147 lines
9.5 KiB
Markdown
147 lines
9.5 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Dispatch #15 (May 2024)"
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date: 2024-05-07T23:17:00-04:00
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draft: false
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tags:
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- dispatch
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references:
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- title: "StackStash: Taking Bookish Musings to the Next Level | Viget"
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url: https://www.viget.com/articles/stackstash-taking-bookish-musings-to-the-next-level/
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date: 2024-04-17T20:44:52Z
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file: www-viget-com-szerfi.txt
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- title: "Lofi Chord Progressions: 11 Ways to Build Nostalgic Lo-Fi Chords [Free MIDI Pack]"
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url: https://blog.landr.com/lofi-chord-progressions/
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date: 2024-05-08T02:39:44Z
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file: blog-landr-com-e4mwah.txt
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- title: "The One Big Thing You Can Do for Your Kids - The Atlantic"
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url: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/parenting-anxiety-happiness-children/677960/
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date: 2024-04-17T20:38:00Z
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file: www-theatlantic-com-jyxibm.txt
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- title: "Opinion | Parents Can Counter the World’s Cruelty With Joy - The New York Times"
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url: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/16/opinion/parenting-mistakes-joy.html
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date: 2024-04-17T20:41:40Z
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file: www-nytimes-com-kh2ijc.txt
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- title: "Review: The Boox Palma is the best purchase I've made in a long time - cliophate.wtf"
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url: https://cliophate.wtf/posts/boox-palma-review
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date: 2024-04-18T14:01:57Z
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file: cliophate-wtf-quluwp.txt
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- title: "AI isn't useless. But is it worth it?"
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url: https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/
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date: 2024-04-18T16:30:46Z
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file: www-citationneeded-news-loassa.txt
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- title: "The Judgment Of Magneto | Defector"
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url: https://defector.com/the-judgment-of-magneto
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date: 2024-05-07T01:04:07Z
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file: defector-com-cfiovt.txt
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- title: "On giant piles of cash, and their origins - by Dave Karpf"
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url: https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/on-giant-piles-of-cash-and-their
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date: 2024-05-08T03:04:13Z
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file: davekarpf-substack-com-yferui.txt
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---
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Big news, friends: we're expecting a second kid in June. To celebrate, Claire and I headed to Lisbon for a long weekend. Highlights included the castles in Sintra (especially [Quinta da Regaliera][1]), biking in [Cascais][2], and attending a [Benfica][3] match. We missed our Nevie, but she had a great time with Grandma and Grandpa, and it was nice to be able to stay out past 7pm.
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[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinta_da_Regaleira
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[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascais
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[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.L._Benfica
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<!--more-->
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{{<dither IMG_0733.jpeg "782x782">}}Sunlit boardwalk ride between dunes and sea, smiling rider taking in the view.{{</dither>}}
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{{<dither IMG_0725.jpeg "782x782">}}Relaxing seaside lunch with a frosty beer under sunlit Sagres umbrellas.{{</dither>}}
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{{<dither IMG_5805.jpeg "782x782">}}Sunlit stroll through Lisbon: mom-to-be cradles her belly on a steep cobblestone street above the river.{{</dither>}}
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{{<dither IMG_5797.jpeg "782x782">}}Red-clad Benfica fans create a roaring wall of color as players battle under the bright lights at Estádio da Luz.{{</dither>}}
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While we were over there, I was pretty diligent about using [Shazam][4] whenever a song caught my ear and saving everything into Apple Notes. When I got back, I compiled all the tracks into a playlist[^1] that's been on repeat ever since. It's a pretty neat way to create a memento that's unique to me and that doesn't cost anything or take up any space, and is something I'll plan to repeat on future trips.
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[4]: https://www.shazam.com/
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I took part in Viget's annual Pointless Palooza hackathon, building a [tool to surface book recommendations][5] based on messages in our `#books` Slack channel. We used [Laravel][6] to build the backend, something I'd heard good things about but have never used -- it was easy to pick up and fun to work with. We also used an <abbr title="large language model">LLM</abbr> to analyze the messages and pull title / author / sentiment. Some of the results were very impressive, some were hot nonsense (it frequently matched generic messages to _The Great Gatsby_ or _Gone with the Wind_).
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[5]: https://www.viget.com/articles/stackstash-taking-bookish-musings-to-the-next-level/
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[6]: https://laravel.com/
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For our quarterly company event, I made this track with a bunch of samples I pulled from our Google Meet archive:
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<audio controls src="/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/The Simple Secret Formula.mp3"></audio>
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Probably funnier if you've ever attended one of these events, but I think it holds up pretty well musically. Credit where it's due, I pulled that Fm11/Ebmaj9 chord progression straight from this [Lofi Chord Progressions][7] article (the shaker's all me though).
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[7]: https://blog.landr.com/lofi-chord-progressions/
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A [comment on Reddit][8] sent me down a little bit of an iPad music rabbit hole, and now I've got my Circuit Tracks driving two software synths on the iPad (digging [Neo-Soul Keys][9] and [Minimoog Model D][10]) in addition to the two built-in ones. It's a tight little setup for travel, and I can even run a MIDI controller into it for more direct control of the synths.
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[8]: https://www.reddit.com/r/synthesizers/comments/1ci0jcr/comment/l26rjp1/
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[9]: https://gospelmusicians.com/products/neo-soul-keys-studio-2
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[10]: https://www.moogmusic.com/products/minimoog-model-d-synthesizer-app
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Claire and I are both big fans of Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service. They're on a tour for the 20th anniversaries of _Transatlaticism_ and _Give Up_ (man what a year 2003 must have been for Ben Gibbard) and we got tickets for the Raleigh show. They played both albums straight through. It was awesome, though when they finished _Give Up_ and we were waiting for the encore, it sure made me wish Postal Service had ever made another record -- we just heard their entire catalogue.
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### This Month
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* Adventure: lake for Memorial Day; enjoy these last few weeks of only-child Nev
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* Project: make a song with my iPad, maybe in a novel location; get the house ready for this BABY
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* Skill: get back into running (fell off in April)
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### Reading
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* Fiction: [_Magician's Gambit_][11], David Eddings (enjoying this series)
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* Non-fiction: [_The Creative Act_][12], Rick Rubin
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[11]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Belgariad
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[12]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-creative-act-a-way-of-being-rick-rubin/18543579
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### Links
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* [The One Big Thing You Can Do for Your Kids][13]
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> When one of my now-adult kids was in middle school, I had a small epiphany about parenting. I had been haranguing him constantly about his homework and grades, which were indeed a problem. One night, after an especially bad day, I was taking stock of the situation, and came to a realization: I didn’t actually care very much about his grades.
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* [Parents Can Counter the World’s Cruelty With Joy][14]
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> Parenting is always an exercise in hope, a gift given to a future we cannot see to the end. At some point, if God is merciful, our children will continue forward without us, left with the memory of love shared and received.
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* [The Boox Palma is the best purchase I've made in a long time][15]
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> When I first saw this device from Craig Mod, I didn't think I'd end up loving it so much. It is, after all, just a phone-sized Kindle with access to an Android store that costs $299. What I didn't expect is that this is precisely what makes it such a fantastic device. A few weeks in, it has become the device I use the most day by day—yes, even more than my phone.
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* [AI isn't useless. But is it worth it?][16]
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> But I find one common thread among the things AI tools are particularly suited to doing: do we even want to be doing these things? If all you want out of a meeting is the AI-generated summary, maybe that meeting could've been an email. If you're using AI to write your emails, and your recipient is using AI to read them, could you maybe cut out the whole thing entirely? If mediocre, auto-generated reports are passing muster, is anyone actually reading them? Or is it just middle-management busywork?
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* [The Judgement of Magneto][17]
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> A fault-line yawned open within the global Jewish community, exposing the divide between those who had understood “Never Again” to be a humanistic warning, and those who saw it as permission in advance for whatever they deemed necessary to ensure it.
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* [On giant piles of cash, and their origins][18]
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> The previous generation of venture capitalists were, for the most part, actual engineers and scientists. They had spent time in the lab. They had experience being “close to the metal.” They made some real money early, then started to point that money in the direction of funding audacious high-risk/high-reward projects that didn’t fit anywhere else. The sector was small, compared to government money and corporate R&D money.
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[13]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/parenting-anxiety-happiness-children/677960/
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[14]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/16/opinion/parenting-mistakes-joy.html
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[15]: https://cliophate.wtf/posts/boox-palma-review
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[16]: https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/
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[17]: https://defector.com/the-judgment-of-magneto
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[18]: https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/on-giant-piles-of-cash-and-their
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[^1]: Here's my Lisbon playlist:
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1. P64 By My Side - John Carroll Kirby
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2. Need Your Body - Stimulator Jones
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3. Temptations - Jitwam
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4. Sunny - Bobby Hebb
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5. Mais Que Nada - Paulo Sergio
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6. Feet Keep Moving - Natural Self
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7. Make My Day - Waldeck
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8. Te Faço um Cafuné - Mariana Aydar
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9. Primavera - Ocote Soul Sounds
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10. When You're Gone - Jon and Roy
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11. I Will Survive (lalala) - Hermes House Band
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12. Off to the Side - L'Impératrice
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13. I Believe in You - more*
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14. Love Story (Retromigration Remix) - Malik Hendricks
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15. Tout va bien - Voyou
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16. Aquela Bossa Axé - Affonsinho
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