Window art
What a window-blind! Spotted on a walk through town after dusk the other night. Made my day.
Quote of the Day
”It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
- Frederic Jameson
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
William Kroll | Banjo and Fiddle | Jennifer Pike with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales | BBC Proms, 2014
Long Read of the Day
”Students who use AI as a crutch don’t learn anything”
Transcript of an interesting El Pais interview with Ethan Mollick who is one of the most interesting and insightful writers on ‘AI’. He teaches at the Wharton business school at the University of Pennsylvania, and from the outset has viewed the technology as an augmentation of human capabilities. His book, Co-Intelligence is one of the books I recommend to teachers who ask me how they can get up to speed on the technology.
Here’s a sample:
Q. You say that the best experts of the future will be those who make the most use of AI. Are people who are waiting to use AI making a mistake?
A. I get it, it’s an unnerving technology. People are freaking out. They’re getting a sense of three sleepless nights and running away screaming. It feels like an essential threat to a lot of careers. I think if you’re a good journalist, the first time you think, “oh no.” But then you start to see how this could help you do things better than before. And at least for the next few generations, it’s not going to replace you, even though the technologists say it is. We need to separate from the Silicon Valley noise. On one hand they’re completely right: this is a miraculous incredible technology that emulates thinking, but the other is it doesn’t understand our jobs….
Books, etc.
Diane Coyle’s Books of the Year
My colleague Diane Coyle has a terrific blog, The Enlightened Economist, which is one of the wonders of the world. It consists entirely of Diane’s reviews of the books she’s been reading. That may sound dull, but, believe me, it’s the opposite. As well as being a distinguished economist she’s also a voracious and perceptive reader. Her reviews are succinct and insightful, and often lead me to buying (or borrowing) books I wouldn’t have known about otherwise.
Every year, Diane publishes a shortlist of candidates for the ‘Book of the Year’ prize. The shortlist for the 2024 candidates is here. The 2024 prize (a free lunch, on Diane) has gone to the author(s) of two winning tomes: The Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies; and The Ordinal Society by Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy.
Diane’s reviews of the books are here and here. And she herself has a new book coming in April.
My commonplace booklet
When he retired to Edinburgh in 1769, David Hume wrote to a friend:
I live still, and must for a twelvemonth, in my old House in James’s Court, which is very chearful and even elegant, but too small to display my great Talent for Cookery, the Science to which I intend to addict the remaining Years of my Life; I have just now lying on the Table before me a Receipt for making Soupe à la Reine, copy’d with my own hand. For Beef and Cabbage (a charming Dish), and old Mutton and old Claret, no body excels me. I make also Sheep head Broth in a manner that Mr Keith speaks of it for eight days…
From Kieran Setiya.
A big deal in an age when everyone of Hume’s status employed a cook and did no cooking.
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