A reminder about how much of politics really is personal

I was talking with someone yesterday about local politics when the topic of one of our legislators at the federal level came up. As it turns out, person I was talking with (who shares my political affiliation) absolutely cannot stand this legislator (who is also of the same political affiliation). I was not terribly surprised, as it goes back to something this legislator said early in their political career. A lot of people were upset about it and much political hay has been made out of it in the years immediately following the kerfuffle.

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Ball field on a rainy Wednesday evening

🔗 So, Amazon’s ‘AI-powered’ cashier-free shops use a lot of … humans. Here’s why that shouldn’t surprise you | James Bridle | The Guardian

But collectively they paint a picture of a society, and a culture, utterly unequipped to register the violence that is being done to it, merely because historical process is draped in the ribbons of “technology”. This violence is enacted simultaneously on the high street and the global stage. What makes me angry about how often we keep falling for it is not merely that we should know better, but what the costs of doing so actually are.

Demanufacture by Fear Factory

I bought this album right around the time it came out and listened to it a lot in the late 1990s. Thrash and industrial were among my favorite genres at the time, and Fear Factory had a pretty sweet spot right at the intersection of the two. For whatever reason, I don't think I have listened to Demanufacture at all in the intervening 20+ years. There was a mention of the band in something I was reading a few days ago, so I decided to revisit the album.

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I wish that people would stop obsessively trying to catalog the qualities that make some piece of work uniquely human so as to be able to figure out what of all the stuff we do is valuable and instead focus on valuing the work that humans do because humans do it.

This is the northbound side of Interstate 91 this morning with all the people trying to get to Vermont to see the eclipse. 🙄

I get that an eclipse is near and will probably step outside this afternoon to take a look. However, the level of mania around this event is ridiculous—people taking their kids out of school, driving hours, booking rentals and hotels? Crazy.

I feel like this whole thing has been turned into a meme, the astronomical equivalent of What Color Is the Dress or that stupid water bottle everyone was on about last month.

Bumper to bumper traffic on the highway

🔗 My Recommendation Engine - Ben Tsai

Sometimes, the human touch and conversation around the thing is what makes it special and worthwhile.

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I went for my first run in over a month—recovering from shin splints—and I am reminded that running is terrible.

Bottle of maple syrup

🔗 Better to be Forgotten Than Disposable - by John Warner:

The point of putting books into the world isn’t to be forever immortalized. At least I don’t think that way. I’m not sure there is a larger point beyond simply engaging in the activity itself.

I wish I could explain this to the people who claim that AI is somehow a way to “democratize” the making of art by giving people who cannot write or compose or draw or sing or play an instrument access to tools of automation that eliminate the process of making the thing.

It’s the making that’s the art. Without the making, you don’t have anything meaningful.

I think this point cannot be overemphasized. I full endorse it.

omg.social greenfield.social another weblog yet another weblog