Directional Play
Hobbies are great because you don’t have to invest too much of yourself in them, but you absolutely can if you like, and if you do, you tend to get more out of them. You can pick up a hobby—say…
Templates and Scripts
I have a general sense that—wherever we end up next, however our technologies and politics evolve, and whatever shapes our communities and systems and social norms and economic realities are nudged into as a consequence of those evolutions—it’ll still be…
Break to Make
I recently updated the operating systems on my iPhone and Macbook Pro, as usual waiting a while because the folks behind some of the software I use drag their heels on getting confirmed-compatible versions of their offerings out the door.…
Hugs Not Nuggs
It’s been said that the average person living today—especially in wealthy countries—will enjoy a better overall quality of life than an emperor living a few hundred years ago, and I tend to think that’s true. Average life- and health-spans have…
Reset Layers
Every morning I like to reset to zero. After a quick little stretch-focused workout, I get the kettle going and put all the dishes and silverware away. I straighten and tidy anything within reach, and I take my pill (levothyroxine for…
A Solved Problem
There’s a chance that some of the technologies that fit under the ever-enbroadening umbrella-term “AI” will end the world by vivifying a consciousness (or pseudo-consciousness) with goals that deviate from ours, which might then cause a spectacular economic collapse or…
I’ll Need Fuel
It’s been said (by many people, as it turns out) that’s it’s difficult and at times dangerous to make predictions about the future. Which is far from ideal, as the future is where we’ll spend the rest of our lives. I…
Paradigms and Gaps
Back in 1960, the concept of paradigms was developed by Thomas Kuhn to refer to our framework of reality—what we seem to know, what seems to be true, the assumptions we make based on that seeming knowledge, and our resulting sense of…
Wantingness
I love the cold. Winter (and to a lesser degree Autumn) is when I can finally spend more time outside, because the sun isn’t persistently menacing my burn-prone skin and all the floral aggressors that trigger my seasonal allergies are…
Info Hoarding
The Google Effect, sometimes called Digital Amnesia, refers to our tendency to treat our tools (like search engines or archives filled with captured notes) as if they are our brains. If someone asks us what the capitol of North Dakota is,…