The Connect2 Podcast

El Niño is a well know weather feature of the pacific.  It happens when the overall temperatures get a little warmer and it affects the trade winds, water circulation and precipitation in the south pacific.  It also has significant ramifications for other parts of the globe.  This year, that temperature change has been the highest on record and the effects will be felt all around the planet.  This Super El Niño is almost double the temperature swing of the previous record, so this is uncharted territory.  What should we be expecting locally?

Canadian identity has evolved over time but the attacks by Trump and separatist sentiments have challenged what it is to be a Canadian.  Mark and Jeff discuss what they think defines a Canadian and makes them different from other identities.  After all, it's not where you are, it's who you are.

There are lots of songs that sound light and joyful but have underlying aspects that are either sad, gloomy or downright stalkerish.  Songs like Every Breath You Take by the Police which is sometimes sung at weddings, but it really is about someone obsessed and stalking the person they are obsessed with.  There are a couple of short clips in the podcast but the artists and the songs are credited, including Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind (1997) and Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks (1974) 

You spend a third of your life sleeping but how well do you know how it works?  It is incredibly important to a good healthy lifestyle but it does some things that are not too obvious.  There are also things that you can inadvertently do that has a negative consequence on your awake time after a poor night's sleep.  It affects so many of your systems and today we discuss sleep 

The real estate world is divided into two very distinct categories, residential and commercial.  There are a lot of problems with both worlds but commercial property is valued in a different way from residential properties.  It has more of an economic basis whereas residential property is really more related to supply and demand.  Mark and Jeff discuss the differences between the two after talking about a number of other more current events including the Alberta Referendum questions.

The Frontier labs are producing more and more models.  As a casual user, you are presented with a number of options as to which version of the model you can select for your task.  How do you decide.  Mark and Jeff go through the different models and versions (as of Sept 2026) and help you understand.  We also, briefly, discuss the current Alex Formenton controversy and how it fits into the culture of the Edmonton Oilers that have a long history of recruiting many players, coaches and GM's that have had tainted pasts to give them an opportunity for a second chance.  

It seems like everyday you look at any news feed all you see is terrible stuff.  Earthquakes, volcanoes, Super El Nino, Polarizing Politics, War, etc...  Everything seems so negative and honestly its a little draining.  Today's episode is about some good news stories.... things that are positive and hopeful.  Oh, and the coffee was great!

Back in the day, underground miners would have canaries in a cage to test the air to make sure it was safe to breath.  If the canary stopped singing and died, it meant that the air was bad and a big risk to the miners (they needed to get out!).  Did we just see an AI equivalent of a dead canary?  The Hugging Face attack by Open AI agents in July was so much worse than originally thought with the agents persistently attacking the Hugging Face infrastructure to figure out how some phantom graders would be assessing the agents' performance. There was so much to unpack.  Mark and Jeff discuss this and the real fear for the future, which is not a single sentient AI but a swarm of powerful misguided AI agents trying to do something and devastating the internet or world.

Mark has a special guest today with Kayla Gordon, from Winnipeg, with whom Mark has been travelling all over this planet with on several photographic trips.  Both Mark and Kayla have competed in a number of image competitions with a range of results.  They discuss the process and what you get as a benefit from these competitions.  Just a special note, the recording was done via a zoom meeting, so the sound is not quite good as usual (sorry about that).

We have been able to travel at supersonic speeds for decades, the technology is well know as are the consequences of going very fast.  There used to be Concordes but nothing after them.  What happened, why don't we do air travel at supersonic speeds (at the moment) and why almost all commercial airplane travel is in a sweet spot of about 0.85 Mach (speed of sound) at an elevation of 35,000 - 45,000 feet.