week report 1

best ...

dream:

• watching the stars from the deck of a ship, the sky doubled by a near-frozen + perfectly flat ocean

food:

• stew after biking the canal trail in the dark

accomplishment:

• successful interview with a dogwalking company

thing read/listened to:

• cited's the green lifeboat! this whole series is great. i recognize the strain of ecofascism addressed in this as still festering. also (less importantly) it shows up as an aesthetic influence in scifi - i wonder about population density in solarpunk fiction - what are the possibilities for crowds in a better world?

  good crowds! i don't experience much of that around here - i've been in the position too many times where i needed help and nobody wanted to look. nyc has a better crowd culture than this city so i feel happier on transit there. but imagine a city where nobody's too busy/scared/tired to help.

  which brings us to the best

conversation:

• of the week! with L in the morning on friday. i read about humanity's last exam and felt lit up with nervousness thinking of AGI. we talked about the huge gap between what normal people want and the ideas produced by the silicon valley VC matrix.

  we think most people don't want robots. i wondered: why aren't there more dreams about new types of appliances? we concluded: it's because they aren't controversial and don't appeal to the very rich.

  the vast majority of people only want to live decent lives where they create & tend to things + care for one another. from goldman this week:

  "Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! ... The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet, how can anyone speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?"

  i want to be in a crowd of free & hale people! & i want to see what technology looks like in a free world. if that's not possible in my lifetime, i want to taste it + dream about it + act like it's on the way.

  "Rabbi Jacob said: this world is like a vestibule before the world to come; prepare yourself in the vestibule, so that you may enter the banqueting-hall."

outfit:

• wizardlike jeans x big striped shirt x wool socks; it's cold as hell in here still!!