(2025-03-08) Sloan Ironic Points Of Light

Robin Sloan: Ironic points of light. A particular California microseason: the almond bloom, in which vast tracts of trees all shimmer with white petals. It looks almost wintry—Narnian.

To understand the San Joaquin Valley, or any productive ag region, as “rural” misses the point. This is a vast, open-air factory floor, totally wired up, carefully monitored. I say that with appreciation bordering on awe.

Better than the vast monocrop almond tracts, though, I like the patchwork zones, where plums & apricots bloom pink & white, & the inky dark orange trees wait their turn.

I’ve been enjoying the platform of my reformulated lab notebook, which is called Dragoncatcher.
The meatiest post so far has been this one, addressing the foundational question of AI language models, which, for me, is simply: is it okay? I think my framing here is novel, & I hope it offers something useful to the AI skeptics & enthusiasts alike.

I’ve also written about some new Shopify email templates, five years of home-cooked apps, & more. If you are someone engaged by the general question space of “computer: how? & why?”, please do add the blog to your RSS reader, or bookmark the page & peek in from time to time.

Brother Brontë is here, the new novel from Fernando A. Flores.

I read an advance copy & felt moved to blurb:
The trick with dystopia is to leave room for light, and lightness; in our real world, tragedy and comedy are braided together. Fernando A. Flores gets this: his imagination ranges from the grimmest realities, of blood and fire and life made small, all the way through to breathtaking hope, and surprise, and solidarity. Brother Brontë evokes Octavia Butler, William Gibson, and John Steinbeck; these are all my favorites, and with this book, Fernando A. Flores joins the list.

The Notebook, Roland Allen:
Books of this kind are dangerous for book people, for paper & pen people, BUT, AND, I’m pleased to report that Roland Allen really delivers here. The Notebook is a careful, curious survey of one of the great human instruments. It surprises at every turn.

In Roland Allen’s book, we encounter people living in all sorts of circumstances, under all sorts of regimes. And the notebooks go on.

We encounter people living in networks—of commerce & correspondence, education & affinity. Networks everywhere, ineradicable. And the notebooks go on.

It’s a bank-shot sort of balm, is what I’m saying.

I’ve been enjoying Diana Kimball Berlin’s weekly newsletter, which presents five snippets from her reading, each with a concise commentary. It has a tech lean—Diana is a product superstar turned VC—but/& the view that emerges is philosophical & playful. Highly recommended.

Here is Elizabeth Goodspeed on treating the public domain like a clip-art library, with the useful analogy to the comedy rule of “punching up vs. punching down”. Overall, I agree with Elizabeth’s argument, although I think it’s important to say, the very soul of the public domain is, you can use this stuff however you want: even in ways that are dull, or dumb, or rude, or thoughtless.