’ll go with Mary Hubbard’s tweet:
I’m relieved and pleased to see Matt Mullenweg return as CEO of Automattic, the largest financial contributor to the WordPress project. Having WordPress’s Co-founder and Project Lead at the helm gives me confidence that their support will remain strong. Matt has my support.
Good cure for optimism
Michael Burry, of Big Short fame, is shorting a bunch of AI stocks. On September 5th, he wrote, “Today is the AI extended version of the bubble that did not burst like it should have in 2021. It will be a doozy when it comes down.”
Axios: AI’s most powerful CEOs hit the brakes. Led by Anthropic’s Dario Amodei.
Cory: LLMs are real, AI is fake.
Or just read anything by Gary Marcus.
The anti-AI (and especially anti-data-center) narratives (the new word for stories) are many and widely held, while the guys (they’re all guys) running the shows have no counter-narratives. And the only person who seems to be for endless AI progress is Donald Trump.
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