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Daily Archives: June 23, 2024

Explain That Stuff

“Want to know why giant ships can float, how your earbuds make music, what graphene is, or how windows can clean themselves? You’ve come to the right place! Here you’ll find simple explanations you can really understand—hurrah! Hard stuff… made simple! Explain that Stuff is an online book written by science writer Chris Woodford (author of many popular science books for adults and children). It includes over 400 easy-to-understand articles, richly illustrated with over 4000 photos, artworks, and animations, covering how things work, cutting-edge science, cool gadgets, and computers. We take the “pain” from explain and the “tough” out of stuff! There’s more information on this website than in your average expensive science book, it’s continually updated, and it’s completely free to use! Explain that Stuff also helps to support curriculum learning (conventional STEM education and home-schooling).” There are five simple ways to find what you want:

  1. A-Z index: Browse articles by name.
  2. Timeline: Find inventions by date.
  3. Random: Discover something new.
  4. Search: Use the search engine (at the top of each page).
  5. Teaching guide: Browse study topics.

11 steps to keep Meta from stealing your data to train AI

Deborah Copaken: “You only have until June 26, 2024 to say no to Meta taking your personal photos and words and using them to train their generative AI. Here are step-by-step directions for opting out…Facebook has led to all sorts of horrors, including an orange-haired, coup-instigating felon in the White House; Russian interference in our… Continue Reading

How do we know how many people died of Covid-19?

YouTube: “After four years and dozens of studies, we know everything we’re going to know about the death toll of the Covid pandemic. After four years and dozens of studies, we know everything we’re going to know about the death toll of the Covid pandemic. WELCOME TO HOWTOWN! Our small but mighty team of two… Continue Reading

Open Source LibreChat Offers More Than Just Extra LLMs

The New Stack: “With an interface inspired by ChatGPT, LibreChat offers an “enhanced” ChatGPT clone, an open source alternative with AI model selection as a main feature — while also providing additional features and customization options (including plugins for things like Retrieval-Augmented Generation). On the Practical AI podcast, LibreChat creator Danny Avila said he’s especially… Continue Reading

Visualizing Americans’ Preferred Payment Methods

Visual Capitalist – Charted: America’s Shift to a Cashless Society: “A cashless society is one in which financial transactions are conducted primarily through digital means rather than physical cash, relying on technologies like credit cards and mobile payments. While no country today has fully reached this concept, there are some (like China and South Korea)… Continue Reading

South Carolina poised to impose draconian censorship regime on school libraries

Popular Information: “On Tuesday, the South Carolina State Board of Education will impose a centralized and expansive censorship regime on every K-12 school library in the state. The new regulations could result in the banning of most classic works of literature from South Carolina schools — from The Canterbury Tales to Romeo and Juliet to… Continue Reading

Global warming and heat extremes to enhance inflationary pressures

Kotz, M., Kuik, F., Lis, E. et al. Global warming and heat extremes to enhance inflationary pressures. Commun Earth Environ 5, 116 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-01173-x – “Climate impacts on economic productivity indicate that climate change may threaten price stability. Here we apply fixed-effects regressions to over 27,000 observations of monthly consumer price indices worldwide to quantify the… Continue Reading

List of Free Adobe Software Alternatives

MakeUseOf: Free Alternative to Illustrator: Inkscape (Free, Open-Source) Free Alternative to Photoshop: GIMP (Free, Open-Source) Free Alternative to Lightroom: RawTherapee (Free, Open-Source) Free Alternative to After Effects: Linearity (Freemium) Free Alternative to Premiere Pro: DaVinci Resolve (Freemium) Free Alternative to InDesign: Scribus (Free, Open-Source) Free Alternative to Adobe Express: Canva (Freemium) Free Alternative to Acrobat:… Continue Reading