Covid-19 weeknotes 20

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Saturday 8th August, 2020

1. Okay, so the problem with Ikea bookcases is that they’re built for giants, or possibly people who like to keep their terrier library well organised.

2. It’s my fault for not checking the size, of course. I just assumed they were bookshelves, because that’s what they’re advertised as. While I have books that need 28cm deep shelves, they are relatively few compared to the ones that are happier on 20cm, or even 15cm. Standard hardbacks only need 20cm, mass-market and B-format paperbacks 15cm. The majority of my books are mass-market paperbacks, and they just look lost on a Billy.

3. More out of place, indeed, than a terrier would.

4. I may experiment with filler strips behind the books, but they’ll need to be fairly tall to work. Alternatively, and this is more likely, I’ll move all the deepest hardbacks onto the Ikea bookcases, put standard hardbacks at the bottom of the others, and fill the rest with paperbacks.

5. This isn’t really ideal, because the one thing that Billy being a bit larger enables is four shelves in a half-height bookcase. That was supposed to be a cunning way of only needing two new bookcases rather than three.

6. Although half-height for Billy means up to my ribcage, rather than up to my hip. They hulk. I’m scared to put them next to each other, in case they gang up on the other furniture.

7. Staples used to do sensibly-shallow bookcases, but they seem to have stopped.

8. I’ve looked at various places online, and a common problem is that you don’t get fully adjustable shelves. Also, they insist on trying to make them look pretty, or rustic, or whatever.

9. So I’m going to have to get some custom made, I suspect.

10. I have at least found places to put the two I’ve bought. Hence resolving my short-term problems with having more books than shelves.

11. Bookcases come in large cardboard boxes, which I’ll have to drip-feed into recycling over the next couple of weeks as there’s never enough space. This is strictly my problem, but it feels increasingly ridiculous that we have single-use packaging that has to go through a long-loop recycling process (that may not even recover anything).

12. Yes, in The Times of Covid we don’t want delivery drivers to have to come inside people’s homes, decant their purchases, and take the packaging away.

13. But post-Covid, we should do that, or at least offer it as an option. Delivery costs would be higher, environmental impact should be lower?

14. And we could offset the increased delivery cost by factoring more environmental externalities into business taxes.

15. Except that raising taxes on companies tends to be passed on to the consumer.

16. So we should get rid of capitalism, so there isn’t an incentive to do that.

Covid-19 weeknotes 19

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Friday 31st July, 2020

1. Help, I think I’m melting:

2. 36 degrees isn’t all that much in the grand scheme of things, but trying to work from home without air conditioning is more trying.

3. I am now on holiday for a week, so expect temperatures to drop, then rise again when I have to work once more.

4. I did write a lot of post-its, though. Not sure whether that was usefully productive. Time may tell.

5. Darkfield Radio is a thing. Double, their first show, is interesting and thoughtful and creeped me the hell out.

6. Have finally ordered more bookcases. Way back in week eight, I predicted that would give me lots to do in terms of moving books around. Time may tell.

7. Yes, they’re from Ikea.

8. I was thinking at lunchtime about how you’d bootstrap something like the Artificial Intelligence ecosystem of The Culture. If you know that’s your end state, the ethics of starting off with systems that favour humanity are complex. But if you don’t bake in some kind of limits early on then when you hit AGI, or at least when you hit it and it gains sufficient real-world agency, humanity is no longer in control.

9. Most people wouldn’t be comfortable with that, I’d guess mostly because they’re worried about the risk of being optimised out of existence. (Which frankly is more likely due to poor use of pre-AGI automation.)

10. AGI without agency feels ethically dubious, although I suspect most people wouldn’t have a problem with it, at least at first. Deliberately creating something that will be superordinate to humanity has interesting ethical questions attached to it as well, and I certainly think most people would be against that. So assuming we can create AGI, we probably shouldn’t.

11. That won’t stop people trying, so unless it’s impossible or we wipe ourselves out before then we should assume we’ll eventually succeed.

12. I’d expect first AGI with constrained agency, but that we’d later depend on AGI to create better AGI, and so those constraints would likely disappear over the generations. So the constraints probably only matter in the short-term, which reduces the ethical problems in getting started.

13. Leaving us in the long-term, though, with what? A non-biological species with sufficient affinity to and affection for humanity that it will co-exist somewhat harmoniously with us? A species without such affinity that just buggers off into the universe? Or one that for some reason decides its creators are so awful we really need to be tidied away before we cause any more damage. (And which might subsequently tidy itself away, even.) Time may tell.

14. But not for a long, long time. We’ll probably all be dead.

Stay safe. Wear your mask. Don’t accept a peerage, the Minds won’t like it.

Covid-19 weeknotes 18

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Friday 24th July, 2020

1. Finished Warrior Nun, which has a title character who is neither a warrior nor a nun. No dinosaurs, either. Beautiful, and with much to like about it except for the plot which I felt was disappointing and poorly-paced.

2. Following that, have watched both seasons of The Order. First season did everything I wanted it to, second season was fun but a bit less together. Feels like the difference was that the world got bigger in the second year, but wasn’t as well fleshed out and perhaps wasn’t seeded in the first year as much as it should have been. But hey, sometimes you get picked up for another season. No dinosaurs, though. Here’s hoping for the third season.

3. Not sure if lockdown has ended, although it definitely feels like the government want it to be today. (Mind you, they’ve already started being cute about when it started.) I previously decided I’d count until I go back into the office; we’ve just announced a return to office date of mid-August, although it’s voluntary and in any case only 25% of us can go back on any given day.

4. Apparently the average length of principal photography for a Hollywood movie is 106 days, or about fifteen weeks. But you have more than that in pre-production, so if I’d started on a film on January 1st, I wouldn’t get into post until early September. (September 8th if you follow the averages exactly.)

5. So maybe I should stay out of the office until then. That would be around 25 weeks in total, which isn’t quite enough time to grow a baboon and in any case if you’re still inside by then you should hold out for another month so you get a grizzly bear.

6. I may not really understand how we get new mammals.

7. But by then, the NHS assures me, a human fetus is the size of a butternut squash and the weight of a small chicken. This is a weird thing to point out, because at about 1.2kg it is also the weight of an average butternut squash.

8. Last Saturday I spent the afternoon sitting outside with friends, talking, sipping cider, and exchanging presents (in strictly decreasing order of proportion of overall activity). It was pleasantly relaxed, helped by being in a small park in a residential development. Not gated; anyone can wander in. But a little secluded.

9. More lockdown impro. Recorded a while ago, but freshly edited and released for your listening pleasure. Although we’re definitely going through an existential dread phase, so perhaps not for your relaxed listening pleasure.

10. Our weekly office happy hour continues to be fun and moderately well-attended. Today we talked about slugs.

Stafe safe. Wear your mask. Wash it, if you haven’t been. Seriously, that’s gross.

Covid-19 weeknotes 17

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Friday 17th July, 2020

1. Alas, Privacy Shield, we knew you too little although probably for too long.

2. It’s interesting how specific the concerns actually are, a key focus being the availability of remedy against government surveillance. This applies not only to the US, of course.

3. Weather turned back. Salads are cool now. Thinking of starting in on my frozen chili stocks.

4. Still no more dinosaurs, although I have started watching Warrior Nun.

5. What is it with shows that spend seven episodes just kind of sitting in their world as their characters think about stuff, and then suddenly all the action kicks off?

6. It’s too hot again. Stopping.

Stay safe. Wear your mask.

Covid-19 weeknotes 16

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Friday 10th July, 2020

1. I moved across from a soup diet to a salad diet just in time for the weather to turn. I can’t really hedge because although I have frozen soup, who wants to freeze salad leaves? Is that even a thing?

2. Haven’t watched any more dinosaur films yet.

3. But I have come to the end of the non-fiction book I’m reading, Dr Adam Rutherford’s How to Argue with a Racist, which I enjoyed despite a weird section of the last major chapter that apparently hadn’t had time to be really dug into by the editor and occasionally wasn’t as clear as the rest of the book. However a little lack of clarity is naught when a book has good footnote game. Not quite at the level of Good Omens (which, let’s face it, is a miracle of the footnote genre), but better than Annotated Alice despite Martin Gardner’s impressive attempt in the first chapter of Through the Looking-Glass to write more footnote than text, with 36 footnotes in 24 pages and two consecutive footnotes that between them go on for nearly three pages. A feat that he then immediately mocks by the next footnote being two words: the mantel.

4. Next up, it’s a race against time to read as many novels as I can before Harrow the Ninth comes out. First up: Children of Virtue and Vengeance.

Stay safe. Wear your mask. Wear your mask properly.

Covid-19 weeknotes 15

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Friday 3rd July, 2020

1. This week: dinosaurs! Which may continue, because as well as slightly too many Jurassic Park films there’s all sorts of other celluloid dino-wonder, including three films with dinosaurs by Ray Harryhausen, one of which has cowboys.

2. I used my mask! But only because I had to go pick up a bike I won. So now I have a folding bicycle, which will probably be the most practical way to get to work once our offices open again.

3. Pubs are opening first.

4. Except pubs were already open as take-aways.

5. And sometimes social distancing is two metres but sometimes it’s one metre, which maybe has something to do with masks.

6. Are you confused yet? Because I am.

7. Wear your mask.

8. Three weeks ago I noted that I could have grown a leopard since the start of lockdown. Now it’s been sixteen weeks, I could have grown a pig.

9. A sixteen week old human fetus is about 11.6cm long, or “the size of an avocado” according to the NHS. Lighter than an avocado, though. And it’ll be pulling faces, apparently.

10. I’m not sure when “lockdown” will officially be over, given we’re relaxing different bits at different times.

11. I’m going to count when I first go back into the office. I don’t think that’ll be for at least another month.

12. By then I could almost have grown a goat.

13. Or a human fetus to the size of a banana.

Stay safe. Wear your mask. Unless you’re still inside the womb.

Covid-19 weeknotes 14

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Sunday 28th June, 2020

1. I’m not working again for a few days, hence slight delay this week.

2. Having finished all the MCU films back in week 8, I thought it’d be fun to watch X-Men. I was partly right (the first one is kind of fun), partly wrong (Days of Future Past is a complete mess and I gave up partway through), and partly hampered because only half of them are on Disney+ and I’m not going to pay any more for these. And I didn’t watch the two of the three Wolverine movies that were on Disney+, because by then I was bored.

3. I’m not going to watch the Fantastic Four films.

4. I did watch Blade, though. It holds up well, despite some of the worst action sequences I’ve seen in a long time, particularly in the first half of the film.

5. My masks sit quietly by my house keys and wallet, unused.

6. We’re running out of June; the start feels like either very recently or a lifetime ago.

Stay safe. Wear your mask.

Covid-19 weeknotes 13

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Friday 19th June, 2020

1. Did a kind of socially-distant stroll around a park for a few hours with a friend on Saturday, which probably did more for my mental health than any amount of exercise or meditation or talking to people through tiny screens. Of course we weren’t really socially distant, since that would miss the point. And we weren’t consistently physically distant either, because it’s tricky to stand two metres from someone and have a conversation, and it’s basically impossible when you’re walking. We probably managed it while sitting down though.

2. I haven’t been out for ages, so the chances of my being a danger to her are minimal.

3. My masks have started arriving. So now I can go on public transport and into shops without endangering other people.

4. Although, again: I’m unlikely to be endangering people.

5. Also, it sounds like everyone has kind of given up on wearing masks.

6. Except on public transport, where it’s the law. Why it isn’t the law in shops I have no idea.

7. Today is Juneteenth, which my (American) employer declared a day of learning and reflection. So I’ve been reading and thinking, and hope my co-workers all have also.

Stay safe. Wear your mask.

Covid-19 weeknotes 12

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Friday 12th June, 2020

1. More virtual firsts, where the London CTO group I’m part of met online in something that tries to replicate the sound experience of a party (or a pub). You can hear people more distinctly when you’re closer to them in the online space. Which is a neat idea, although the sound didn’t really taper off fast enough for me, or maybe I know some people with very loud voices. Either way, there was too much I could make out from other groups. But an interesting idea fairly well-executed for something that still seems basically in stealth mode, so I won’t link to them unless I find out that’s okay now.

2. And from tomorrow (I think? or is it Monday?) people living on their own can buddy up with another household in what I think is supposed to be called a “support cluster”, but I suspect everyone will think of as “sex pod”. Which would be all well and good, but you still have to go through the outside with all the idiots and the lack of masks.

3. Speaking of which, I have ordered some washable, definitely non-medical grade, masks. Some were from here, because they’re awesome and only partly because I know the maker. Anyway, this will mean I can retire the half-arsed thing I made out of a t-shirt, for when I need to wander around outside and protect other people from any infections I’ve picked up from the packaging of the masks.

4. But until most other people are wearing masks, no one will be protecting me. So that won’t be happening often. Maybe early in the morning or late at night.

5. It’s been a quarter of a year in lockdown. Or will have been in the next week, depending on exactly when you stopped going out. I came back from Cyprus on Friday 13th March, stayed in a hotel at Heathrow until the Saturday, and then came home. Two days later we shut our offices worldwide. So technically for me I suppose it’ll be a quarter of a year on Monday.

6. If you try to Google for things that last 13 weeks you’ll mostly get human first trimester advice. (Apparently at this point a human fetus is the size of a cactus.) That’s about the average gestation of an entire leopard. I could have grown a leopard in this time.

7. It’s been a bad week to be a statue of a bad guy. Actually, scratch that. They’re moving around; one of them even got to go for a swim. These are statues. They’re living their best lives right now. The people they’re statues of? Long dead racists.

8. Still some work to do on the living ones though.

9. And for that matter on the ones who just didn’t think it through. Lady Antebellum are just now realising that the war their name referred to is the one fought over slavery? Maybe we need to teach more Latin.

10. But at least they’re owning and fixing it and not say doubling down. (Also, good on NASCAR for banning the Confederate flag, although again you might wonder what they thought it stood for up until now.)

11. I own two flags: Kernow and Bretagne. There was a point, probably when I was in my twenties, when I had a vague plan to get the flags of the other Celtic nations, but they weren’t monochrome which was a thing I was going through at the time. Also you have to decide where you stand on places like the north-west autonomous communities of Spain, and Norte. After a while the flags ended up in a box, and I found them again recently. They are now in a different box.

12. Burning is an acceptable way of disposing of a Union Flag. If you otherwise acceptably dispose of flags you don’t own, that’s vandalism.

13. I couldn’t figure out if the Vandals had a flag, but I’m sure they had something approximate. The closest thing I could find to Vandal symbols though were starting to get a bit…Germanic Swastika. And although that isn’t per se racist, there’s definitely something off about knocking down statues of racists and burning flags of their racist countries — while wearing that as an emblem.

Stay safe.

Covid-19 weeknotes 11

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Friday 5th June, 2020

1. Virtual picnic, more fun than I thought it would be and not million miles from an actual picnic. Even in terms of who turned up late. Although most people don’t bring a 40 inch TV to a picnic so they can see their friends but still have a big picnic blanket spread out in front of them.

2. Spoke to my sister and nieces.

3. But that’s about it for positivity right now, because America is on fire. Literally, in some places; figuratively, everywhere. Outside America, there’s much less literal fire but (at least in the UK) basically the same amount of figurative fire.

4. It’s June.

Stay safe.