(An aside – I have let my writing lapse due to other projects in the last 6 months. And that is a shame, because writing is the best way to cement your learning, to tease out your thinking, and to kickstart engagement with others. I see people that set goals to write 1000 words a day. A high bar but a good one.)

We just are wrapping up a remodelling project. Top of mind this week is all the smart tech in the home and the attention they demand. Every appliance and device maker has the central idea that their device is the most important device ever, and that you should dedicate your day to admiring it and servicing it.

• Washers and dryers with their loud “cycle finished” alarms, because of course nothing is more important in my day that knowing when a cycle finishes, especially at 10 PM in the middle of a movie, or at 1 AM when you are in bed. And the UX to turn off the alarm is goooooofy.
• Dishwashers with “cycle finished” alarm to rival the smoke alarm in persistence, they just go on and on and on. THe manufacturer did so much work to make the dishwasher itself quiet, only to blare an alarm saying “I’m Done!!! Come Celebrate!! NOW NOW NOW!!”. And again the UX to turn off is terrible
• Smart thermostats that want to be the star of the room – big black obelisks with garish color displays. Most homeowners want their thermostats to disappear.
• The smart vacuum with the speaker and voice that yells at me at 1AM to “plug me in now” because it wasn’t seated right on the charger. I just about wet my pants that night. I have a smart vacuum because I don’t want to think about vacuuming, not because I want to be yelled at by a vacuum.
• OK the “you left the fridge door open” alarm is sensible and I am glad for that one. But it is the exception.
• The smart doorbell that by default sends you an alert for every motion at your door – so god forbid your doorbell camera faces the street or trees or something.

Almost all the manufacturers recognize that the phone is a key part of everyone’s life, so they all build their own apps for their devices. They don’t embrace Homekit or other standards, because they want to own the relationship with the consumer. So you get a flotilla of apps, each with their own UX and object model and interaction style and notification control. Some are beyond goofy. I have a whole page of them on my phone now.

I don’t think any of us really want a refrigerator app and a stovetop app and a icemaker app and a thermostat app (three in my house because we have Trane and Honeywell thermostats and a minisplit!) We really want a home app and everything to click into it, and a common way to control notifications, to group things, to automate, etc. I’m a nerd so I of course install all the apps, but the regular humans in my household want nothing to do with this.

All these separate apps do not build the brand loyalty that the manufacturers want – every time I have to run the Honeywell app, it is time lost, and it just reminds me what jerks the Honeywell product managers are and how little they think of me.

A lot of this mess is because there is no established practice of system architecture in the home. We have great architects who think thru the physical design of the house and the mechanical systems. But I am not seeing the same leadership in digital and electrical infrastructure in the home. We have a jumble of security, audio, cat6, low voltage, and other wiring. A jumble of wireless protocols for data, for proprietary security and control systems. A jumble of apps, jumble of logins and accounts and cloud services There is no design here. The architects and contractors leave it up to subcontractors who just jam stuff in. It is all a little embarrassing.

• A Psalm for the Wild-built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers. Brilliant little stories about what it really is to be human and how to accept others. Can’t recommend highly enough.
• Terminal Alliance by Jim C. Hines. Engaging space opera. No new ground covered but likable characters and good plotting.
• How Asia Works by Joe Studwell. A bit dense but a very good analysis of country development in Asia – what has worked, what has failed. A lot of excellent analysis of the policies that led to success in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. I loved this line – “At the industrial policy-making level, what stands out with the benefit of hindsight is that there was almost no role played in Japan, Korea, or Taiwan by economists.” Most of the advice by big-brained western consultants and agencies has been dead wrong.
• The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics by Tim Harford. An ok look at how to better understand and validate statistics. Tho probably won’t stick with me the way The Black Swan or Superforecasting have stuck with me.
• Delta-V adn Critical Mass by Daniel Suarez. The story of the bootstrapping of the first space-resident society off Earth. A lot of fun technology forecasting, but characters and plot were kind of secondary.

• G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage. Wow this is a lot of J. Edgar Hoover info. He was certainly a central figure in the 20th century. A sobering story about the accumulation of power, and the abuse of power, by him and by politicians around him. We are not well served by elected or appointed officials with long terms.
• Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe. An easy to read memoir, a good introduction to one person’s story about gender. Much I don’t know about these issues.
• She: A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard. Been on my shelves for years, finally cracked it. A rip roaring tale tho obviously hasn’t aged well.
• Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman’s Ruthless Quest for Global Power by Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck. Another blood boiler. Very difficult to be positive about alliance with Saudi Arabia after reading this. Also makes me even more pro-renewables so that we can stop dealing with these turds.
• The Blood of the Lamb by Peter de Vries. Oof, what a gut punch. A man struggles for meaning and faith over the course of a life in which he loses his brother, first love, his wife, his parents, his daughter. And somehow de Vries injects levity in the story. Great admiration for the writing.

Some useful roundups of ideas from around the web.

• 40 useful concepts, hattip to Recomendo. So many pithy insights – “People just aren’t thinking about you that much.”, “By celebrating people for their intelligence, we make them stupid”, “Action creates traction, so each step you take will facilitate the next.”
• 12 questions to ask dad before he’s gone.
• The Conquest of Happiness – seems like a book I should read. “One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.”
• The Law of 100. Practice and repetition with feedback is the way.

• The Mountain In The Sea by Ray Nayler. Good introspective tale about discovery and creation of different kinds of intelligences. Octopi are fascinating.
• Breakheart Pass by Alistair MacLean. As a kid I read all MacLean’s books and loved them. As a lark I reread one. OK it is overwritten, under-edited, a little trite – but there is a great story in the bones of this book, I understand why I ate them up.
• Nophek Gloss by Essa Hansen. I am not sure why I gave this book so much of a chance, it is a fairly typical hero saga with really dumb sci fi elements. Not worth it.
• Bad Mexicans by Kelly Lytle Hernandez. Chock full of history that I never learned, and I really should know, but the book is just boring. Kept falling asleep.

• Trust by Hernan Diaz. Worthy of all the accolades. The truth is slowly unravelled as different characters relate their experience, stripping away facade after facade.
• The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen. The story of the end of the Soviet Union and the rise of the current Russian goverment/society told thru the stories of people who endured it. Very sobering assessment of Russian society and government, the enthusiasm for and commitment to totalitarianism runs deep. Even more a supporter of a free Ukraine after reading this.
• China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine by Rosemary Gibson. A little histrionic at times, and overly long and repetitive, but raises good issues. There is a glaring hole in the recommendations, there is no way we can depend on inspections of manufacturing facilities in the US or overseas to ensure quality, we have to perform random sample testing of product in the field and take fast action based on problems identified.

Elon has every right to have whatever editorial policy he wants and to support whatever membership he wants. It is his company. And Twitter is not some special place, some sacred commons — it is just another media site, and like every media site, it is going to have a slant and a certain audience goal.

Increasingly, the site doesn’t match with my interests. It is becoming an outrage fest and Elon is encouraging that. Elon posts provocative stuff, people express outrage, and other people express outrage about the outrage. Elon isn’t the only driver of course.

The good news is we are awash in tools to express ourselves, it has never been easier to get your voice out and connect with people. I read and post on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Mastodon, Post, Goodreads, Discord, Wordpress, Github, and more. I’ve considered and discarded so many alternatives, I can’t remember them all. Social networks, microblogging platforms, short message platforms, video clip sharing services, photo sharing services, blogging tools, newsletter tools, website hosting, discussion forums, video hosting services — there are so many tools available and more every day. I can’t keep up with them all, I have probably missed entire categories of tools. And in every category there are multiple choices, with multiple different content policies. There is a place for everyone.

Twitter and its adherents don’t owe me anything and I don’t owe twitter or anyone on it a listen.

• Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. What if our world really is just a simulation? An OK tale but not a knockout.
• The Year of Peril: America in 1942 by Tracy Campbell. Interesting look at the stresses in American society in 1942. We look back now and feel like our victory in WWII was inevitable and that all Americans pulled together. Reality is much messier.
• The Overstory by Richard Powers. I don’t get it. Plodding. Couldn’t be bothered to finish it.
• Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It by Richard B. Reeves. Very thought provoking. This is not some apologist text about men, it is a very critical view of how we are raised and molded and demands that we do better. It is also very critical of Democratic Party approaches to the issue. The solutions are a little too straight line but worth reading.
• Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers by Andy Greenberg. I don’t know, just didn’t really grab me. Something about the narrative was just kind of boring.
• Fortune Favors the Dead by Stephen Spotswood. Oh what a great detective story, two wonderful main characters in the Holmes/Watson tradition, vulnerable and very human. Really liked it.

Bill Gates recently posted some of his favorite books. And it has inspired me to think about my all time favorites. I have 1200+ books listed on Goodreads and I am sure there are another 500-1000 I’ve read that I have never put on Goodreads (for instance, I read every Allen Drury political drama back in my teens, loved them, but I’ve never bothered to put on Goodreads).

I narrowed my list down to 6 with some alternates as well. (Sorry I couldn’t get to 5, Bill is better at this than I am)

• The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster with illustrations by Jules Feiffer. This book hooked me on reading as a young reader, I loved the story and the wordplay. It is probably not a great adult book read but I think it is fabulous for young readers. The Hobbit is of course a great choice as well.
• Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. I read a ton of classic science fiction and I loved much of it. Rama really had a sense of mystery and wonder that I enjoyed. Dune, Hyperion are great books in the genre as well.
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Leguin. I love all of Leguin’s works, this book showed me that speculative fiction could be so much deeper. The Sparrow is an excellent choice too.
• The Strange Death of Liberal England by George Dangerfield. One of my favorite history books about a period of great change, just so well written. Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power and Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio are excellent choices as well.
• The Wild Party by Joseph Moncure March with illustrations by Art Spiegelman. A quirky little piece of fiction that I find incredibly entertaining. The Screwtape Letters and Dear Committee Members are fun choices too.
• The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould. All of Gould’s work is excellent, this set of analyses is well argued and well written. Other good non-fiction choices are The Mythical Man-Month, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, The Black Swan, and Tune In.

• Her Name Is Knight, They Come At Knight by Yasmin Angoe. The first book is a good start to a thriller series featuring a young African assassin who has been thru a hellacious early life, and is now starting to avenge herself. The tale continues int he second book, which loses its way for a little while, although ends well.
• The Pyramid of Lies: Lex Greensill and the Billion-Dollar Scandal by Duncan Mavin. More detail than I really wanted on this scandal. I am excited to read the equivalent about Sam Bankman-Fried some day.
• Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. Great tale of three close friends who deal with the transformation of Earth by alien technologies. Great characters dealing with stress.
• The Secret History by Donna Tartt. This book seems well written, but the characters are unpleasant and the situation is unpleasant and I just didn’t enjoy putting this into my head. Moving on.

• America and Iran: A History 1720 to the Present by John Ghazvinian. This has been a long read, and an exceptional read. So much I didn’t know. Heartbreaking, so much ill will and bad behaviour between the countries, serving no one’s purpose. Such opportunity lost.
• The Toaster Project: Or A Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch by Thomas Thwaites. A very short book documenting this project. Reminds you of just how advanced and specialized and interconnected our society is; the days of living along off the land are long gone.
• Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett. Quite entertaining fantasy romp. A young thief gains access to magical secrets and upends the power structure of a country. Good characters. First of a series and I’m sure I’d enjoy the rest, tho this works very well on its own.
• Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath by Bill Browder. A pretty exciting tale about money laundering and the attempts to fight it over the last 2 decades. A very dangerous fight.
• Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany’s Wealthiest Dynasties by David de Jong. A long retelling of the wealth of some of Germany’s richest people, and how many of these families benefitted from Nazi ties. The book kind of loses its way in the flood of never ending details and maybe that is the point – the ties to the Nazis were pervasive, and never really resolved.

1, I really wish the AppleTV device had features for serious sports viewers. PIP so I can keep up with multiple games. Fast 1-button switching between two or three different games. I used to have these features on my old cable boxes, we have really lost something. And sports enthusiasts would pay for these features, if there was a special sports version of the appletv box I would buy it in seconds.

2, I’d love to see my viewing history for any service as I can with Netflix (although even on Netflix, it is buried in a stupid place in the UX). I’d like to be able to quickly rate shows, filter my history, share it or a filtered subset of it, etc. Every week my kids ask me “what did you watch good this week?” and I have to scramble to answer.

3, I wish all streaming services would integrate with either/both AppleTV and Amazon aggregation features - easy account activation/deactivation, viewing within the app, participation in favorites list, etc. I want to use an aggregator and I don’t care which one particularly. I don’t want to have 17 logins with 17 different apps with 17 different UXes – and boy are the UXes on some of the lesser streaming services bad, Showtime I’m looking at you.

It is easy to be concerned about the nation and the world. So much bad news and misbehavior.

But wow, do I feel optimistic this week. Like so many people I’ve been playing around with Stable Diffusion, and to a lesser extent Midjourney and Dall-E 2. Tons of fun, the open nature of Stable Diffusion makes it easy to play with, I’m reminded of how much fun it was the first time I got a PC. And the rate of innovation around it is incredible – a KerasCV port which seems super fast, alternative web UIs like the Automatic1111, animation aupport, video applications, tools to do incremental training for new objects and styles, prompt generation tools, landscape generation tools, inpainting, outpainting, masking, mosaicing, audio equivalents – it is hard to keep up with everything. Incredibly exciting time, great energy. Lots of issues around copyright and IP protection to be figured out, but still super exciting. I like this phrasing – the creative multiverse is way more exciting than some corporate metaverse. Stable Diffusion and its kin are going to be major accelerants for every creative task.

And I see reasons for great optimism outside software. I am relatively stupid about things biologic, but I get pretty excited when I read articles like Biomanufactured Materials Are Coming. Imagine if we can create Moore’s Law equivalents for biologic materials – ever cheaper, ever higher volume, ever more function biologics – the applications are pretty endless.

And then look at the space industry – Launch volumes are going way up, costs are going way down. And there are a ton of companies working hard to make this happen faster – for instance Stoke Space. Getting the free market to work on this challenge has been brilliant.

I could probably get just as excited about the declining cost of renewable energy and the implications of much cheaper energy.

It seems like we are on the cusp of an explosion of creativity fed by all these advances. A great time to be alive.

• Hard Cash Valley by Brian Panowich. A solid detective tale in rural northern Georgia (the state).
• Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. The Julia Childs story on steroids. The characters felt a little light at first but it evolved into a very touching story.
• A History of the Bible: The Story of the World’s Most Influential Book by John Barton. This is quite a deep look, more than I wanted, and so I eventually set it down. But I still recommend it if you want to understand the development and structure of the bible.
• The Science of Rapid Skill Acquisition: Advanced Methods to Learn, Remember, and Master New Skills and Information by Peter Hollins. This would have been a nice book to have at the beginning of my serious learning career back when I was 17 or 18. Some good basic frameworks and I appreciate how he stresses teaching as just being on the learning spectrum, at one end. I would not characterize anything in here as “science” or “advanced” though.

• The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson. Good story of parallel universes. A traveller betweens worlds deal with conspiracies and politics across multiple similar worlds with similar characters.
• Blood and Daring: How Canada Fought the American Civil War and Forged a Nation by John Boyko. I know pathetically little about Canadian history, this was interesting and easy to get into as it related to history I already knew well, the American Civil War. I did not realize the impact the Civil War had across the border.
• How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F. Walter. Very good data on history of civil wars, and pinpointing the common factor – loss of power by a historically controlling group. When it got to remedies, the book was a little less on target – a lot of theoretically good but impractical ideas, and too many of them. We are only going to be able to pull a few levers, I am not sure this book helped me understand which.
• Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. Wow, this is a long book, but that is because it has so much story packed into it. War, organized crime, prison, prison escapes, murder, betrayal, love, humour, this has it all. Not sure why I waited so long to read.