Notes for Week 27, 2024

Song of the week:

Notes

• I think I say this every month but it's incredible that we're in summer, properly. July has come around out of nowhere. The world is in a strange modality right now. And I'm wondering what the second half of this year will bring, because whatever it is, it's likely to be punctuated by deeply bad news.
• I do a good bit of 1:1 mentorship with folks. Mostly in $company, but there's a good bit externally. Both external to my team but also external to the business. It's very satisfying to help empower folks for the sake of that empowerment. I had a lot of that when I was younger in my career; and still do today! It also helps give me a wide range of perspectives from different backgrounds, skillsets and just ways of operating or thinking.
• The UK elections are over and, as we expected and hoped for, Labour smashed it. I'm not much of a fan of Starmer but stable, boring and being in favour of the people rather than the rich is enough for now. Hopefully they don't muck it up. But his first call with Simon Harris being about collaboration and cooperation is itself a huge shift.
• I know someone who went to Glasto last week. And while he had a blast and totally recommends it as something you should do before you die, it sounded a bit overwhelming to me. 220,000+ people and folks being sheperded into fields that host 70,000 for Avril Lavigne etc. just ain't for me! But the videos online are phenomenal.
  • My wife and I intend to do an annual pilgrimage to a small festival but our one-of-choice, Body & Stvoul, was cancelled this year, which really threw our plans out quite a lot.
• I built an R/C car for myself and my soon-to-be 4 year old. I've run into a few issues with it but troubleshooting them has turned me into an actual engineer for electric motors. Elon, I'm ready to design a car for you.
• I've published my monthly posts for July on Analogue.gg, my games blog, and Dead Dinosaurs, my climate-focused one.

Tabs

• Ed Zitron with Adam Conover on AI
• Living cyberpunk
• Canal+ forces openDNS to suspend French service
• Microsoft reckons your content is fine to steal. Which means it must be ok to steal Microsoft's works, right?
• The shareholder supremacy. Super smart take.
• Vimeo CEO shares decent take on AI
• Cloudflare allows AI bot blocking. I hadn't considered the CDN being a firewall for AI but it's pretty novel.
• How much does it cost to make a Dior bag?. Not much, actually!
• Jonathan Pie after the UK election. Hilarious as always.
• Booting Linux off of Google drive. No one stopped to ask why.
• Proton launches privacy-focused Google docs alternative
• What did the internet look like in the 90s?. It looked like shit by modern standards (this was pre-CSS), but it was functional. And there were no ads.