When we moved here one thing we wanted to take advantage of was the theater that’s just across the river. So on Friday night we walked over to see Moulin Rouge! The play was fantastic (great cast) and the theater was lovely (well laid out seating, but also a shockingly warm building to the point we quickly over-heated).
I’ve hit a good routine as I prep for next year’s marathon. I spend a consistent 2 days in the gym and 3 days running and have leaned on LLMs to function as a coach. I use them to build detailed training plans that, so far, have led to results.
There is, however, a threshold of knowledge required to get the most from this as I’d get much less value if I hadn’t previously worked out with a personal trainer for 3 years. Sure, an LLM could still generate a training plan for me. But at both the prompting level and the refinement level I’m able to nudge them toward better outcomes by drawing on what I learned from my trainer. The best coaches have always been those that create self-sufficiency. I’m unsure how to articulate it, but in the AI era I think the nature of that role has shifted in an interesting way (but is not going to disappear).
Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Ireland this week and the Irish Navy’s William Butler Yeats sat offshore to protect his flight path into Dublin. I’m not sure why but, afterward, it sailed into the river. It was fun to watch and is a beautiful ship. I’ve long been fascinated by the detailed machinery of ships like this.
I finished The World-Ending Fire, which I picked up after reading Against the Machine. Paul Kingsnorth wrote the introduction to this collection of Wendell Berry essays. It was my first exposure to Berry’s writing and I rather enjoyed it. Berry carries a strong critique of the modern economy and puts it forward in simple language that also offers constructive ideas for what to do instead.
I also enjoyed reading:
- Make or Break. The UK’s path to growth. It’s important to create positive-sum futures and to be absolutely clear about what problem you’re trying to solve.
- The Theft of the Commons. The only thing tragic about the commons is how they were taken. I worry something similar is happening to the quirky, common open web.
- excerpt from a letter to a friend. “We’re not just going back to the pre-PC era, we’re going back to the pre-typing era.” Hand-written, in-class assignments as a hedge against AI.
