2024 Week 41 and 42 - Weekly Notes

Time tends to move both fast and slow as you are purchasing a home. This is our first home, and I can tell it’s been a whirlwind of emotions all around. When there’s a serious need to provide documentation, we have been on top of things. When it’s on the other end, waiting for the loan officer or underwriters, it feels like a snail crawl. That said, yesterday, we closed on our home. We got the keys handed over to us. It’s an exciting landmark moment. And I wasn’t expecting to be this tired. But here we are, and life’s moments got in the way of releasing any week notes.

With that reflection, it may be time to pair this down quite a bit. I loved the past year of sharing an incredible amount of links, reflecting on the week, giving my daily notes to breathe back into me. Too often, we are tirelessly scrolling through an endless feed of passive, yet wanton, feed that fuels the monkey brain. It’s as if we can’t turn off the addiction to our devices and has an incredible pull for us. We can’t go to the restroom without our devices. We can’t sleep without them. The always-on nature of it makes it incredibly hard to listen to our natural circadian rhythms.

I’m not saying let’s return back. I’m not sure we can. We let the genie out of the bottle, and I don’t think there’s going back. But what does forward look like? I’d like to craft a space where forward are the things that matter the most. With that, here are hand-picked items that I’ve run across this past week, and are worthy of putting in the “read later” category, and stick to it that later means concentrated, but still passive, consumption.

General AI Space

OpenAI - Canvas is a new way to write and code with ChatGPT. Otherwise, known as their o1 update with reasoning

Jascha’s blog - Too much efficiency makes everything worse: overfitting and the strong version of Goodhart’s law. I’m sure I’ve heard of this epynomous law before, and I’m well aware of over-fitting.

Artificial Wombs

They are in research phase. To Be Born in a Bag. It’s crazy stories like this that make me wonder how did we get here and when will it be available. And also, the biomedical side of my brain runs through all the risks and challenges you must pass through.

Home Buying Process

Mortgages have been on the mind. And Freddie Mae has caught me up in mortgage rate trends over the past few decades.

Also, we learned the Underwriting process is essentially to QA everything. Check out the leins on a home and rectify them.

Hurricane Milton

The unbelievable nature of disasters strike close to home again where my in-laws live. The New York Times reporting Fears of Hurricane Milton Drive Millions From Their Homes in Florida. It did make landfall and did cause havoc. Thankfully, my in-laws are okay, and the state had to reel from two major hurricanes in the span of two. That’s unbelievable.

Tangentially, I learned about how people use ArcGIS to map out the Storm Surge Risk Viewer. Also, there’s parts of me that can’t fathom how we have to fight weather misinformation. CBS News - North Carolina Republican pushes back on hurricane misinformation: “Nobody can control the weather”. And official FEMA Hurricane Rumor Response.

Northern Lights

NBC Bay Area - Northern Lights: Aurora viewing in California

Adult Friendships

The Atlantic - What Can Adults Learn From Kids’ Friendships?

It’s made me think back to the article earlier this year about loneliness and the amount of work it takes to keep up friendships in the US. The lack of third places and the way we treat community feels more of a reciprocal give and take.