To Infinity and Beyond

ICYMI.

And This Is How the Message Ran

Sci-Fi:

There will be no edges, but curves.

Clean lines pointing only forward.

History, with its hard spine & dog-eared

Corners, will be replaced with nuance,

Just like the dinosaurs gave way

To mounds and mounds of ice.

Women will still be women, but

The distinction will be empty. Sex,

Having outlived every threat, will gratify

Only the mind, which is where it will exist.

For kicks, we'll dance for ourselves

Before mirrors studded with golden bulbs.

The oldest among us will recognize that glow—

But the word sun will have been re-assigned

To the Standard Uranium-Neutralizing device

Found in households and nursing homes.

And yes, we'll live to be much older, thanks

To popular consensus. Weightless, unhinged,

Eons from even our own moon, we'll drift

In the haze of space, which will be, once

And for all, scrutable and safe.

Tracy K. Smith.

#throwbackthursday

Sabertooth Sadie at OMSI, second to last field trip that I chaperoned for either kid.  (2019)

He may not have a clue and he may not have style

But everything he lacks, well, he makes up in denial.

Narrow Here, More Rapid There, Here Slower, There Broader

River:

The bare (brindled) word of it word enough; brim-rhyming as it runs 
                             alongside reverie-bank (all rindled roots) and order.

Atsuro Riley.

Excuse Me, Does This Trolley Stop at Omelas?

Busy today validating an old lab, beta testing a new lab environment, and tinkering with my new lifesaving AI assistant, but time enough for a quick hit (or so Pecci tells me, lol).

So my Brother William app has quite a bit of backstory (almost world-building, even), with its Order of St Isidore, meditating on AI and ethics and the human condition at the Abbey of Perpetual Inquiry, which is built upon Mount Bedrock.  There are a number of Easter eggs in the mix, including the Abbey's mythical location: near the Village of Omelas.

Fans of Ursula K. Le Guin¹ will recognize the reference to The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, which at heart is an exploration of the Trolley Problem, albeit in a messier, truer fashion, at least from where I sit.  Some redditors, too:

Whether it's children mining cobalt for our phones, or gig workers delivering McDonald's in hopes of a decent tip to pay for healthcare, or data labelers doing the invisible hard labor that makes today's LLMs possible, we must come to grips with the fact that we all live near Omelas.

Selah.

1 - Did I ever tell all y'all that I am one handshake away from her?  Ericka took a creative writing class with Le Guin long ago.

Yeah, yeah, yeah

Stop talking!

Lélektől lélekig

From soul to soul:

I stand beside my window in the night
and through its gulfs, immeasurably far
there gathers to my eye a quivering light,
the gentle radiance of a far-off star.

A billion miles or more it came to me
across the chill, black darknesses of space.
Thousands of years it sped untiringly
with none to rack off its celestial race.

Its heavenly message has arrived at last,
safe in my sight from wandering through the skies,
and dies content when I upon it cast
the coffin-cover of my weary eyes.

But through prismatic crystals lured and bent
the self-same ray reveals its parent flame,
and gives us news of many an element
related to our earth and my sad frame.

I drink it in. Locked in my veins it throbs.
And dreamily, in silence, I can feel
what ancient sorrow to my blood it sobs,
when timeless griefs the heavens to earth reveal.

Perhaps the stars feel pangs of lonely heat,
being a million orphans lost in space?
Perhaps they mourn because we cannot meet
across the icy night through which we pace?

Why weep, O star? No further do you stand
than human heart of earth from human heart.
Ah, who can tell if, at my own right hand,
my friends, or Sirius, move more apart?

Alas for friendship, and alas for love!
Alas for the impervious road from soul to soul!
Rays from our weary eyes unceasing move,
but icy voids of night between us roll.

Árpád Tóth.

How Peculiar

What's that?  I've been doing more silly AI stuff?  Well, yes, but also some stuff that's actually taking advantage of the tech's capabilities with an excellent use case.

It might be pretty obvious to even the casual observer that I've got some neurodivergence going on.  Certainly ADHD - untreated, undiagnosed, but a long history of being "hyperactive", and when I've filled out Vanderbilt assessments for my kids, they felt autobiographical (and boy did they get screwed by their genetic heritage on both sides).  Also maybe some other spectrum-y things going on with my various obsessions and general inclinations toward hyperfixation, not to mention sensory issues and suboptimal ability to understand people (the kids gently suggest I get an official diagnosis).

Between all that, plus PTSD, getting older, likely long COVID impact, and being fairly overwhelmed as a single parent (now starting Year Seven!), I've had some challenges with decision fatigue and executive dysfunction.  

Class tomorrow?  No problem, I've taught that material a million times, or I have such long experience I could make shit up on the fly if it came to it.  But other necessary things like getting new glasses (took me over four years, and only happened because Sadie needed some) fall by the wayside because it's difficult for me to work out when I can actually do something, then to get on the phone (something I have always hated) and set it up.

Enter Amazon Quick.  I now have a single source of truth for the eleventy million daily messages I get in Slack and Outlook (my backlog is longer than a list of Trump lies), a tool that prioritizes various tasks for me automatically and looks around corners ("you'll need to validate that lab for Thursday, don't worry about the AI ethics/responsible use session on Friday"), and an assistant that can tell me if I will be able to run an errand or schedule an appointment uptown in between calls ("yes, your best window is after 3:00 PM when your Cloud Practitioner class is over"), amongst other things.  

It has already been a game changer for me, preserving just a little bit of my fraying sanity.  And being me, I was compelled to explore its limitations and power, particularly for in-class demo purposes, so I decided to see whether it could integrate with non-standard things like Brother William.  Yup:

So a couple things about that screenshot.  First, Brother William lives on a simple web server (an EC2 instance to be specific), and fittingly has an extremely austere user interface.  One splash of fancy is the app also generates an accompanying image that's germane to my input, and in the style of marginalia found in illuminated manuscripts.  But it's the barest of bones, which is suitable for the task of demonstrating and discussing many different aspects of technology generally, our particular services, AI/ML, security and ethics, etc.

Now I have set up Quick to send queries (on my behalf or even as itself) to the Brother William process, and display the results in the Quick app directly.  Not only that, I have it massage the output, ignoring some components and even formatting things in a much nicer, still style-appropriate, fashion.  Another demo has been consecrated.

You also might have noticed the reference to Pecci.  Who the hell is Pecci?  Well, in Quick, it's just a pre-built, user-selectable persona that I chose for funsies (I'll likely create my own custom instructions at some point).  But Pecci is An Amazon Thing:

He’s Amazon’s mascot and cultural ambassador, Peccy.

Wait—Amazon has a mascot? I expect that this comes as news to you. Or at least it did to me. When I interviewed Amazon HR chief Beth Galetti for a profile in our new issue, we mostly talked about topics such as her unlikely career path from electrical engineer to HR pro, the challenges of hiring thousands of people a week, and her quest to use technology to better the Amazon employee experience. But as we wound up our chat, she gave me a laminated copy of the company’s leadership principles. Our conversation ended thusly, as I pointed at the character grinning from the document’s upper left-hand corner:

Me: Does this critter have a name, by the way?

Galetti: Peccy! Oh, I love Peccy. He’s called Peccy because he represents our peculiar ways. We call ourselves at Amazon very peculiar.

The different spelling is a peculiar mystery, although when I queried Quick about the discrepancy, it first took responsibility ("totally a typo on my part!"), then when I pushed back, it hallucinated that I had chosen the spelling in honor of my late dog (too soon, man).  So remember the primary lesson of AI: don't fucking trust it.

Anyway, the accompanying picture is of my vintage paperback copy of Eco's Reflections on The Name of the Rose, and the Peccy/i plushy/ie I scored at our team all-hands last month.  I like the mascot and what it represents in particular because, well...I am rather peculiar myself.  Not just due to all that stuff I mentioned way at the beginning, but because I am a Quaker:

Quakers are “peculiar,” both within the Christian tradition and beyond it, in that we do not base our religion on a system of outward requirements (either of belief or behavior) or rewards (either in this world or the next). Quakerism invites much freedom for personal spiritual inquiry and guidance. This suggests a basic optimism about the goodness of life and belief in God’s availability to teach, to comfort, and to minister to each person directly. Central to this experience is a willingness to be transformed, not just once but over and over. That means a willingness to test ideas and processes. It also means living as pilgrims, always seeking new openings.

As pilgrims ourselves, our meetings are open to others who seek. We do not profess what we have not experienced, nor do we ask anyone else to profess what he or she has not experienced. But we need to name experiences of the Divine in others and in ourselves. We affirm that ours is a community that provides an opportunity to seek, and indeed rejoices when people affirm, “This I know from my own experience!”

As with everything else in my life, this peculiarity influences a great deal of how I show up in my classes.  I work with and build AI tools so I can talk about them with earned authority beyond what I might learn from reading research papers and course material.  I've always preferred to speak from my own experience, rather than just describing what others have done, and when I get on my soapbox, leaning heavily into responsible use and whatnot, I view it as Witness.

In conclusion: have I mentioned I also love trains?

PS - Also was able to integrate Quick with my TODDScore platform.

Gimme rage!

Like there's tear gas in the crowd.

It Is a Country

bon bon il est un pays:

all right all right there’s a land

where forgetting where forgetting weighs

gently upon worlds unnamed

there the head we shush it the head is mute

and one knows no but one knows nothing

the song of dead mouths dies

on the shore it has made its voyage

there is nothing to mourn

my loneliness I know it oh well I know it badly

I have the time is what I tell myself I have time

but what time famished bone the time of the dog

of a sky incessantly paling my grain of sky

of the climbing ray ocellate trembling

of microns of years of darkness

you want me to go from A to B I cannot

I cannot come out I’m in a traceless land

yes yes it’s a fine thing you’ve got there a mighty fine thing

what is that ask me no more questions

spiral dust of instants what is this the same

the calm the love the hate the calm the calm

Samuel Beckett.

Oh Baby, Don’t It Feel like Heaven Right Now?

.@NASA doesn't make merchandise, but we do work with many vendors to review and approve things. We've seen many requests for Artemis II items, including Rise plushies, and our team is currently in the review process. Because production takes 60+ days, it will be a little while…

— NASA Artemis (@NASAArtemis) April 13, 2026

Glad NASA focused on heat shields and helium tanks and balky toilets, of course, but I wish somebody in the PAO had thought to get the production line primed ahead of time.  Well, after waiting 53 years and change for humans to get back to the moon, I guess I can wait 60 days and change for my Rise plushie.

<exits singing, The waiting is the hardest part>

You were looking for a gunner

I was looking for a ride.

PS - This is the latest from my buddy David Ferguson's band.  You can buy their single over on Bandcamp.

One Foot in Front of the Other

How Things Work:

Today it’s going to cost us twenty dollars

To live. Five for a softball. Four for a book,

A handful of ones for coffee and two sweet rolls,

Bus fare, rosin for your mother’s violin.

We’re completing our task. The tip I left

For the waitress filters down

Like rain, wetting the new roots of a child

Perhaps, a belligerent cat that won’t let go

Of a balled sock until there’s chicken to eat.

As far as I can tell, daughter, it works like this:

You buy bread from a grocery, a bag of apples

From a fruit stand, and what coins

Are passed on helps others buy pencils, glue,

Tickets to a movie in which laughter

Is thrown into their faces.

If we buy a goldfish, someone tries on a hat.

If we buy crayons, someone walks home with a broom.

A tip, a small purchase here and there,

And things just keep going. I guess.

Gary Soto.