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feat: add weekly notes #2

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Devin Haska 2024-06-16 22:35:48 -07:00
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---
title: "Weekly Notes #2"
excerpt: The week of thinking.
tags:
- ai
- women and technology
- hermits
- disco elysium
- charli xcx
- linux
---
The job hunt continues. Here are some things I've been thinking about, reading about, listening to, and playing.
On the weekend I took my Dad out to our local arcade and had a blast (and scored 12 million points in pinball, a personal best), then we got a lovely brunch. An excellent Father's Day!
## Links
### [No Web Without Women](https://nowebwithoutwomen.com/)
What a great website. There are so many women who we owe so much of the web to. Without them things would undoubtedly be different.
As I am now officially an honorary Slovak[^3] (according to my Slovak father-in-law) I've tried to take the time and learn about my new family background. I was excited to see that such an important figure in digital typography was a Slovak - Zuzana Licko!
### [Turning the Tables on AI](https://ia.net/topics/turning-the-tables-on-ai)
I liked the way iA reframed modern Artificial Intelligence as a tool and not a replacement of our minds - by making sure we still have to think.
I got genuine use out of this article and helped me rework portions of my résumé and cover letters without rewriting it entirely for me. Forcing AI to write out lists of options is a great idea.
## Reading
I've been in a reading slump for a while now. I made decent progress with Shogun by James Clavell, but even before that book I found myself struggling with keeping up my reading habit. I typically enjoy reading, especially at the end of a long day. Lately though I found myself in a rut, and couldn't "get into" whatever I was reading.
My wife suggested I read [The Stranger In The Woods by Michael Finkel](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/251786/the-stranger-in-the-woods-by-michael-finkel/9781101911532). It's something I'd never have picked for myself. It was short. It had an engaging writing style. Perfect! I ended up devouring the book over a week or so.
Christopher Knight's story is wild and almost beyond belief. In short, he managed to stay alive - by himself - in the woods of Maine for over 27 years. By himself is oversimplifying it a bit - he relied on (stealing) the supplies of others to do it, but besides that he was on his own.
There was one section in the book I'm surprised Finkel kept in. I'm not going into specifics - but it felt like something so deeply personal that it bordered on inappropriate to publish. I was uncomfortable reading it - it almost felt voyeuristic? A lot of their discussions felt uncomfortable, like I was an unwelcome eavesdropper in all of it.
That said, it was a great book overall. If learning about how someone survived in the woods and wider discussions on being alone sounds interesting to you - I'd encourage you to give it a read.
## Listening
[Taylor Swift was in the news recently](https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2024/06/14/taylor-swift-drops-new-tortured-poets-department-versions-as-fans-accuse-singer-of-blocking-charli-xcx-from-no-1/) because of her apparently releasing UK variants of The Tortured Poet's Department in order to compete with Charli XCX's newest album [brat](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brat_(Charli_XCX_album)>). I had never really listened to anything by Charli XCX before, and I thought Tortured Poets was an altogether forgettable album[^1][^2], so I thought why not compare the two? brat is awesome. Absolute banger. The opposite entirely. Now I'm excited to visit the catalogue and see what else there is to listen to!
## Playing
I finished my second playthrough of Disco Elysium. I went with a Intellect and Motorics focused build. My Encyclopedia skill was initially amusing and interesting, but did become exhausting with its constantly chiming in with useless information (which I think was the developer's intention). Without my Inland Empire and Empathy skills, I had a hard time reading people, but found that my Drama and Logic skills filled in the blanks in different wants.
I used a guide this time to experience all of the events and conversations that I missed in my first playthrough, like ordering my partner to hit the dance floor (CODE 31!!).
It was fun to experience the world of Revachol again, but by the end of my run I was feeling a bit done with the game. Perhaps going back so soon was not a smart move, and I'm planning to take a break from it now. I don't want to ruin my experience and feelings on the game.
[The planned (but now cancelled) sequel](https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/1df2l9z/first_details_on_cancelled_disco_elysium_sequel/) sounds like it would've starred Kim Kitsuragi and I dreamed of what could've been. Without a doubt my favourite character is Kim - I would love to see a game set during his earlier years before he met the main character of the first game. It's such a shame that the studio crumbled after the game released, but the game being brought down by a bunch of greedy, incompetent suits is so amazingly on-brand for Disco Elysium it's almost perfect.
## Thinking
The [recent news about Recall being recalled](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/14/microsoft-to-delay-launch-of-ai-recall-tool-due-to-security-concerns.html)[^4] is great, but it has me thinking that it might be time to say goodbye to Windows. I've been using Windows for one reason alone these days and that's for gaming. The biggest hurdle for reliable gaming is dealing with anti-cheat technology. It can be a headache[^5]. These days though I'm playing mostly single player games, which have been working decently well for a while. [ProtonDB](https://www.protondb.com/) reports a decent compatibility score with my Steam library.
For work I rely on macOS, so I don't need Windows in a professional capacity (and if I did, I'd use a machine provided by my workplace).
It'll be a pain at first, but if I've learned anything in the past few months it's that I love tinkering with things. I can think of nothing better to satiate that addiction than running a distro of Arch (btw) that I installed and set up myself.
So the plan is to eventually put Arch Linux onto my PC - but before I pull the trigger I'm trying to set it up in a virtual machine on my macOS machine. I want to feel comfortable having a workable setup first before I completely commit.
[^1]: Frankly I think Swift peaked around 1989, and haven't really enjoyed anything since - oh no I'm going to be eaten alive by Swifties aren't I?
[^2]: I also thought the album was called "The Dead Poet's Society" but that was a movie.
[^3]: All I had to do was drink a fair bit of [slivovitz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slivovitz)!
[^4]: heh.
[^5]: Check out the amazing resource [Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?](https://areweanticheatyet.com/)