What is a Kelvin Wave? California is About to Find Out

Above, local California station has coverage of one way in which El Niño will exert strong effects on the state, including Coastal Flooding, which is already underway.
It’s called a Coastaly Trapped Kelvin Wave, and the physics behind it are fascinating.
If you’re interested, Daniel Swain had a really great discussion of this in his super valuable “Office Hours” YouTube session a few weeks ago, which I’ve excerpted here. The full length session is at this link, and worth your time.

Here’s the Kelvin wave explainer, about 10 minutes. Get coffee.

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How Likely is an AI Built Pandemic?

David Bellamy is an Infrastructure Engineer for agentic training and a Harvard PhD Statistician, that I follow on X.
I hope he doesn’t mind that I quote him verbatim here.

David Bellamy on X:

I must be among an extremely small group of people (n=1?) that have both 1) trained a frontier LLM and 2) designed and synthesized custom viruses in a lab with my own two hands.

And I think that the takes on AI killing us all by creating dangerous viruses is total bogus.
Could an LLM propose a viral genome to synthesize? Sure. Could it be synthesize-able? Sure. Could it be infectious? Sure, it could just be a replica or a slight modification of a viral genome we already know.

This really isn’t the bottleneck to creating dangerous viruses. The bottleneck is in the physical process of synthesizing a virus and the equipment/goods needed to do so.
Designing a virus that can evade all forms of pandemic counterdefense is not something that a ‘genius in a datacenter’ can do. This is something that requires contact with the physical world and iteration.
Let me steelman the fearmongering as much as I can. Imagine a ‘fully automated’ viral synthesis laboratory. I’m talking automated freezers, automated cell culture room, the whole nine yards. This would be an extremely expensive lab – >>$100M. And there is no such thing as 1 lab that can synthesize all conceivable viruses. But let’s put practical constraint aside. Let’s suppose this hypothetical lab is built to synthesize the ‘most dangerous types’ of viruses known.

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Time for an “I, Robot” Sequel?

The Three Laws of Robots, presented to be from the fictional “Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.” by Isaac Asimov, are:

  1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law

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Recent events have made the 2004 Will Smith sci-fi thriller “I, Robot” a stealth hit on streaming.

There should probably be a corollary list for Action stars, –

“I will not stride on to the stage and slap the shit out of the MC at an Academy Award show.”

Runners Face Waist Deep Water

The New Normal is Nothing is Normal anymore.

New York Times:

A half-marathon race on Sunday in Paramus, N.J., nearly turned disastrous, as heavy rainfall flooded parts of the course and forced runners to wade through several feet of water.

No injuries were reported, but several runners posted videos to social media showing them traversing knee-deep waters throughout the course at Saddle River Park. The entire area had been placed under a flash flood warning on Sunday, and the organization behind the race, Racefaster, was criticized for going forward with the event despite those warnings.

Racefaster did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.

The race was supposed to start at 8 a.m., but organizers on Saturday opted to delay the half-marathon by two hours.

Samantha Spitaletta, a Bloomfield, N.J., resident who has run dozens of half-marathons, said it was already raining heavily when the race started. She said an organizer informed the runners to be aware of “ankle-deep water” in an early section of the course.

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Good News! AI Dangers are a Hoax, Like Climate Change!

BBC:

US President Donald Trump has said fears about the safety of artificial intelligence (AI) are a “hoax”, as he criticised calls to have more guardrails in place for the fast-moving technology.

It comes after Jack Clark, co-founder of AI giant Anthropic, told the BBC that a “kill switch” that can be checked by a third party may need to be mandatory for the industry.

Those concerns triggered a selloff in tech firms’ shares as investors weighed the impact of a potential slowdown in the multi-billion dollar development of AI.

In a series of social media posts, the US president compared warnings about AI to the “Global Warming Scam” which, he said, was “being perpetrated by the Radical Left Dumocrats”.

Trump also called himself “the Hoax Buster”, likening concerns about the safety of the technology to what he called “the RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX”.

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In other news:

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US Drivers: All Bent Over and Now No Lube

That’s gotta hurt.

Yahoo:

Costco has raised the price of its Kirkland Signature full-synthetic motor oil and begun limiting how much any one member can purchase, as a global lubricant shortage tied to the ongoing Middle East conflict pushes crude oil toward $100 a barrel.

That 10-quart case — two 5-quart bottles, enough for a typical V6 or V8 oil change — has jumped to $57.99, compared with the roughly $30 price members had grown accustomed to paying, according to The Drive. Stores are capping purchases at two units per customer per week. The retailer has also imposed a five-per-member limit on Mobil 1, with six quarts of that brand running $44.

Oil Prices Still not Reflecting Reality

Ill considered Iran War continues to reveal how vulnerable global economies are in their dependence on fossil fuels.
A generation of business and political leaders are internalizing this message, and making plans accordingly.

CNBC:

Crude oil prices jumped Monday after Saudi Arabia closed its critical pipeline that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz, a disruption that will constrain global supplies at a time when the market is already tight.

Drones launched from Iraq damaged the East-West pipeline on Thursday, forcing the Saudi government to close the key crude oil artery. Riyadh has not disclosed how badly the pipeline is damaged or how long it will remain shut. 

“The relatively contained price reaction suggests the market still expects Saudi inventories to cushion exports in the near term, but if the disruption extends beyond the five-to-seven-day inventory cushion, that could change quickly,” said Janiv Shah, an oil market analyst at Rystad Energy, in a Monday note.

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