Recently updated blogs

Steer clear of Google Chrome if you value your privacy. They've just introduced a misleadingly labeled "privacy sandbox" feature, which, paradoxically, undermines user privacy rather than protecting it. [direct link to source]

As with guitars, you can never have too many songs, surely? My modern period of writing and recording began around April 2012, although I’d done a lot of noodling guitar instrumentals with beats and synths for many years before that going way back into my teens. But, this modern period which started in my 40s when I co-established an Arts Night happening got me writing and recording on a more …

The resourceful young agents of James Ponti’s terrific middle grade series City Spies are back for their fifth adventure, this time protecting a young environmentalist from forces who will stop at nothing to silence her powerful voice for change. Teenager Beatriz Santos is a rock star in the global protest movement, with dedicated followers who…

Another underground magazine, this one originating in Seattle during the first wave of the counter-cultural publications that flourished from the mid-60s on. Wikipedia says that Helix managed 125 bi-weekly issues from 1967 to 1970; the Internet Archive has the first 42 issues which run to October 1968 (the uploader’s dates are out by a year each way). When so few of these magazines are available online this makes a welcome …

There is a sort of truism in the education world that non-profit means white hat* and for-profit means you should be skeptical or something stronger. And because Bellwether is a non-profit it would be in my interest to perpetuate that notion. Except it’s wrong and not at all useful. Not-for-profit and for-profit are just corporate structures. Those structures matter, for instance, legally, to some aspects of operations, to compensation, and …

https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-literature/article/95/2/281/344231/Poetry-Will-Not-Optimize-or-What-Is-Literature-to Abstract Literature, poetry, and other forms of noncommercial creative expression challenge the techno-instrumentalist approaches to language, the predictive language generation, informing NLP (large natural language processing models) such as GPT-3 or -4 as well as, more generally, generative AI (text to image, video, audio). Claims that AI systems automate and expedite creativity reflect industry and research priorities of speed, scale, optimization, and frictionlessness driving much artificial intelligence design and …

INSPECTOR FOWLER: We have all seen the musical Oliver, and are familiar with the images of jolly, apple-cheeked urchins in big hats. Well, dispel this cozy impression. The Artful Dodger was a thief, and I don’t think he’d have considered himself quite so “at home” in a juvenile detention centre, which is where I’d have put him. Thieving is thieving. And no amount of “oom-pah-pah” or “boom-titty-titty” will change that. …

Tickets are now on sale to Barbican members for UK premiere of “Eno” including post screening conversation with @brianeno, @gary_hustwit and myself. Tickets for non-members go on sale Friday. The film is never the same twice and the screening in London will be unique to that time and place. Checkout Garys’s site for all the details @gary_hustwit

Art by Laura Nicole On fight week, Kayla feels every muscle in her body harden. Electrical currents race around in her bloodstream; each movement is animated by a force that feels uncontrollable, uncontainable. Her coach keeps telling her to rest, to sleep, but how is she supposed to sleep? Her life has tapered to one fine and brilliant point. In bed at night she imagines each punch landing like a …

Sanctimonious post about something that, strangely enough, just occurred to me: normal people can easily turn into soulless sellers, casually dropping ridiculous corporate jargon while taking money out of the same group they call community. Yesterday I watched a few videos from well-known professionals in the music production field, which left me stunned. Not sure if it was the language, or the way they were taking the topics so seriously, …

Last summer as I lamented that my research didn't have real world implications, one of the comments mentioned the sumcheck protocol used for zero-knowledge SNARKs. I tried to figure out the connection back then but got lost in technical papers. With the formal verification of the sumcheck protocol announced last week I tried again this time using Google's new Gemini Ultra. Gemini gave a readable explanation. Let me try to …

Yep, even though I’ve been working as a software engineer for around 11 years now, I’ve actually never had a promotion. Every change in title I’ve had throughout my career has been through changing jobs. But today, for the first time in my career, I had it confirmed that I’ve been promoted. It’s just a level-increase within the “Senior” bracket, but it’s a huge win for me. I got some …

Nabokov arises early in the morning and works. He does his writing on filing cards, which are gradually copied, expanded, and rearranged until they become his novels. The Paris Review: The Art of Fiction No. 40 I’m working through each section of a paper in the Craft of Research series this spring using an image that has worked for me in the past, and which is by no means original, …

We seem to be moving from technology inspired by Star Trek to tech straight out of books by Douglas Adams? This is not my observation. I was on the podcast WB-40 this week, talking about crowdfunding, narrative hooks, and how to preserve a lightness of being. Here it is, WB-40 episode 288: Crowdfunding. After we were done recording, Lisa Riemers, one of the hosts, commented that my recent projects could …

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