This could be us, Berlin. 😭

If you’re not reading the Aboard newsletter from Paul @ftrain and Rich, you’re missing out on a nuanced conversation about how AI is changing the world. This piece on process v. artifact concisely expresses what I’ve been trying to pin down and a manager and an artist. mailchi.mp/aboard/zkd26...

Been testing a continuous glucose monitor lately and I’m starting to think my ADHD symptoms have just been glucose spikes in disguise. 🥸

Feels pretty counterculture these days to commit to long-form, i.e. listen to an entire album, read a long novel, look at a painting for an unreasonable span of time.

🫠 You’d think that with the massive effort that goes into approvals and labeling, there’d just be a bit of attention to actual effectiveness through the manufacturing process.

STOP LAUNCHING CRAP WE DON'T NEED OR WANT

It's staggeringly depressing how blithely they plan to ruin everything. Everything.

I went to a dark site last week so I could say goodbye to the sky. Took a little hand-held photo and guess what? A satellite trail appeared.

Just stop!

Paperback book: The Web 2027 by Graham Joyce, Peter F Hamilton, Maggie Furey

Am I interested in what 1997 thought 2027 would be like? Yes. Am I 563 pages interested? Hmmm… 🤔

“Childhood’s End” describing a disturbing utopia. “Do you realize that every day something like five hundred hours of radio and TV pour out over the various channels? If you went without sleep and did nothing else, you could follow less than a twentieth of the entertainment that's available at the turn of a switch! No wonder that people are becoming passive sponges - absorbing but never creating. Did you know that the average viewing time per person is now three hours a day? Soon people won't be living their own lives any more. It will be a full-time job keeping up with the various family serials on TV!”

Just sci-fi from 1954 accurately predicting the present again. From “Childhood’s End,” by Arthur C. Clarke

What’s not to love? It’s such an unquestionable win for communities and individuals. More parkrun! 🫶

why parkrun: Leitha’s story | Hasenheide parkrunFacebookXInstagramYouTubeTikTokLinkedIn Hasenheide parkrun ist einer von vielen kostenlosen, unterhaltsamen und freundlichen 5-Kilometer-Gemeinschaftsläufen weltweit, die jede Woche stattfinden.

On my way to try the parkrun at Etna 🌋 so it’s an appropriate moment to thank @regcoppinger.bsky.social for introducing me to this wonderful concept/community/movement/obsession. www.parkrun.com.de/hasenheide/n...

I‘m realizing this year that advent calendars are essentially a program executed each year that distracts everyone from the fact that it’s damp, colder, and darker each day. By the time epiphany rolls in, the spring program is triggered and the snowdrops emerge. Brilliant design.

There are a few little heuristics that just continue to be bangers and honestly, woe to all who fail to heed them. “Form follows function” hit me up today, as did “Why Wasn’t I Consulted?” (WWIC). Honored to know @ftrain IRL. Go read the essay in case you missed it in 2011. www.ftrain.com/wwic

Ed Crumb, a large soft sculpture, sits in a chair beside the bookcase holding a copy of the “Oh, That Night!” book.

The problem with making physical artwork is figuring out how to store it. But it seems like Ed is becoming part of the household now.

The squares for Curium and Meitnerium from periodictable.com, featuring portraits of their respective namesakes, are presented above a caption "Only two women have chemical elements named after them. Both were born on November 7th." (I'm aware that there was some ambiguity surrounding Lise Meitner's birthday, but Ruth Lewin Sime's biography notes that Meitner celebrated the occasion on November 7.)

Happy birthday to the only two women with elements named after them on the periodic table: #MarieCurie & #LiseMeitner.

As I do every year, I will once again repeat my proposal that November 7 should be International #WomenInSTEM Day!

#histSTM #chemistry #physics
#OnThisDay #OTD #PeriodicTable👩‍🔬🗃️📜

“It would be some relief to our condition and our frailty if all things were as slow in their perishing as they were in their coming into being; but as it is, the growth of things is a tardy process and their undoing is a rapid matter.” Seneca spilling the T. This is just a stoic feed now. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Person smiling in a home setting and holding a child with two picture books.

An artwork is incomplete without the bridge between the work and the audience, so I’m so pleased my book (in both language editions) is connecting with a bookworm. 🐛

Refreshingly practical agentic AI talk by Slavik Dimitrovich at the AWS session in Berlin this morning. “The value of AI isn’t guaranteed, but the monthly bill is.”🤖

“One side offers me no guiding light to direct my vision towards the truth, while the other just gouges my eyes out” 👀

Seneca says we need to avoid garbage information. Apparently that was a problem even 2000 years ago. “Measure your life: it just does not have room for so much.” 🤷🏻‍♀️

Not a lot of majestic around here. Unless maybe lakes and fields can be majestic.

Great shots! Mountain 🏔️

Idiotic, but it does again demonstrate how imaginary (and politically biased) most “awards” are. Maybe you could should just establish the “Kabas Award for Responsible Journalism” as a counterpoint.

A nice — though unexpected — alignment between Portuguese (saudade) and German (Sehnsucht) for the concept of "a vague and constant desire for something that does not (and possibly cannot) exist." 😔

Could it be last year’s survivors breeding an elite fruit fly force?

Helpful to get a friend to offer a perspective. You’re too close to the subject matter. 😁

my mom taught me there's two kinds of businesses: hot dog stands and art galleries

- hot dog stands protect territory and keep competition off their turf
- art galleries benefit from more adjacent art galleries, cluster together to amplify reach/support

youre an art gallery, not a hot dog stand

“… what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously — I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in un-certainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” - Keats

First they came for chess, and I said nothing.

China hosts fully autonomous AI robot football match Footage of three-a-side game shows humanoids struggling to kick the ball or stay upright

As we enter the era in which companionship, therapy, art, labor and sport are all performed by AI, I wonder when we’ll just fully embrace the idea that “passive consumption” is now the definitive occupation of humanity? Glad I lived in the before times.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

I Deleted My Second Brain Why I Erased 10,000 Notes, 7 Years of Ideas, and Every Thought I Tried to Save

“The act of deletion is not a failure of recordkeeping. It is a reassertion of agency.”

Thoughts on the limits of PKM and the power of minimalism for the brain.

www.joanwestenberg.com/p/i-deleted-...