If you've peeked at my reading log the last year or so, you'd be excused for thinking I'd abandoned Letters from a Stoic by Seneca. It has featured under my reading section for more than a year!
Finishing a book has never taken me this long before. But finish it I did, and I did it just the other day.
Stoic philosophy has interested me for many years. Even before it was co-opted by the âmanosphereâ and quotes from Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and their fellow stoics became endemic to various platforms. I just never really got around to following up on my curiosity. Not until I began listening to the History of Rome podcast a couple of years back. It renewed my interest in the philosophical teachings of the age, and â having both Seneca's Letters and Aurelius' Meditations on my shelf â I decided that I needed to read these two cornerstones of stoicism.
Seneca's letters are written as musings and advice for his friend Lucilius. The 65 letters have become somewhat of a bible or, the original teachings, for stoics. They cover a wide array of subjects. Everything from the folly of the crowds to how to meet death to the point of philosophy.
Part of the reason finishing the book took me so long is because I decided to read at most one letter per day. Given the subject matter, plowing through felt insufficient. Better to let each letter sink in and process it properly before moving on to the next. I also took a fair bit of notes.
Much of what Seneca teaches resonates with me. The stoic views on death, in particular, align with my personal beliefs. Seneca closes his 65th and final letter to Lucilius:
And what is death? It is either the end, or a process of change. I have no fear of ceasing to exist; it is the same as not having begun. Nor do I shrink from changing into another state, because I shall, under no conditions, be as cramped as I am now. Farewell.
Mic drop!
Death is a recurring subject throughout the letters. The view is consistent in that death is nothing to be feared. All of our lives we are dying. (âFor death itself is always the same distance from us.â) Not a single one of us has any guarantees for when that final moment will come. We should lead our lives as if death is constantly around the corner. âLet us postpone nothingâ, he writes.
His first letter deals with just that. Seneca opens it thus:
Set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands.
Seneca preaches that âlife is long, if only you know how to use itâ. Most of us, unfortunately, do not. We are not set free. We do not gather and save our time. Instead, our precious time is squandered to âthe most disgraceful kind of lossâ which âis due to carelessnessâ.
His strong and adamant preaching that ânothing is ours, except timeâ was a timely (hur-hur) reminder. I'm at a part of my life where the days seemingly fly by. Each day is filled to the brim. Reading Seneca's letter compelled me to take stock of how I'm spending my time. To make adjustments, sure. But, more importantly, to reach the conclusion that much of what I fill my days with is genuinely what I want to be doing.
What a gift.
Another gift was his thoughts on crowds. In the physical sense, in the sense of âeveryone is doing itâ that is so easy to use as justification for our actions and in the sense that we need to strive for the approval of the many. This particular anecdote hit home:
The following was also nobly spoken by someone or other for it is doubtful who the author was; they asked him what was the object of all this study applied to an art that would reach but very few. He replied: âI am content with few, content with one, content with none at all.â
And, on the subject of attracting praise, Seneca wrote (emphasis mine):
Many men praise you; but have you any reason for being pleased with yourself if you are a person whom the many can understand? Your good quality should face inwards.
These are thoughts I've sort of held or vaguely surmised, but never truly expressed. But I could not agree more. Your compass should point towards something other than praise and adulation. Your good quality should face inwards. Seneca also talks about going against the crowds in how you act:
It shows much more courage to remain dry and sober when the mob is drunk and vomiting, but it shows greater self-control to refuse to withdraw oneself and to do what the crowd does, but in a different way â thus neither making oneself conspicuous nor becoming one of the crowd. For one may keep holiday without extravaganza.
In opposing the crowd, it is easy to default to reclusive behaviour. As Seneca points out here, however, this is not necessarily the stoic way. Instead, to be among the crowds, and to do what they do, but in a different way, is both more challenging and more instructive.
Another cornerstone of stoic philosophy are the views on material wealth. It is not that they abhor richness. In fact, they actively encourage anyone to pursue it. It, however, being something quite different than what we normally consider wealth. Nothing illustrates this more than when Seneca quotes Epicurus in a story about Pythocles:
âIf you wish to make Pyhocles rich, but not rich in the vulgar and equivocal way, do not add to his store of money, but subtract from his desires.â
Seneca believes that it is equally true that:
If you wish to make Pythocles honourable, do not add to his honours, but subtract from his desires.
And:
If you wish Pythocles to have pleasure forever, do not add to his pleasures, but subtract from his desires.
Not as eloquent as his âEpicurean enemyâ, perhaps, but it certainly gets the point across. This view that wealth and honour and true pleasure is not defined by what you own and acquire, but rather what you desire, is something I believe deeply. Seeing it written in such plain words helped me cement that belief. Every day I now try to remind myself of this. That I can become richer, more virtuous and make life more pleasurable simply be subtracting from my desires.
To that end, I will end this post with perhaps my favourite quote from all of Seneca's letters, concerning what constitutes happiness:
âŠteach us that the happy man is not he whom the crowd deems happy, namely, he into whose coffers mighty sums have flowed, but he whose possessions are all in his soul, who is upright and exalted, who spurns inconstancy, who sees no man with which he wishes to change places, who rates men only at their value as men, who takes Nature for his teacher, conforming to her laws and living as she commands, whom no violence can deprive of his possessions, who turns evil into good, who is unerring in judgement, unshaken, unafraid, who may be moved by force but never moved to distraction, whom Fortune when she hurls at him with all her might the deadliest missile in her armoury, may graze, though rarely, but never wound.
Alex Chan in Creating a personalised bin calendar:
I start by generating an HTML calendar using Python. Thereâs a built-in calendar module, which lets you output calendars in different formats. It doesnât embed individual date information in the
<td>cells, so I customise the HTMLCalendar class to write the date as an id attribute.
Neat post from Alex. Can immediately think of a few places where this approach might be useful. Also wish I'd known that Python calendar module fifteen years ago when I spent a not insignificant amount of hours setting up a calendar grid in Photoshop by hand ^_^
Soundtrack — Soundgarden — Blow Up The Outside World
A lot of people try to rationalize the AI bubble by digging up the past.
Billions of dollars of waste are justified by saying “OpenAI just like Uber” (it isn’t) and “the data center buildout is
April 1st is now globally over - relax!
AI won't decide about what's in your backups.
New features coming to borg 1.4. soon!
Mat Duggan in I Can't See Apple's Vision:
The first time I thought "oh man, they've lost the thread" was Notifications. On iOS, Notifications make sense â you've got apps buried in folders three screens deep, so a unified system for surfacing what's happening is genuinely useful. On macOS, this design makes absolutely no sense at all.
I absolutely cannot wrap my head around notifications on the Mac. Why are they there? Where do they come from? Who decides what goes there? Every time I accidentally open that right sidebar, I'm always surprised to see a heap of notifications there. Should I be checking up on these more often? Am I missing out on important stuff?
The concept of ânotificationsâ in a desktop environment simply doesn't make sense to my, admittedly not very smart, brain.
Mat's post is spot on. Recommended reading!
Today is #WorldBackupDay - a good day to:
- start using borg backup
- upgrade to borg 1.4.4
- actually test a restore
- play with the latest borg2 beta
- contribute to borg development
- donate to the borg project
- give borgbackup a star on github
- update the borg packages, if you maintain some
- contribute to some project borg backup depends on
- contribute to some project that uses borg backup
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Rakhim in Related UI elements should not appear unrelated:
A few years ago a new trend in UI design emerged where related elements would appear more and more detached and unrelated to the things they are meant to point to.
Somewhat related to my comments on old versions of OS X being much better designed that the current iteration, is this post where Rakhim points out that this goes for browsers as well. Nobody can claim with a straight face that this evolution isn't degrading the design and user experience.
Well, I guess it wasn't feature complete after all. Easy to forget when you're mostly running on the treadmill. Once the hills come around, though, you know you need to log and display elevation gain, or climbing.
So now my workout log does that.
You can see this in the summary section of today's run. As you can see, I climbed 140 metres. If you want to know the actual elevation profile, you can click on the elevation tab. This is just a little extra data point to give context to that visualisation.
For new readers, if you want to know more about how I went about putting the workout log together, I've covered the process extensively in these three posts:
Andreas in Emulating old OS X versions with QEMU:
It's weird, because I never used these systems back when they were new, and yet I feel somehow nostalgic for them. I don't know why, but there's just something about the look of them. The colour palette, the skeuomorphism, the fonts and the overall design are just beautiful, and I wouldn't mind using an OS with this kind of look and feel today.
The early versions of Mac OS X were unequivocally better designed and a preferable user experience than the bastardised offspring that today's MacOS has become. My experience started with Tiger (10.4) and I would love to go back. In fact, if someone put together a Linux distro that closely emulates the early OS X aesthetic and UX, I would finally be forced to switch.
If you want to experience the old OS X versions yourself, Andreas' post guides you through the process.
A while ago, I came across a haiku by Basho by way of a two decades old post by Jason Kottke. The poem in question was âthe whole familyâ and goes like this:
the whole family
all with white hair and canes
visiting graves
It resonated deeply and sent me down a rabbit hole. I began my making a note of it. This to ensure I didn't forget the poem. The lines made me want to read more by Basho. Upon discovering that he was Japanese, I was reminded of the quote by the tourist towards the end of the movie Paterson:
Poetry in translations is like taking a shower with a raincoat on.
That got me thinking. Ideally I should learn Japanese to truly get a feel for Basho's work. But that was not a journey I was willing to begin at the moment. Nevertheless, I thought that instead of reading English translations, it would probably be one step up if I could instead find Norwegian translations. Poetry never came easy to me. Reading in my native tongue would probably be my best chance of âgetting itâ.
I then began searching for first hand translation. Translated poetry is bad enough. I certainly didn't want to spend my time reading AI-generated Norwegian translations based on English translation. Eventually I ended up discovering Fra duggens verden at the National Library of Norway's website.
The full title of the book is âFra duggens verden: Basho i norsk gjendiktning (1644-1694)â. It translates to something like âFrom the dew's world: Basho re-created in Norwegianâ and the title made me confident that the author â of whom I knew nothing â had translated the works based on the originals. That it was released in 1985 made me reasonably certain they weren't AI-generated.
My next order of business was getting a hold of the book. Yes, I could technically read the book scans, in my browser, through the National Library's website. But that's no way to read a book! Of this particular book, I wanted a physical copy. That was easier said than done. My search eventually led me to the website of a local art gallery and antiquarian bookshop which claimed to have for sale. I emailed the owner that I wanted to buy the book, and a short while later it arrived in the mailbox outside my house.
At this point I still had no idea about what kind of book this was. My idea was that it contained translated haiku poems. To my surprise, the first half or so turned out to be a biography of Basho and his struggles to become founder of what's today know as haiku poetry.
Great stuff! I love getting more than I'd bargained for.
Basho's story was a fascinating one. His frequent pilgrimages throughout Japan to get away from âmodern societyâ of Japan in sixteen hundreds and live a more modest life to connect with nature rang familiar. DĂžrumsgaard doesn't hide his disdain for the contemporary society of the 1980s. He wonders what Basho would think of the lives we lead today. Which in turn made me wonder what both Basho and DĂžrumsgaard and would make of the world as it is in 2026. As I read this book in parallel with Letters from a Stoic, it struck me that perhaps this struggle to get back to natural world must be a universal human experience.
Despite Basho's poems and DĂžrumsgaard formal, almost to the point of heavy, and opinionated recounting of his live, the best part of this book to me was something else entirely: The smell. There is a certain, characteristic smell of old books and this book has it in spades. The smell brings me back to my life as a boy, sitting in the attic of my grandparents' house trying to find something interesting to read after ploughing through the Donald Duck comics I'd brought for entertainment. The sensation is so visceral that, for a tiny sliver of a moment, I feel as if I've been transported through time and space. Despite having finished the book, I still keep it on the side table next to my chair, only to pick it up towards my nose and flicker through the pages.
Sometimes you get way more than you bargained for.
As for Basho's poetry and DĂžrumsgaard's re-creations, well, they certainly are first hand translations. DĂžrumsgaard has included a sizeable sections of notes on his reasoning for the translations. And while I've gained newfound appreciation for both poetry as an art form, and haiku in particular, not a single other of the poems included in this book hit me as much as that first one I came across which pushed me down this rabbit hole. DĂžrumsgaard's Norwegian re-creation goes as follows:
Slektens siste
Alle med stokker
og hvite i hÄret
rusler de stille omkring mellem graver.
I guess that's poetry for you. It resonates when the most when you expect it the least. For instance when clicking a link to a twenty two year old blog post lamenting that the work of sorting and categorising has overshadowed the work itself. Nevertheless, here are some of my other favourites. I challenge you to find them recreated in whichever language you're the most comfortable reading poetry.
Tid og evighet
Hvor vis den mann som ikke tenker
«flyktig er livet»
ved synet av lyn.Silhuet
En krÄke
PĂ„ en vissen gren
i hĂžstens skumringâŠCikaden
Den sang sig
ut av livet â
tomt ligger skallet igjen.Lede
Ofte fĂžler jeg at de dĂždes rike
mÄ vÊre lik en ensom kveld
ved hÞst.«L'etang mort»
En gammel dam â
en frosk som sprang:
et skvulp.
Years ago, when I was in college, I had one of those friends who never quite had it together. You know the type; I'm talking lost a debit card and took three months to get a new one because of some sort of "mixup" with the credit union that I think consisted mostly of not calling them for three months.
So apparently rsync is slop now. When I heard, I wanted to drop a quick note on my blog to give an alternative: tar. It doesn’t do everything that rsync does, in particular identifying and skipping up-to-date files, but tar + ssh can definitely accomodate the use case of “transmit all of these files over an SSH connection to another host”.
Consider the following:
tar -cz public | ssh example.org tar -C /var/www -xz
This will transfer the contents of ./public/ to
example.org:/var/www/public/, preserving file ownership and permissions and so
on, with gzip compression.
So apparently rsync is slop now. When I heard, I wanted to drop a quick note on my blog to give an alternative: tar. It doesnât do everything that rsync does, in particular identifying and skipping up-to-date files, but tar + ssh can definitely accomodate the use case of âtransmit all of these files over an SSH connection to another hostâ.
Consider the following:
tar -cz public | ssh example.org tar -C /var/www -xz
This will transfer the contents of ./public/ to example.org:/var/www/public/, preserving file ownership and permissions and so on, with gzip compression.
I’m turning 40 in a month or so, and at 40 years young, I’m old enough to remember as far back as December 11 2025, when Disney and OpenAI “reached an agreement” to “bring beloved characters from across Disney’s brands to
Mat Duggan in Markdown Ate The World:
Markdown doesn't do most of what those formats do. You can't set margins. You can't do columns. You can't embed a pivot table or track changes or add a watermark that says DRAFT across every page in 45-degree gray Calibri. Markdown doesn't even have a native way to change the font color.
And none of that mattered, because it turns out most writing isn't about any of those things. Most writing is about getting words down in a structure that makes sense, and then getting those words in front of other people. Markdown does that with less friction than anything else ever created. You can learn it in ten minutes, write it in any text editor on any device, read the source file without rendering it, diff it in version control, and convert it to virtually any output format.
Informative and well-written post from Mat on Markdown's rise to prominence over the past few years. Lots of fascinating information in the backstory detailing the .doc and .docx formats about which I knew next to nothing. I just realised a few years ago that plain text was the way to go, and Markdown was the obvious choice at that point. Now I know more about why that was the case.
Vim is important to me. I’m using it to write the words you’re reading right now. In fact, almost every word I have ever committed to posterity, through this blog, in my code, all of the docs I’ve written, emails I’ve sent, and more, almost all of it has passed through Vim.
My relationship with the software is intimate, almost as if it were an extra limb.
Vim is important to me. Iâm using it to write the words youâre reading right now. In fact, almost every word I have ever committed to posterity, through this blog, in my code, all of the docs Iâve written, emails Iâve sent, and more, almost all of it has passed through Vim.
My relationship with the software is intimate, almost as if it were an extra limb.
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It's that time of the year again. Spring is in the air, and runners are gearing up for Norway's biggest running event and, according to themselves, the biggest relay event in the world: Holmenkollstafetten. This road running relay race goes through the heart of Oslo and has taken place almost every year since 1923!
75.000 runners representing more than 4.500 teams line up to run the relay, and Oslo is absolutely packed to the brim with people sharing the joys of physical activity. Though some might say that the festivities that typically follow the race is the highlight of the day. I might be inclined to agree.
Teams comprise all sorts of groups of people: Friends, running clubs, businesses, charities and whatever else that bind people together. Many businesses use this as an excuse to get their employees to enjoy physical activity followed by social bonding afterwards. That is true for my employer. They pay the entry fees and book a great location in the heart of Oslo. It is the base before runners venture out to their starting points across the city. And after the race there is a banquet with great food, entertainment and all around good vibes.
Inspired by other businesses, our running group last year took the initiative to establish an "Elite Team" where the aim is to run the relay as quickly as possible.1 The selection process is simple. A tryout race consisting of a 1000 metre time trial to compete for ten long stage spots and a 400 metre time trial to compete for five short stage spots.
As I ran the tryouts last year as well as this year, I thought it would be fun to analyse and compare the stats from each years time trial.2 Given that I'm a slow twitch runner, and a marathoner by heart, even a 1000 metre race is a full on sprint for me. Safe to say that a short stage is off the table for me. My one and only shot of a spot on the team was running the 1000 metre race.
I run with a Stryd footpod/power meter (an old version referred to as "Stryd Wind"). The power and pace charts below are both from the web version of their running tracker log data analysis software thing called Powercenter. The heart rate chart comes from the magnificent Intervals.icu, which is my go-to platform for advanced workout data analysis. I've, of course, also linked to the individual entries in my personal workout log.
Last year's race took place on 25 March. It was a cold and crisp day, with the sun peeking out and next to no wind.
Last year I ran the 1000 metres in 3 minutes and 1 second. For the imperialists out there, that is roughly 4:51 per mile pace.
Power average for the race was 542 Watts, while peak power was 622 Watts.
Heart rate average was 181 beats per minute and I maxed out at 191! This is only four beats off my estimated max of 195 bpm.
This year's race was delayed due to the conditions and took place on 24 March. Almost to the day a year after last year's tryouts. The weather wasn't nearly as nice, with a grey and overcast sky and a little bit of wind.
This year I ran the 1000 metres in 3 minutes and 2 seconds. It is around 4:53 per mile pace.
Power average for the race was 543 Watts, while I peaked at 650 Watts.
Heart rate average was 177 beats per minute, and I maxed out at 188. Seven beats off my estimated max, and three beats lower than last year.
As I'd been ill for almost a week not two weeks back, I doubted my fitness. Because of this, I ran a much more conservative race. Whereas I reached peak power (622W) on the first bend last year, I ran more even this year before steadily increasing the power on the final straight hitting a significantly higher peak (650W) right on the finish line.
Today's time was a second slower. Looking at the data, I should've run faster. The heart rate charts hammer this point home. Last year I spent two full minutes in "the purple zone" (185+ bpm), while this year I only managed just shy of a minute in that same zone.
That tracks with how I felt throughout the race as well. Last year I felt like I was working at my max from the get go. That I couldn't increase the pace/power much the final 200 metres illustrates that I didn't have anything left in the tank. Conversely, today I felt like I was quite in control all the way up until I turned it on towards the end of the final bend, and was able to keep increasing the pace/power right up to the finish line. Even though I felt like I mechanically couldn't increase the pace further, I felt like I could've kept it up for a while yet.
My conclusion is that I'm significantly fitter today than I was last year, despite running slower. I should've run a little faster, and at least broken three minutes. I think I executed this year's race better, but I simply left it too late before turning it on. This is extra annoying because I almost caught a guy right before the finish line, but he held me off to beat me with two tenths of a second in the end!
At 69.5 kilograms today versus 68.2 kilograms on race day last year, I am 1.3 kilograms (1.9%) heavier this year. Knowing this going in, together with the recent illness and no race specific sessions to prepare this year, it played a part in making me think I wouldn't be able to defend last year's time. I should've trusted that my base fitness is significantly better this year.
Your fitness is determined by the work you've done over a longer time period, not just the last couple of weeks. And as my workout log shows, I put in much more work the first couple of months of 2026 than I did in 2025. And my total workload for 2025 was again much higher than what I managed in 2024. Even at 40 and at a higher weight, that translates to better fitness!
It's also interesting to note that now that my weight has gone up a little, the Stryd footpod appears to be more accurate. The estimated distance this year is spot on. Last year, it was 20 metres short. I ran both races in the same pair of shoes (only used once in-between) and on the same track. As the Stryd only utilises the user defined weight value to determine an air resistance coefficient and multiply the natively calculated Watts/kg to present an absolute power value, it makes sense that a weight change potentially estimates the calculations.
My weight setting for both races was 100 kg. It's impressive (and a little bit confounding, given the changes in estimated distance and pace) seeing that the average absolute watt levels are nearly identical (542W last year versus 543W this year) despite the weight change. It means that the pod's native watt/kg calculation picks up the weight change very well.
Last year I was a regular coffee drinker at the time of the race. I did my regular race day routine of supplementing my normal dosage (around 80 milligram) with an energy drink containing about 100 milligrams of caffeine 30-45 minutes before the race. If you'll recall, my adventures in quitting caffeine commenced shortly after.
An adventure it has been, and I should write about it some time. The long and the short of it though, is that going into today's race, I've been more or less caffeine free for the past four months. I was excited to discover how this would play out when trying to take advantage of caffeine as a performance enhancer. And make a difference it did!
Although it's clearly impossible to measure the performance effects, I can only say that I've never before in my adult life noticed anything like the effects that I got from ingesting caffeine today. I've used caffeine in similar dosages before every race I've run over the past decade. Today hit different. I was wired and alert and felt almost supercharged. In fact, five hours later, I still do. Which is why I'm just finishing up this post long past my bedtime. I'm convinced, perhaps even more so than the race execution, the caffeine high contributed to the fact that I never really felt tired throughout the race.
Caffeine is clearly a performance enhancing drug. There are studies that confirm this. But I'm now convinced that someone who doesn't consume it regularly will experience greatly increased effects compared to someone who's adapted to its effect through daily consumption. The obvious caveat being that there appears to be a genetically determined difference in how people respond to caffeine, so your mileage may vary.3
I'll continue to stay off caffeine in my daily life, and only turn to it when I'm in dire need of its effects. To ensure that I get max potency when needed, but also because regular consumption is not without downsides to me.
Last year, I did!
For this year, the final results aren't in yet. But I'll be sure to update this post when they are.
Update: The final results are in, and I made it Out of everyone that tried out for the men's team, my time had me in sixth place. A whopping three seconds clear of the cut off time!
The overall approach for most teams in the race is participation, and that's what makes it such a great occasion. It would be very boring in comparison if it was mainly a performance oriented race, and the city wasn't positively brimming with people. ↩
No, really, that is my idea of fun! ↩
This recently became very clear to me when I saw my wife quit caffeine cold turkey with absolutely no withdrawal symptoms. Whereas I'm completely debilitated for days when cutting similar dosages. ↩
Andreas in Can I hear a difference between MP3s and uncompressed audio?:
But modern MP3 encoders are much better than those from the past, and at a bitrate of 320kbit/s they deliver audio quality that in my opinion very few people will be able to tell apart from the uncompressed original.
Super interesting and well made post from Andreas, complete with samples where you can test for yourself. My hearing's so poor I couldn't even discern the artefact in the sample used to showcase what an artefact sounds like! I really need to enable to transcoding on my music server to save space and bandwidth.
I hear from a lot of people that are filled with bilious fury about the tech industry, but few companies have pissed off the world more than Adobe.
As the foremost monopolist in software, web and graphic design, Adobe has created one of the single-most abusive, usurious freakshows in capitalist
borg 1.4.4: if you package for big-endian architectures (most stuff is little-endian nowadays), you will need this patch:
borgbackup 1.4.4 was just released!
Some important fixes, a few small new features, check the change log please!
Congrats to rolandrc on github - he just discovered and fixed an ancient memory leak in borgbackup's C code.
Hi! If you like this piece and want to support my work, please subscribe to my premium newsletter. It’s $70 a year, or $7 a month, and in return you get a weekly newsletter that’s usually anywhere from 5000 to 185,000 words, including vast, extremely
borgbackup 2.0.0 beta 21 was just released!
Please help testing!
https://github.com/borgbackup/borg/releases/tag/2.0.0b21
#borgbackup #linux #macos #freebsd #openbsd #netbsd #omniOS #haikuOS #windows #backup
Niki in Itâs hard to justify Tahoe icons:
The main function of an icon is to help you find what you are looking for faster.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, adding an icon to everything is exactly the wrong thing to do. To stand out, things need to be different. But if everything has an icon, nothing stands out.
Come on Apple, get your shit together.
PS: The title of Niki's post is excellent. Works in every way. I normally try to tweak the titles of these link posts a bit, but had to quote this one verbatim because it's so great.
Via.
I tend to focus on the origin of the computer within the military. Particularly in the early days of digital computing, the military was a key customer, and fundamental concepts of modern computing arose in universities and laboratories serving military contracts.
Soundtrack: The Dillinger Escape Plan — Black Bubblegum
To understand the AI bubble, you need to understand the context in which it sits, and that larger context is the end of the hyper-growth era in software that I call the Rot-Com Bubble.
Generative AI, at first, appeared to be
Oh my!
Most abrupt fall from grace for a TV show since Heroes? If not, it's certainly up there with Prison Break.
Thought the first season of The Last of Us was magnificent. Enjoyed the way the broke up the story and told it in pieces. Could tell that they tried to employ similar techniques in season two. It just fell flat. Says it all that, despite the cliffhanger, I have no inclination to continue watching once season three rolls around.
Jonas Hieatala in A work week one bag travel:
Iâve been spending five nights away 4â5 times a year on business travels. Itâs not a crazy amount but also not negligible, so I figured itâs worth trying to optimize them a bit.
Like Jonas, I travel occasionally for work. (Coincidentally, a few of my travels are in Sweden, too!) Although I've travelled for two nights at most, switching to "one bag travel" took a bit of adjusting.
However, nowadays I wouldn't entertain the idea of checking in luggage or carrying anything else than my backpack kit when I go on these trips. It's a much more convenient way of travelling. This walkthrough from Jonas covers the aspects you have to think about when travelling this way.
My best tip is merino wool t-shirts, sweaters and socks. No problems reusing these items multiple days without washing, which saves quite a bit of space.
Sid in ai;dr:
For me, writing is the most direct window into how someone thinks, perceives, and groks the world. Once you outsource that to an LLM, I'm not sure what we're even doing here. Why should I bother to read something someone else couldn't be bothered to write?
What he said.
After resurrecting this blog back in 2023, the first book I wrote about was James Islington's The Will of the Many. I gave it a solid 3 out of 5 and concluded:
âŠthereâs much to explore still, and Iâm excited to see how Islington will build on this solid foundation in the books that follow.
The Strength of the Few is the second of four planned books in Islington's Hierarchy series. It came out late last year. As Islington, to my knowledge, does not maintain a website or blog with an RSS feed, I'm not able to keep up with his writing progress.1 Instead, I only discovered the new book when visiting a local book store with my kids. The Strength of the Few was given ample premium shelf space in the middle of the store. That was the first time I realised just how popular The Will of the Many must have been.
Later that same day I tried to purchase the e-book to add it to my library. I was sad to discover that there were no DRM free options. In fact, for someone located in Norway, Amazon was the only legal option for acquiring the e-book. As I try to avoid spending my hard earned money adding to Jeff Bezos' vast fortune, I gave up and instead bought a second hand copy of the paperback.2 It arrived in my within a couple of days, and I was off to the races.
Quite literally, as the book features an actual race scene quite early on. It sets the scene for much of what's to come in this particular branch of the story. And, yeah, that's where things get a little complicated. Without wanting to spoil too much for someone who's not read the book, it consists of three stories that evolve in synchronous fashion.
Although each storyline is designated with a particular icon, it took me more than half the book to remember which was which. Instead, I relied on the actual content of the chapters to orient myself. It wasn't too challenging, but at the offset I felt like I was floundering a bit while trying to keep up with what was going on where. A key reason is that it's been a couple of years since I read the predecessor. Strength picks up where Will left off, and it is a direct continuation. The references to the events of the previous book are numerous and mostly presented without any further explanation. As I had forgotten far more than I remembered about The Will of the Many, this doubtlessly made it harder for me to properly enjoy The Strength of the Few from the get go.3
About a quarter of the way through, however, I began feeling like I had enough context to follow the story properly. And the book became much more enjoyable.
The three different stories are distinct and compelling in their unique ways. Where one is dystopian and strange, another feels intimately humane and recognisable. And both spring from a central story set in what's probably closest to the world we live in today. Islington's approach felt like a fresh take on telling an overarching story that I hadn't encountered before.
Speaking of, the connective storyline is interesting and kept me guessing and speculating along the way. While there is still much to be revealed â Strength feels like a classic middle book in that it begins and ends in the middle of the story â fantasy fans will see further homage to Brandon Sanderson in "the big reveal" we're treated to towards the end of The Strength of the Few.
I thought this book was a step up from its predecessor. The story feels more compelling, the way it is told more unique, all the while building on that which made The Will of the Many such a success. Anyone who picks up The Strength of the Few will, however, be well served by watching or listening to a recap of the first book before beginning. Or, better yet, treat themselves to a reread.
Either way, I'm really excited to see where James Islington takes the story with the next book in the series.
Contrary to some of my other favourite fantasy writers, like Brandon Sanderson and Joe Abercrombie. ↩
I generally prefer reading e-books. Though some nicer books can feel great to hold and smell, I find the advantages of e-books to outweigh that aspect. Doubly so when it comes to big, unwieldy paperbacks. ↩
This is a significant drawback of reading books in a unfinished series in my opinion. I much prefer reading through a full series where every book has been released. ↩
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Derek Sivers in Offline 23 hours a day:
Not so long ago, this was the norm. Youâd go online to get what you need, then disconnect.
Honestly think this might be the way to go. The being disconnected for most of the day part. The moving into the woods part is optional, I think, but good for you if you can swing it.