An Ojibwe-language dubbed Star Wars film has been made, premiering in Winnipeg. Seems like a huge win for Indigenous language preservation/reconciliation. More, please!
Every so often an audiobook comes along that is well-written AND funny AND has perfect character narration. This is that book, and it’s a great time.
I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, by Jason Pargin
Making a Brain Fog Index
#This was cathartic to write for myself this week. There are descriptions too. Does anyone want to read more? I might turn it into something.
“brain fog index Cataloguing my experience of brain fog in the context of chronic illness
Lvl 1: Flow Lvl 2: Triage Lvl 3: Midnight swamp Lvl 4: Void Lvl 5: ?(dead)”
Making happy spaces for my brain
#Here’s a guide from neurodivergent psychologist Megan A Neff on finding just the right amount of stimulation. A topic I’ve been thinking about as I create a new studio space.
How to Find Your Sensory Goldilocks: Achieving the “Just Right” Fit
I got a little folding done at the bookshop tonight.
Chameleon designed by Jo Nakashima, folded by me on 15x15cm kami
“Deep listening, for me, is learning to expand perception of sounds to include the whole space-time continuum of sound, encountering the vastness and complexities as much as possible. […] My practice is to listen to everything all the time, and remind myself when I am not listening.” – Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016)
Origami humpback whale
design by Bodo Haag, folded by me on 18x18 cm kami
Definitely the most difficult model I’ve folded so far
♿️ This is the most interesting accessibility tool I’ve ever seen on Al Gore’s Internet. Click the icon at bottom right, and it lets you change how the page is displayed with things like text size, colour contrast, and focus modes. Taking note for my local accessibility work. visitbend.com
The dystopian "Her" and OpenAI's entitlement problem
#From Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine:
“so much of the promise of generative AI as it is currently constituted, is driven by rote entitlement.** I want something and I want it produced, for me, personally, with the least amount of friction possible;** I want to see words arranged on the screen without my having to take the time to write them, I want to see images assembled before me without learning how to draw them. I want to solve the world’s biggest problems, without bothering with politics — I have the data, I have trained the model, I should be able to! We have advanced technology to new heights, we are entitled to its fruits, regardless of the blowback or the laws or the people whose jobs we might threaten.
Making a home on the web
#I’ve tried to build a home on the web many times since ~1999-2000 as a teen, when I tinkered with HTML coding and published a collection of short mp3s I found hilarious – mostly from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Star Wars.
Here’s a good piece with lots of helpful links about making a web home today.
Finished reading: Blood in the Machine
#Finished reading: Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant 📚
Wow, this book surprised me. It’s a story very well told, and I learned a lot about the Luddite rebellion of the 1810s in England. Workers resisting their replacement by automation technology and their mistreatment in factories. “General Ludd” became a Robin Hood-like legend in Nottingham and surroundings.
Also:
- Dickens' Oliver Twist is said to be based on or influenced by stories of child labour from this period.
- I didn’t know Lord Byron – poet, parliamentarian, philanderer – was such a celebrity. His speech to Parliament about the Luddite cause is one of the best records we have, since so much organizing was done in secret.
- Also he got together with a few friends in Geneva ~1816 at a retreat where both Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) and Dracula were written. Frankenstein, especially, being influenced by Luddism.
Has anyone in micro.blog world read The Killing Moon by N. K. Jemisin, and how was it? I just learned this series exists. 📚📖
If I was a diver, I’d go see the Underwater Sculpture Park in Grenada. Currently feeling some affinity with The Lost Correspondent. www.puregrenada.com/underwate…
George Monbiot in The Guardian on ME/CFS
#Wow, I did not expect to read George Monbiot explain via The Guardian what ME/CFS patients have been saying for ages about a medical system that doesn’t listen to us, but I doff my cap to you, sir. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Cc: anyone with Long COVID
I always appreciate a good data visualization, and this is one of the best I’ve seen. Mona Chalabi for NYT on the wealth of Jeff Bezos (from 2022).
Just watched the biopic on Hideo Kojima. I find it inspiring to learn a little about what drives other artists. It reaffirms my weird obsessions. This one also makes me want to try Death Stranding. 🕹️
The best thing I did for myself this week was to make a text message notification sound from a recording of my cat’s collar + purr. The beeps and dings that come with our devices tend to be way louder than I need them to be, so why not make something pleasant and less… activating?
This article about temporal accessibility resonated, and it is a reason why I do not schedule myself live music gigs very often anymore. It costs too much. By Alex Haagaard. alexhaagaard.medium.com/notes-on-…
Learning a bit about the Hidden Disabilities sunflower. Started in 2016, aiming to bring some understanding and inclusivity for people with invisible illnesses. There’s a travel component too - airports have adopted it. hdsunflower.com/ca/
Disability is inherent in the human condition
#I’m doing a close reading of a new book called Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement by Ashley Shew. And I’m keeping my notes in a longer, live-read blog post on this very site.
One of the core ideas that keeps coming up is that “Disability is inherent in the human condition.” It’s a thought that helps me re-frame what disability actually means as I do a little volunteer work on a local accessibility committee.
Sometimes disability is a technical or medical challenge. But the ways disabled people suffer needlessly also have a lot to do with the social problem: the world is set up to exclude them.
Also, the quote of the day is from Chapter 4. “Technology cannot transcend the meatsack.”
Today’s rant about AI hype
#Just read an email that told me “AI can see, hear, and talk.”
Here’s a friendly reminder that no, it can’t!
At best, AI is software imitating those things. As AI claims get increasingly far-fetched, it isn’t helpful to anthropomorphize and ascribe consciousness to computer programs. It only feeds the hype.
CBC radio interview: Benedicte and I on art, music, and grief
#Cross-posting this from my music/professional blog. I was interviewed about an audio installation I have running at the Haida Gwaii Museum alongside the work of visual artist Benedicte Hansen. It’s from my album called We Have All the Time on Earth.
“Clive James has said that the greatest poets aspire not to change literary history but to only to enrich it.” (from Time Travel by James Gleick, saving this idea for later)
“Why should we put ourselves out of our way to do anything for posterity, for what has posterity ever done for us?” – Sir Boyle Roche, Irish politician circa 1900
(via Time Travel by James Gleick)