🔗 Cross-border Calvinball - Paul Wells
Careful what you wish for. Five minutes ago everyone was calling for a “Team Canada” approach to dealing with Donald Trump. Unfortunately our team would make the Bad News Bears look like Navy SEALs.
Good observations on Canada’s responses, so far, to Trump’s tariff threats
Wednesday, December 11, 2024 →
🔗 Apple Intelligence in iOS 18.2: A Deep Dive into Working with Siri and ChatGPT, Together
I’m aligned with Viticci here:
I think empowering LLMs to be “creative” with the goal of displacing artists is a mistake, and also a distraction – a glossy facade largely amounting to a party trick that gets boring fast and misses the bigger picture of how these AI tools may practically help us in the workplace, healthcare, biology, and other industries.
I could use the help with reducing busywork and letting me focus on the creative part. That’s what I’m looking forward to
🔗 The Problem with Sci-Fi Body Armor // Bret Devereaux
I want to focus on rigid science fiction armors because they offer an interesting lens to consider their design: how to armor a human body in a rigid substance is an exceedingly solved problem: quite a few cultures have tackled this particular problem with a lot of energy and ingenuity, attempting to balance protection, mobility and weight. And the “problem with sci-fi body armor” begins with the fact that most of these futuristic ‘hardsuits’ utilize little of any of the design language of those efforts.
🔗 My Experiment to Eliminate Read-It-Later Backlog Stress
Every so often, I audit every information source I’m subscribed to. I ask three simple questions I picked up from the late Jim Rohn:
- Who am I allowing to speak into my life?
- What effect is that having on me?
- Is that ok?
There are a lot of things I subscribed to a long time ago that I just never bothered to unsubscribe to. And every once in a while, I get annoyed and ask myself, “Why am I still consuming this?”
Good advice. Obvious? Perhaps, though we often need reminders to do what’s good for us.
We are being given a runaround. When a party wins an election, its victory excuses every mistake or excess for years before the election. We won, didn’t we? Any new criticism is interpreted as sour grapes or denial of the result: the purest illustration of one day dominating every other. Every idea that pops into a new PM’s head is beyond reproach, because he just won an election. Later, as the next election approaches, criticism becomes a luxury the party can’t afford, because the leader must be given latitude to win the next election. Rinse and repeat.
Walport couldn’t help noticing that Canada is a sucking black hole for information-sharing, although I bet he never imagined his own report would gather dust for half a year for no reason anyone has ever explained nor ever will.
This is too important to not be taken seriously
🔗 How to Choose The Best Methods for your Health and Performance // David Lipman
So don’t go jumping onto the latest trend, especially not if it’s been around for less time than it takes for your eggs to go bad in the fridge. When any new method arrives, it is worth spending some time evaluating the underlying principles of the method. Particularly seeking where it is similar and where it differs from the established methods at the time to try and work out if there really is much difference (there’s often less difference than people would like to believe or argue there is on the internet).
🔗 Matt Gurney: Anson Mount saved Star Trek
Because Anson Mount saved Star Trek. And I’m not afraid to say so. In fact, I’m here to shout it from the rooftops: thank you, Anson Mount. You were just what we needed.
I endorse this claim
🔗 “Worse than I’ve ever seen” - Paul Wells
I’m not here this week to tell a story of despair. I was impressed by what I saw of the Alberta government reponse to the opioid crisis, which reflects a level of ambition and concerted effort over time that I rarely see in government action anywhere.
I’m glad to see this getting pragmatic attention, rather than rhetoric
🔗 Variations on the Theme of Silence
Silences that close us off, refusing connection, shoring up the ego at others’ expense—those are dead silences. But the letting-go sort, the silences that hold space or keep vigil for someone else? They are alive.
🔗 How to Talk to Whales - The Atlantic
This would be a first-contact scenario involving two species that have lived side by side for ages. I wanted to imagine how it could unfold. I reached out to marine biologists, field scientists who specialize in whales, paleontologists, professors of animal-rights law, linguists, and philosophers. Assume that Project CETI works, I told them. Assume that we are able to communicate something of substance to the sperm whale civilization. What should we say?
Fascinating to think what this would be like and what we might learn
🔗 “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel | Strong Songs: A Podcast About Music
Strong Songs Season Six kicks off with a widely requested classic: Peter Gabriel’s 1986 yearner “In Your Eyes.” Because why hire one rhythm section when you can hire two for twice the price?
🎧 A favourite song on a favourite podcast
🔗 The strange and turbulent global world of ant geopolitics
What is surprising is how poorly we still understand global ant societies: there is a science-fiction epic going on under our feet, an alien geopolitics being negotiated by the 20 quadrillion ants living on Earth today. It might seem like a familiar story, but the more time I spend with it, the less familiar it seems, and the more I want to resist relying on human analogies. Its characters are strange; its scales hard to conceive. Can we tell the story of global ant societies without simply retelling our own story?
Fascinating
🔗 How paltry the return by Jen Gerson
“Now more than ever, soft and hard power are important,” Joly noted, correctly, ignoring the fact that Canada increasingly has neither, and doesn’t seem to be doing much about that.
Making a good case that we don’t take ourselves seriously anymore
Perhaps moral philosophers can contribute to public discourse even now—for instance, in thinking about how decisions should be made given the tremendous uncertainty involved, or to insist on the relevance of some neglected considerations. Or perhaps we should confess that we, too, are embarrassed, that we cannot be confident just what to say. Depending on your expectations, this may be disappointing. But unlike many of the other interventions in today’s public discourse, such a response would at least be honest. And probably less harmful as well.