/reader

En zo geschiedde.

Het zal vaker voorkomen, misschien moet ik het ritme wel naar tweewekelijks brengen. Ik weet het nog niet precies, het vormt zich vanzelf wel.

Dan hebben we direct de rode draad in deze editie te pakken. En in mijn eigen werk de afgelopen weken. Veel wist ik nog precies en vormt zich gaandeweg. Het is net het leven he. We denken dat we alles kunnen uitdokteren, een plan maken, een routekaart, maar ach, die kun je na de eerste onverwachte bocht of opengebroken weg weer aanpassen.

Klinkt heftig, maar eigenlijk kan het best leuk zijn!

Wat zag ik zoal deze week?

Zo begon ik deze week met nieuwe weekberichten over mijn project CreativeNotes. Ja, erg meta en erg Main Character Energy (een term die ik leerde van mijn dochter) om in een leesmap te schrijven over je eigen weekbericht. Op Paper Trails kun je mijn route volgen hoe ik van een wild idee naar ja… iets ga. Een boek? Een podcast? Een serie interviews met foto’s? Ik weet het nog altijd niet exact…het vormt zich gaandeweg. En het vormt zich op dit moment in mooie wegen, maar dat lees je binnenkort wel…

Over schrijven en boeken… Martijn Aslander publiceert binnenkort zijn nieuwe boek “Starten met Obsidian”, dat hij in een relatief korte tijd heeft geschreven. Een praktische gids om met de notitie-app Obsidian te beginnen. Van je eerste notitie tot de opzet van een levend systeem. Ik mocht het manuscript lezen én het voorwoord schrijven. Het boek is nu al te bestellen en bij Martijn op LinkedIn kun je mijn voorwoord lezen. Ben je net begonnen met Obsidian of van plan je eigen kennis beter te borgen? Bestel dat boek van Martijn. Het is praktisch, grappig, inzichtelijk en zet je direct aan de slag.

Nog meer boekennieuws! Vriendin en Punkqueen Kirsten Jassies had vrijdag de lancering van haar boek “Het is allemaal de schuld van Social Media” over hoe BigTech, algoritmes en AI ons leven sturen. En wat je er aan kunt doen. Het is geen revolutionair en anti-kapitalistisch manifest om Silicon Valley tot de grond af te fikken. Kirsten zet de risico’s tegenover de positieve kant van technologie en geeft je handvatten hoe je het meer bewust kunt inzetten. Met inzicht, eigen initiatief en meer regelgeving.
Het vervelende is alleen wel dat Kirsten niets op haar eigen site zet om naar te linken en vooral op Instagram stories deelt. Die maar tijdelijk zijn en een account nodig hebben, dus hier linken is wat onnozel. Bij RTL vind je een interview met Kirsten en vorig jaar was ik te gast bij haar podcast over dit onderwerp.

Wat me brengt bij “My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge”. Een inzichtelijk en lekker leesbaar artikel waarom artiesten en auteurs de architecten moeten zijn van hun eigen site. Laurel Schwulst zet op een rij hoe je een website kunt inrichten en waarom het zo belangrijk is voor creatieven. Je eigen website hoeft niet een constante stroom van blogposts te zijn (ahem…) maar kan net goed iets zijn als

• een kamer, waar je alleen hele specifieke zaken bewaart. Als het jouw uitkomt.
• een boekenplank, met wat je hebt gelezen, of nu leest. Wat je mooi vindt.
• een plant, het begint met een zaadje. Misschien één regel of één idee op je site. Wat je langzaam uit laat groeien. Als de tijd er rijp voor is.
• een tuin, waar je op gezette tijden in tuiniert, schoffelt, onkruid (oude teksten/beelden) weghaalt en bepaalde seizoenen even met rust laat.
• een poel, iets wat tijdelijk bestaat. Een site rondom een gebeurtenis, een moment in je leven. Iets wat een begin- en eindmoment kent.
• een steen die je in de zee gooit. Een plek die je eenmaal maakt en daarna niet meer naar omkijkt. Maar dat wel bestaat op het web. Voor anderen.

Each artist should create their own space on the web, for a website is an individual act of collective ambition.

Joan Westerberg bracht eerst LinkedIn en daarna Hackernews in vervoering met haar blogpost “I Deleted My Second Brain”. Ik heb gedachten over dat artikel. Het is fijne clickbait die het lekker doet op de socials, maar inhoudelijk is het weinig nieuws onder de zon. Ik wil dit nog wat laten marineren in mijn hersenpan en, oh the irony, linken aan eigen notities en ideeën die ik over de jaren heb opgebouwd. Dus wordt nog vervolgd, maar lees zeker haar essay over de tyranny of tools, the anxiety of the unread en laat me weten wat je er van vindt. Lees dan als tegenhanger dit artikel van Remco van den Akker, waarom een eigen systeem juist wél de moeite waard is.

Over linken gesproken en wat allemaal nog niet af is, ik kwam laatst langs Linkblocks, een Federated Bookmark Manager en dat ziet er op zich wel interessant uit. Het is nog láng niet af, maar je kunt het proces volgen op Github en een eenvoudige demo proberen.

Ik heb al jaren een zwak voor zines. Ik doe er te weinig mee, ik verzamel ze niet, ik maak ze niet en ik zoek het niet actief op. Maar het is zo’n latente, passieve liefhebberij. Als het langskomt ben ik super enthousiast en laat ik dat anderen weten als het kan. Zoals op de PublicSpaces Conference, waar Astrid Poot haar mini-zines uitdeelde. Of laatst tijdens een koffie met Elmine, waar we de lol van zines deelden.
Juli is International Zine Month, des te meer reden om zines de aandacht te geven die ze verdienen!

Video-tip! Gavin Strange is de Creative Director van de UK animatie studio Aardman. Die ken je van series als Wallace & Gromit of Shaun the Sheep. Strange vertelt op Beyond Tellerrand in humoristische hyperspeed hoe we meer moeten klooien en minder de dingen overdenken. Alleen al voor zijn slides en voorbeelden is “Less thinkering and more tinkering” de moeite van het kijken waard.

Tot volgende week, blijf mooie dingen maken en abonneer je op mijn nieuwsbrief Paper Trails.

My poor ability to rote memorise permeated into other parts of me. I began to believe I have poor learning skills, so for long spurts in my life I gave up on learning anything. It also fuelled a large part of my low self-esteem because I started getting terrible grades at school.

Thankfully due to the rise of the internet in my teens I realised I could learn something quickly if I was deeply curious. I picked up photoshop, web design, and coding on my own and didn’t seem to have issues remembering steps to do something. I think it is mostly because a lot of it can be inferred from logic before it becomes part of our long-term memory.

I guess I tend to assume I have a poor all-round memory because I have a poor working memory. Yet when I was bored in secondary school I would keep myself awake by writing down lyrics of chinese songs in traditional chinese. In Singapore we learn simplified chinese, but cantopop and manga exposed me to the traditional version. On top of remembering the aural form of the lyrics, I could also write them.

It has been around 20 years since, and I can probably still remember at least half of them. A random song I haven’t heard in years can pop up on the radio and I would still be able to sing along. I can still write out chinese lyrics of hundreds of songs. As a big fan of Faye Wong, I can recite her discography in chronological order complete with the order of the tracks. Isn’t my memory strange?

There is something about conscious and repeated exposure that injects these effortlessly into my memory, but somehow it fails me if I try to remember something deliberately. I think a large part of it is due to adhd. I just cannot sustain enough attention to memorise anything consciously, except when I am in a hyperfocused state. Hyperfocus brings me the attention span not available to me in my daily life. But it is not a state I can consciously switch on. It comes and goes like a ghost I cannot chase.

I just wish I knew all of these when I was much younger so I wouldn’t have wasted so much of my life. I am probably 100x much better at studying now compared to when I was a teenager. Personally I think it is too much to ask of a teenager to ace multiple exams over multiple years that would define their life significantly at a period when they are typically in turmoil for various reasons. We designed society to be convenient for the economy instead of what actually makes sense.

Going down the rabbit hole I picked up Moonwalking with Einstein, a book where journalist Joshua Foer sought to demonstrate that anyone can having amazing memory after training with mnemonic techniques. I am not very convinced: he may have survivor’s bias – just because he can train himself to be a memory athlete doesn’t mean anybody can. Mnemonic techniques typically require good visualisation skills, which not everybody has.

But unlike my past self I now believe that it can be at least improved, because the brain is the ultimate learning engine. New neuronal connections are formed each time we are exposed to new stimuli. Like strength training a muscle, the brain can be exercised to gain improvements. Yes there is probably a threshold, but I would wager that most of us are nowhere near that threshold. Constant new learning experiences are not something most of us have as adults.

This has taught me is that in general we are too quick to believe in self-limiting narratives for ourselves. We should try to investigate if these limits are true. My working memory is poor as of now, but is it something that can be improved? I kept thinking that my memory as a whole is bad because I have accumulated too many traumatic memories (yes I see the irony) with regards to my working memory, forgetting that there are strange large repositories of things I actually can remember. Like lyrics. The spelling of a ton of words. The writing of numerous chinese characters. Phone numbers and addresses from few decades ago. Lots of random facts I’ve accumulated by reading a lot.

I hope it doesn’t come across as bragging. I am trying to express how blind we can be to parts of our selves, unconsciously choosing to have a narrow yet magnified focus on a particular part. The way this society operates (and its emphasis on rote learning) has made me feel bad about myself for most of my life. I wonder if I can slowly change that impression. 

Well, I once believed I was born physically weak. Making the conscious decision to strength-train has changed that perception. I wonder how many of these beliefs I can flip.

A tough place to govern#

• Benjamin Wittes: "It’s remarkable how many non-New Yorkers seem to care who the mayor of New York City is." #
• They do and they're right to, the same way we were concerned how the Governor of California and Mayor of Los Angeles would react to the invasion of the Marines and hijacking of the National Guard. #
• Right now the NYC mayor is a hostage of the US govt. Not in a position to help. An inexperienced first term NY mayor, have we seen that before? How does the NYPD respond to that? #
• Then there was the snowstorm that derailed John V Lindsay, a heroic and transformative mayor. NY is a tough place to govern even when the US government isn't aiming to regime change the place.#

• NY is a tough place to govern even when the US government isn't aiming to regime change the place.#

• Local government is our last line of defense. #
• "Think of voting as a chess move, not a valentine."#
• You all fell in love with a candidate, I do it too. #
• But think about the context the next mayor will govern in.#
• The thing about NY that people might not understand is that the politics are dirty and fucked up. Dems tend to elect handsome young heros who when they have to deal with NYPD and the sanitation workers, the teachers union, and the federal government, also the ancient infrastructure, melt.#

The best job in the world#

• Now that we know the outcome of the 2024 election, not just in numbers but in what it's doing to our beloved country and the rest of the world, it's interesting to revisit the campaign that journalism ran last year to force President Biden to step aside. That's one of the functions of Facebook, they play back your posts from years ago, so you can see how things changed, or didn't. #
• Anyway, last year on this day I wrote this on Facebook: "Why don't journalists cover the Biden base? Do they even consider the possibility that there is one? Or do they think they are the base? I thought they weren't supposed to care who the nominees are? Why do they feel entitled to say one candidate should withdraw but not the other? Have any of them even thought this through?"#
• Nick Arnett, a former tech journalist, said in a comment: "Until I read this, the madness of the Times calling on Biden, but not Trump, to withdraw didn't dawn on me." #
• I had followed his metamorphosis over years from a journalist to a worker who goes where there are fires or other natural disasters, for the government, to support the effort to save people's homes and lives. I watched him via Facebook, in awe, as he went around the country, not being paid very much I imagine, but doing good. #
• I learned something important when my father was in the hospital many years ago, in a coma, after losing a lot of blood and being unconscious for hours before he was found. He was in a ward in Flushing Hospital, along with a lot of other comatose people. All were unconscious, unable to feed themselves. Hard to know if they had any awareness. From an outside perspective they, and my father included, were lost. Some had been there for years, probably weren't ever going to come out of it. We were lucky, my father survived, after a month, and had seven more years to live. #
• I visited him every day, and got to know the flow of the hospital. Workers came in and out of the room to attend to these comatose people. Imagine the kind of support they needed just to keep their bodies functioning and not wasting away for lack of movement. I thought these people must have the worst jobs imaginable, imagining myself in their shoes.#
• I got to know them, asked about what else they do, how they got here, where they live, etc. Somehow I got up the courage to ask one of them if they liked their job, imagining I'd get a New Yorker comment like "You know, it's a living." But what I heard was a complete surprise. "It's the best job in the world," he said, because I can see so clearly how my work helps real people. He was looking right at me. It hit me, this man is doing what I can't do, what my father's parents, who were long gone, couldn't do. Caring. Caring for my dad. Then I got it. #
• Back to Nick, who was and still is, and probably always will be doing things to help other people, no matter what he does. #
• He was canned in one of the DOGE purges this spring. #
• Now you tell me whether the "Trump base" deserved a chance you wouldn't let us have with Biden? Why journalism felt entitled to make this decision for all of us? When are you going to get the idea that you're supposed to help us. Do the right thing. I get so angry at journalism for getting in the way. Once informed of the facts, it was their job to get out of the way and let us, the voters, make the decision. #
• PS: In the very next post on FB, I wrote an HTML hack that makes the same point, more concisely. #

Another great and reflective theme for the IndieWeb Carnival. While I don’t subscribe to regrets, there are several things I might try differently if I could go back in time.

I’ve been fortunate to have a great career path and work with great people, but it was never the career I envisioned. That’s because I don’t think I had a clear vision rooted in something I was passionate about. It wasn’t until I matured in both career and life that I realized a career as a designer (more specifically, an architect) would have been fulfilling. I’ve cared about all types of design my entire life, but never connected how deeply architecture resonates with me. One “take two” would absolutely be to focus my formal education on design and pursue a career as an architect.

Also, as I’ve written about before, this blog is a bit of a “take two” for my online writing. Consolidating my writing just this one blog (vs. three separate ones) has been a great feeling. Sometimes a second take isn’t due to a mistake made during the first take. Sometimes the second take is about gaining new perspective by trying something again or doing it differently.

This post would become longer than I have time to write if I listed out all the “takes” on life that have evolved into second, third or fiftieth iterations to the current perspective I embrace today. One of the beautiful things about being human is you have the opportunity to grow and evolve in any multitude of ways, so long as your outlook is that not all change is bad and you reserve yourself the right to always “take two” your thinking on any stance at any time.

I am usually pretty good about remembering birthdays since I live in my calendar. And calendar aside I cannot believe he did not let it slip for the entire day. I don't think I'd be able to handle the absurdity of it but maybe I'm just a diva.

Anyway, I felt awful and fretted about it. J and B and them told me that it was nothing to worry about. Would you be mad if someone forgot your birthday? they asked. Probably not, but I imagine I would find it a little strange if my close friend who lived with me forgot for almost the entire day. Perhaps I felt bad because last year M completely forgot about mine and I was a little more sad about it than I'd like to admit.

In my defense I had been thinking about his birthday gift for the past few weeks and I did get him something. So I guess my self-flagellation results stems from the illusion that I was not the type of person to forget close friends' birthdays being shattered.

If J was bothered by my duncehood he did not let it show. We went to Cap't Loui for dinner today, which puts a Korean spin on the traditional seafood boil. One year later, I am again dreaming of a low country boil.

The house sauce they use is sweetened by gochujang and one of their specialty sides is garlic noodles. What do you like in your seafood boil?

*   *   *

I got breakfast with S this morning at Paloma in Greenpoint. Her friend called mid-hangout and S said to her, "The next time you come here we have to go get these croissants." They were fine. I don't really think my brain has wrapped itself around the fact that a single croissant can cost eight dollars.

And here I am writing home about them. Clockwise from top left: guava and key lime danish, herbs de Provence croissant, shakshuka croissant

After breakfast I suggested going to the library to work. Libraries here tend to have a lot of homeless people in them and in this location a few slept in the sunlit chairs facing the windows. I wasn't bothered, but when one started snoring loudly A said it was our cue to get out of here. "Doesn't that bother you?" she asked.

I was confused. "Why? Just tune it out."

"You're so tame," she replied as she packed up her things.

tame: INFORMAL
(of a person) willing to cooperate.

Later I asked her how she was feeling about her breakup. Her face lit up. "Oh! I don't know if it's because I'm getting older, but I feel like I just forgot and moved on after a while. Don't you feel that way too?"

I think the only part of breakups that has gotten easier for me is that I have learned the hard way what I should be doing and (more importantly) not doing after they happen. But when it comes to how much I suffer, if anything they get harder the older I get. My body takes longer to heal. Forgetting is so long. I think about things more now. I want everything to make sense.

*   *   *

I brought J to work with me on Friday. She'd brought me to her office a few times in the past, but her office isn't quite as nice and she doesn't know anyone that works there. I introduced her to my friends at work, who later asked me if we were dating. I explained that we were not. I always find it a little mind-boggling (and sad) how many people struggle to comprehend the existence of close platonic friendships between genders, not least because they make up the majority of my friendships.

*   *   *

I loved Sylvia's moments that stick in [her] mind, so much so that I have half a mind to steal the idea and write my own list. But what a depressing list it would be...

Hacks, Season 4
This season was a return to form with a hilarious yet heartfelt storyline, non-stop one-liners, new and exciting characters, and fun celebrity cameos. The relationship between Deborah and Ava is much more mature as the season develops, and the major turn of the season is unexpected. Jimmy and Kayla remain the MVPs of the series, and the addition of Randi to their twosome is inspired. I laughed, a lot, and can’t wait for next season.

Great British Baking Show, Season 15
There’s not much I can say about this show that I haven’t said before: its reality tv at its sweetest (pun intended) and perhaps best. You grow to love every contestant, are enamored by the judges and hosts, and the baking is always mouth-watering. This season, however, was probably the first where, after the first few episodes, I had no idea the eventual winner was going to win. Was a lovely result.

Another Simple Favor
There was a moment, about a third of the way through the movie, when we contemplated giving up on the film, but decided to give it a little bit more to see if it got better. It didn’t. And despite that we watched the whole thing. The writing is pure schlock and the outfits weren’t even as good this time as they were in the first film. Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively are usually fun to watch, but this material is abysmal rendering the two leads barely watchable. Did make me want to go to Capri, though.

Severance, Season 2
Undoubtedly, a second season of a series will be compared to its first, but in this case, the comparison would be inapt. This season of Severance is wildly different than the first, making it better and worse at the same time. The show keeps its tone and timbre, and the look stays the same, but the story goes to places you couldn’t imagine. Season one left us with some cliffhangers, and those are aptly dealt with in season two, which introduces new plot twists and characters and setting all with intrigue and mystery. I really hope they don’t keep us waiting three years for the next season.

New laws for new technologies

The tl;dr is: the court ruled that (a) piracy for the purpose of training an LLM is still piracy, so there’ll be a separate case about the fact that Anthropic did not pay for copies of all the books their model ingested, but (b) training a model on books and then selling access to that model, which can then produce output based on what it has “learned” from those books, is considered transformative work and therefore fair use.

Compelling arguments have been made both ways on this topic already, e.g.:

• Some folks are very keen to point out that it’s totally permitted for humans to read, and even memorise, entire volumes, and then use what they’ve learned when they produce new work. They argue that what an LLM “does” is not materially different from an impossibly well-read human.
• By way of counterpoint, it’s been observed that such a human would still be personally liable if the “inspired” output they subsequently created was derivative to the point of  violating copyright, but we don’t yet have a strong legal model for assessing AI output in the same way. (BBC News article about Disney & Universal vs. Midjourney is going to be very interesting!)
• Furthermore, it might be impossible to conclusively determine that the way GenAI works is fundamentally comparable to human thought. And that’s the thing that got me thinking about this particular thought experiment.

A moment of philosophy

Here’s a thought experiment:

Support I trained an LLM on all of the books of just one author (plus enough additional language that it was able to meaningfully communicate). Let’s take Stephen King’s 65 novels and 200+ short stories, for example. We’ll sell access to the API we produce.

The output of this system would be heavily-biased by the limited input it’s been given: anybody familiar with King’s work would quickly spot that the AI’s mannerisms echoed his writing style. Appropriately prompted – or just by chance – such a system would likely produce whole chapters of output that would certainly be considered to be a substantial infringement of the original work, right?

If I make KingLLM, I’m going to get sued, rightly enough.

But if we accept that (and assume that the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California would agree)… then this ruling on Anthropic would carry a curious implication. That if enough content is ingested, the operation of the LLM in itself is no longer copyright infringement.

Which raises the question: where is the line? What size of corpus must a system be trained upon before its processing must necessarily be considered transformative of its inputs?

Clearly, trying to answer that question leads to a variant of the sorites paradox. Nobody can ever say that, for example, an input of twenty million words is enough to make a model transformative but just one fewer and it must be considered to be perpetually ripping off what little knowledge it has!

But as more of these copyright holder vs. AI company cases come to fruition, it’ll be interesting to see where courts fall. What is fair use and what is infringing?

And wherever the answers land, I’m sure there’ll be folks like me coming up with thought experiments that sit uncomfortably in the grey areas that remain.

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