🔗 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
Monday, December 2, 2024
Last month, I posted a series of album covers for music that shaped my preferences. The gimmick was that there was no context or explanation, just an album cover. Now, I’d like to provide a few notes.
As part of the overall framing, these are influential albums for me. They aren’t all necessarily my favourite albums by these artists or ones that I still listen to frequently. Rather, what I listen to and enjoy now, are strongly connected to these albums.
The list is also available on Album Whale, if that’s preferred.
Depeche Mode, Violator: Hard for me to believe that only a year separates this from Pearl Jam’s Ten. I listened to this album a lot and it leads to a long enjoyment of industrial music.
Kate Bush, Hounds of Love: I don’t have an origin story for Kate Bush, her music just always seemed to be there: quirky, innovative, and captivating.
Bjork, Homogenic: A spiritual successor to Kate Bush? Definitely exciting, creative, and beguiling.
Peter Gabriel, So: Peter Gabriel has been a consistent favourite and introduced me to many great artists through his Real World record label. For me, this is his definitive album.
Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon: Another one from my Dad’s record collection. How much more needs to be said about this album? An obvious classic that really emphasizes an album as a cohesive product, rather than a collection of songs.
Sarah McLachlan, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy: First of all, a great album. Second, I was listening to this at the same time as some heavy industrial and metal bands. This confused many of my friends, but reinforced, for me, the joy of diverse musical interests.
Afro Celt Sound System, Volume 1: Sound Magic: Via Peter Gabriel, this was an exotic amalgamation of many musical styles and led me to an appreciation of what was then called “world music”. Although I think their third album is their best, this is more influential for me.
The Tragically Hip, Up to Here: Iconic in Canada and helped me appreciate my nation’s history and stories. They followed up with three fantastic albums and then I mostly lost touch with their music until Gord Downie’s epic last tour.
Supertramp, Breakfast in America: Another one from my Dad’s collection. At the core, it is their musicianship that drew me in and influenced my musical tastes.
The Clash, London Calling: Perfectly captures the primal energy of punk rock.
Massive Attack, Mezzanine: This one started my ongoing affection for bleak, creepy, and paranoid music.18. Yo La Tengo, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One: Classic shoegaze and indie that is a clear theme of my current tastes. Yo La Tengo was a big part of early grad school which has lots of nostalgia for me.19. Ali Farka Toure, Talking Timbuktu: This sounded really fresh and exciting to me when it was released, especially when contrasted with the mostly industrial music I was listening to at the time.20. Rage Against the Machine: This was late high school and I was ready for music as social commentary, especially packaged as fierce, disciplined rebellion.
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!
🪓 We had great fun at last night’s Axe Pancreatic Cancer event. We started the event ten years ago to raise awareness and funds, after my Mom’s short battle with the disease. So gratifying and amazing to see what the event has become, especially under the stewardship of Pancreatic Cancer Canada.
Finished reading: In The Antidote, Oliver Burkeman makes a lot of sense to me about how to live sensibly and genuinely 📚
🏃♂️ Thinking about my grandmother on today’s run. She was a bright spark and warm hug for 100 years 😢
