Author: obsidian_ns

Daily Reads:

Nelson Dellis describes how he memorises a poem. Memory palaces are so helpful, if only I can remember to use the damn things 🤪

The Guardian’s visual explainer of how Large Language Models work, for the non-technical person, aka the vast majority of folks.

Simon Wardley: X Marks the Spot. Simon is an exceptional presenter, and this is one of his best explanations of why maps offer context, combining an anchor, position & movement to challenge the executive’s ‘story’. Highly recommended 45 minutes.

QOTD:

On stage, I make love to 25,000 different people, then I go home alone.
– Janis Joplin

Music:

It’s the weekend so two for the price of one 😅
Tuba Skinny: Them Things Got Me
John Prine: Far From Me The man’s songwriting and powers of observation were genius. A 3 chord Mark Twain, as someone points out in the comments on that video.

Daily Reads:

Listened to Cal Fussman in conversation with Boris Eldegsan on Fake Images and Your Future. Boris was in the news when he turned down the Sony World Photography award sometime last year(?). This was a thoughtful talk I thoroughly enjoyed.

Nicole van der Hoeven is masterful explainer of all things Obsidian (& more). Her prolific videos are a godsend when I’m searching for ways to effectively use the tool, and her narrative style I’ve come to deeply appreciate. I’ve not understood frontmatter and YAML, so took a chance this afternoon to educate myself on this, thanks to nvdh. Then of course I had to go down the themes rabbit hole with her review of AnuPuccin.

Speaking of brilliant explainers:

• I’ve been working my way through Prof Aswath Damodaran’s Investment Philosophies videos from about a decade ago. Highly recommended reviewing even if you are a seasoned investor, plenty to learn.
• I’ve also been educating myself on HTML & CSS through Dave Gray’s beginner courses on the topics on the freecodecamp YT channel. I’ve never really dug into CSS (I’m never going to be a front-end developer was my reasoning). The Advanced Slides plugin for Obsidian got me interested in this, and Dave Gray’s explanations kept me interested. Learning is never "done", is it?
• Throughout last year, my daughter & I worked our way through the Harvard CS50 full Computer Science course with David Malan.

QOTD:

Everyone has a belief system, B.S., the trick is to learn not to take anyone’s B.S. too seriously, especially your own.
– Robert Anton Wilson, novelist

Music:

Tuba Skinny at the Royal Frenchmen Hotel & Bar May 2023, New Orleans

Daily Reads:

The Man Weeping In The Parking Lot It was still dark. I left home in the darkness, and I returned in darkness.

David Epstein puts Boeing’s Door Disaster in Perspective

QOTD:

Half the truth is often a great lie.
\ – Benjamin Franklin

Music:

Leo Kottke and Mike Gordon: TIny Desk Concert from home from the days of COVID

Daily Reads:

Gaping Void, on the powerful impact of storytelling about the UK Post Office scandal and tragedy. ITV’s show Mr. Bates Vs The Post Office is credited with resurrecting the implications of the saga that had its last prosecution in 2015!

“Writing for me is and always has been an attempt to capture a moment in time, to capture a feeling, capture an observation, capture a conversation that serve as a sort of time capsule that allows me to remember who I have been in relationship to the world around me.” Rob Walker shines a light on poet Clint Smith’s poem, and a creative idea for imagining how a smell might look like, or a sound might smell like.. ad infinitum. Shuffle Your Senses

Manuel Morales is scathing about AI companies stealing ‘inspiration’. and rightly so. If a human does it

QOTD:

Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.
\ – Margaret Wheatley

Music:

Johann Sebastian Bach was a coffee lover? Who would have thought! Coffee Cantata aka Schweigt_stille,_plaudert_nicht,_BWV_211

A significant number of events took place from the 13th until this evening so there’s been a snowball’s chance in hell of doing any reading.

Daily Reads:

Hidde de Vries on sharing links

Open Culture: Bertrand Russell and Buckminster Fuller on Why We Should Work Less, and Live and Learn More.

Brad Carter: A system for really remembering stuff. This one hits home hard for a collector of links like me. The reason I collect links is for the benefit of the people I know might be interested.

Seth Godin: The generous ask. When we offer to help someone get to where they were going, we’re approaching the relationship with generosity, not selfishness.

John Hagel: The Paradox of Progress

QOTD:

Lay-offs are also always a symptom of exec incompetence.
\– Baldur Bjarnasson

Music:

Muireann Bradley Candyman

Daily Reads:

Return to Office policies aren’t improving employee performance or company value. Controlling bosses don’t care. Link

Prof Aswath Damodaran invites people to sign up to his 2024 series of lessons in corporate finance and valuation.

Jon Callahan set up a spend tracker with ChatGPT. Fun learning project, I agree. The problem of consistent categorisation, or hallucinated transactions with data errors will be driving the accountants mad too 😅

QOTD:

Some are guilty, but all are responsible.
\ – Abraham Joshua Heschel, rabbi and professor

Music:

Carson McKee covers Gordon Lightfoot’s nostalgic I’m Not Supposed To Care

Daily Reads:

I love reading Alex Hayward-Waterhouse’s blog posts. He says while he’s recently been opening his blog posts with "At the advanced age of 81", he’s isn’t quite done yet.

Simon Wardley on why Cynefin and Wardley Maps are complementary tools Bears reading a few times. I’ve not tried the OnlineWardleyMaps tool yet.

Listened to Will Larson on Lenny’s podcast.

Saw this stunning photo taken by Valerio Minato. Already glowing in the darkness, the hilltop Basilica of Superga sits directly in the center of the Monviso mountain with the moon precisely framing the pair. HT Grace Ebert.

QOTD:

From the music of the day by Jackson Browne:

I don’t know what to say about these days
I’m seeing people changing in the strangest ways
Even in the richer neighborhoods
People don’t know when they’ve got it good
They’ve got the envy and they’ve got it bad

Music:

Jackson Browne – The Long Way Around

Daily Reads:

We learn from each other, and from our own mistakes. Learning in public includes accepting that there are times when you will get it wrong. Simon Willison is contrite about what he got wrong with his last post on the term Artificial Intelligence. I didn’t see the problem with his original post, given it was written on his personal blog, and it was an opinion on terminology. I can also see why he thinks a particular sentence was clumsily written.

Gary Marcus is not a fan of the OpenAI crowd. This is a howler of an observation about Open AI’s recent lobbying to the UK Govt. John Lam calls it like only an artist can in a tweet.

HT Jim Nielsen for this link – interacting with each other is the whole point of being human. I’m subscribed now to the Aboard podcast.

Who knew that used fire trucks are on sale? And relatively cheap too (HT Tyler Cowen)

Rob Miller wrote a blog about the UK Post Office travesty a while ago titled The Thermocline of Truth. I remember sharing that widely at my then employment, trying to get the leaders to recognise the parallels between the two organisations. Several years later, and possibly too late for many innocents in the saga, the UK government is finally doing something to clear the names of the wrongfully convicted humans.

Jesse Kornbluth recommends Guy de Maupassant’s Bel-Ami. I think it’s in the public domain too. I’ve not read it yet, but it is on the list now.

Baldur Bjarnnson has thoughts not too dissimilar to mine in "to plan a strategy you must first have a theory of how the hell things work", except of course he writes publicly about his struggle, and his process of discovery. This article complements very well Henrik Karlsson’s post a few days that caught me by the collar and shook me wide awake.

QOTD:

… people matter. Even in the wildest of innovations, people still matter, and human relationships still matter, and you can’t shortcut it.

• Rich Ziade on the Aboard podcast

Music:

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 in E Minor, Op. 64, TH. 29 – II

Daily Reads:

Edward Donner fine tuned a LLM on 240K test messages

Simon Willison has made peace with using the term AI – rather than explicitly calling it LLMs.

Prof. Ethan Mollick sees signs and portents in the year ahead for AI

Fabian Pfortmuller on The challenges of building community

Maria Popova shares 17 lessons from 17 years of Marginalian I missed this from October last year.

An interview with Dr. Gladys McGarey, the Mother of Holistic Medicine, who is 103 years old.

Derek Sivers: When in doubt, try the difference. Useful ideas.

Oliver Burkeman: The eight secrets to a (fairly) fulfilled life

QOTD:

The only viable solution is to make a shift: from a life spent trying not to neglect anything, to one spent proactively and consciously choosing what to neglect, in favour of what matters most.
– Oliver Burkeman

Music:

Freddie White: Tenderness on the Block

Daily Reads:

I found the time to read only one article today. Bob Ewing in "A New Year for Regrets and Courage", asks a question I’m asking myself every day: "If I truly had the courage this year to live my life on my own terms, and speak my mind in an authentic way, what would I do and say?"

QOTD:

When you counsel someone, you should appear to be reminding him of something he had forgotten, not of the light he was unable to see.
– Baltasar Gracian, writer and philosopher

Music:

Donovan: Universal soldier – breaks my heart every time.