Current meditation practice

 Reading The Mind Illuminated: Meditation Integrating Mindfulness for some guidance and based on that, upped my practice to one hour sessions twice a day. I feel a strong need to meditate. I am now around a year and a half into my strict daily practice regimen and twenty years into my return to practice in general.

Hikes

This Washington Post story of a cross-US hike  is heart-warming and inspiring. Via my middle-school/high-school group of friends. The group includes a couple triathletes and many hikers. I am prepping for our (COVID-delayed) 50th reunion in the Fall, necessary for me.  I am walking at least an hour a day on my treadmill. Even with that, I won’t be able to keep up with them. I expect something milder than HikeANation, but... Maybe someday we will hit the Camino de Santiago. My longest hike was ten days on Hadrian’s Wall.

Former Nazis recall the past in ‘Final Account,’ a masterpiece among documentaries

SF Chronicle.com review  Our review to follow

Ton Zijlstra’s blog post on federated bookshelves using OPML and RSS

 Thanks to Dave Winer  for linking to Ton’s post. I am interested in this idea and plan to continue reading Ton’s writing!

Follow up to “Nothing Is True”: Deepfakes

 Nina Schick’s book “Deepfakes” is an excellent follow-up to “Nothing Is True”, which I pointed to in this post The use of AI to create synthetic media has only just begun; it will transform the political and cultural landscape in the next few years.

More about “Nothing Is True...”

 I finished the book mentioned in an earlier post and recommend it more strongly than before. Now I understand Trump World better - get the background on the culture and mentality from which it arises. The book is not about Trump and Russia, by the way. Think “Situationists Nightmare.” Poor Olga and Julia grew up in this mileau...

Clojure and Zendesk

Studying Clojure, a LISP-family language, and setting up a test instance of Zendesk, a customer service system I might use for my business - I am excited and having fun! Something inherent in this work tickles my interest, although our deal pipeline excites me as well.

DeepMind AI leaps ahead in protein folding with real-world success

These advances from 2018 to 2021 were not expected until the late 2020s. Acceleration continues! 

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/11/30/1012712/deepmind-protein-folding-ai-solved-biology-science-drugs-disease/