The route circle
Hello from my home in Helsinki! This is NordLetter #85, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland. Each week I share some of the interesting things I found on the web.
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We moved to our new home in Kumpula/Helsinki on 8th November. Since we moved here, I had not felt at home. Something felt amiss.
I have lived in three (four if you count the hotel in Kamppi) places since moving to Finland - Merihaka, Matinkyla and now Kumpula. At all these places, sooner rather than later, I had figured out a route for me to walk on.
I love walking. I prefer walking the same route everyday. I also prefer it to be a circular route. You end where you start. Which is obvious in a way. But you could go half the distance and just return from there, walking the same path twice - back and forth. I do not like that. Ideally, I want to walk the entire route once.
I had routes like this in Kamppi, in Merihaka (around the Toolo lake), and in Matinkyla (around the Matinkyla beach.)
I had not found a route here. Here, we had went out and walked. There is nature and trees behind our homes, a route that cuts through the suburban sprawl of single family homes.
But no looking at fresh water. No circular route.
That had bugged me. That had made me not want to go out and walk. And you know me. I love walking.
On Wednesday, I found myself with some time on my hands. Prerna is in India right now, and we had Christmas/end-of-the-year holidays.
So, I went out with a want, a quest if you will to find the waterfront. I knew there was a waterfront, beyond the Arabia mall. I had seen it in the map. I had planned going there. I had imagined it in my head. But it had felt so distant.
In fact, one day me and Prerna had gone there, crossed the tram lines but since we had to pick some groceries, we had taken a different route.
Not on Wednesday mind you.
On Wednesday, I walked the same path, past the #13 tram line, across the road. I looked at the map and continued walking. I walked past the blocked roads and construction equipment. And then I saw it - the trails, the trees and the serene waters of the Vanhankaupunginlahti (Gulf of Finland).
We are in the middle of winters here in Finland. That means the sun goes down around 15:00. Hence the dark pictures of the bay and the route.
But you know what? I don’t care. I was so happy when I found this route. I was worried also. This felt far away from our home. I was not sure how to get back home, how to close the circle. I kept looking at the map, thinking which route to take. I had to pick some groceries on Wednesday as well. But I paid it to no heed. I kept walking.
And then some. Till I got to a bridge. At which point I cut across the park, across the little road, then through another park and finally across the E75. It was here, that I saw the little outing which took me back to the little roads which cut through the suburban sprawl of single family homes.
I had been here before. I knew how to get back home from here. My circle was complete.
Here’s the route. That’s a sweet little circle is it not?
I finished reading a few books this week - Two nights in Lisbon, Steal like an artist, Show your work and Keep Going.
Perhaps inspired by that or by what I’m reading now, I wrote a few things:
Check them out.
/five things to share
1. On Paperbacks and TikTok - Cal Newport
Here we find a parallel to our current moment. As the platforms of the digital attention economy transition from social network models to providing maximally distracting short-form videos, more of the content available online is devolving toward that paragon of low-quality forgettability, commonly referred to as slop. Who will listen to a podcast or read a long essay, many now fret, when Sora can offer countless videos of historical figures dancing and X can deliver an endless sequence of nudity and bar fights?
If we return to the paperback example, however, we might find a small sliver of hope. Ultimately, the explosion of these cheaper, often lower-quality books didn’t lead to the elimination of more serious titles. In fact, the opposite happened. Vastly more hardcover titles are published today than they were before the Pocket Books revolution began.
A nice little history lesson here on paperbacks.
2. 2025 LLM Year in Review by Andrej Karpathy
LLMs are emerging as a new kind of intelligence, simultaneously a lot smarter than I expected and a lot dumber than I expected. In any case they are extremely useful and I don’t think the industry has realized anywhere near 10% of their potential even at present capability. Meanwhile, there are so many ideas to try and conceptually the field feels wide open.
A nice read, if a little longer. Perhaps the reason why I had not gotten to it yet.
3. Remote Work is Officially Dead, Says the World’s Largest Recruiter - Slashdot
“You have to be very special to be able to demand a 100% remote job,” van ‘t Noordende told Fortune. “That’s increasingly the story. You have to have very special technology skills or some expertise.” The equilibrium appears to be settling at a hybrid model of three to four days in office for most workers.
That has been my experience too.
Also even before the Covid pandemic, the fully remote option was there for high performers or edge cases, where people had specific requirements to work from home and were good enough that they could not be kicked out of the job.
4. Our interfaces have lost their senses by Amelia Wattenberger
Think about how you use physical tools. Drawing isn’t just moving your hand—it’s the feel of the pencil against paper, the tiny adjustments of pressure, the sound of graphite scratching. You shift your body to reach the other side of the canvas. You erase with your other hand. You step back to see the whole picture.
A beautifully illustrated thing.
Everything happens on screens. There is no variability in our experiences of doing different things.
5. ChatGPT’s yearly recap sums up your conversations with the chatbot by Emma Roth
ChatGPT is joining the flood of apps offering yearly recaps for users. It’s rolling out a “Year in Review” feature that will show you a bunch of stats — like how many messages you sent to the chatbot in 2025 — as well as give you an AI-generated pixel art-style image that encompasses some of the topics you talked about this year.
The only one I did this year was the LinkedIn one. I did it because I saw a friend do it. I posted the one where it says who have you interacted with most this year. For me it was Prerna, and I guess hence the post.
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.