Lifestyle
High winds toppled 70 trees and closed California Botanic Garden. Here’s how to help
When the Santa Ana winds stormed by means of Southern California on Jan. 21, they toppled bushes and knocked out energy in a lot of Claremont, however Lucinda McDade, govt director of California Botanic Backyard, was principally nervous about frozen seeds — embryos for the 1000’s of uncommon crops within the seed financial institution of the state’s largest botanic backyard devoted to native crops.
She heard the winds shrieking that evening and nervous that the ability outage would begin thawing the seeds, so she was up round daybreak attempting to get backup energy restored on the backyard. She knew the principle gate could be ineffective as a result of it’s power-operated.
What she didn’t count on is that 70-plus bushes and a blizzard of fallen branches, leaves and particles would make the remainder of the backyard impassable.
“The weird factor is that Claremont is normally fairly shielded from the winds. Folks will name and say ‘It’s blowing 60 mph in Fontana!’ however after I look out my window, my oak tree is waving just like the royals do, sluggish and delicate,” McDade mentioned.
However round 9 p.m. on Jan. 21 she might hear the wind tossing issues round on her patio, and it practically yanked her door off its hinges when she went outdoors to research. The facility went out and she or he made a plan to go to the backyard early the following morning — a Saturday — to verify the backup generator was working.
It wasn’t, however restoring energy to the freezer was a comparatively fast and straightforward repair, she mentioned. Cleansing up the massive fallen bushes, mountains of palm fronds and ankle-deep piles of particles has been one other matter.
The backyard has been closed because the wind storm, and McDade mentioned it should stay closed till the bushes blocking trails or threatening to fall have been eliminated.
Fortunately, two of the backyard’s most well-known bushes withstood the winds — the Majestic Oak, the oldest oak on the grounds, and the tall Boojum tree within the again reaches of the backyard.
However many different bushes have been both fully uprooted, or partially blown over badly sufficient to sever their essential roots and require their elimination, she mentioned, including that one of many saddest losses was that of a uncommon island dwell oak, which normally grows solely within the Channel Islands and elements of Santa Barbara County.
The backyard has a catalog of each tree in its 86 acres, however it may well’t freeze the acorn seeds that permit them to be replanted, McDade mentioned. “They flip to mush after they come out of the freezer,” she mentioned, so the backyard’s horticulturists should go to native stands of the broken oaks to collect extra acorns for replanting.
Backyard employees who usually work desk jobs have been out with rakes and shovels final week, clearing the walkways, she mentioned. “It appeared prefer it snowed 6 inches of leaves, branches and sticks on all the paths.”
After which there was the small mountain of palm fronds that needed to be faraway from the doorway to the executive workplace. the wind knocked out all the skirt of brown fronds on a California native fan palm subsequent to the constructing, breaking out a third-floor window, destroying a cover and blocking the principle door.
“It took no less than 4 truck masses to haul all of them away,” mentioned Amanda Behnke, California Botanic Backyard’s director of development.
McDade mentioned she hopes to reopen no less than the entrance 35 acres of the gardens within the subsequent few weeks, after the bushes are eliminated, “however proper now it appears like a conflict zone, with heavy gear operating round and bushes all around the floor.”
Volunteers will possible be wanted subsequent winter when the backyard begins replanting, however the broken bushes and crops have to be cataloged and eliminated first. The backyard doesn’t do planting within the spring or summer time as a result of the warmth can harm tender seedlings, so replanting possible received’t begin earlier than late fall or the winter, McDade defined.
Within the meantime, the massive precedence is getting the backyard secure sufficient for guests. Backyard employees might solely achieve this a lot to assist with the cleanup, Behnke mentioned. “We’ve to rent specialised arborists to securely take away these bushes — we will’t simply have volunteers operating round with chain saws — and sadly insurance coverage doesn’t cowl eradicating bushes which have fallen down.”
The cleanup is anticipated to value no less than $100,000, and “at this level we’ve got an enormous deficit — no less than $75,000 — to getting it paid,” Behnke mentioned.
Individuals who need to assist ought to contemplate making a monetary donation to the backyard, McDade mentioned, after which plan on visiting often as soon as it reopens, to assist replenish its coffers.
One other manner to assist? Turn out to be a member. Annual memberships begin at $50 for people and $85 for households and supply limitless admission to California Botanic Backyard plus reciprocal admission to 300 different botanic gardens in North America, together with 35 in California.
It is a time when native crops begin blooming, so McDade is keen to open the gates. “I do know the backyard is a part of the psychic wellness plan for thus many individuals who come to stroll it each day,” she mentioned. “I received so many messages through the pandemic [when the garden was closed] from individuals saying, ‘I’ll by no means take the backyard with no consideration once more.’
“However the backyard remains to be stunning. There are massive areas that seem like nothing occurred … The interplay of the wind with the bushes is a fickle factor. It’s unhappy, however we’ll be again.”
Lifestyle
Writer Ted Chiang on AI and grappling with big ideas
Science fiction author Ted Chiang wishes he could write faster.
His entire body of work from the last 34 years almost completely fits into two book-length collections of short stories, and he says he feels the pressure that many writers do — to be more prolific.
“I can’t claim any moral high ground or deliberate strategy. It’s mostly just that I’m just a very slow writer,” Chiang said.
But each of his stories is meticulously crafted, the result of big philosophical questions that gnaw at him for months or even years. And he is no stranger to success: His novella-length “Story of Your Life” was the basis of the film Arrival. Many of his works have won science fiction’s highest accolades and prizes.
Chiang recently added another prestigious award to that list. He is the recipient of this year’s PEN/Malamud Award, which celebrates “excellence in the short story.”
Chiang sat down with All Things Considered host Scott Detrow to talk about his writing process, the philosophical ideas that undergird science fiction and why he doesn’t think AI is capable of making art.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
Scott Detrow: I want to start really broadly because I think so many of your stories seem to be asking big questions, whether it’s how humans would behave when they encounter a disruptive new technology, or an alien race, or the physical presence of God. But then all the stories come back to the human reaction to that, as opposed to the existential problem itself. When you’re coming up with these stories, do you start with the big question? Do you start with the character? Where does your mind typically drift first?
Ted Chiang: I usually start with what you would call “the big question.” I am interested in philosophical questions, but I think that thought experiments are often very abstract, and it can be somewhat hard for people to engage with them. What science fiction is good at is, it offers a way to dramatize thought experiments. The way it happens for me is that ideas come and ideas go. But when an idea keeps recurring to me over a period of time, months or sometimes years, that is an indicator to me that I should pay more attention to this idea, that this idea is gnawing at me. The only way for me to really get it to stop gnawing at me is to write a story.
Detrow: In the last year or so, you’ve published a series of articles in The New Yorker taking a critical look at AI and often making arguments that this is being framed the wrong way when popular culture talks about artificial intelligence [or] large language models like ChatGPT. What is it about AI in this moment that interests you?
Chiang: As a science fiction writer, I’ve always had a certain interest in artificial intelligence. But as someone who studied computer science in college, I’ve always been acutely aware of the vast chasm between science-fictional depictions of AI and the reality of AI. I think the companies who are trying to sell you AI benefit from blurring this distinction. They want you to think that they are selling a kind of science-fictional vision of your superhelpful robot butler. But the technology they have is so radically unlike what science fiction has traditionally depicted.
Detrow: In one of these essays that I think perhaps got the most attention, you were making the argument that AI is not going to be making great art. Can you walk us through your thinking, your argument about the fact that ChatGPT probably isn’t going to write a great novel or DALL-E is not going to be creating really valuable fundamental works of art?
Chiang: So the premise of generative AI is that you, as the user, expend very little effort, and then you get a high-quality output. You might enter a short prompt, and then you get a long piece of text, like a short story or maybe a novel. Or you enter a short prompt, and then you get a highly detailed image, like a painting. You cannot specify a lot in a short text prompt. An artist needs to have control of every aspect of a painting. A writer needs to have control over every sentence in a novel. And you simply cannot have control over every sentence in a novel if all you gave was a pretty short text prompt.
Detrow: Tying this back to your fictional work, I think a lot of your stories will propose a new innovation or a scientific discovery that just rocks the society that it comes upon. Is it fair to say that, at least when we’re talking about generative AI, when we’re talking about AI in the current conversation, is it fair to say that you do not see it as that kind of game-changing development?
Chiang: I think that generative AI will have massive repercussions, not because it is fundamentally a transformative tool, but because companies will be quick to adopt it as a way of cutting costs. And by the time they realize that it is not actually that effective, they may have destroyed entire industries. But in the meantime, they might have made a lot of short-term money. And it costs thousands or millions of people their jobs.
Detrow: There are these big societal changes in your pieces. But in a lot of the stories, the main character won’t necessarily change that much of their identity. Whatever massive shift is happening seems just kind of to confirm their sense of purpose or their sense of identity. I’m wondering how you think about that, and if you think that’s maybe a hopeful takeaway from some of these stories.
Chiang: So, I would say that big technological changes, they often will demand that we kind of rethink a lot of things, but they don’t automatically change our fundamental values. If you loved your children before, you should continue to love your children — there’s no technological advance that will make you think, “Oh, actually, loving my children, I guess I’m going to discard that idea.” So, I wouldn’t say that the characters are unaffected or that they just go on being the same. It’s more that they hopefully find some way to live, which allows them to be faithful to their core beliefs, their core values, even in the face of a world that has changed in a very unexpected way.
Lifestyle
I got a butt massage by an AI robot in L.A. Here’s how it went
My first meeting with Aescape, the AI-powered massage robot, was benign enough — if a bit eerie. As if HAL had gotten a job in the Valley. I stepped into the austere spa room at Pause, a wellness center in Studio City, and a sturdy massage table commanded the space. It was deep-sea blue and plush, glowing from LED lights that lined its base. Its enormous, sculpted robot arms promised a unique spa experience.
Yes, I was about to get a transformative butt massage by an AI-powered masseuse.
Aescape sparked a media frenzy when it debuted in New York in August at a handful of Equinox gyms. This week, it arrives in Los Angeles. Aescape will open its robotic arms for business Friday at Pause.
I got a sneak peek, however, the day before Thanksgiving. Upon arrival, I slipped into specialized compression wear that the Aescape company provided for optimal friction; no oil is required for this massage.
After lying on the table belly down, my face nestled into a padded cradle, I selected my playlist on a touch screen (beach house to start, then relaxing piano music). I quickly forgot about the overhead depth sensors and surrounding robotics and drifted into calm. And although I longed for the intimacy of a human masseuse, I found it to be a surprisingly decent session. Here’s how things went.
First, four high-resolution infrared sensors took a 3D scan of my body from above, mapping 1.2 million data points — every curve and asymmetric point on my frame, much to my chagrin — so Aescape could pinpoint where I was on the table and better target my specific body parts. Then its hulking robot arms reached up and around my torso, before beginning to massage me.
Aescape has heated “hands,” which look like giant pads with touch points on their undersides. They’re modeled after the way a massage therapist uses their body parts as tools, kneading with the blade of the hand at one point, then pressing or rolling with the heel of the palm, the elbow or forearm. I’d selected gentle intensity, so Aescape kneaded slowly and deliberately around my scapula at first, then applied light rolling pressure along my spine, mid-back. It didn’t feel exactly like a human hand; but surprisingly, I wasn’t creeped out, either. Instead, the experience mirrored that of a sophisticated massage chair in horizontal — not as effective as an actual person but still providing much-needed relief in key areas.
The Aescape massage is totally customizable. You dictate the kind you want — I chose “total back and glutes,” but “upper and mid-back focus” and “lower back, glutes and hamstrings focus” were also offerings. You can also use the touch screen to control the intensity of your massage as it’s underway, increasing or decreasing the pressure, or pausing altogether.
Aescape is the brainchild of Eric Litman, a self-described serial entrepreneur who suffered from neck pain due to a bulging disc and needed daily massages, even while traveling internationally. That’s a headache to schedule, especially when there’s a shortage of massage therapists in the U.S., according to the International Spa Assn.
As a solution, Litman imagined a “fully automated, customizable massage experience,” with the goal of “bringing personalized wellness robotics to the masses,” as the Aescape company describes its mission. Litman founded the robotics company in 2017 and by November 2023, it had $85 million in funding from technology, wellness and hospitality backers.
“The intent was to build a product that addressed the needs of people like myself who struggled with getting the specific massages that their body needed — whether that’s because of a lack of therapist availability, a lack of consistency among therapists or just the desire for a very personalized experience,” Litman said in an interview. “So what we’ve built is something that caters remarkably well to all three of those needs. It’s accessible in many ways: It’s easily booked, it’s usable by people who wouldn’t otherwise be comfortable getting a massage [by a human] and it puts you in control, allowing you to get the specific massage you want at that moment in time.”
Then there’s this — for better or worse, AI masseuses don’t need breaks to rest their hands. They’re the ideal employees.
“It can operate 24 hours a day,” Litman said. “So it can be available at 11 at night, hours when you’re unlikely to find a masseuse available.”
The Aescape company plans to roll out tables at spas, hotels and fitness centers as well as at corporations, for office workers, nationwide. In addition to its New York and L.A. locations, Aescape tables are now operating in Miami, Baltimore, Nashville, Atlantic City, N.J., and Orlando, Fla. One will debut at the Ritz-Carlton Bacara in Santa Barbara on Dec. 16. Users can find nearby Aescape tables and book sessions on an app.
Software engineers offer frequent updates to the Aescape tables on the types of massages available or the music you can listen to. A holiday playlist was added just this week, for instance.
However, Aescape is not cheap: $60 for half an hour, $120 for an hour.
It’s also not as intelligent as I’d hoped. Aescape knows where your body parts are located in space, so as to target the areas you’ve selected for your massage. But the feature allowing it to intuit areas of tension that need massaging hasn’t been rolled out yet, Litman says. However, it is getting smarter, he adds.
“It will continue to learn from all the massages that we give, across all our tables,” Litman says, “and allow for people to get a much more customized, precise massage experience.”
As a massage junkie, I prefer the warmth and responsiveness of human touch.
Even so, Aescape gave me a pretty decent massage. I had run stairs the day before for exercise and my glutes were sore. The robot masseuse kneaded my butt in just the right spots and even relieved shoulder tightness from hours of typing at my desk.
And as a bonus, it didn’t interrupt my massage with chitchat.
Lifestyle
An 84-year-old pop superstar just dropped an album — how does she sound so good?
Mina, one of the bestselling Italian musical artists of all time, just dropped a new album — at the age of 84.
She’s not a household name in the United States, though audiences in this country might recognize the performer’s unmistakable voice from the Netflix series Ripley, the HBO series The White Lotus, and the Pixar animated feature Luca.
But in her native country, Mina has been worshipped for decades — especially because of her powerful and distinctive voice.
“All generations have always identified with her voice and with her albums,” said Rome-based musicologist and music critic Paulo Prato.
Prato said Mina sings in many languages and is constantly reinventing herself.
“She can sing pop music, opera, jazz, rock and roll,” he said.
Retreat from the stage and the media
Like Barbra Streisand, another singer with an enduring career and a voice for the ages, Mina has sold more than 150 million records worldwide. But unlike Streisand, who has given live concerts over the past decade, Mina hasn’t performed in public since 1978.
“She chose to focus on recording and making the music she wanted to,” said independent scholar Rachel Haworth, who is based in the U.K. and has written a book about Mina.
Mina also doesn’t give media interviews. Haworth said the last time the general public was offered a glimpse into the artist’s creative process was in 2001, in a video live-streamed from her recording studio.
“It broke the server, because so many people wanted to see it,” Haworth said.
Signs of aging suggest authenticity
As a result of the relative secrecy that surrounds Mina’s work, and the toll aging takes on the human voice, Haworth said it’s hard to know just how she keeps her amazing voice going, or if that voice — especially in our age of artificial intelligence-generated replicas — is truly hers.
Mina’s use of imagery made with AI in at least one recent music video has prompted discussion, Haworth noted.
“There’s this kind of debate around, ‘Well, we never see her. How do we know if it’s even her?’” Haworth said. “And then you get the counter to that, where it’s, ‘Well, of course it’s her, because we know what she sounds like.’”
Mina’s representatives did not respond to NPR’s requests for comment.
But experts generally do believe it’s Mina’s authentic voice on the recordings because it plainly shows signs of aging.
“In the early years, she had a very clear voice — a lot of flexibility, a lot of range,” said Sarah Schneider, a voice speech pathologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who works with singers. “In listening to her most recent work, there’s a little bit more of a huskier, raspier sound to it — which is not unexpected.”
Navigating the aging voice
Schneider said just as our bodies age, so do our voices.
“Our breathing mechanism changes, our vocal folds themselves change, skin gets thinner, muscle gets smaller, potentially,” Schneider said.
She said Mina’s apparent use of backup singers on her new album, Gassa D’Amante, helps bolster her voice in the higher passages.
YouTube
And she added the singer’s retreat to the recording studio has likely worked in her favor over the years. It’s less physically taxing than keeping up with a relentless touring schedule.
And she owns her own label and studio. “Assuming she has control over her studio time, she’s going in when she wants and she’s doing as many takes as she wants,” Schneider said. “Being in control of those things allows for you to choose your best work.”
Not all artists have this kind of control — though many do have access to is the latest technology.
“I think pop stars are going to be more and more tempted to use AI-assisted voice software that will allow them to keep their vocal timbre and their vocal range maybe longer than their actual physical voices will allow them,” said musicologist and Switched on Pop podcast co-host Nate Sloan.
But Sloan said he hopes they’ll resist the temptation.
“Audiences want to hear a direct and unfiltered performance. They want to hear an artist’s vulnerabilities. They want to hear their flaws,” Sloan said. “Because that is what draws us to art is that human connection.”
Sloan said he gets excited when singers like Mina connect with listeners in an unvarnished way. “There’s space for older artists to make their voices heard,” he said.
Jennifer Vanasco edited this story for broadcast and digital. Chloee Weiner mixed the audio.
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