Some reading for today:::
War is a dirty business, by Scott Bateman MBE, on X. HT to Tanya Weiman for her comment here.
Catch the lunar eclipse on Tuesday. In case I don't remind you. Or me.
A thank you to Brian Linse for his kind words on Bluesky. Fact: one of the best parties I've ever attended was at Brian's house in Laurel Canyon, back in blogging's most golden age. At the party, it seemed everybody was talking about this one blogger, Tony Pierce. I hadn't met Tony yet, so I assumed that a sort of familiar-looking smart-sounding guy hanging in the kitchen must be Tony, since he seemed to have accreted some fans and well-wishers. So I asked somebody who had been talking about Tony if that guy was him. "No," they said. "That's Warren Zevon." I'm a fan, so I should have known. This was also not long before Warren's ride arrived. These days Tony blogs at Hear in LA. More about Brian here.
Thanks to Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs (who was also at Brian's party) for this amazing piece of music on an instrument he describes as a "Nick Benjamin custom semi-baritone hybrid guitar. Designed to be 1/3 Bass, 1/3 guitar, and 1/3 slide. It’s constructed largely from sustainable maple, with separate pickups for the bass strings, and banjo tuners for the top strings.1/3 Bass, 1/3 guitar, and 1/3 slide. It’s constructed largely from sustainable maple, with separate pickups for the bass strings, and banjo tuners for the top strings." I didn't want it to end.
While out running errands, I listened on SiriusXM to the Knicks creaming the Spurs at the Garden this afternoon. Broke the Spurs' eleven-game streak and proved again that the Knicks can beat anybody. Very reassuring.
Law360: Are New Police Drone Programs A Big Help Or Big Brother? Before even reading it, I would have said the latter. Once drones become as common as guns (which outnumber people in the US), and some become armed to kill (whether for law enforcement or bad guys), just the sound of one will creep the shit out of people.
Teaching Dialogic Intelligence with AI, by Rupert Wegerif. Pull quote: "Skeptics insist AI can’t be a true dialogue partner because it lacks empathy. Yet its very other-ness lets it serve as education’s outside voice—embodying everything ever said in a field and inviting students into that living conversation. From there it can prod them to leap beyond inherited ideas and co-create tomorrow’s knowledge." That's how I learn from (and presumably with) it. HT to David Weinberger for the pointer.
I just learned about the Heilmeier Catechism. Here is how I would have answered its questions for The Cluetrain Manifesto, The Intention Economy, and MyTerms:
- What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon. Make good trouble.
- How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice? It isn't, except where it happens in nature. And there are no limits.
- What is new in your approach, and why do you think it will be successful? Talk and write about it. Because it has to happen eventually anyway, and talking and writing about it might make it happen sooner.
- Who cares? If you are successful, what difference will it make? Nobody does yet, but some will, and the difference will be everything.
- What are the risks? That it will take longer than I'd like.
- How much will it cost? Nothing.
- How long will it take? Enough
- What are the mid-term and final “exams” to check for success? Imagine asking that question of speech, writing, printing, clothing, the Internet, the Web, or other inventions.
Still, good questions.
This blog post from March of 2020 is getting visits for some reason. Interesting to read it again. I wrote it before the virus became known best as Covid.
It's great to see Bob Frankston mull out loud about AI and programming. One pull-quote: "Perhaps more to the point is that the current tools have been trained on corporate programming dogma, so they developed all sorts of what I consider are bad practices while others see this as the best of breed. This is not an intrinsic flaw but a teething problem."
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