Daylight saving time: SWITCH or DITCH

"An extra hour to your day - for free!"
DST clock by ChatGPT

DST has a lot going for it. The extra hour of light means more time outdoors, fewer accidents on the road and it feels good.  But the ‘step ahead’, ‘fall back’  gives our circadian rhythm a jolt. For ex. heart attacks jump when the Time Changes. Our CR balks.  

The CR clock in our brain  tells us when to sleep and when to wake up. It doesn’t dig change. So why don’t we make DST permanent. Good question. About 30% of the world’s  population has a sleep problem. Could Time Change be part of the problem.

In 2022 the American senate passed a law to make DST permanent. But it didn’t get through the house. They’re going to try to  again. According to the NYT Trump is all for it. If the US switches. Will other countries follow? Let’s hope. But don’t bet on it.

Sources: Economist, New York Times, Cleveland Clinic

July: Little Margie doc blog will be on vacation

Note: If DT is supporting permanent DST, that may be the first thing ever we agree on. I would love to have permanent DST. I couldn't care less whether it is light or dark at 4 am. But whether it's light or dark at 4pm... that really matters. Switching to regular time in the fall is like diving into eternal darkness, only to be brought back to life in the spring when DST is back on.

There's been a lot of push to make regular time permanent. I have no idea why anyone supports that idea, but that would be even worse than the switcharoo. It would make day permanently shorter.

My internal clock runs in 25 hour cycle, i think. If i was to be isolated in a room with no clocks or daily cycle, i would go to bed an hour later every day. And sleep in an additional hour in the morning. My hunch is that this applies to most people who are at their best in the evening. The morning people unfortunately rule the ball, so our nights are cut short by the alarm clock.

I feel like DST gives me that extra hour back, almost. And standard time robs it away.

CU

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Eki

Make a CHRISTIAN movie: they’re HOT

"A Christian Movie" by Flux, Veo 2, Suno and Eki.

Chockablock with copyright-free plots, characters - good guys and bad guys, saints and sinners, the bible is a mother-lode for Christian movie makers. Viewer potential is huge: 2.2bn Christians.  A Christian boom is in the zeitgeist. Even the highfalutin New Yorker magazine published a piece about Mary Magdalene (traveled with Jesus and witnessed his crucifixion). 

Studies tell us people who have a religion are happier and live on average three years longer. Catholics’ gobble up 50% of the 2.2bn. The other 50% are all sorts of ideologies. At a mega-church in Colorado, the preacher appeared in a Hawaiian shirt and belted out, ‘Jesus is the big Kahuna.’  

Pitched an idea to Eki for a 30 second Christian video. He balked. Said it would appeal to far right wing bigots. I changed the location from a run-down town in Texas to 5th avenue New York. He still didn’t bite. But said he’d come up with something. EKI! Can’t wait to see ’SOMETHING.’ 

Sources: NewYork Times, Economist, Wikipedia, internet, New Yorker magazine,  personal experience

Next week:  Daylight saving time: BAH HUMBIG!

Make a CHRISTIAN movie: they’re HOT


Note: Okay, some unpacking to do. We have never done anything because of market research, and we will certainly not start now. Second, neither of us are people of faith, so it would be dishonest to do an actual Christian movie, and being dishonest is not something we will start now either. Third, as said, it would not only be dishonest, it would implicitly support what is in my opinion a dangerous worldview.

I do not mean just MAGA, I mean faith.

Yes, faith is dangerous. I would go as far as to say faith is a cancer of the modern society.

"Why so?" one might ask - well, I will tell you why. Encouraging faith is encouraging gut feeling instead of knowledge. Glorifying unsubstantiated beliefs into something noble and more important than a trust in the observable truths. I, for one, am unwilling to contribute to that.

Trust is a belief held because of evidence. Faith is a belief held despite it.

So, i made "something".

CU
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Eki

BAD ASS BROS: Trump, Vance, Musk

Bad ass, and every other kind too, while at it.

TRUMP, super-salesman, is canny and charismatic but dumb.* He’s a tick on speed creating chaos. ‘Tariffs’ are his weapon of mass-destruction to wreak the world’s economy. His cabinet is full of kiss-my-ring kooks. Two months in office, his DOGE** launched by Elon Musk, has battered the Federal government. Dead serious about grabbing Greenland, chucking Palestinians out of Gaza to build a Riviera resort, running for a a 3rd term. DAMN the laws, the courts, the Constitution, full speed ahead.  GOD SAVE AMERICA.

VANCE, V.P. Caught up in the hilarious ‘gang of Signal Chat’ that  included the editor of  the ATLANTIC (respected US news magazine). The chatters rattled off top secret war plans, made salacious slurs against US ‘friends’. When the blabbers discovered their Big Mistake, they called the editor, (Jeffery Goldberg) a liar. He splashed the whole transcript, including. the ‘cute’ emojis. A bunch of school-yard tough guys, playing pro-pols. Trumps WANNABEs.

MUSK:  It’s rumoured that Musk takes ketamine to boost his strength and he-man image.  He usually travels with a couple of f his little kids.  Gives world leaders pep talks with X on his shoulder. Or  leads his DOGE band of teen-age digital storm-troopers to clear out Federal agencies - 10,000 Federal Health care workers were fired April Fools day. Lately he’s been in Wisconsin dolling out dollars (25m) for Rep candidate in the Wisconsin  Supreme court election April Fool’s day, Musk was handing our 100 dollar bills to get voters to sign a petition. Ha ha, the Democrat won.  GOD BLESS AVE AMERICA.

*Bret Stephens: centre-right OP ED NYTs

**DOGE:  Department of Government Efficiency

Sources: Economist, New York Times, Washington Post, Roberta Nelson

Next week:  Wanna make a lot of  MONEY:  make a CHRISTIAN movie

Note: I'm kind of tired of writing about the three stooges. Yes, they are wreaking havoc, yes, it is preposterous, dangerous and stupid, yes, if you wonder what it looked like if Russian assets ran the US government... yes, it would look exactly like this. Yes many times over to all that and more.

What gets my juices flowing is the fact that people wanted this, and cast their vote to make it happen. Many still support the madness. Fox news still cheers them on like nothing happened. And the left blames democrats like they always do, instead of taking the responsibility that they themselves are to blame too - every time they called Biden old, or Kamala inexperienced, or just criticized the dems for whatever like they always do... they helped make this happen. THAT is the real story, and it is not a pretty one - US citizens, look in the mirror.

I'm here in northern Europe, looking at you, hoping the same shit-show (ASS-show??) will not happen here. It is already too close, we have our own wannabe-nazis in the government too. And enough of OUR citizens wanted that. Some still do.

CU
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Eki

SCAMLAND where you get PIG-BUTCHERED

Pig-butcher by Dall-E

You’re on 'linked in'. You hook up with Anna, who lives in Singapore.  After about six month chatting online, she tells you how she got into crypto and doubled her investment.  She  can clue you in.  You take the bait. After you double your money, you decide to cash in. Poof, it’s gone. So is Anna. You’ve been pig-butchered.

Anna is a captive living in camp-town in Myanmar. If she doesn’t keep up the scams, she's punished.  Her minders don’t fool around. Torture is common. 

Scamming is a 500bn dollar business -  on par  with the illegal drug business without the product. Social media was made for scamming. A perfect site to nurture a pig, butcher him. when the scan pays off.  AI has escalated the danger.  If you get butchered, tell your friends. You might save potential pigs from getting the axe.  

Source: Economist

Next week:  BAD-ASS-BROS:  Tump. Vance. Musk 

Note: Okay, be careful out there. The best course of action in most cases is simply to ignore the threats. Do nothing. Do not reply to people you do not know in real life. If you get a message claiming you have been hacked, the hack likely is a psychological one: they try to make you panic and react, then get you the hook when trying to "fix" the non-existing hack. As said, ignore, do nothing. Be zen.

CU

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Eki

DEEPSEEK: new hot-shot on the block

A storm in a teapot by Flux1 dev AI

DeepSeek rocked Silicon Valley. Sent tech titans into a tizzy. Sam Altman, OpenAI boss is dead sure DeepSeek used OPEAI data. Nvidia, chip-maker , darling of investors, lost 500 bn.  The brouhaha ain’t over yet.

DeepSeek, a small hedge fund, used cheaper chips and less machinery to come  up with a super AI app. 

It cost approx. 6 m. Just after OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle had signed a 500 bn contract with Trump’s blessing. Oy very, have they got a headache.

Governments worry that the DeepSeek is tapping data - Tik Tok* was blocked by the US Supreme Court for that reason.  Researchers claim DeepSeek is peppered with propaganda. The Chinese Top Dogs worry DeepSeek’s  bite is bigger than theirs. Users don’t seem to give a rat’s ass. What comes next?  EKI! 

*Trump gave Tik Tok  a 75 day reprieve

Source:s: Economist, New York Times, Washington Post

Next week: SCAMLAND where you get PIG-BUTCHERED

Note: The DeepSeek storm in a teapot lasted a few days. It turns out, it's a pretty decent model, somewhat censored - but so are the US models, just on different topics. DeepSeek does not want to talk about Tianamen square, ChatGPT does not want to talk about sex. Both reflect the norms of the originating society.

The alleged low training cost of DeepSeek came with an asterisk. Yes, the final training run was cheap. No, that is not the cost of the development of the model, but rather just a small fraction of it. Anyway, the AI community has moved on, the brouhaha is pretty much history.

Today (18. of February - it is necessary to give exact date, not just a vague description like mid-feb, as the progress is so fast) X-Ai released Grok 3, the king of the hill for as-of-now. Last week it was Google's Gemini 2.0. That is unless you consider the reasoning models, where OpenAI:s o3-mini(high) was on top. DeepSeek belongs in the bubbling under category, together with another Chinese LLM, Qwen.

It looks like we're still at an exponential curve of progress. No-one knows how long that will last. Interesting times.

PS: I would not be surprised, if stiffling competition rather than real security concerns were behind the TikTok ban. Oh, and Trump had pretty much nothing at all to do with that 500 bn investment. The way i see it, this was a cheap way to buy influence into Trump administration for the companies involved - they did not really need to do anything more than tolerate being in the same room with Trump for a few minutes, while he took the credit for the investment that would have happened with or without him.

CU

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Eki

ELISA OY & INTRUM sue LITTLE MARGIE

Phoney gangster by Flux AI

It was Monday. I called Eki. He said, ‘you’ve been sued for 2euros, 40 cents.’  I called Intrum Justitia, the debt collector, it was 10 euros, 4 cents. And 308 euros 80 cents at the District Court. Elisa Corporate Service, host for Littlemargieproductions’ website, was the plaintiff.

The LMMP site was paid by direct debit. My bank stopped payments because Elisa’s bills weren’t the correct format. LMP was no longer a company.  I told Elisa to send the new E-bills to my personal acct. Or take down the site. When the site was till up, I assumed the bills were paid.  Big mistake.

My bank contact paid  the bills LMP’s former accountant received from Intrum collection agency*.  I called Elisa to verify. An agent told me the December bill was still due. I gave her a short version of  Elisa V LMP. She cancelled the December bill. Sent a verification and wished me a HAPPY NEW YEAR.

*I have an Elisa email but was never notified

**Because of macular degeneration I can’t use online banking  

sources; Elisa, Intrum, personal experience

Next week: Social media INFLUENCERS: world MARKETEEERS


Note: 

In my honest opinion, Elisa sucks as a company. It used to be a landline share co-operation (HPY) that worked to benefit all users, but has changed into a company that just maximizes profits for the stock market, charging more and more for their enshittifying services. Users be damned.

If I did not have a retro-grade e-mail address from the olden days I want to keep (kolumbus.fi), i would probably have already severed my ties with Elisa completely. I have changed to another ISP / phone company though.

For me, the camel's back was broken by them selling me 5G connection (to replace copper), that would be "twice as fast" as the landline version. In reality, i got 5 mbit/s from the promised 500 mbit/s. After way too much digging around and consulting the (paid) support line, i got a hold to a person that actually knew what was the issue. There simply are no 5G antennas near enough to my address yet - that did not stop them from selling and billing for it though. No refund offer, and they refused to change it back to landline. Competing service (DNA) got me that 500 mbit/s over cable, cheaper. And it actually works as advertised.

Now, let's not even get into that loan shark "service", Intrum Justitia. I think escalating that 2,40€ missing interest payment all the way to a court without properly contacting littlemargieproductions is not an outlier. I think it is a business model.

Despicable businesses, both of them.

CU

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Eki

UNCANNY VALLEY

Self portrait with LightWave 3D (Eki Halkka, 1999)

Eki has used AI in the LMP blog for approx. two years. It's been fun to watch the  leaps. Then he told me about Uncanny Valley - the creeps people can get when they're up close to a humanoid like AI-DA.  The AI that painted Alan Turing's portrait.*

In the article she was striking. Large eyes, a short black bob. I was okay until AI-DA cautioned US to be careful of AI. Her wide-open eyes, that  blank stare. She looked right through you. It was getting dark. I turned on all the  lights. Put on some music. Had  a drink. And tried to forget that blank stare.

In a poll I took nobody knew what "Uncanny Valley" was. But it's been round since the 1970s, coined by  Masahiro Mori, a professor at Tokyo University, when  AI was in its first throes. They may not know UV now, but they will. And it ain't fun.

*Alan Turing's portrait sold at Sotheby's for 1.8m

Sources: Economist, Guardian

Next week: CULT BRANDING:  big buck and loyalty

Animatronic Arnold (Orion Pictures, 1984)

Note: Uncanny valley has been the curse of my line of work, visual effects, for a long time. First, the animatronic puppets that were almost life-like, but not quite - see e.g. puppet Arnold Schwarzenegger the original Teminator. Then 3D animation, that was the same. Remember Polar Express, or the scorpion king from The Mummy returns? Firmly in the valley. 

At the highest level, the valley has been long crossed. The computer generated humans in big budget Hollywood productions have been convincing enough to go unnoticed for at least a decade. It's only when we know there must be shenanigans going on (resurrecting dead actors, or making old ones look young again) that we look carefully enough to tell something may be off.

Personally, I never put in the work (or perhaps just didn't have the talent) to create fully realistic close-up ready humans from scratch. Perhaps I never even made it into the valley - an early attempt from the last millennium (above) may serve as an example. Anyway, it still is not an easy task. At all. 

This said, there are tools like Epic Metahumans, and of course the AI tools we get to play with nowadays, that can pass the valley with flying colours, without needing a team of artists specializing on just this one thing full time for months on end to get results.

PS: Masahiro Mori is a roboticist, and Uncanny Valley was (and arguably still is) more about appearance and motion than artificial intelligence. Not to say that AI can't be spooky too ;-)

CU

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Eki