🔗 Here’s a funny thing. Now THERE’s a funny thing …

(Before you click on the link - where do you think it goes to?)

Friend of mine pinged me this morning re a typo on a web site. Basically two words running in together. likethis.

Checked the issue - yup, so sent it on to ‘flag and fix’ - but issue ‘couldn’t be replicated’.

So I looked again - still there.

Checked it on my Mac, iPad and iPhone - still there.

On my Mac with Arc, Safari, Chrome and Firefox - still there.

Looked at ‘view source’ - not a problem - there were the two words - with a lovely space twixt the two.

Must be a ‘Mac thing’ they said.

My friend who did the original flagging?

YUP. Mac.

So yes, clearly a ‘Mac thing’ - but how to fix it?

Not so clear!

LATER - 🔗 even less so now I know the answer!

🔗 Read The Whole Thing

I am not generally a fan of hip-hop - but I do check in from time to time. I came across this one from mcc@mastodon.social - and just spectacular. It kind of felt to me that he’s channeling Gil Scott-Heron - 55 40 years later. (LATER: Reading more - I realised that the music is from a 2007 album._

🔗📼🎵Really. Watch it.

Lyrics in the comments - because as MCC wrote in her post

Position paper read through a megaphone. Terrifying, breezy industrial beats and laughing children.

Yes - which sometimes makes it hard to hear the words.

Thank you @hawaiiboy who wrote;

Really like this Car-Free Community. Not Arizona, but the idea.

🔗 Resharing by @hawaiiboy

The host has a nice style. The video is great and some marvellous zingers from interviewees, like

‘when I came back from Tokyo I realised that the way we live in America is just stupid.

🔗 📼 Well worth a watch.

🪦 Builder.AI

Imagine if all that money had been given to someone who is trying to make a difference in the world - someone like, oh - I don’t know …. 🔗🙋🏼‍♀️ Jax Harrison? … instead the money is just chasing mo' money.

🔗 This is why I am with Jony Ive on the state of Silicon Valley.

Apologies if I have already shared this - but I’d rather share it twice than not at all.

🔗 The Great Displacement Is Already Well Underway.

I guess I’m reflecting on history a little this weekend.

🔗📼🎵 Ohio

🔗 Business Thinking … resurfacing this post from 2020 - because sometimes we need to remind ourselves.

Where we have got to is not normal.

To change it is fully in our power.

I am back on this topic again.

In my world, Venkatesh Rao’s thinking on tis topic is front and center. Posting this now - because In other circles I found myself once more referencing his post from 2022 …

🔗 The Dawn of Mediocre Computing - Venkatesh Rao

A selection of quotes

Mediocre computing is computing that aims for parity with mediocre human performance in a realish domains where notions of excellence are ill-posed.

And ..

Excellent computing is computing that aims to surpass the best-performing humans in stylized, closed-world domains where notions of excellence are well-posed.

And ..

In the weird but realish world we live in, mediocre is actually harder than excellent, and way more useful.

And ..

In stylized domains like chess and Go, humans have to deliver exceptional performance (ie good enough to make money at them by winning championships) to ensure mediocre survival in the real world (enough prize money to live on).

There is a lot more besides, but I just realised that this journal had no connections back to this post - despite it being in my top 5 of VR posts (if number of references I have made is the measurement).

There’s also these ..

• His index to the 🔗 Mediocre Computing series.
• His index to a sister series; 🔗 Mediocratopia

Oh - and this ..

🔗 Survival of the mediocre-mediocre