Nice Canadian Fire Sunset
Overwhelming and Collective Murder
The incomparable Werner Herzog talking about the Amazon jungle:
Shape Up by Ryan Singer
I was prompted to read this book from a coworker. Some ideas that resonated with me:
Using a six week span to get work done. It’s not too short to require a lot of formality and not too long where people get lost. The notion of an appetite for something to get done. “Estimates start with a design and end with a number. Appetite start with a number and end with a design.
Switched Search Engines
I have historically been a big fan of Google. Their products are engaging, though not reliably durable in their lifespan. I was a big fan of Google’s Pixel phone in all its Android purity. What has slowly become distasteful for me with Google is that they are an advertising sales company who builds cool tech … to serve the advertising. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it would take to move away from them.
The Kitchen Cabinet Painting Project
Much of the kitchen refresh was hinged around adding some new cabinetry with the ultimate goal of painting them all to be a uniform color. We had been living with a mixed set of colors having had existing red maple, adding white painted cabinets, and constructing new custom cabinets. To finally get them painted was a major milestone.
The painting process itself is pretty straight forward. You must clean and sand the existing cabinets, then use a sprayer to get an even coat of paint on.
The Kitchen Refresh Program
In my professional world, a Program is the superset of many related Projects. We even have the role of Program Manager to oversee the long term progress of a Program that can span multiple teams and organizations to ensure something gets done. Over the past year, the big Program for me has been a kitchen refresh. I am told it is not a remodel as we did not take it down to bare studs, but I promise you the distinction does not seem to be much cheaper.
The Silliness of Artificial Intelligence
Some random thoughts on AI, or more specifically the LLM implementation of AI:
The big tech companies are historically terrible at putting human beings first and constantly think they can outsmart earth/nature/humanity. They will make poor guides for how this technology is applied to society. I personally do not think the world needs more content, so the idea that AI will replace us and produce all that we produce at bigger scale presupposes anyone wants to consume it.
Bringing a Bag of Pancakes Onto a Flight
If you are not familiar with Kyle Kinane, you must spend the full eight minutes listening to his story of a man bringing a bag of pancakes onto a flight.
Lean on Me
From Austin Kleon’s wonderful weekly newsletter, a link to his post, Lean on Me by Bill Withers. The quote within that resonates with me:
“I consider it to be the best American song recorded in the past hundred or so years,” Hein writes. “I made the case that it would make a better national anthem than our current terrible one.”
Modern Masculinity
What is masculinity in the modern world? It is an interesting question as it leads to a lot of uncomfortable skepticism around your motivation. Am I implying men are victims in the feminist world today? No. What I am implying is that thankfully we have progressed with feminism, but in putting our focus there, we have lost a clear definition of what it means to be masculine. The reason I find the question particularly interesting is that most every definition I have heard could reasonably be applied to women.