Just submitted assessment four of five for my OU course on politics 🎓

Breakfast browsing: An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler 📚

Started reading: Red Plenty by Francis Spufford 📚

Ken White

When I said the incendiary and provocative thing, intending that you would react, I was not actually being incendiary or provocative. I was being thoughtful, and deep… When you say I am contradicting myself, you fail to recognize I am in a Platonic dialogue with myself, and both sides of myself are winning.

Can we still build the world we live in?

The Shape of Metal

Reading The Economist on the decline of car usage by young people.

As an economic, and social imperative we need to design the urban environment to enable car-free living.

“The city of Jacksonville, Florida, for instance, spreads across 875 square miles. With around 1m residents, that makes it only about twice as densely populated as the whole of England, only around 8% of which is classified as “urban”.”

It seems that “car-free” behaviour can persist, which gives me hope for change.

The Convivial Society - The prompt box

I care far less about whether an AI is sentient than I do about the fact that in certain states an AI could, bereft of motive or intention, so easily trigger or reinforce the darkest patterns of thought in our own heads.

And this is to say nothing of how those tilting toward violence could likewise be goaded into action—a senseless technology mimicking our capacity for sense inducing what we call senseless acts of violence.

Finished reading: The Rise and Decline of Nations by Mancur Olson 📚

Proud of my brother, winning a VES Award for Avatar 2 - WetaFX on Twitter

Watched Everything Everywhere All at Once 🍿

Enjoying Premonition by White Lung, thanks to Spotify Discover 🎶

open.spotify.com/album/2GO…

I was given a second hand iPad, so picked up an Apple Pencil. Giving digital sketching a go. Here’s the first attempt: a two minute sketch of Harriet on the sofa.

Crossed paths with Gordon, staying in Gatehouse and out marathon training in Kirkcudbright

Out spotting red squirrels at Barhill Wood today 📸

Lovely: Zebra finch hatching

Currently reading: The Rise and Decline of Nations by Mancur Olson 📚

Finished reading: The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy 📚

Reading: On the limits of computational photography

First task of the week: assessment submission for the Open University module I’m taking on politics.

Indirect utilitarianism states that not everything is a moral question. You will not maximise happiness, Mill says, by maximising utility, but by attaching yourself to projects, people, and activities. Utility is a guiding principle for society, not a way of assessing everything we do in our lives. Get something to do, someone to love, something to enjoy, and you will become happy. Utility is not the one-and-only moral decider.

EA and moral hygiene on the Ruffian by Henry Oliver.

This quote chimes with what Viktor Frankl said: life asks you the question. Experiences, relationships, creative works and suffering. It is you that lives in this world, and you that has to respond.

Resilience takes slack, and slack looks a lot like waste.

from Resilience and Waste in Software Teams

Reading: On the blandness of the Netflix aesthetic

Who is locally influential?

Is this a lack of accountability, a lack of power, an atomised society?

🏃‍♂️🚴‍♂️ Twelve Weeks of Sprint Interval Training Improves Indices of Cardiometabolic Health Similar to Traditional Endurance Training despite a Five-Fold Lower Exercise Volume and Time Commitment

Interesting article relating “Five days in class with ChatGPT” via Marginal Revolution.

I now know non-technical folk who are using ChatGPT as a prompt to brainstorm business plans.