Read

Einstein didn’t say that: How viral misquotes evolve and replicate

Good to find out the person behind Quote Investigator is legitimate. I was hoping this piece would go more into the psychology of why we prize quotes from famous people so much. I’m fascinated by the way that if “Famous Person said XYZ”, then the idea is cemented in our minds as official and factually correct. But if a regular person says an interesting thing, then it’s just something they said. It’s the old appeal to authority fallacy. Or maybe it’s the halo effect. Either way, sadly, we’re so easily hackable.

The Leopold Model: Analysis and Reactions

After reading situational-awareness.ai, struggling my way through some of the more technical parts, and feeling a mix of interest and scepticism, I wanted to see what others though. This piece was good for that. Though still, a lot goes over my head, and I’ve not good way of judging what I should think about the validity of either Leopold’s or Zvi’s opinions. Getting to grips, even with just the opinions around AI, is a bit tricky, innit.

Now finished: Here’s what you can and (probably) can’t change about [AI’s] environmental impact

I’ve now finished this one it feels even more like a good companion to the above two mentioned AI related pieces.

Large language models, explained with a minimum of math and jargon

Continuing my little AI reading thread, I revisited this piece that I read last year. I feel it gave me my basis for what current ‘AI’ is actually about, and wanted to check it still stands up. I think it does. And I feel confident again in my take that we should be saying LLMs rather that AIs most of the time. But that goes too deep into the semantic mess surrounding the word ‘intelligence’. I’ll leave that for now then, and say only that this piece is still very useful for getting a conceptual understanding for what’s happening with current AI chat tools. Fundamentally, they’re pattern matching and prediction systems, trained on really massive datasets of text written by humans. Damn, here’s were I question myself and think, ‘but, aren’t we all just pattern matching and prediction systems, trained on very small datasets of text written by humans’?

People Differ Widely in Their Understanding of Even a Simple Concept Such as the Word ‘Penguin’

Re-reading this and the next link in order to refresh my memory. I found both of these in February this year and they resonated very loudly with a lot of what I’ve observed and felt for years. Sadly it’s behind a paywall though. Celeste Kidd, who’s work this article focuses on, also gave a fascinating interview on the You Are Not so Smart podcast (link for that also below).

People Have Very Different Understandings of Even the Simplest Words

This one covers much from the above link, but gives more detail in some areas. Such as James Hampton’s “prototype” theory, practical solutions to semantic disagreement, and the failure of language relating to climate change, which I first remember reading about a while back in Climate change is ‘largest science communication failure in history’. Oh, I also forgot that this piece uses the Garry Larson / Far Side ‘Ginger the Dog’ effect to illustrate miscommunication, as I did a while back when exploring the use of the word ‘growth’

How [climate change] graphics could be made more accessible

Thinking how words are failing at climate change communication, reminded me that images seem just as bad. A friend shared this a few weeks back and I forgot to revisit it. Really interesting to see a piece on graphic design, visual communication, accessibility and UCD theory, in what is effectively a site for climate change policy wonks (meaning, the very best type of wonk).

Bluesky and enshittification, Cory Doctorow

“I have watched virtually every service I relied on, gave my time and attention to, and trusted, go through this process”. As friendly as Bluesky seems, I very much feel this piece. Not that I’ve got much to lose by giving a little of my attention to Bluesky, but the story arch of enshittification is real, and I fully expect it to either slowly enshittificate, or fail. I don’t think mastodon is the solution though, at least not until a regular person (someone that’s never worked in tech or build anything themselves on the web) can sign up and tell me it was easy.

alt-text to contextualise… an extra joke punchline… a nice Easter egg

Same. I can’t say I’ve been great historically with alt-text but these past few years I’ve been giving it proper attention and realising how useful it is for context and Easter egg fun. I wish there were ALT buttons on all website images to make them more openly accessible.

Content for all, Sarah Winters, CDL

Less than 800 words, but this piece is packed with excellent points. And about far more than ‘just words and content’. Oddly though I feel quite overwhelmed by it for being so concise while containing so much. Like staring into a fractal…

Listen

The science behind why we so often talk past each other without realising

An enlightening conversation with Celeste Kidd “who studies how we acquire and conceptualise information, form beliefs around those concepts, and, in general, make sense of the torrent of information blasting our brains each and every second.” The big topic here is semantic disagreement, which I’d put as one of the top causes of most bad things.

Is it bad of me to ‘correct’ American spellings in headlines I link too? I just can’t stand seeing spellings like ’realizing’ or similar in my documents. Even this example hurts, so I realise… I’m going to keep correcting until someone convinces me that it’s rude

Should leaders be feared or loved? ReThinking with Adam Grant

Grant talks to Niall Ferguson in this episode, and it’s a really odd listen. I’d not actually heard of Ferguson before this. Maybe he’s more famous in the US than in UK culture that I’m aware of. Or just in another bubble. I went in open then, or possibly even a little bias to the ‘feared’ side of the discussion that Ferguson was arguing for. That doesn’t mean I love that side of things, more that I sadly believe in the effectiveness of fear for many leaders. But from the very start, Ferguson puts on such an arrogant bad boy act that it seems fascinatingly clear he is himself in some state of fear and defensiveness. He took a practically absolutist stance that using fear is the only way to lead, and his inability to engage in nuanced discussion made his argument seem less, rather than more convincing. He went on and on about Glasgow and how tough he thought he was for growing up there. And proudly told a story of throwing a chair at a student once for handing an essay in late. “You can’t do that anymore unfortunately”, he said in a transparent attempt to provoke and get a rise. Grant though, being confident, aware, and far from fearsome, didn’t really take the bait and it made Ferguson seem even more weak and desperate to prove his manliness or something. Anyway, it really is a fascinating thing to hear someone acting so much like an internet troll, or desperate contrarian, or pantomime baddie while taking themselves so seriously. Quite sad even. It left me feeling more confident that fear isn’t the only, or the best way. While many leaders will still successfully use fear, this guy let the veil slip on the theatrical and weak nature of the stance, and Grant made the perfect example for leading the conversation by being more thoughtful and kind. Curious and fearless, rather than childlike and fearsome.

How the World Ran Out of Everything, 99% Invisible

An interesting episode of 99pi. One of their more infrastructure / global systems design based ones. It plots a good story of how the world went from being revolutionised by the moving assembly line (which everyone copied), to being revolutionised by the standard shipping container and Just-in-Time / Lean manufacturing (which everyone copied). Then, how everything went totally wrong during covid and everyone realised how fragile and dependent the entire world has become on Chinese manufacturing and shipping containers. I’ve previously written about the fascinating history of shipping containers and how they changed Britain and the world.

Listen/Watch

Could You Survive The Cambrian Explosion (hang on… aren’t we still living like this!?)

“Who shall I eat?… In the Cambrian, the act of killing and eating other animals is a hot new lifestyle trend that’s catching on fast. Predation is disrupting the more passive, peaceful lifestyles that had come before. And the spread of predation through the animal kingdom is probably partly driving the immense innovation and diversification of the time. both predators and prey find themselves locked in an intense evolutionary race to adapt and survive by developing new traits and behaviours that have never been seen before.” Such a great introduction to this video (though the chat that follows isn’t so good imo). This highlighted section is just so dazzlingly analogous to explaining capitalism for me! In particular the past 30 years of digital and technological innovation. It also triggers my Personal Parable #3 about unsustainable one-upmanship. And it relates to the above ReThinking podcast link. Who shall I eat… killing and eating other animals… predators and prey developing new traits and behaviours… such as being fearsome in attempt to stay atop the food chain.

Why I’m not worried about the election, Adam Conover

“The real reason I’m not worried is because worry is a useless fucking emotion that does nothing but paralyse and control us”. Had this on while cooking tonight and multitasking with random YouTube videos. I’ve liked what I’ve seen from Adam in the past, so gave it a click to see why he’d used what seemed to be a deliberately clickbait-like title, but then he dropped this line and genuinely motivating stories and suggestions thereafter. Good stuff.

Watch

Theories of Nonbinary Heterosexuality, Carson Olshansky

“… it’s not just a question of what gender someone is, I think it’s also a question of how much gender someone has.” This is such a good set, which I know is supposed to be funny, and it is, I do get it! But it’s also really on to something with the idea of axes that are missing from spectrums that we try to think of linear (let alone linear in a binary sense). The bit I mean starts here, but please just watch the whole video. I’m new to Cason, but very much hoping their recent increase in uploads will continue.

Do This To Jump Higher In 15 Minutes

“In order to jump high you need to have a really good penultimate step. One of the most important aspects of the penultimate step is leading with the knee…” I’m still being fed lots of useful basketball videos for which I’m grateful. This one clearly knows that my dunking aspirations have returned after 30 years! I knew nothing of the ideas and techniques in this video, or to be honest, that there were even techniques for jumping. Gonna try this on Wednesday night though as see if it helps.

Look

Who needs writers?

My fanboy fixation with DESIGNTHINKING! might be getting out of hand, but it’s always spot on. I’ve so many memories of clients refusing to see words and writing as important details that worth investing in. The creation of ‘Content Designer’ as a distinct role has helped in some sectors with this issue, but it’s still a hard sell. There’s something about ‘everyone being able to write’ that makes people feel it’s easy and and effectively thoughtless.

Fantastic Four #588. A comic (nearly) without a single word

I’m not a massive comic book fan, but I dip into that world, and enjoy a well produced video essay about comic book artists from time to time. I learned of this Fantastic Four issue from one of those videos and loved the idea of it containing nearly no words. I managed to find it online (though not sure if that link will last given it’s not an official source by the looks of it). I don’t know many of the characters in this issue, and I’m not actually keen on the Fanatic Four, but the issue still works I think. Benefiting from there being no words and having to read the expressions and graphics instead. I think this no words concept resonated with also as I once imagined a similar idea for an episode of Eastenders! I didn’t like the show, but thought a silent episode would have been amazing to watch. Years later I heard they made an entire episode featuring just Dot recording a message for her husband in hospital. I like when formats are changed or challenged a bit. Feels healthy to push the boundaries of convention from time to time.

Thomas Barnett design portfolio

A very nice portfolio of work I found, after finding a very nice website and identity that he’d worked on for Neurodiverse Connection, which is also a very impressive and polished use of Squarespace.

Gen Z’s TikTok-addled brains?!

I still have Steve Silberman’s words saying there is no “healthy ideal state of cognition” in my head today. And I’ve been thinking a lot about the big event approaching tomorrow in the US. I think that’s why my mind was nudged back to seeing this a few weeks ago. For me, the dailydot took an ignorant stance on this Subway Surfer split-screen Harris campaign ad. It smacks like a kind of ‘neuronormative’ elitism. That the only good attention span is a long and patient one. No thought to other minds that process in different ways. As someone that finds it easiest to think and focus on information audibly, while my hands are either cooking or washing up, or when I’m riding a bike or gardening, I find the suggestion here that I too am addled brained. We need to stop judging how people take in their information. And think more, as kalamahq have, about how we reach more than just the same old, old audiences. Original TikTok here.

Use/Buy

Pixelmator Pro. Professional image editing tools that anyone can use

I’m possibly too late to adopt this app and it’s smaller sibling and iOS versions, as they’ve just announced an accusation by Apple. Wish I knew of it sooner though as while I now use Affinity Photo, it’s missing some smart images editing features that I’d like (and that I’m still 100% unwilling to personally pay Adobe for).

An ABC Pop-up Book on How Letters Get their Shape

As I clicked through to this Kickstarter I promised myself I wasn’t going to ‘invest’ in another one. Then I did, because this book looks absolutely amazing. So much talent on display here from the maker of This Book is a Camera (which I did managed to resits buying, but only just).

Want

High Performance Personal Writing and Drawing Machine, from Evil Mad Scientist

I keep glancing at plotters, still inspired by Dan Catt’s talk that I mentioned in Part 1 of my Papercamp 3 write up. Which reminds me that I need to finish part three, and stop distracting myself with daydreams of things I’m so clearly not going to buy. Would be cool though… and so would buying anything from a site called Evil Mad Scientist.