Today’s solar eclipse reaffirms our human condition. Humanity has always paid attention to this phenomenon. With curiosity, with fascination, with devotion, or with fear. For some time now, its observation has also become a social event. This afternoon, many people will put aside their screens (or use them in camera mode) and will experience, as a community, an experience difficult to assimilate.
For once, humans will not find the answer to their perplexity in AI chats. In fact, some of them seem to have lost their composure amid so much commotion. Asked a few days ago about the best place to see the eclipse in Barcelona, ChatGPT answered Barceloneta. “But it may happen that a boat blocks your visibility at the key moment,” it warned. When questioned about whether it was confusing sunrise with sunset, the artificial charlatan apologized and promised to improve its answers, as if nothing had happened, as if such a terrible mistake did not expose the extreme fragility of the algorithmic civilization that some want to build on the remains of the annoying human beings.
Although there are plenty of reasons to celebrate today’s phenomenon, we should not lose sight that this will not be the first, nor the second, nor the third time the sun is eclipsed this summer. It has not been the moon, but the smoke from forest fires, that too many times has come between the solar disk and our gaze.
Read more Exteriors reports 164 Spaniards missing after the earthquake in Colombia
Also read
Sarah Shackleton, a New Zealand artist living in Aragón, posted yesterday on Instagram a striking photo in which the sun appeared partially hidden behind a reddish stripe. “This – the text read – is not a solar eclipse. This is the effect caused by the fire in Las Peñas de Riglos yesterday afternoon.”
Faced with a solar eclipse, one can only resign oneself. You have to accept it if the clouds ruin the party or if the next appointment with the phenomenon is beyond our reasonable hope of life. However, measures can be taken against the eclipse caused by smoke, such as monitoring political parties that do not apply proper forest policies or reviewing if their programs exude climate denialism. And, as citizens, listen to the experts and not add more fuel to the fire.
Read more The differences that separate earthquakes in Colombia and Venezuela
