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Just tried out fartlek training to try to improve my running. It was a lot of fun! Claude suggested I should add either fartlek or tempo runs based on my current schedule and fartlek has a funny name so I choice that. I think I’d struggle with tempo runs as a beginner since you should run at 80%, which I’d stuggle to figure out what pace that is, running at 100% is fun and simpler. Having never really run at 100% before also opened my mind a bit to what it feels like to run faster/outside my comfort zone more, I can definitely see this increasing my running ability. As always hoping for a new PB at parkrun on saturday!

Set out to create a custom theme for this microblog but found custom themes aren’t covered in the $1 microblog subscription. Managed to make good enough changes using the custom css on the tiny theme.

Happy enough with the changes and not being able to do a custom theme is kinda a feature to me since I would have spent ages creating one that probably would have looked very similar as the blog does now

How to start Running

• acquire some quality running shoes >£100, should be all rounders, don’t overthink it
• start running slowly
• fine to start with 1km
• run at least once a week
• build up the distance
• now you are a runner

Ways to commute to work

Ways I’ve commuted to work:

• bus
• bike
• running

Ways I’ve not commuted to work:

• car
• taxi
• kayak
• walk

Bad luck I had this morning:

• Daughter decided to throw a bowl of porridge across the floor/wall
• Leftover pasta from yesterday was left out of the fridge and had to be thrown away
• I lost my waterbottle and spent the morning walking across campus in search of it (no luck)
• I unneccessarily rushed to get to the bus stop and turned up over 10 minutes early  

Positive Mindset:

• Learnt to make sure daughters porridge is thicker so it can’t be as messy
• Fresh cooked food for tea tonight
• Enjoy a sunny walk across campus this morning
• I caught the bus on time

Started using a manual push mower to cut the grass

Signed up to micro blog to write more, suggestions are to start small to start the rhythm. At the same time I’ve blocked, YouTube, twitter, Reddit, Facebook to avoid short form and started using matter a lot more. All I’m saying is there is some irony in focusing on writing more short form and also focusing on avoiding reading short form.

Media I listened/read/watched this week, including some unedited ramblings.

• Blinkist - The value of everything - Mariana Mazzucato

  • Listen to blinkist of Mariana Mazzucato’s The value of everything. Very good but seemed an essay that opened up questions rather than the answers I wanted. Got this book recommendation from Claude after pondering value creation vs value extraction after reading some Rutger Bergman and David Graeber essays. Rutger and Graeber talk about how nurses/teachers/farmers are adding value to the economy and are some of the lowest paid and high frequency traders/marketing execs are some of the value extraction/value shifting jobs which are much higher paid. Seems wrong things are setup like this and concerning so much brain power is going into these high paying professions on moving money instead of time spent on human florishing, e.g imagine if all the brain power spent on high frequency trading was spent on curing cancer.

  • This led me to the main question of where do you draw the line on jobs that are value creation to the economy or not. E.g 10 doctors working on curing cancer could be all said to be value creation, have a project manager organise the 10 doctors to be move productive and focus on separate but related areas could enhance the productivity and be a value creation job, but if there are 10 project managers there are definitely some inefficiencies and it can’t all be value creation, where is the line drawn, what are the main lines of thought on this. Long winded but this are my thoughts and what led me to mazzucato’s book which was great but not quite what I was looking to get answered.

• Book -Everyone in my family has killed someone - Benjamin Stevenson

  • This book is okay, reminds me of Anthony Horowitz. It’s got me hooked and is a page turner, but the writing style is lazy. Didn’t know there was snow and even ski resorts in Austrailia! The Andy charafter helped me click on what was wrong with people like Andy, people that have a lot of enthusiasm for “fun” things but it feels fake. For example he keeps talking about how cool it would be if they went and played golf on the roof, which nobody wants to, if he just entertained himself and did the things he talks about, he would be a much more interesting person. The chapter about his younger brother in the car was tough.

• Blog - The Barbian - Fatih

  • I visited this building a few years ago in London, it seemed really nice but was very quiet and seemed a bit delict. Reading this and a bit more about the barbican, what a cool place! Wish I’d spent time learning a bit more about it before my visit. Would love to go on a tour from the residents. I looked up how much it costs to buy a flat there and it was £1mil for a 2 bed.

• Blog - Polishing Forks Thorston Ball

  • Read this article and didn’t think much of it, then a few hours later it popped into my head and it really stuck with me. I’m starting to consider my next career move and I really want to work with other people that are passionate about what they do and work on difficult problems with them. Digging around this blog and the blogosphere around it, it’s mostly san francisco people, for the first time I thought about how pleasant it could be to live in san Fransisco.

• Video Course - Avengers: The story of Globalisation - MRU

  • Films are now being made with the idea of making them globally appealing, this means things which translate across cultures such as lots of special effects. I think that has pros and cons, pros for bringing people together etc, but cons for lack of individually and no incentive for creative expression or experimentation. I’ve not watched the avengers and this makes me want to watch it less, the only appeal being if everybody else has watched it I want to fit in, having similar reference points to everybody around me is nice. For example I started watching traitors and it was nice chatting to people about it when it came up in different social circles, rather than my normal approach that reality tv = yuck.

  • Globalization is defined in stages:

    • 1.0 foreign trade happens but is limited and transportation is slow
    • 2.0 advancements in transportation, global shipping networks, slow communication
    • 3.0 fast/instant communication globally opening up new areas for trade
    • 4.0 communication getting so good/fast e.g internet video. That people can work remotely and provide a service in a completely different location

• Video Course - AI Mindset - MRU

  • AI is revolutionary, it’s going to change all service industries, much like technology has before. Peoples responses to AI are the same as ludites before about other technologies. People were scared of the internet. When the bike was invented people where scared about how it would transform the world, heck people were even concerned about the teddy bear being invented and mass produced, the point being some one somewhere will always find negatives with technology (often with valid but over stated points).

  • Portrait painting was hugely popular before photography came on the scene, and many portrait painters lost their jobs to photography. But the technology of photography created whole new industries, painting went about a revolution into impressionism -> dadaism which likely wouldn’t have occurred without photography, impressionists focussing on the feel of a scene rather than photorealism which was better found with photography. Photography became an art form in itself, it make portraits more available and cheaper to everyone and led to film making. It’s difficult to argue that the benefits don’t hugely outweigh the positives.

  • AI is going to be the same, it will destroy jobs and it will shake up industries but new innovation and new jobs are likely to pop up, this is the pattern we have seen before, nobody could envision the future with the internet but it happened and everything turned out better (on balance).

  • This course is clearly written or influenced by Tyler Cowen I can see common themes, where he takes on ludites/people talking about the negatives of technology and throws the positives in. This reminded me of his excellent podcast episode debating with Jonathan haidt about his book the anxious generation, when Cowen argues for the positives of social media and how we don’t need to protect the kids as the next generation are aware of the problems with tech, look at the way they describe it e.g brain rot , and they are already moving away from Facebook/insta or using it in ways to minimise social anxiety moving to smaller whatsapps groups with better connection.

  • Overall a thought provoking course which makes you excited for the future of AI and working with it. As a software engineer AI is already having a big impact and my job is changing, I use it heavily when writing code and as a back and forth for discussing ideas, ways to improve, what I should focus on etc etc

• Video Course - Creative destruction - MRU

  • Innovation destroys jobs but often creates new jobs by freeing up that labour. For example Kodak and Polaroid both when bankrupt because of digital photos, this meant huge job loss, but more photos are taken and distributed than ever before.

  • This creative destruction is happening now more and more quickly than ever before. So it’s more important to be adaptive and open to new technology and learning how to learn is a huge asset. This is good for me to hear, I love learning and really try to make time to learning, for example writing these weekly notes and watching these economics courses.

• Podcast - James Clark (Anthropic) - Conversations with Tyler Cowen

  • Lots of interesting takes in this one, one highlight:
    • People in established careers being most disadvantaged by ai chnages and having to adapt. Or children that are 10 or so that are going to miss out of the advances in education that ai will bring.

• Video - Who can wear a gorilla suit the longest - Kenny v Spenny

  • When Kenny went to get his gorilla suit groomed at a dog groomers and came back, the reveal when Spenny opens the door had me in tears.

• Film - Shrek (First 30 minutes)

  • Brilliant film, not watched it for a long time, started watching it with my daughter, she might be too young for it.

• Blog - Human - quarter–mile

  • Really liked this essay, seemed to get a lot of hate on hacker news unnecessarily

• Blog - Clearly Incorrect - quarter–mile

  • Very clearly written, brilliant article and subject matter, but also made me think about how to write. Clearly writes a story focused on Gordon Ramsey as a way to create a story.

• Blog - You could just choose optimism

  • Feel like I’ve been complaining a lot recently, I think this is one of those things that I’ve read just at the write time. As above written really well, clearly a lot of thought has gone into creating a good story.

Just signed up to micro.blog, first post to test it out!