Perspectives

A day out in nature with conversations that revolved around boats and diving. I discovered terms I’d never heard before like rebreathing and getting narced. A trio of perenties (Australian goannas) were our companions too, getting very friendly with us (after of course my first shock when the monsters crept up near my feet when I was in deep listening mode 😳 )

Very little reading today!

Daily Reads:

Antirez: LLM’s and programming in the first days of 2024 (HT Jeremy Keith)

QOTD:

Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.
– Umberto Eco, philosopher and novelist

Music:

Chet Atkins introduces a group of fantastic musicians in this YT video titled The World’s Most Famous Unknown Band

Daily Reads:

Andrew Chen on The Next Next Job, a framework for making big career decisions. This is a topic that is on my mind a lot 😄

Ordinary Mastery: John Durrant argues for Audacious Aspirations, Low Expectations.

Richard Merrick’s Postcard from the Edge speaks of the impoverishment of language, and the work of the artisan in regenerating both words, and the world.

HT Tyler Cowen: Roger Silk on The Rate of Return on Exercise 5.8%, according to the author.

QOTD:

“If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.”
\ – Richard Buckminster Fuller

Music:

Ashley Campbell with Carl Jackson cover Ashley’s dad’s hit Gentle On My Mind

Daily Reads:

I’m not alone. Scott Eblin shares his thinking around his decade long plan for purposeful growth.

At some near point in the future, I’m going to be working with spreadsheets again. I know present Microsoft Excel only barely looks like its pre-historic ancestor from the 1990’s and has much of its internals and even externals revamped. Articles like this one remind me that open source tools can complement my skills, and to keep working with them as much as I can while unemployed. Haki Benita, Fastest Way to Read Excel in Python Also, "It depends" is a perfectly good answer, sometimes the best answer, when followed by a clear explanation of the nuance. Who’s listening, though?

This is a moving post from a giant in the software world. An Unreasonable Investment. Reading it reminded me of Chandru from my first ‘corporate’ job. He taught me almost everything I needed to know about databases and structured querying and saving countless hours of un-formatting… I messaged him today, and he was happily surprised to hear from me. 😄

QOTD:

People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo.
– Max Eastman

Music:

Richard Smith Beatles Medley

Daily Reads:

Came across these handy tools to share individual Obsidian notes when you don’t have a Obsidian Publish subscription. It results in a copy of course, not the original note being shared, but it serves the purpose. Could also simply email the note, but then keeping track of edits, urgh!

Jeremy Connell-Waite has put together a handy website called Better Stories with some great looking resources. Bookmarked.

Dan Pink interviews Dan Heath on the 3-2-1 Podcast on the Power of Moments. The awareness that key transitory moments can be made magical with a little effort and thoughtfulness

Adam Mastroianni on De-bogging oneself. I love his ability to concoct labels to the ridiculous things we make up and pretend they are real problems. That’s why having goofy names for them matters so much, because it reminds me not to believe the biggest bog lie of all: that I’m stuck in a situation unlike any I, or anyone else, has ever seen before.

Where does AI (in all its forms) be applied, beyond the hyperventilation about code, text, and images? The Scientific American has this story about explainable AI (in contrast to black-box models) while discovering a new class of antibiotics.

Steven Levy from Wired in a fun interview with Yann Le Cun – How Not To Be Stupid About AI.

Simon Willison tips his hat to Tom Scott and talks about the formidable power of escalating streaks. So much inspiration here! Watch Tom’s final video

QOTD:

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what’s right.
– Isaac Asimov

Music:

A Celebration of New Orleans Blues with Hugh Laurie Storytelling, music, history, humor, tour-guiding, and much more rolled into an fantastic 52 minutes.

Daily Reads:

The Guardian had an article about a rise in women exploring sexual fantasy in midlife. I found it fascinating that behind the lurid headline, is a segment of population that has unmet needs, rarely spoken about aloud at least in my circles. Someone’s discovered the commercial potential, and even attracted government investment in the idea.

Nicole van der Hoeven shares how to use bookmarks in Obisidan

Tracy Durnell’s Big Questions and a hundred dozen links in there. The trap I’m caught in is information consumption, and her framing of what to read, and why, makes it really tempting to try it myself.

The idea of the indieweb is captivating. Knowing how to implement in on my own site, another matter. This book on Micro Blogs by Manton Reece is for my reading, and possible implementation, although I have not yet figured out the why, besides my usual "this is cool".

A 2 min snippet of Matthew McConaughey’s speech at the White House in the aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting.

Rob Walker, in Resolved shares ideas for ‘resolutions’ for 2024 – be less boring by Rob LaZebnik is imaginatively fun! (go somewhere you’ve never been, indulge your senses, get permission to do something normally off-limits, get out of your creative comfort zone…)

Matt Mullenweg celebrates his 40th birthday soon. He wants more people to blog as his Birthday Gift. I think it’s a great idea too! My story: I came across an article by Om Malik about his connection with WordPress/ Automattic sometime in 2007 (I think?) I finally got around to creating a blog of my own in 2009, and started using WordPress in 2010. For a non-techie like me (& having seen Google kill off its products way too often), WordPress has been a steady, easy, part of my life for the last 14 years. Anyway, Happy Birthday Matt!

QOTD:

I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
– J.D. Salinger

Music:

An Australian icon, Slim Dusty, says in verse how I feel today: Looking Forward, Looking Back

Looking forward, looking back
I’ve come a long way down the track
Got a long way left to go
Making songs, from what I know

I use a RSS reader to build a river of content that I can dip my toes into, swim in, or picnic at for an entire day. What I get mostly is to improve my own imagination, and give me ideas to work on because I have few original ideas. I read more than I share, and that’s probably definitely a good thing.

Daily Reads:

Julia Evans on helping build a brag document I will be using it myself, and sharing with the folks I’ve been working with.

Nathan Baugh: Start at the end. Works for writing, and works for projects. His suggestion to copy work from your favourite author by hand, tear it apart to see why it works is a great warm up that I will recommence in 2024. The Best of 23 Workbuilders is also a compendium to several posts that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed and learnt from.

Anne-Laure le Cunff of Ness Labs has earned her way into my must-reads. Her 2023 Annual Review might shed a light on why

John Durrant of Ordinary Mastery on Rules and Rulelessness

Simon Willison is another must-read, and his wrap up of the stuff we figured out about AI in 2023 will bring you mostly up-to-speed even if you didn’t know anything about it.

Rishad Tobaccowala has a blog and a podcast, and both are worthy of time. In Mind-Shi(f)t, he offers a few ideas on how to change your mind (not a bad thing, in case you’re wondering!)

Ben Werdmuller on Looking Forward to 2024 while acknowledging that it will be like the one gone by, difficult.

Richard Merrick reflecting on 2023 shares his discoveries of 3 brutal simplicities: leadership, efficiency, and belonging. Hard-hitting, as usual.

Om Malik does something more interesting than merely metrics – discover the inter-relationships between the topics he explored. I like this approach very much.

I learnt today that the symbol for section § can be typed on the Mac keyboard using Option+6. I don’t know what to do with this information yet 😆

Cal Newport on Metrics & Resolve Goal setting and time management are all prospective, in that they look boldly toward your desired future. Metrics, by contrast, are retrospective, merely leaving a record of what has already occurred. Tracking daily metrics is like a training regime for your will.

Kent Hendricks learned a lot of things in 2023.

I cherish the writings of photographer Alex Waterhouse-Hayward: the writing revolves around his now departed wife Rosemary. He’s been writing on his blog since 2009 or earlier, and has a wonderful away with words, as much as his mastery over the camera.

Allen Pike came bundled with the NetNewsWire app that I’ve been trying out, reading feeds on today. His November post titled "You Should Have A Research Question" grabbed me by the collar and smacked me against a wall of wasted decades. Brent Simmons, who started NetNewsWire writes why this particular software doesn’t take money from its users

Sara Campbell has the final word in Tiny Revolutions No. 106, which also makes it the quote of the day.

QOTD:

Our actions are our only belongings.
– HT: Sara Campbell, from a Buddhist treatise

Music:

This is one of my favourite tunes from the Morales Brothers that are Inka Gold, panpipes and guitar make a great vibe: El Condor Pasa

Happy New Year, whatever Happy or New means to you!

Daily Reads:

Doc Searls on how categorisation gets humans wrong, with a personal example.

Downloaded a new newsreader app called NetNewsWire. I’ve been using Feedbro all year, probably longer, and I’m not entirely sure why I want to switch, other than to check it out because someone who’s blog I follow regularly mentioned it, and I’d never heard of it before. It’s a Mac specific app, so that’s probably one reason. Anyway, will be a try-out and see approach for a bit.

The choice I made was before reading this post that Tracy Durnell shared on her blog: Choose Boring Technology by Dan McKinley. consider how you would solve your immediate problem without adding anything new.

Charlie Munger’s Poor Charlie’s Almanack is available to read on this beautiful website.

QOTD:

the mind, when its interests are divided, takes in nothing very deeply.
– Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

Music:

Isto (Chris White) performs Imagine – the perfect song for New Year’s Eve.

Daily Reads:

Jim Nielsen: Blogging is like composting

Irving Wladawsky-Berger draws parallels between the internet and the World Wide Web and the current state of play with AI in The Duelling Visions for the Soul of AI

Taking classical music recommendations from an economist. Tyler Cowen’s 2023 Classical Music discoveries

Warpnews: Advances in CRISPR technology Base editing, prime editing, epigenome editing are beyond my awareness, let alone knowledge. I’m interested in understanding a bit more about this world in 2024 and beyond. Mathias Sundin, the Angry Optimist, has a selection of fact-based optimistic articles from 2023 in this hopescrolling article

A collection of 2023 reviews, in the hope that my own imagination can take some flight 😅
Tom MacWright has a wonderful quote in his, from a NYTimes opinion piece: “I get what I want, but I know what to want.”
Ryan Holiday did "less" in 2023. His focus for 2024 is "systems". I used this as a prompt for my own exploration in my morning pages.
Ewan McIntosh on how to be messy and brilliant – with book stacks! Not strictly a 2023 review, but one for the holidays. Brad Carter, his business partner, shares a trick to remember the year gone by using a paper and pen.

Ithaca by CP Cavafy, read by Sean Connery. This moved me to tears, and I can’t describe why. …Hope that your journey is a long one…

So much good stuff in the world! Donald Hall on his wife Jane Kenyon: The Third Thing has the quote of the day.

StrangestLoop: Things that aren’t doing the thing

Michael Lopp shares his Seven Steps To Fixing Stalled To-Do Tasks

Seth Godin: Rewriting for humans is an example of taking something dense, and making it accessible.

By the way, I’m so grateful for the (new?) right click option in Firefox that says "Copy Link without site tracking" – I hate the referral links and clear them out each time I share the link.

QOTD:

What we did: love. We did not spend our days gazing into each other’s eyes. We did that gazing when we made love or when one of us was in trouble, but most of the time our gazes met and entwined as they looked at a third thing. Third things are essential to marriages, objects or practices or habits or arts or institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint rapture or contentment.
– Donald Hall

Music:

Christy Moore: Ordinary Man

Daily Reads:

What would Socrates Do? Prof. Tamar Gendler of Yale, on the Hidden Brain podcast, points out that the same questions that affect contemporary life were tackled a couple of millennia ago

Four Timeless Investing Principles That Never Change Darius Foroux with another reminder that one of the principles of investing is doing nothing.

I’m with Doc Sears on this one: Feeling is Human However good AI gets, the machine is not feeling, merely emulating.

Joanna Stern interviews iPhone thief Aaron Johnson. Stunning.

Om Malik on Second Chances.

Sam Altman: What I Wish Someone Had Told Me

QOTD:

In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.
– Mortimer J. Adler

Music:

Angelo Debarre, Thomas Dutronc, Manoir de Mes Reves