AI is Throwing a Roadside Picnic What alien leftovers can teach us about AI-generated science metedata.substack.com Roadside Picnic by Аркадий Стругацкий, Борис Стругацкий, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky LLMs do feel like alien technology. It’s still very surprising to me that these relatively simple linear algebra building blocks can now perform as “thinking machines”. It feels unintuitive that “next token prediction” would work as well as it does.
I can relate. I have a bunch of these “will never release” projects as well. They’re tailor made tools for my workflows. LLMs + Agents have many downsides and concerns attached to them but one of the upsides is that all your software wishes can now come true.
Seth Grant's World Series — Glass What's the point of a portrait? glass.photo autumn leaves, a Series by Uwe — Glass contractually obligated annual status report: it has started 🙂 glass.photo Weather has been good and it’s really pretty outside.
Speaking of pretty, this movie is magical
Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel The award-winning, bestselling author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility returns with a breathtaking novel of doubles, shadow worlds, and fractured timelines as a man disappears from a glittering Los Angeles party, and a woman—a gunrunner, an art collector, an operative of the State—searches ... I’ve been joking with my wife that we must be stuck in a weird parallel universe—one where Trump has been president (twice!), AI happened, and pickleball is somehow the dominant sport.
Kusama in Photos — Glass An icon's impact on photography. glass.photo The 92-Year-Old Mathematician and the Teenage Apprentice Joan Birman thought her major discoveries were behind her. Then came an email from a young neighbor — a girl who knew little but wanted to learn. www.nytimes.com why I can't stop thinking about Papua New Guinea and what I think everyone should know about it When you talk about Papua New Guinea, people may say, oh, is that the place where: notnottalmud.substack.com Heavyweight - Jonathan Goldstein Podcast - Pushkin www.pushkin.fm Jonathan Goldstein is back with new episodes.
On Holiday — Glass How to vacation, according to Glass. glass.photo Emily Wilson · An Uncomplicated Man The representation of Odysseus as a reluctant warlord makes a nonsense of The Odyssey’s imagined world. We are not... www.lrb.co.uk Here’s another take from Ezra Klein:
I have thoughts 🙂, mostly summarized as “Of course one would hope that humanity has evolved to a more collaborative, empathic and inclusive culture. It’s infinitely sad that this commentary and the movie are even necessary.”
Life in Rural Romania — Glass A slower life rooted in tradition. gls.photo Love these photos.
The Man in the Corduroy Suit by James Wolff “A wonderful, artful, absorbing espionage novel.” Adam Brookes, author of Night Heron The story of an internal investigation into the past of a British spy suspected of having been turned by Russian agents. British intelligence is in a state of panic. Cracks are appearing, or so a run of ... As expected, finished the third installment (see the spy novels section). This last one brings closure to the Gatekeeping universe and ties up the loose ends from book one and two. I’ll be watching James Wolff for more.
Inaugural post of this new collection. The idea is not original: I’m stealing from the best (and please don’t expect this sort of quality and consistency from me):
kottke.org — Jason Kottke, the original link blog Register Spill — Joy & Curiosity — Thorsten Ball, ~10 links a week with a sentence or two of opinion Simon Willison’s Weblog — linkblog plus “weeknotes” posts ongoing — Long Links — Tim Bray’s occasional long lists of worthwhile reads Michael Tsai — Apple/dev link blog, quotes plus commentary Daring Fireball — Linked List — John Gruber, the original link-plus-two-cents format Waxy.org — Andy Baio’s links It’s a (probably) futile attempt to revive a moribund blog. I noticed my posting frequency declining to zero, but despite this evidence and in a surge of misplaced blogging optimism I even gave this new collection a Hugo index page and a place on the blog menu bar.
North Woods by Daniel Mason I enjoyed this book a lot. The episodes are interesting, the writing is superb and it reminds me of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. It has a little sad, nostalgic undertone coming from the long window of time spanning the episodes in the book. People come into the scope of the house and then disappear again. The permanence of the location is in sharp contrast to the transient existence of the house inhabitants. Some episodes end so abruptly they leave you yearning for more (probably and cleverly intentional).
Deacon King Kong by James McBride Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride James McBride completely hooked me with Deacon King Kong and he did it again with The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. His characters are so compelling, they stay with you long after you finish his books. Their stories feel like old family stories. His dialog is superb, and often very funny. And he rips out your heart with some devastatingly beautiful scenes in both books (Dodo and Monkey Pants in The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, Sportcoat and Hettie in Deacon King Kong). Easily one of my favorite writers.
Transcription by Kate Atkinson, Fenella Woolgar Kate Atkinson’s novel Transcription is the answer to the question of what happens if you take the wicked humor of Martin Amis, John Le Carre prose elegance and the emotional honesty of Iris Murdoch and blend them all together.
Transcription tells the story of Juliet Armstrong in two periods of her life: during World War II and in the 1950’s. Juliet is a compelling protagonist, winning you over with her witty retorts and hilariously devastating inner monologue while navigating absurd situations caused mostly by often inept men and their spy games. During World War II she has been pulled into the war effort working as a transcriber of audio recordings of British Nazis. In the 1950’s we find her employed as a producer of children radio programs at the BBC. In both settings Atkinson aptly captures the work environments, the camaraderie that forms, the incompetence of superiors with their “my girl” sexism. The BBC producer period is of course lower stakes than the WWII life and death situations but lucky for us readers, wounds from Juliet’s spying past resurface and demand to be resolved. The plot is engaging but not overheated so you can still enjoy the writing which is excellent without fighting the urge to skip ahead just to find out what happened. Atkinson keeps you guessing by alternating between the two periods in Juliet’s life, leaving traces in the earlier period that get explained and resolved in the later period. She also does it with shorter timeframes, first describing a situation and then revealing its meaning. This is done very skillfully, you always feel you’re in good hands.
Transformer by Nick Lane As Nick Lane tells it in his book “Transformer”, a biological cell is comparable to a big city: there are structures like buildings, there are pathways and flows, conveyer belts, machinery. One single cell undergoes one billion transformations a second.
“If we live to the age of eighty, we will have lived through nearly three billion billion (3 × 10^18) nanoseconds-worth of metabolism.”
If you shrink yourself to the size of a cell you would experience the electrical field in the cell as you would a lightning strike in human size.
Dough by Richard Bertinet Like many others I picked up bread making during the pandemic lockdown. It turned out to be a fun activity. I eventually landed on Richard Bertinet’s youtube video explaining dough handling.
With a little practice I got it going the way he suggests and I use his method ever since.
Down to Earth by Bruno Latour I understand how we got here. It’s the universal desire to live in Cockaigne Cockaigne, the land of milk and honey. . Some of us live in Cockaigne. We’re busy protecting it, building walls and borders to keep the ones not in it out. We do that because we know Cockaigne as it stands doesn’t scale to everybody. The process of creating it has left a lot of people out, has created a lot of damage and destroyed the planet, forcing those not in the protective bubble of Cockaigne to deal with the consequences. We’re also in denial about our ability to keep this protective bubble up and how much suffering building Cockaigne has caused. In his book “Down to Earth” Bruno Latour French philosopher Bruno Latour died in October, 2022. strongly urges us to reconsider this fantasy, to step out of Cockaigne and come back down to Earth. In 140 pages and without using philosophical jargon Latour explains how we got into this mess and he tries to help us find a way out.