NL38 - The families we make
2 hopeful things + electric cars might last longer + the age of average + one more thing about AI
Hello from my home in Matinkylä! This is NordLetter #38, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland. Each week I share some of the interesting things I found on the web.
Previous editions can be found here. You can reach out to me by replying on this mail or adding a comment on this. I am also posting on Threads.
It snowed today. Today, being Saturday. This is the time for the annual, winter-wonderland photos. So here it goes.
No matter how many times I see this, the first snow of the season is such a joy. It looks beautiful, everything feels pristine.
It never lasts though. But that is for another time.
Families are weird. You don't have a choice mostly, who your family is. All families have dysfunctions. And yet, you would die for your family. No matter what they do. Unless they fuck up real bad.
One aspect of leaving everything behind, and coming to live in a new place, anywhere: a different city, a different state, a different country, is that you leave your family behind as well.
We are social animals. We need people around us. People to talk to. People to have fun with. People to support us when needed.
We get to pick our families here. Sure we might not talk to them everyday. We might not live under the same roof. But we are a family.
It's a good thing.
We celebrated the first birthday of a child in our family. It was good fun. We got the cake from somewhere near Vanta. The food was good. The kids running around were too many! We had fun.
Prerna shares her birthday with this child. We got a lime cake from Prisma and cut it on the 12th night.
I made a reel and put it up on IG. It’s my early meditation on love and what it means to love her.
/five things to share
1. One good and one ok news about electric cars
Electric Cars Could Last Much Longer Than You Think
Bad batteries are perhaps the major reason why I’m unsure if I should buy an electric car. If this holds true, then it would be great. These things (batteries in particular and technology in general) only improve with time after all.
Making a battery is very, very different to making an engine. It's chemical engineering - not mechanical engineering. The skills built up by European carmakers over decades are simply not directly transferrable. Even if Europe was the only continent in the world making cars, it would still be an almighty challenge to shift from one industrial model to a very different one, without having a rollercoaster ride along the way
An interesting look at why China is taking the lead in electric cars. This and the subsidies provided by their government.
2. A hopeful bit of news about rebuilding classrooms with lego like blocks
Classroom of Hope has partnered with Finnish company Block Solutions, which developed the modular building system for speedy construction, making it the first of its kind for disaster relief construction. A dedicated Block Solutions Indonesia factory was opened in the south of Lombok in June 2023 to reduce the costs and carbon footprint of shipping the modules from Finland.
3. About how the rich can pay for human service while the rest of us go talk to an AI agent
But no one is talking about what happens when we limit human contact to those who can afford to pay a premium. Technology does not arrive on a blank slate, but intersects with existing inequalities, and in this case it amplifies the stratification of human connection. In 2025, the affluent will get their connective labor from humans. The rest will get theirs from a machine.
Seems obvious, while reading the article, but this was a fresh look into the whole AI hoopla for me. The further alienation between the rich and the rest.
4. The age of plastics might be coming to an end
Since 2022, policymakers in the United Nations, representing over 170 countries, have been negotiating a legally binding Global Plastics Treaty addressing the full lifecycle of plastics, from design to production to disposal.
There are two factions, the first led by the Nordics who want plastic production to be reduced. The second option about recycling, etc. is preferred by oil manufacturers like UAE, etc.
5. The age of average - Alex Murell
Alex looks at how everything is becoming the same across most of our society: cars, fashion, homes, movies, art. Everything.
This bit from the fashion section:
“Everybody looks like clones and the only people you notice are my age. I don’t notice anybody unless they look great, and every now and again they do, and they are usually 70. We are so conformist, nobody is thinking. We are all sucking up stuff, we have been trained to be consumers and we are all consuming far too much. I’m a fashion designer and people think, what do I know? But I’m talking about all this disposable crap.”
If you enjoyed reading this, and know someone else who might, please consider forwarding this to them. It would help this grow and make me happy. 😄
Until next week.
