Everybody’s seeing bald eagles this winter, it seems, but me. We have a bobcat at school (promptly named “Bob”) that’s exploring campus a bit too much for its own good. Hawks circle the skies above our house, and herons wade in the pond up the street. When I was a kid in the ’70s and ’80s, we didn’t see wildlife like this.
There was too much pollution and development, and too few of us valued preserving natural spaces. It’s nice to be reminded that progress does come, sometimes without noticing it until much later. These glimpses of nature’s resilience remind me to look for progress in other areas too, especially during challenging times.
There’s a lot going on in the world that I’m struggling with right now, and it’s impacting me in ways that I can’t completely wrap my head around. What keeps surfacing for me, however, time and again as I get through each day, is a deep and abiding gratitude. Gratitude for the people in my life, for my job, for my health, and for the sense of stability that I’ve worked my entire adult life to achieve.
I take comfort, also, in knowing that when things seem overwhelming, it doesn’t mean that they will always be as they are now. We humans are just not wired to look at it that way unless we deliberately step back and think. When the constant thinking becomes exhausting (and it does), I find that returning to simple gratitude practices helps ground me. Small moments of appreciation – like spotting a hawk circling above – can be anchors when everything else feels uncertain.
My Picks
A deep dive and some much-needed distractions this month:
Andrej Karpathy’s LLM Deep Dive
This video, more than any other, has helped fill in the gaps in my understanding about how Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT work. As AI becomes increasingly integrated into our lives, understanding the fundamentals feels particularly important, even for non-technical folks. It’s long at three and a half hours, but if you or someone you know really wants to understand how this revolutionary technology works, I highly recommend watching.
I’m currently immersed in a world of Venetian glassmaking, strong women finding ways to overcome societal pressures, and sweeping family drama. I love Blown Away, Netflix’s glass blowing competition, because the results are stunningly beautiful, and the drama is not manufactured: one wrong move, and all that effort literally shatters before your eyes. This book takes that environment and nestles it within family, history, and the islands of the upper Adriatic. Tracy Chevalier’s The Glassmaker is proving to be a perfect distraction to end each day.
Reuters wrote a fantastic article about one of my favorite video game genres: cozy games. If you aren’t familiar with the term, it refers to games that are designed to help us relax and enjoy the experience of playing instead of getting high scores, beating countdown timers, and destroying everything in sight. What’s unique about this article, however, is that it is a cozy game itself. I so love this! You can learn about the genre, get a taste for how it works, and then perhaps try something like my personal favorite, Stardew Valley.
Recently Published
If you’ve missed it, here’s what’s new on the site:
This article is about my experience using AI as a thought partner to debrief a class I had just finished, and results that surprised me. If you haven’t noticed (ahem), a lot of my time and energy is currently invested in exploring the uses of AI. This isn’t just because I’m fascinated by it, though that’s been true for more than a decade. It’s also because LLMs are transforming our society in major ways, both good and bad. It’s up to us to make sure that this technology, built from a massive pool of human labor that was collected mostly without consent, improves human lives instead of making them worse.
Curiosity is one of the major engines of creation and innovation. It can help us find new solutions, keep us motivated when things go wrong, and build resilience. I see this in action with my students, and with myself. This article goes over some of my experiences, takes a look at some scientific research about curiosity, and rounds up some strategies that I’ve found to be helpful.
In the Groove
It’s been a good month for me, creatively. I’ve stepped back from the planning to focus on more hands-on creation, and it’s resulted in a series of demo songs that went to wonderfully unexpected places. This is the space that it feels right to be in, right now. Nothing’s ready for release – and it may never go anywhere – but I’m creating, and that’s awesome.
I’m also currently developing software with the help of AI that can generate visuals to accompany my music using Processing, a java-based visual arts language. I’m still very early in the process (no pun intended), but things look promising, and I’m learning a lot.
Until Next Time
Circling back to gratitude, I am grateful to you, for reading this. I wasn’t quite sure about this new website experiment, and where it would lead. I’m still getting into the rhythm and finding my way, but I’m glad to be here.
I’m looking forward to the coming of spring, though we still have a ways to go, and to seeing where things end up next. If something in this newsletter sparked a thought or connection for you, I’d enjoy hearing about it - those unexpected parallels are often where the most interesting discoveries happen.
Until next month,
—Tom