Hyperlinks are Important

Hyperlinks are important. It drives me nuts that many journalism outlets disagree. I see it all the time in The Globe and Mail, the New York Times and others.

Here’s a perfect worked example of why they are important. The Economist writes about how college students can’t read. They talk about a study where students have trouble reading Dickens.

Well. Except it turns out that’s not the whole story! Mark Lieberman at Language Log did the work to find the study, which tells a more subtle narrative than the Economist. Read his post, it’s good.

This brings me to my main point: Journalism needs to learn to love the hyperlink. You want to develop trust in media? Link your sources. Think about a generation raised on media literacy classes that, where they are able to visit the source links for articles and compare; a generation that starts to understand the torquing and nuance loss that comes from a 6 paragraph opinion column. Think about the trust engendered by discovering that some outlets are really good at accurately reflecting their sources, and think about how the lack of links can become a signifier of dishonesty.

“But the sources journalists are talking about are complicated!” Sure! Not everyone will read them. Yet some will. Some will strive, some will learn, and grow. We have to give people the opportunity.

Maybe, just maybe, the Hyperlink is a key part of making sure that we understand the society we live in.

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea

I’ve recently finished reading the cozy fantasy novel Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea. While the weather was too hot to feel warmed by it, I nevertheless enjoyed it.

I love me a story with

• Characters who talk through problems. In fact, my least favourite narrative tropes are where the problems are created by two people, ostensibly who care for eachother, but cannot have even the simplest lowest-level honest conversation. See also “Could Have Avoided This!” Plot and Poor Communication Kills.
• Community Building, and community raising; the cynical part of me feels like this might be the most fantastical part of the book, but how I love it.

and of course, the requisite easy entrepreneurship.

It’s not a perfect book, but was a good distraction, and I’ve put the next on my borrowing queue at the library already.

Open A Channel: A Women’s Trek

I just finished Nana Visitor’s book. What a fascinating read. Looking at Star Trek from a woman’s perspective, both Visitor’s, and the many women she interviewed.

It’s a book I actually wish was about five times thicker: you can feel the hours of interview that -didn’t- make the pages. I would have loved to hear more from many of the women she talked to.

It’s a hopeful book, though I did learn about Visitors traumatic sexual assault via this book, which I had never known about previously; a content warning of sorts.

As someone who was a child in the 90s, Visitor’s stories of Hollywood of the 90s are totally believable and yet horrifying. One of the through lines of the book is the way in which you sometimes cannot see the wrongs within which you swim. I have a few inklings about what we’ll say about 2025, but I wonder what we will see with more clarity in 2055.

Summer Guitar Lull

I’m in a bit of a summer lull with guitar.

Bad: I’ve totally fallen off my discipline, and haven’t accomplished even one thing on my summer goals list

Good: I’ve been having fun. Playing riffs with totally incoherent tones, and having a blast — Lemme tell you, there’s a punk cover of Cissy Strut waiting to happen I’m sure.

I’m sure I’ll find my discipline again. But maybe I’ll go dig my loop pedal out until then.

Redefining Prosperity

I really hate the term prosperity — no one means the same thing when they say it, and a heck of a lot of people think it means “I’m gonna be a {million,billion,trillion}aire”.

Maybe it’s time for a new definition of prosperity:

• The ability find friends, make friends, see friends.
• Time to enjoy the changing of the seasons.
• The time and money required to have a hobby, or three.
• Time with your kids; the resources to have kids if you want them.
• The freedom to feel like a hobby is worth doing rather than a dereliction of your duty to the machine.
• Access to people who make you feel whole; access to community that makes you feel whole. Encouragement and support to grow our communities, and build bonds.
• Jobs with dignity, jobs without moral injury.
• The freedom and safety to explore different versions of yourself; intentionally low costs for decisions.
• The ability to stop feeling like the machine is grinding you down.
• The ability to become ill or disabled without fearing for your life falling down around you because you have become useless to the machine.
• The freedom to make art if that calls to you.
• The freedom to partake of art if that calls to you.

What does concrete policy look like that chases this kind of world? I don’t know that I have great answers. There’s a few things:

• 30 hour work weeks?
• Job Sharing?
• Community business support?
• Basic Income?
• Wealth taxation?
• No more billionaires? Wealth maximums?

That certainly feel aligned, but I can’t say I have all the answers.

I yearn for a politics that fights for these sorts of things. I yearn for a prosperity that focuses not on what you’ve got in your bank account, but the lives you’ve touched, the fun you’ve had, and the safety you’ve felt while doing it.

A letter to the ministers of Environment and AI

Just sent this letter to the ministers of the environment for Canada and Alberta, as well to the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation.

Honourable Ministers,

The momentous rise of AI has many people wanting to build data centres. While I personally am skeptical of the long term impact in terms of jobs, even if you take claims at face value it is incredibly important that we not let a burgeoning industry push us backwards on climate goals, as neat as it seems.

We’ve already seen bad outcomes in the US and Canada from the chase of data centres:

- In Memphis, you have xAI building illegal gas turbines [1]

- You have AI data centres draining water from communities [2]

- Data centres being built in Alberta [3], which has one of the least green electricity grids in the nation.

A nation we need to establish some ground rules. New data centres need to be

1. Using renewable energy, or create appreciably more green generation than they are expected to consume. Carbon Capture, if deployed, must be required rather optional.

2. Be tightly regulated on their water consumption.

3. Have incentives provided to use waste heat from them for secondary purposes. Every data centre is an opportunity to build a district energy system and heat storage system to help heat homes through the winter, providing climate impacts.

We have an opportunity to set our regulatory environment to minimize our regret in the future.

We also should encourage the industry to change. We should be working with international partners to start labelling model hosts with a “tokens-per-tone” measure of CO2 intensity, and encourage the development of time-of-use token pricing to build efficient use of renewable resources into models.

[1]: https://www.selc.org/press-release/new-images-reveal-elon-musks-xai-datacenter-has-nearly-doubled-its-number-of-polluting-unpermitted-gas-turbines/

[2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-impacts-data-centers-water-data/

[3]: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/industry-news/property-report/article-new-data-centre-will-be-one-of-canadas-most-powerful/

Style in the Age of Robots

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Dittttttttto the vIS-yu-al arts?

Too Many Ways to Make a Link

It’s become exhausting how many different ways I have to remember to make a link in editors:

• Select text, ⌘-K, paste link
• Select text, paste link over top
• Type [markdown](link syntax)
• ...

Of course, these are all mutually independent, so half the time I try one, hit ⌘-Z, then try again.

Anyhow. Gripe.