/now/

/now/^[1] is a monthly updated page that lists some of the projects I'm working on, media I'm engaging, and hobbies or other activities I'm doing.

👩‍💻 Coding

• Gqueues TUI - a user interface for Gqueues in your terminal emulator
• Vanilla Bean TUI - a user interface for Beancounter file format
• Advanced Hands-On Rust coding exercises
• And more on my github

🏔️ Hiking & Mountaineering

• ✅ Franklin Falls
• ✅ Poo Poo Point

Misc. Projects

• Hosting an out-of-state friend
• Homestead repairs and improvements

Media

Books

• Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett (Book two of the Founders Trilogy)
• What you are looking for is in the library by Michiko Aoyama
• Advanced Hands-On Rust by Herbert Wolverson
• ⏸️ The Incredible Years
• ⏸️ Bulletproof Problem Solving

Music

• Dido No Angel
• Sisqo Return of Dragon

Movies

• Inglorious Basterds
• The Lego Movie

Podcasts

• The DOS Gaming Club
  • Ultima Underworld
  • Doom
  • One Must Fall: 2097
• Opposing Bases
• Aviation News Talk w/ Max Trescott
• Improve Something today

🎮 Video Games

• Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erd Tree
• Stardew Valley (with kiddo and partner)
• Valheim (Peaceful mode with kiddo)

Some Articles I clipped last month:

The Record Divide Between Corporate Profits and Worker Pay by Greg Ip

Worker compensation—wages and benefits—grew 0.8% in the first quarter from the fourth, while domestic corporate profits jumped 2.7%.

It’s the latest milestone in a trend that became pronounced in the 2000s, then picked up speed after the pandemic. Adjusted for inflation, hourly wages are up 3% since the end of 2019 while profits are up 50%.

Notes on Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on AI by Simon Willison

Pope Leo XIV explained part of the reason for the choice of his papal name. "There are different reasons for this," he said, before going on to explain that he chose the name Leo "mainly because Pope Leo XIII, in his historic encyclical Rerum novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution."

• “In our own day,” he continued, “the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice, and labour.”

• Justice demands the recognition of the rights of society and the rights of peoples, and includes a responsibility toward future generations. Development is not truly human if it increases consumption for some while shifting costs and burdens onto others, or relegates entire regions to subordinate roles, preventing them from realizing their full potential.

• The apparent objectivity of the responses and suggestions these systems provide can lead us to overlook the fact that they reflect the cultural assumptions of those who designed and trained them, with all their strengths and limitations.

• The artificial imitation of positive human communication — words of advice, empathy, friendship and even love — can be engaging and at times genuinely helpful. However, for less discerning users, it can also be misleading, creating the illusion of a relationship with a real personal subject.

• Current AI systems require enormous amounts of energy and water, significantly influencing carbon dioxide emissions, and place heavy demands on natural resources. [...] For this reason, it is essential to develop more sustainable technological solutions that reduce environmental impact and help protect our common home.

• The use of AI is never a purely technical matter: when it enters processes that affect people’s lives [...] Important and sensitive decisions [...] risk being fully delegated to automated systems that do not know “compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and above all, the hope that people are able to change,

• For AI to respect human dignity and truly serve the common good, responsibility must be clearly defined at every stage: from those who design and develop these systems to those who use them and rely on them for concrete decisions.

• [AI makes] it harder to assign responsibility and correct errors.

• AI tends to amplify the power of those who already possess economic resources, expertise and access to data.

Emotional Regulation is a Dying Art by Joan Westenberg

There was a time when adults could feel something without screaming at you about it.
[...]
You can see it - in real time - on any platform that rewards reaction; the faster the feedback loop, the worse the regulation. People are unleashing their feelings, unbounded and uninhibited, before they’ve finished having them, which means they aren’t really having them at all. They’re skipping the inner step, where a person sits with a sensation and decides whether or not it deserves to leave the body.
[...]
Suppression and regulation are different animals. Suppression is shoving the feeling into a closet and pretending it isn’t there until it crawls out twenty years later as an autoimmune disease; regulation is letting yourself feel the feeling, in full, while keeping your hands on the wheel of the car.

Three Inverse Laws of AI by Susam Pal

Here are the three inverse laws of robotics:

Humans must not anthropomorphise AI systems.
Humans must not blindly trust the output of AI systems.
Humans must remain fully responsible and accountable for consequences arising from the use of AI systems.