I really enjoyed this Strong Song episode on one of my favourite songs: Paranoid Android 🎵

Grades 9 and 6

The Fall by Neal Stephenson is well worth a read. The concepts about consciousness, computer simulations, and death were fascinating, along with the usual hyper detail from Stephenson. Definitely a marathon of a read with multiple, overlapping stories within the book 📚

Owen conquered his first #spartantoronto race

Very fun and very muddy #spartantoronto race

We often think of fungi or other microbes as not particularly intelligent. This study goes to show that across these networks, one of the reasons they can be so successful is that they can make what seem to be fairly sophisticated decisions about where to allocate resources to optimize the return they get.

Soil’s Microbial Market Shows the Ruthless Side of Forests

My vacation transition in Screen Time:

  1. Reading on the dock Thursday and Friday
  2. Starting to pack on Saturday and traveling on Sunday
  3. Then Monday catching up at home on lots of email, upcoming meetings, and tasks
  4. Followed by Tuesday and Wednesday going to meetings in the office

Go Karts!

Waiting for the thunderstorms to pass ⛈

Admittedly I didn’t have high expectations, but the First Formic War series from Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston is pretty good. Not as sophisticated as the original Ender’s War series, though well worth a vacation read 📚

Paddle boat for three

Another great @highlandyardrace, in support of Places for People. An extra thanks to @boshkungbrewing for the refreshing, post-race beer

Chips in the paddle boat

Lucy the lifeguard

Kids have settled into cottage life

Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston is a promising start to the prequels for Ender’s Game. Some similarities with the Expanse series, in terms of the asteroid miners, that gives some nice realism to the story and good foreshadowing of the later books 📚

Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker is fascinating and concerning. I knew sleep was important, but not that it is so essential to health, memory, and learning. I’ve been falling short of my 8 hour target for a while now and am definitely motivated to reprioritize sleep again 📚

Conscious by Annaka Harris is a fascinating overview of the science of this mysterious process. Her description of panpsychism was particularly intriguing 📚

The Good Place is a fun, clever show, once you get past the first few episodes 📺