📰 Read Write Respond #064

On the family front, April has been the month of celebrations – our eldest turned double digits, my grandfather turned ninety and my nephew turned one. Makes for a lot of celebrations, even in these strange times. With the house, I experienced the highs and lows of selling things online. We inherited a 10-person spa when we bought our house and I advertised it for $50 dollars. Clearly from the responses this was well under what it was worth, although it did cost $1000 to move. On a positive note, we had my wife’s upright piano delivered, which was nice addition.

At work, we returned to three days in the office, so I am back on public transport for the first time since the start of last year. It really makes me appreciate how lucky I have been to work from home for so long. Although it is nice to catch up with people, I am not sure there are many gains, especially when so much of my work is done alone. The other part of this puzzle has been expanding our support team. This has left me wondering how you jump on a moving train travelling at full speed. Is it about a clear vision to buy into? Collating the appropriate documentation to support theme? Or hiring the right person? The problem I have found is that the work is the work, the problem is that you do not really know what that work is until you are in the middle of it.

Personally, I have been listening to a number of albums, including Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s G_d’s Pee at State’s End!, London Grammar’s Californian Soil and Amy Shark’s Cry Forever. However, I was really taken by Julia Stone’s Sixty Summers and All India Radio’s Afterworld. Continuing on my Marvel journey, I have been binge-watching Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I started writing about making small tools to automate repeatable processes using Google Sheets, but as per usual, I have been too busy to fully flesh things out.

On other matters, here are some of the posts that have had me thinking:

Education

Video Games as Literature

Quinn Norton asks the question, what is literature and where mediums like comics and games sit with this.

City of the Future

Daniel Summerell shares a unit of work that involves working collaboratively to design a city of the future within Minecraft.

Why bizarre milkshakes will never replace world-class consent education

Amanda Keddie discusses the Australian Government’s resource developed to help schools address the challenge of educating young people about respectful relationships and the problems she has with milkshakes.

When Real World Mapping Meets Tolkien

Dan Bell steps through the process of turning a real world map into something from Middle Earth.

What Good Leaders Do When Replacing Bad Leaders

Andrew Blum provides strategies for dealing with the transition between leaders.

Technology

Atlas of AI with Kate Crawford

Kate Crawford speaks about her new book, Atlas of AI. In it, she attempts to capture the human side of artificial intelligence, whether it be the resources, the workforce, history, datasets or the escape to space.

The Next Generation of Robots is Here

Clive Thompson dives into the world of robotics. This includes the development of the Unimate, the challenge of replicating the human hand, the innovative opportunity provided by the X-Box’s 3-D-sensing chip, and the financial incentive offered by pandemic.

Hackers Used to Be Humans. Soon, AIs Will Hack Humanity

Bruce Schneier discusses the findings of an investigation into the future of AI and hacking.

The Observatory of Anonymity

Cory Doctorow discusses the problems on anonymity of de-identified data over time.

30 Days of HTML

Jen Kramer and Erika Lee breakdown HTML one element at a time.

General

What should become of the office?

Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens speak with Gideon Haigh about his book The Momentous, Uneventful Day: A Requiem for the Office. With so many forced to work offsite during the pandemic, the three consider the current purpose of the office and its futute moving forward.

There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing

Adam Grant explains that mental health is a spectrum and in the middle between flourishing and depression is the feeling of languishing.

How to Rewild Your Balcony, One Native Plant at a Time

Jeff VanderMeer shares eight tips for rewilding your yard even when there is limited space.

I’ve learnt a lot from Bluey, but can the show be more representative?

Beverley Wang talks about the way in which she was blindsided by Bluey with its sense of mortality. She talks about the power of co-viewing and the learning opportunities that arise with this.

How Donald Trump Wanted the End of History

Rebecca Solnit looks back on Donald Trump’s legacy and reflects on his effort to ‘end history’.

Read Write Respond #064

So that was April for me, how about you? As always, love to hear.

Image via JustLego101