Finished reading: Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave by Seán O’Hagan is a remarkable conversation about creativity, grief, and religion📚
Microposts
Dispatch from the Front Line: “Canada” is a question of what we can get
The ability of a population to withstand neighbourly aggression — “economic force,” if you will — depends on two things. The first is internal social cohesion and identity. The second is what the aggressor is willing to do or offer in order to secure capitulation.
The first is so important, yet so intangible and fickle
🎧 Nice to have Strombo back on Apple Music radio. The show has been a regular companion for my long basement rides and was missed over the past few months
📚 Although I exceeded my goal of reading 45 books in 2024 by finishing 60 books. I’m going to keep my goal for 2025 at 45, anticipating that I’ll be reading more non-fiction this year which will slow me down – for the better.
If you’re interested in owning your own web content (and you should be), the new Micro.one is a fantastic option at a super affordable $1/month. I joined Micro.blog back in 2018 and am a very happy Premium user.
The people should own the town square
Nice to see this:
we are going to transfer ownership of key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components (including name and copyrights, among other assets) to a new non-profit organization, affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual.
Mastodon continues to be our best, decentralized option and I’m glad it exists
Finished reading: The Infernal Machine is another great book by Steven Johnson. I enjoy how he integrates seemingly small technological changes with broad historical trends. Always interesting to read 📚
🥶🏊♂️ Shortest and coldest swim of the year
George wishes everyone a happy new year! And, requests more liver treats
Finished reading: Translation State by Ann Leckie is another great book in the Imperial Radch series. I’ve enjoyed each one📚
Finished reading: I enjoyed the satirical futility of The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis 📚
Wednesday, December 25, 2024 →
🎄My family knows me well!
🐶 George meets snow
Finished reading: A Gathering of Shadows by V. E. Schwab is a fun second book of a great series. I’m looking forward to the next one📚
🔗 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
George enjoys the fresh air, even at high speeds
After using the new Reeder for a couple of months I’m going to stick with it.
I like having all of my sources (RSS, Micro.blog, Mastodon, Bluesky, and podcasts) consolidated into one feed with easy gestures to tag as “read later” or open in a native app. The recent addition of folders was helpful, as I’ve created an “Attention” folder for anything I really don’t want to miss. Everything else is part of the river of updates and I don’t worry about completion.
One issue with the consolidation is that I’m following people across multiple services and seeing duplicate posts. I’ve been standardizing to their Micro.blog timelines, when available. This fragmentation across services is a common complaint and I expect I’ll be experimenting with different solutions. Now that we can so easily cross-post, we also need to manage our conversations. Recent updates to Micro.blog have been really helpful for this.
🚴 I’ve been having fun on Zwift
The most productive thing I’ll do all week: Organized the giant box of cables by taking out anything we no longer need, had no idea what is was for, or already had at least three backups. The photo is of the discard pile
Finished reading: I really enjoyed The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin. The Earthsea series is very good 📚
🏃♂️ Simultaneously ridiculous, inspiring, and intriguing
🔗 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.
Finished reading: Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman is a great companion to Four Thousand Weeks (my favourite non-fiction book of 2022). I followed the author’s suggestion and read a chapter a day to help the ideas percolate 📚
🏃♂️ New running shoe day!
Finished reading: Fire Exit: A Novel by Morgan Talty is a good book about the importance of knowing your family’s stories 📚
Wednesday, November 20, 2024 →
My son and I enjoyed listening to Ryan Holiday elaborate on the importance of stoicism for everyday life.
A fun Mindscape episode with Brandon Ogbunu on Fitness Seascapes and the Course of Evolution
🔗 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.
🎧 Having switched back to Albums (again) for music, I’m discovering what a mess my Apple Music library has become. I’ve got duplicate tracks within albums, duplicate albums, incorrect metadata, and all sorts of nonsense. Really tempting to just delete my entire music library and start over!