A weekly selection of what I was reading, drawing, writing, and doing.

Song lyric that I was thinking about:

I ask questions cuz I like to learn,
but hated school
because they ain’t teach us that
the hardest question of them all is
“who am I?”

(from Phantom Pain by Bluestaeb, one of my music picks from August)

Thoughts on the AI revolution:

The below doesn’t sound that strange to me. I’m pretty certain whatever comes will be much stranger than I can imagine.

If you imagine a child born today, you give the child a baby toy or a bear, and that bear is AI-enabled. And every year the child gets a better toy. Every year the bear gets smarter, and in a decade, the child and the bear who are best friends are watching television and the bear says, ’“I don’t really like this television show.” And the kid says, ’“Yeah, I agree with you.” What do we think when humans and these AI systems become best friends? Do we lose our communications and our warmth among humans, or does it get stronger? We don’t know.

Misinformation Is About to Get So Much Worse: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/09/eric-schmidt-artificial-intelligence-misinformation/620218

What life might have been like:

Nice little trip back in time. Can you imagine?

Did you arrive in a stagecoach? This is more difficult. You will be let in, because you will be expected; indeed the landlord may well have put gold in other people’s pocket to get the coach to stop, and you will be expected to put that gold back into his. You are probably only staying for the time it takes to change the horses; it could be done in five, and if this was a Post Office coach it would be, but you need to eat and drink. So it might be twenty minutes or in might be an hour.

Those travelling ‘up top’ to would be directed to the kitchen with the pedestrians, gypsies, itinerant labourers and soldiers. Do not expect help getting off the eight foot high coach; if you were a lady, you would not be on top in the first place, would you?

A Guide to the Georgian Coaching Inn: https://about1816.wordpress.com/2021/09/23/a-guide-to-the-georgian-coaching-inn/

Emojis that play with metaphor:

Interesting to hear all the thought that goes into making decisions on what emojis get added to our keyboards and why. I love this one:

A marker of a good emoji is when someone looks at it and feels like they’ve seen it before —or something like it. Emoji that are iconic, well established concepts frequently bubble to the top of the frequently used list. But, illustrating the absence of something is incredibly tricky. What’s an Emoji Subcommittee to do?

Sometimes I just want to disappear: https://jenniferdaniel.substack.com/p/sometimes-i-just-want-to-disappear

Film I enjoyed:

I’ve yet to be a fan of Mac Miller, but this video and song are both dope.

What I wrote and drew about this week:

What I did, was reminded of, or was thankful for last week:

• Our dog Rubee had a visit last week from her sister Ria who lives in Poland. They hadn’t seen each other since they were puppies. Since then, Rubee had been adopted by us and Ria adopted by a couple in Wales. They found each other on Facebook via my wife. Strange world.
• The kids and I started playing the Lego Marvel series last week on Xbox and I get it now why these games are so popular. They are really accessible, funny, and the gameplay is 🌈🌈.

Last but not least, check out what I’m up to now.