Ponderings
Viktor Frankl: Have more music and nature in your liveE
It is not only through our actions that we can give life meaning — insofar as we can answer life's specific questions responsibly — we can fulfill the demands of existence not only as active agents but also as loving human beings: in our loving dedication to the beautiful, the great, the good. Should I perhaps try to explain for you with some hackneyed phrase how and why experiencing beauty can make life meaningful? I prefer to confine myself to the following thought experiment: imagine that you are sitting in a concert hall and listening to your favorite symphony, and your favorite bars of the symphony resound in your ears, and you are so moved by the music that it sends shivers down your spine; and now imagine that it would be possible (something that is psychologically so impossible) for someone to ask you in this moment whether your life has meaning. I believe you would agree with me if I declared that in this case you would only be able to give one answer, and it would go something like: “It would have been worth it to have lived for this moment alone!”
By Maria Popova
The Marginalian, 05 October 2025
Cybernetics
Weiner, Norbert (1948). Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine
In man, the gain achieved by the increase in size and complication of the brain is partly nullified by the fact that less of the organ can be used effectively at one time. It is interesting to reflect that we may be facing one of those limitations of nature in which highly specialized organs reach a level of declining efficiency and ultimately lead to the extinction of the species. The human brain may be as far along on its road to this destructive specialization as the great nose horns of the last of the titanotheres.
read Chapter 7, pp. 199-214
Economist
Schools brief | Applications for AI: LLMs will transform medicine, media and more
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be described as the art of getting computers to do things that seem smart to humans. In this sense it is already pervasive. Satnav software uses search algorithms to find the quickest route from your house to that new restaurant; airplanes land themselves; traffic cameras use optical character recognition to identify the letters on the number plate of a speeding car; thermostats adjust their temperature settings based on who is at home. This is all AI, even if it is not marketed as such. When AI works consistently and reliably, runs an old joke, it is just called engineering. (Conversely AI, goes another joke, is the stuff that does not quite work yet.)
Something else
Senegal Fast Food
Amadou and Mariam, and their place in Last.fm, with some comments about them from Wikipedia
Amadou & Mariam are a musical duo from Mali, composed of the couple Amadou Bagayoko (guitar and vocals) (born in Bamako 24 October 1954) and Mariam Doumbia (vocals) (born in Bamako 15 April 1958). The pair, known as "the blind couple from Mali" met at Mali's Institute for the Young Blind, and found they shared an interest in music.
Amadou & Mariam - Senegal Fast Food by Tchefari
Manu Chao (born José-Manuel Thomas Arthur Chao on June 21, 1961), is a French singer of Spanish origin (Basque and Galician). He sings in French, Spanish, English, Galician, Arabic and Portuguese and occasionally in other languages.
Manu Chao and his place in Last.fm, with some comments about him from Wikipedia