27 May 26
Weather in May
Yesterday afternoon a thunderstorm dumped half an inch of rain onto us in five minutes. There is no more “normal” weather other than that everything is getting more extreme. I was able to get into one of the flower beds this morning and pull the last of the delphiniums in order to put in some chili peppers (and found five buried potatoes, which made their way into the soup).
One of the roads through Yosemite is now closed because of snow — I’m usually pleased to hear about snow in the mountains but it’s getting late enough to start affecting nesting birds. It will be hot again soon.
26 May 26
Disarming AI
Today I read through the entirety of Pope Leo XIV’s newly issued encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, subtitled On Safeguarding The Human Person In The Time Of Artificial Intelligence. It’s a very rich document which anyone who is concerned with the ethical and moral issues around AI should add to their reading list. Pope Leo’s namesake predecessor Pope Leo XIII in 1891 wrote the encyclical Rerum Novarum about the condition of the working class. In its first two chapters Magnifica Humanitas traces the history of Catholic social teachings from the time of Rerum Novarum to the present. These themes of human dignity and working towards the common good structure the discussion of AI beginning in chapter three.
Whether through direct study or not Pope Leo XIV has absorbed a lot from the discipline of science and technology studies. For instance there is no such thing as morally neutral AI:
In reality, every technical tool embodies choices and priorities through what it measures, ignores and optimizes, and how it classifies people and situations. If a system is designed or used in a way that treats some lives as less worthy, or excludes them without the possibility of appeal, then it is not merely a tool “to be used well,” since it has already introduced criteria that contradict the inalienable dignity of the human person. (Section 104).
Discussions of digital colonialism are readily found among academic critics of information technology but it is much weightier to hear this topic coming from the leader of the Catholic church:
Even today, colonialism assumes new forms. It no longer dominates only bodies, but appropriates data, transforming personal lives into exploitable information. Entire regions, especially those marked by structural fragility and limited geopolitical relevance, are currently subjected to a new mindset of extraction: that of health data, epidemiological profiles, genetic maps and demographic information…Here lies one of the most urgent moral challenges of our time: to ensure that shared knowledge becomes a true common good rather than an instrument of dominance. This requires restoring to individuals not only the data that describes them, but also the ability to decide how it is used, by whom and for whose benefit. Otherwise, the digital age will not be post-colonial, but colonial in another form. (Section 178).
Pope Leo XIV is fond of the expression “to disarm” and this phrase is at the heart of his critique of AI:
To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern. To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity. It means freeing technology from monopolistic control and opening it to discussion and debate, therefore making it human-friendly and restoring it to the plurality of human cultures and ways of life. Our task today is not only ethical or technical. It is ecological in the deepest sense, for it concerns a new dimension of our common home. AI is already an environment in which we are immersed, as well as a force with which we must engage. For this reason, merely regulating it is insufficient; it must be disarmed, welcoming and accessible. (Section 110).
It is easy to find blanket rejections of AI in many quarters but I am heartened that there is a lot more nuance in this encyclical. Technical innovation is part of the divine act of creation but going along with that comes a responsibility towards affected communities and cultivation of the common good.
25 May 26
Consciousness and the Imagination
I just finished listening to Michael Sheen’s reading of The Rose Field, the third in Philip Pullman’s second trilogy, The Book of Dust, following the life of Lyra Belacqua/Lyra Silvertongue. I have not seen any of the visual adaptations of any of the books but was happy to listen to Sheen, who can do a convincing griffon queen and a terrified mouse daemon as well as anyone.
The bonus interview between Sheen and Pullman included at the end of this audiobook has sent me on a long ponder. What is the imagination? What separates us, humans, from animals? What is consciousness? What does it mean to make connections and weave metaphors reflecting our own lives, our lived experience, and particularly, how does the timing of our exposure to these potential metaphors affect the meaning we ascribe to them?
24 May 26
Craft Fair
On Sundays twice a month the Davis Craft and Vintage Fair takes place in Central Park. It is pleasant to wander through, and there is almost always live music at one end of the concourse. Here is a sketch from today of one of the stalls.
23 May 26
Getting Back to the Work
I’ve been stalled a bit on my project about my mother’s death, partly because I went away and partly because, well, it’s hard. Today in Comics Coven we worked a bit on containers, but all I could think about was how much my mother tried to disappear all her life, how little of a burden she wanted to be (even after her death, she didn’t want us to grieve, which isn’t really the dying person’s call: grief is part of life). I am thinking of her as a silhouette. A silhouette in a doorway.
22 May 26
Drying Days
It reached 95° F today with 26% relative humidity. These are good drying days. But if you are neither a) drying your clothes on a line outside or b) a watercolorist this may be an unfamiliar concept. How rapidly do wet materials dry given the present combination of relative humidity and wind speed? It doesn’t seem to feature in weather websites in the United States, though I did a Kagi search on “drying days” and came up with a laundry drying guide for London. Today’s weather there was rated “Superb”.
I am now trying sketching experiments with layers where I am painting first with loose watercolors, and then drawing over the watercolor with my Derwent drawing pencils. This calls for good drying days, since the paper needs to be perfectly dry before drawing on it. Here is a sketch I did earlier today in this manner of our laundry on the drying rack.
21 May 26
Very Simple Knitting
I was in the middle of knitting an extremely complicated cardigan, pictured at right, when I left for Europe at the beginning of April. This is an unusually structured piece with cables going over the shoulders, where stitches are picked up and then a stranded colorwork panel is worked, double moss-stitch forms side panels and sleeves, which also feature the cables and a smaller stranded panel going along their length. I’m knitting this with a worsted-weight yarn and it’s lovely but I’m finding it difficult to resume my work on it. (Note to self: don’t start a complex project when you know you’re going to be going away for a while; it’s now too hot to be knitting a heavy project.)
There are several knitting designers who are deeply influenced by the knitting cultures they grew up in yet who have managed to bring a contemporary feel to their designs. Ysolda Teague, a Scottish designer based in Edinburgh, has produced fascinating designs that draw on the traditions of her culture but are always unmistakably modern. I’m reminded of her Blank Canvas pullover which I’ve knit, which gives a well-fitting design in multiple sizes and encourages knitters to customize it freely. (One of the problems a lot of contemporary knitters face is their fear of modifying patterns either to suit their taste or individual bodies, resulting in a lot of sweaters that don’t get worn.)
Petite Knit is the brand of a Danish designer, Mette Wendelboe Okkels. This designer has taken a lot of flak for charging as much as she does for designs that are really very simple — no unusual stitches, no flamboyant shapes, just timeless, classic pieces (mostly sweaters) that highlight gorgeous, top-quality yarns. But simple doesn’t mean easy to design, and the care and effort that has obviously gone into each piece is a lovely testimony to the clean Scandinavian esthetic embraced by Petite Knit. (I’m of the opinion that designers deserve a fair price for their labor and get screaming angry when people find workarounds to paying for a pattern. It’s stealing, people. If you don’t want to pay for a pattern there are lots of free ones available on Ravelry.) Rosemary and Pines Fiber Arts looks into how Petite Knit took over the knitting world in a video here.I’m knitting Ysolda’s Musselburgh hat — my fifth — for a friend and I have cast on the Petite Knit Maggie Cardigan. Both of these are straightforward, stockinette projects. This is my first top-down sweater and a lot of concentration is required for the shaping around the shoulders, but once I reach the armpits, it will be very simple. (And, in this case, easy.)
20 May 26
On New Music
Microtonality is having a moment. I am late to this trend, but two days ago I discovered the Québécois rock band duo Angine de Poitrine who is now all over the internet. Back in February, the Seattle radio station KEXP posted a YouTube video of a set the band did at a music festival in Rennes, France in December. This video rapidly went viral, and as of this writing has 14.8 million views on YouTube. Clearly the band has tapped into something in the public’s consciousness, but what?
The first thing one notices on the video are the Dadaesque costumes — masked figures in black and white polkadots with especially long noses. The conceit is that they are alien timetravellers, brothers named Khn and Klek de Poitrine. Klek is the drummer, and Khn plays a double-necked combination bass and guitar. Look closely at the bass-guitar combo and one will notice rather a lot of frets on the two necks.
The costumes may be what draw people to look at the band, but the music is what is compelling and new. The reason for the large number of frets is that it is a microtonal instrument, and the frets are spaced in quarter tones. The band plays microtonal math rock, the latter meaning there are a lot of complex time signatures and polyrhythms. And the two musicians are really good: they have been playing together since they were teenagers. Khn uses a live looper to layer different bass and guitar lines together in sequence, which seems like quite a feat of hand-foot-toe coordination. Despite the complexity of the music, it remains accessible with a strong groove.
Commentary on the band is its own subgenre on YouTube. Some of this commentary goes into music theory: there are videos looking at the microtonality, and other videos analyzing the polyrhythms. There is other discussion about why this band has gone viral. One thread that comes up a lot is that the band has put things together in a way that could not have been done by AI. Despite being alien timetravelers, what they have done is a profound act of human creativity.
19 May 26
Overnight Visitor(s)
When I went outside this morning, I saw that this table, which was clear last night, was now covered in large bird droppings.
I didn’t sleep well (back spasm) and I got up well before dawn. I heard a great-horned owl calling outside. (This isn’t unusual; we have barn and great-horned owls nesting in the neighborhood.) But this is a lot of droppings for one owl in one night. My guess is that there were young owls sitting in the persimmon tree, getting fed by an adult. The fact that there was no evidence of food indicates that it was probably regurgitated for the young.
I’m glad there are enough mature trees where we live to host these species along with nesting Swainson’s hawks.
18 May 26
Redemption In A Walnut Orchard
Last weekend I watched the Errol Morris documentary from 2003 on Robert McNamara, The Fog of War. I followed this up with listening to a podcast interview from 2022 with his son Craig McNamara, which was produced not too long after Craig’s memoir of his difficult relationship with his father came out, entitled Because Our Fathers Lied after a line in a poem by Kipling.
Craig’s journey landed him not very far from here. In fact his interviewer, Michael Dimock, is somebody I have worked with: Michael is a regenerative food system activist who leads a group called Roots of Change. Craig became an organic farmer who has a walnut orchard near Winters, about 25 km west of Davis. Craig’s response to the Vietnam War as a young adult was in 1969 to wander south: he spent several years traveling through Latin America, working on subsistence farms, eventually ending up staying for a while on Easter Island. Agriculture got into his bones, and he returned to California and enrolled in UC Davis to get formal training in the agricultural sciences. He later bought the land and orchard near Winters with his father coming in as a financial partner.
This is one of these stories whose arc is multigenerational. After Robert left (or was fired from) his position as US Secretary of Defense he becomes president of the World Bank for 13 years, and meets with many heads of state all over the globe. Such travel does not make for a grounded life, but his son discovered such grounding on a bit of land near Putah Creek. The generations continue on there: Craig’s children Emily and Sean are both partners in the organic farm.