Vegetative Electron Microscopy

 In episode 64 of the AI Inside podcast, titled "Vegetative Electron Microscopy Doesn't Exist", Jason and Jeff discuss the  hallucination of "Vegetative Electron Microscopy" by leading AI tools.

I decided to see what the latest Gemini deep research 2.5 pro thinks it is.

I asked it to explain the meaning of Vegetative Electron Microscopy.

I copied the result to a Google Doc. 

Scroll down to the conclusion and the first paragraph states,

The investigation undertaken in this report confirms that the phrase "Vegetative Electron Microscopy" is not a standard, recognised term within the scientific field of electron microscopy.1 Its appearance in the scientific literature is anomalous and has been linked to several potential sources, including technical errors in digital text processing (AI/OCR errors), mistranslations from other languages (specifically Persian), or its use as a marker or artifact associated with fraudulent publications generated by paper mills.1 The fact that the phrase has been explicitly corrected to "scanning electron microscopy" in at least one publication further underscores its erroneous nature.

GIMP 3.0 Released

 After 7 years, the new version, 3.0, of GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) has been released.

Death Is Not Final - The Debate

 The Open To Debate site debated the statement "Death is not finale". The moderator-in-chief John Donvan does his usual great moderator job.

For the statement is Eben Alexander, Neurosurgeon, Author of ‘Proof of Heaven’ and Raymond Moody, Medical Doctor, Author of ‘Life After Life’.

Against is Sean Carroll, Physicist & writer and Steven Novella, Academic Neurologist at the Yale School of Medicine.

From the web site "If consciousness is just the workings of neurons and synapses, how do we explain the phenomenon of near-death experience? By some accounts, about 3% of the U.S. population has had one: an out-of-body experience often characterized by remarkable visions and feelings of peace and joy, all while the physical body is close to death. To skeptics, there are more plausible, natural explanations, like oxygen deprivation. Is the prospect of an existence after death “real” and provable by science, or a construct of wishful thinking about our own mortality?"

Amy Webb Launches 2025 Emerging Tech Trend Report | SXSW LIVE

Amy Webb, a popular American futurist and author, who appears regularly on the Twit.tv network, appeared on the South by South West 2025 event. Her presentation is available on Youtube.

Amy Webb Launches 2025 Emerging Tech Trend Report | SXSW LIVE

Look for the 2025 forecast from the Future Today Institute at https://ftsg.com/.

SIX EASY PIECES. Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher

SIX EASY PIECES. Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher 

Six Easy Pieces grew out of the need to bring to as wide an audience as possible a substantial yet nontechnical physics primer based on the science of Richard Feynman. We have chosen the six easiest chapters from Feynman’s celebrated and landmark text, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (originally published in 1963), which remains his most famous publication. General readers are fortunate that Feynman chose to present certain key topics in largely qualitative terms without formal mathematics, and  hese are brought together for Six Easy Pieces.

Some free python books (PDF) from archive.org

 Python Pocket Reference, Fourth Edition (PDF)

Automate the Boring Stuff with Python (PDF)

Mark Lutz - Learning Python (PDF)

A Comprehensive Introduction to Python Programming and GUI Design Using Tkinter (PDF)

Python by Example: Learning to Program in 150 Challenges (PDF)

Python Anti-Patterns (PDF)

Think Python (PDF)

Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces

 Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces

From the page:

Welcome to Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces (now version 1.10 -- see book news for details), a free online operating systems book! The book is centered around three conceptual pieces that are fundamental to operating systems: virtualization, concurrency, and persistence. In understanding the conceptual, you will also learn the practical, including how an operating system does things like schedule the CPU, manage memory, and store files persistently. Lots of fun stuff! Or maybe not so fun?