I like the term ‘citizen scientist,’ as it is flatters me. It keeps me pursuing goals. I’ll be that guy at the party who knows a little something. Let’s converse. Let’s look each other in the eyes for a moment.

I’m currently collecting rocks in local Seattle parks for an AI identification project.

We each have wells down which we can gaze. We know this. A smile is enough. The birds suddenly whirl-up and are gone. The conversation moves on. Tis better to have loved and lost, and all that.

Life is strange. Love is all?

You have a joy you keep close to your heart. Keep it there.

This one gets me: A man goes up to his attic to grab some things before a tornado arrives. He points the phone out, standing in place. Terrified? Mesmerized?

The monster approaches.

His life is engulfed, briefly, by Nature’s fury. His life must be engulfed, afterwards, in loss and despair.

With exponentially more computing power comes more input, and enough variables to recreate and predict actual tornadic conditions.

Step back from the terror; the place where death comes. Climb inside a supercell and see what might be going on. Supercells are rare. EF5 supercells are very, very rare.

Beautiful.

Storm-chasing attracts daredevils. I’ll bet there must be any number of douchebags on the circuit.

It takes courage. Some humility even. More video data and live, human experience can be collected into useful channels.

Better understanding can help save lives.

Sometimes, you take the wrong path, or make the wrong decision. You may not know it at the time, but you come to know it soon enough. An anti-cyclonic vortex bears down, roaring away at 200 mph.

This is it. Fuck. No. Please. Oh God.

No matter how much knowledge and experience you have, one wrong decision can cost you your life:

Keep looking up: Lightning can lead to the edges of our atmosphere, and into space.

What’s the weather like on Mars? Where’s all the water? Does it have conditions which still harbor life?

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

–W.H. Auden

–The Fall Of Icarus

Thanks to reader, Robin Saika:

‘Here is an interesting piece on it: https://www.winchestercollege.org/stories/About_Suffering_They_Were_Never_Wrong
The author reminds us that Auden also refers to Brueghel’s Census in Bethlehem, as well as to Icarus.‘