netfull.org

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 10:16:18 -0400

Two Sandhills Cranes.

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 18:13:28 -0400

I published a repo for an Alfred workflow that I made for searching my links using the GoodLinks app on macOS.

Moral Excellence

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 10:30:12 -0400

…Isaac with his indifference to any moral excellence he himself does not care to practice…

How much of our self-righteous conflict emerges from the result that we each, being limited, fight our moral battles on particular fields, and when we find others who have left our chosen fields to fight in others, deny them moral excellence?

Our moral rubrics are always weighted toward our passions.

New Old Typewriter

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 08:50:53 -0400

I was inspired by Chris Aldrich’s post to purchase, clean, and repair an old typewriter. I never realized what marvels these things are. This instrument works just about as well as it did in the forties.

It makes me think about machines a bit differently.

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 18:59:57 -0400

A lot of people are fleeing from Twitter/X looking for the next place where ‘everybody is.’ But consider that the scale required for a place where everybody is might be the whole problem. Or at least attract the worst of social network health.

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 13:54:22 -0400

Last night at a middle school band concert, the director announced a student would play “a little ditty” but all the kids heard “play a little Diddy” and they all went nuts.

Stories about reality

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 10:03:42 -0400

Because Large Language Models are trained on human language about reality, their chatbots can often sound like they are in touch with reality. Sometimes they give remarkably lucid responses about things in the world that we would all agree with. But that can hide the fact that these models have no basis in reality whatsoever…only in the recorded interpretations of reality available to them.

Humans are meaning making machines. We are constantly interpreting the randomness of the world as stories which more or less work, but may also not be objectively true. This is why the events of the world continue to surprise us, or cause us anguish when they do not fit into our stories.

Chatbots don’t do that because they don’t know reality, just our stories about reality.

It would be like asking someone about the ocean who has read many books about the ocean, but has never actually experienced the ocean. You could learn a lot, but you’d always be a layer or two (philosophers can argue about this) removed from reality. And I think that makes a difference.

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 08:02:19 -0400

This is super helpful. Thank you.

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 21:38:58 -0400

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 09:14:19 -0400

Brooding: Should Our Children Have a Political Party?

Most of us have loved ones whose beliefs don’t perfectly align with ours, and kids need help making sense of that beyond a binary of right and wrong. Our biases are often simultaneously irrational and grounded in experience. Understanding this is not moral relativism, it’s social intelligence. Belonging to a group feels good, but teaching your kids how to identify group dynamics can feel good too.

This was from before the election, but will continue to be relevant.

Thu, 07 Nov 2024 07:57:52 -0400

Finished reading: Martin Heidegger by George Steiner 📚

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 23:34:57 -0400

Cadillac Mountain, Maine

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 17:01:53 -0400

Verona Island, Maine

Wed, 30 Oct 2024 20:53:44 -0400

Accountability sinks | A Working Library

Once you start looking for accountability sinks, you see them all over the place. When your health insurance declines a procedure; when the airline cancels your flight; when a government agency declares that you are ineligible for a benefit; when an investor tells all their companies to shovel so-called AI into their apps. Everywhere, broken links between the people who face the consequences of the decision and the people making the decisions.

I’m thinking about how accountability sinks might operate in my context, the local church. Sometimes you get opposing sinks: the pastor concludes the church doesn’t move forward because of the stubbornness of the laity; the laity conclude the pastor is to blame; everyone escapes accountability as the community degrades. The consequences, though, are much harder to discern in this case.

Other People's Projects

Mon, 28 Oct 2024 06:42:43 -0400

Pluralistic: Keeping a suspense file gives you superpowers (26 Oct 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

This is not an imposition, it’s a kindness. The point of a suspense file isn’t to nag others into living up to their commitments, it’s to form a network of support among collaborators where we all help one another make those conscious choices about what we’re not going to do, rather than having the stuff we really value slip away because we forgot about it.

This is important…I’ve often wondered about good boundaries around reminding other people of their obligations. Should I send out a reminder email about the meeting, or assume we’re all adults? Instead of seeing it though through the expectation of perfection, if I admit that we all need help (this is why I have a Getting Things Done system after all), reminding others turns into a collaborative system in which we’re all trying to do our best.

Sat, 26 Oct 2024 15:23:25 -0400

“merlin mann” apple site:music.apple.com at DuckDuckGo

Merlin doesn’t share his profile on Apple Music but you can find his public playlists with this search.

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 07:41:16 -0400

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 19:21:42 -0400

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 20:00:00 -0400

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 15:23:38 -0400

Finished reading: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan 📚

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 15:22:22 -0400

Finished reading: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker 📚

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 15:19:58 -0400

Finished reading: Low Anthropology by David Zahl 📚

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 15:12:26 -0400

Finished reading: Free of Charge by Miroslav Volf 📚

Tue, 19 Dec 2023 08:13:20 -0400

Finished reading: America’s Theologian by Robert W. Jenson 📚

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 22:14:22 -0400

Finished reading: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders 📚