Office tension continues to rise as we enter the second month of a broken dishwasher
Finished reading: A Crown of Swords by Robert Jordan continues this epic series. Hard to believe I’m only half way through the fourteen book series! 📚
🧘 300 hours of meditation: why do I keep going
Consistent daily practice of mindfulness has helped me improve focus and equanimity, although transferring these benefits to daily life presents challenges that require ongoing effort.
Project Hail Mary is a very fun movie 🍿
🎵 Hooray, new music from both Wintersleep and The New Pornographers is out this week
Heart rate distribution in HealthFit ❤️
HealthFit’s new heart rate distribution graphs effectively help track workout intensity and recovery across different activities.
Something is happening. The dam has burst on almost two decades of tightly-managed, coordinated and targeted political messaging. In its place we’re seeing a communications approach that’s more free-flowing, discursive, open and adaptable.
Such a welcome change. I hope it lasts.
Finished reading: Arctic Passages by Kieran Mulvaney nicely integrates the past, present, and future of the Arctic into a compelling story about climate change, geopolitics, history, and exploration 📚
🎵 Song of the week for my daughter — Wheat Kings by The Tragically Hip from Fully Completely. A Canadian classic!
Finished reading: Count Zero by William Gibson is great. Not sure why I waited almost thirty years after reading Neuromancer to read this one. I certainly won’t wait as long to read the third book of the trilogy 📚
Finished reading: The Prime Ministers by J.D.M. Stewart was exactly what I wanted: a concise and clear summary of each Candian Prime Minister. That was a gap in my knowledge that is now closed 📚
🏃♂️ Winter was back for today’s run
Tracking surprise in financial forecasts 😱
Aiming to improve forecasting accuracy, I’m proposing a new metric to track the portion of monthly changes in project cost estimates that can be attributed to previously identified risks.
🎵 Song of the week for my daughter — How Soon Is Now? by The Smiths. A classic alternative song that still sounds great to me.
Go by The Chemical Brothers showed up just in time to get me through today’s tough ride 🚴🎵
So I propose (years late, many bucks short) we just toss it all in the bin and go back to the beginning. Blogs, newsletters, IRC, mailing groups, and, sure why not, Usenet, go nuts. (The jury is still out on forums, but I suspect they are actually a stunted malformed sapling sprung from the same seed of evil that created modern social media.) These things are time tested, functional even in the face of overwhelming lack of interest from the general internet, and are, most importantly, utterly unbreakable. A specific blog, irc etc etc might disappear, but that won’t take anything besides that one facet of a larger whole with it.
I don’t think this is just nostalgia, though there is some of that. The “old” internet was robust and vibrant in a way that modern sites aren’t.
Finished reading: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller is very well done. Really fleshes out the Achilles myth and brings Greek heros and gods to life 📚
George had a busy day
Default app updates for 2026 Q1
I’m updating some app defaults to explore indie alternatives, enhance content discovery, and reduce reliance on Apple services.
🔗 Why the Online Harms Act is the Wrong Way to Regulate AI Chatbots - Michael Geist
Applying the Online Harms Act to AI chatbot conversations now risks reopening the very issues policymakers previously sought to avoid. In fact, it is difficult to see the difference between something posted to an AI chatbot or similar content entered into a search query or included in text message or email correspondence. If proactive monitoring of searches, emails or texts is subject to privacy safeguards, so too should be AI chatbot engagement.
I’m all for smart regulation of AI, but agree that this isn’t the way to go.