Aside on netfull.org

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 18:59:57 -0400

A lot of people are fleeing from Twitter/X looking for the next place where ‘everybody is.’ But consider that the scale required for a place where everybody is might be the whole problem. Or at least attract the worst of social network health.

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 13:54:22 -0400

Last night at a middle school band concert, the director announced a student would play “a little ditty” but all the kids heard “play a little Diddy” and they all went nuts.

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 09:14:19 -0400

Brooding: Should Our Children Have a Political Party?

Most of us have loved ones whose beliefs don’t perfectly align with ours, and kids need help making sense of that beyond a binary of right and wrong. Our biases are often simultaneously irrational and grounded in experience. Understanding this is not moral relativism, it’s social intelligence. Belonging to a group feels good, but teaching your kids how to identify group dynamics can feel good too.

This was from before the election, but will continue to be relevant.

Wed, 30 Oct 2024 20:53:44 -0400

Accountability sinks | A Working Library

Once you start looking for accountability sinks, you see them all over the place. When your health insurance declines a procedure; when the airline cancels your flight; when a government agency declares that you are ineligible for a benefit; when an investor tells all their companies to shovel so-called AI into their apps. Everywhere, broken links between the people who face the consequences of the decision and the people making the decisions.

I’m thinking about how accountability sinks might operate in my context, the local church. Sometimes you get opposing sinks: the pastor concludes the church doesn’t move forward because of the stubbornness of the laity; the laity conclude the pastor is to blame; everyone escapes accountability as the community degrades. The consequences, though, are much harder to discern in this case.

Sat, 26 Oct 2024 15:23:25 -0400

“merlin mann” apple site:music.apple.com at DuckDuckGo

Merlin doesn’t share his profile on Apple Music but you can find his public playlists with this search.

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 15:23:38 -0400

Finished reading: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan 📚

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 15:22:22 -0400

Finished reading: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker 📚

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 15:19:58 -0400

Finished reading: Low Anthropology by David Zahl 📚

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 15:12:26 -0400

Finished reading: Free of Charge by Miroslav Volf 📚

Tue, 19 Dec 2023 08:13:20 -0400

Finished reading: America’s Theologian by Robert W. Jenson 📚

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 22:14:22 -0400

Finished reading: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders 📚

Tue, 27 Jun 2023 06:34:42 -0400

Finished reading: The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne 📚

Tue, 27 Jun 2023 06:34:06 -0400

Finished reading: The Humans by Matt Haig 📚

Wed, 24 May 2023 09:39:12 -0400

Finished reading: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin 📚

Thu, 11 May 2023 09:42:26 -0400

Finished reading: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It’s a big book with diverse parts so I have big and diverse feelings about it. 📚

Wed, 10 May 2023 16:15:58 -0400

Finished reading: Saving Time by Jenny Odell 📚

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 08:33:16 -0400

The Homebound Symphony

Perhaps [‘the history of anarchism, almost alone among modern social movements, is one of unrelieved failure.’]; but its failures are different and less shameful than the failures of Marxism. There are many ways for a social movement to fail, and I prefer those that don’t result in the murder of tens of millions of human beings.

Maybe a good question for leaders of any social movement: how will you fail? Failure is guaranteed but not all failure is equal.

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 07:58:40 -0400

A great test for Large Language Model AI’s would be to remove some artist’s specific work and see if it could be anticipated based on the remaining work. I don’t think the nature of super large datasets would ever allow this, though.

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 20:47:20 -0400

Finished reading: Across the Everglades by Hugh Laussat Willoughby 📚

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 11:32:38 -0400

Finished reading: I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven 📚

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 14:13:11 -0400

The First Battleground of the Age of AI Is Art

Kottke says:

Like, just think about how powerful this is: normal people who have ideas but lack technical skills can now create imagery. Is it art? Perhaps not in most cases, but some of it will be.

My definition of art is “craft + courage.” I think it’s pretty clear that typing a prompt into a text box to make art isn’t an act of courage. So for now I’ll say that generating images using AI – especially in honing the prompts – is craft but not art.

Sun, 05 Mar 2023 17:08:06 -0400

Finished reading: The 2 Oz. Backpacker by Robert S. Wood 📚

Sun, 05 Mar 2023 16:29:22 -0400

Finished reading: The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas 📚

Mon, 16 Jan 2023 10:49:58 -0400

Ted Gioia on AI music.

In agreement with my 2023 goal of doing work that cannot be replaced by AI.