Full moon
Hello from my home in Matinkylä! This is NordLetter #71, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland. Each week I share some of the interesting things I found on the web.
To follow the series, you can subscribe here. A new NordLetter will land in your inbox every Sunday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read previous editions here. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed.
You can reach out to me by replying on this mail or adding a comment on this. I am also posting on Mastodon.
There’s a bench which sits on top of a little hill, overlooking the ocean, the boats, the beautiful scenery all around. It was empty today, when we reached it.
A perfect full moon hung in the sky, it’s silver light dancing across the ocean’s surface.
There was a light breeze. With our sweatshirts hung over our heads, the temperature felt perfect. Everything aligned perfectly. Savya was in the pram, while Prerna and me sat on that bench and looked out into the ocean.
Life is perfect - these little moments, this daily walk. We get to talk, casually, without want or structure. The conversation flowing, from one thing to the next. The walks have become a ritual, something we have to do, no matter how tired, no matter the time of the day.
In these walks we decompress, wind down. We speak, we listen.
It is a perfect ritual. I love it.
On Tuesday, Apple announced the new iPhones.
I had a feeling of dread going in. Not dread. Tiredness. I was not excited about it.
There are reasons for it. Most of the things are known already - through rumours and such. The other reason is that this is not my year to get an iPhone. So why care?
A ritual is a ritual though and so I was on my sofa at 8, waiting for Tim Cook to say - Good morning.
Or was it good evening?
My thoughts on the event here.
We were in NYC in May.
Prerna has a friend there. We met them. I am not the usual sort of tourist. If I have a friend at the place I am visiting, I would rather hang out with them - than do the touristy stuff.
The trip was a hectic one. We could only take out one day where we could hang out with our friends at their place.
Prerna was talking to this friend recently. And I had this urge to go back to NYC. Not to see NYC, just to hang out with these friends.
I don’t have anyone I know from before, here, in Finland.
It gets harder as we grow old I guess. It gets harder making friends.
We have friends here. But they are not my friends friends.
They are not people who know who I was back in college. There are no common stories here. There are no crazy thing we did that night.
I was missing that, this day.
/five things to share
1. Walk away or dance by Seth Godin
The first is to walk away from the tools.
You’re probably not going to persuade your competitors and your clients to have as much animosity for AI automation as you do, and time spent ranting about it is time wasted. But, you can walk away. There’s a long history of creative professionals refusing to use the technology of the moment and thriving.
The other option is to dance.
Outsource all relevant tasks to an AI to put yourself on the hook for judgment, taste and decision-making instead. Give yourself a promotion, becoming the arbiter and the publisher, not the ink-stained wretch. Dramatically increase your pace and your output, and create work that scares you.
I am on the lookout for more things AI (Claude at present) can do. So I guess I’m dancing?
All writing continues to be personal. I find that I lose my voice when I ask the LLMs to do anything.
I do ask it to describe things or search for things, which triggers something in me - an idea, a way to say something. I think it is useful that way.
2. Xbox is coming to cars thanks to an LG and Microsoft partnership by Tom Warren
The Xbox app will be able to stream games when you’re charging an EV or trying to entertain passengers on a road trip. LG’s ACP is already available on Kia’s EV3 in Europe, and is also coming to the EV4, EV5, and new Sportage. ACP runs LG’s webOS platform, the same software that powers its smart TVs, and provides access to a variety of content like Netflix, Disney Plus, YouTube, and more.
A thing to do while you wait for your car to charge. A step closer to making EVs mainstream.
The ideal thing would be electromagnetic strips that charge a vehicle while it drives on the road, a bit like Death Stranding’s electric strip on the roads. So that cars are always at an appropriate charge level.
But otherwise, having a quick charge time and something to do while we wait for the car to charge up are good steps in the direction.
3. My review of Claude’s new Code Interpreter, released under a very confusing name by Simon Willison
Claude can now write and execute custom Python (and Node.js) code in a server-side sandbox and use it to process and analyze data.
In a particularly egregious example of AI companies being terrible at naming features, the official name for this one really does appear to be Upgraded file creation and analysis. Sigh.
This feature is not available for Pro users yet. I don’t have it.
Claude can access reminders, maps and calendar now. There was a default prompt where it checked my calendar and added a 2 hr focus session including a reminder to take my headphones.
It worked fine.
This is great. My one use case for this would be to ask Claude to add calendar invites based on pictures. It did it partly already, using screenshots and creating events. Now it can add them to the calendar directly. Progress!!
4. State Surveillance by Hugh Howey
Most people fear a surveillance state. Me? I fear the people who fear the surveillance state. I wish there were cameras everywhere watching everything and that we all had access to them. Because we are beginning to lose the behavioral feedback loop that kept us in line.
That feedback loop goes back to the tribal societies in which we were meant to live. You are adapted for a reality in which you would almost never encounter a stranger. The people you were born around would be the people you lived around and died around. If something went missing in a small band of people, the culprit would likely get caught. If a child misbehaved, the nearest adult would correct the behavior. If an adult misbehaved, ditto.
These days, we cut people off in a merging situation because we know we’ll never see them again and there will be no repercussions. Anonymity brings out the worst in us. Things are said behind online accounts that bring shame when we are doxxed and those same public outbursts are shown to employers, family, friends. We act like the surveillance and doxxing are the problem, rather than the behaviors. And that’s fucked up.
I have had this idea going around in my head for a long time now - about how society would function in a world with no secrets, where information is available freely to everyone.
If all your actions could be viewed by anyone and no one had any privacy then you would behave better.
Of course the world does not behave in that way. The powerful would have privacy while the others would not. Would that be worth it?
5. AI as teleportation
“A stove used to furnish more than mere warmth. It was a focus, a hearth, a place that gathered the work and leisure of a family and gave the house of a center.”
When you switch to a modern central heating system, you cut out all these inconveniences. Fantastic!
Oh, and by the way, your family social life is totally different….. wait what?? Yes, the inconveniences were inconvenient. But they were also holding up something in your life and culture, and now they’re suddenly gone.
/new posts
These are the posts I’ve written this week. Click the links to read them.
1. Thoughts on iPhone day - 2025
All three iPhones got better and noticeably so. The base model got ProMotion. If there ever was a finally, here it was.
2. Curation matters
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.