Nicolas Ward<p><strong>Media — February 2025</strong></p><p>Never mind that it’s halfway into March. I’ve been having fun with The Composition Challenge and family gatherings and online D&D and a rather busy work schedule so I’m going to have to declare RSS bankruptcy soon and catch up on what I’ve been enjoying.</p><p><strong>Reading</strong></p><p><strong><a href="https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/f2e8cb20-643a-474e-8312-0c2b43be6910" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">AI Snake Oil</a></strong></p><p>At first I thought I wasn’t the audience for this, but I think it balances the technical and accessible well. I would recommend this to anyone wondering about the negative impacts of “AI” (current generative trends but also classifiers more broadly). They do a good job of hammering now many use cases just don’t work (and in many cases can never work).</p><p>I think the authors are a little less negative than I am on some applications but remain highly skeptical and definitely believe we already have a lot of the right regulatory frameworks. I also like how they see most of the problems as requiring social solutions more than trying to engineer technical ones.</p><p>Still a lot to think about here for myself, since my career has been and remains rather machine learning centric.</p><p><strong><a href="https://lmnt.me/blog/range.html" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Range</a></strong></p><p>This is a nice piece from Louie Mantia on non-algorithmic discovery of interesting things to read online, using RSS. More than that it emphasizes the value in being a little hard to find, compared to being targeted on algorithmic social media.</p><p><strong>Watching</strong></p><p>Rewatched some favorites (including Star Trek VI) and introduced kid to Into the Spider-Verse and Barbie, both of which he really enjoyed.</p><p><strong><a href="https://watch.amazon.com/detail?gti=amzn1.dv.gti.76b1d258-57f3-49cf-951d-0860508e06f5&territory=US&ref_=share_ios_movie&r=web" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">You’re Cordially Invited</a></strong></p><p>This was a pretty hilarious R-rated romcom (which obviously just Andrle and I watched). I had remembered seeing the trailers a while ago and it is pretty much what it looks like on the tin. We laughed a lot. It was predictable in most of the trope beats but that’s fine. Farrell still delivers his usual. Others <a href="https://hachyderm.io/@lexfri/114183744619001743" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">didn’t like it</a>.</p><p><strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%282024_film%29" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Flow</a></strong></p><p>I had heard a lot of Oscar buzz about this one so we watched it for one of our movie nights. It was surprisingly stressful at points! Fun to watch a scifi movie that’s just vibes. I think it worked better that the world wasn’t super explained. Astounding that so much of it was basically one guy in Blender. (Pike hated all the dogs in it though.)</p><p><strong>Listening</strong></p><p>We technically watched <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/67th_Annual_Grammy_Awards" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Grammys</a> but it helped us check out or revisit some music. A definite highlight was Janelle Monáe moonwalking through a cover of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Stop_%27Til_You_Get_Enough" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough</a>.</p><p><strong>Abracadabra</strong></p><p>This was a surprise music video premiere during The Grammys. This made us excited for her new album (more on that in this month’s post, probably) because it was very much a return to the dance pop we loved on Fame Monster as new music when Andrle and I were first dating.</p><p><a href="https://youtu.be/vBynw9Isr28?si=EDwbZYxakOL9NiGc" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/vBynw9Isr28?si=EDwbZYxakOL9NiGc</a></p><p><strong><a href="https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/605013/bookshop-org-andy-hunter-amazon-ebooks-monopoly-books" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Decoder — Bookshop</a></strong></p><p>Enjoyed Nilay’s interview with <a href="https://bookshop.org" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Bookshop’s</a> CEO Andy Hunter. Even working for the Big A I still care a lot about independent booksellers.</p><p><strong><a href="https://overcast.fm/+AAuH1EtkkqI" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">InvestiGates 304 — Sonequa Martin-Green</a></strong></p><p>In addition to the usual Trek behind the scenes stories, some interesting thoughts on parenting and work-life balance.</p><p><a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://blog.ultranurd.net/tag/artificial-intelligence/" target="_blank">#artificialIntelligence</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://blog.ultranurd.net/tag/cats/" target="_blank">#cats</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://blog.ultranurd.net/tag/grammys/" target="_blank">#grammys</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://blog.ultranurd.net/tag/lady-gaga/" target="_blank">#ladyGaga</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://blog.ultranurd.net/tag/podcasts/" target="_blank">#podcasts</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://blog.ultranurd.net/tag/star-trek/" target="_blank">#starTrek</a></p>