Thomas

I have long been a subscriber to the idea that any intelligence needs to be embodied and situated. The very first problems a baby has to solve are, How do I move my body? How do I move around in the world? Those tasks are entirely missing from existing large language models. And, as many people noted, the phrase “large language model” is a... See more

In a speech delivered years ago, Ev Williams used agriculture as a metaphor to understand what’s possible on the Internet.

Agriculture was a tremendous invention – it got people fed and freed them to do many things. But agriculture – taken to the extreme in the pursuit of profit leads to a sick and obese population and industrialized farms with... See more

The vital thing to understand- and the point that I want to stress the most- is that walking is not an activity. Or rather, it should not be conceptualised as and reduced to being a mere activity. It is much more than that because it is much less than that. Walking is one of the great forms of inactivity and in a world of striving and consumerism... See more

I wrote about the kind of cognitive dissonance between the argument that we need people to have more babies and the argument that we need fewer immigrants. Do you think that having more babies causes people to lose jobs because the babies take the job? No. You want more people because then you have a country that flourishes more.

in the deep flow of my art, I’ve always felt extremely detached/removed from “the world,” like I was existing on a different dimension than the here-and-now. I made art primarily for me. that’s still true. but. what if I deliberately committed (at least part of the time) to being IN the world, OF the world — in service FOR the world? that is a very... See more

here’s my way of thinking about sharing:

1. your website = your home / your garden


2. email newsletter = birds that carry your gifts


3. public platforms (social media, podcast, = pop-up booths & tents, your energy going camping elsewhere