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4 min read 43

UofWinds 423, Week 43: Technology Connections, how to actually be enjoyably well-educated, How I use ActivityPub (and Why)


Good morning. I am writing this without a coffee beside me because there are an assorted array of teenagers sleeping in the living room and I don't want them to wake them up to the whirl of our coffee grinder. Not yet.

My husband in the study with me. He's lying on the sofa and our cat is vying for his attention by head-butting the ipad that he is trying to read. It is a very good tactic.

Technology Connections


We are in the process of installing solar panels on our garage as we are in the last months in which we can use our interest-free loan from the federal government's Greener Homes Initiative. To make the most use of this free gift of the sun, I'm currently in the process of researching what sort of heat pump system we should replace our aging and inefficient air conditioner with. I would be completely lost in the weeds if wasn't for YouTube Channel, Technology Connections.

Yes, I have already mentioned Alec's videos before in this newsletter [141] but when I did so, I thought this series was just a set of quirky and nerdy deep-dives into the secret lives of dishwashers. I didn't realize that what I was watching was more than just novelty; Alec's creative work is a form of science education that is designed to help the viewer better think about and understand the technology that surrounds them and to empower them. It is much less fun trying to do similar research in the boards of reddit where strangers will occasionally appear out of nowhere to aggressively shut down questions about switching to solar or asking about heat pumps. Alec's commitment to accuracy, willingness to correct previous videos, and respond to viewer feedback makes me believe he's an honest broker.

I've made a playlist of TC's home heating-related videos that I've learned so much from. Three of them are about heat pumps, two are about North-American forced-air furnaces, and one is about the miracle of the humble home water heater. And I am very aware that suggesting that you should spend several hours of your one and precious life on videos explaining these technologies is a tough sell. The technologies of our home are largely out of mind and only become "visible upon breakdown" [pdf]. Or when you need to replace your system.

how to actually be enjoyably well-educated


I don't know if there's a name for it, but there's a particular type of online essay that is dedicated to describing a method by which a young squire can become well-read with a strict routine and a starter list of books prescribed by the author.

Evidently there was a similar kind of essay that was circulating on substack that was making numbers last week. Novelist Naomi Alderman thinks it was written with help from a chatbot.

It’s a post about how to be ‘well-educated’. It is SO extremely low-bar that it’s made me suspect that AI has become conscious1 and has ‘the bigotry of low expectations’ about humans2. Or is deliberately trying to make us more stupid3.
I am going to do a line-by-line takedown of it, for my own amusement (and hopefully yours) and also because I think probably some good advice can come out of looking at the things that AI post got wrong. Not even wrong like a human would get things wrong, just low-grade, uncanny-valley, feel-fine, not-designed-for-a-human-mind-to-actually-DO-something-with bad.

As someone with a very active curiosity streak, I very much enjoyed learning how Naomi followers her curiosity into learning something new to her. I can't wait to read the rest of this short series.

How I use ActivityPub (and Why)


While the online world seems to have devolved into into shitposting and aura farming, some of us are posting through it using the strategy of Acting normal.

I have an social media account that uses ActivityPub that is hosted on the Mastodon instance social.coop. My address is @copystar@social.coop.

ActivityPub is plumbing. It is plumbing built on top of the web, which coordinates the ability for independently operated services, for example a collection of federated social media services, to exchange messages with each other in a decentralized manner.

If that sounds like a bit like how email works that’s because it is. This is often what ActivityPub compares itself to. The salient point being that you don’t have to run your own email server but you can and it will still be able to interoperate with people who don’t.

Using this account, I follow small groups of librarians, technologists, solar punks and solar power enthusiasts, and people who post pictures of bugs on weekends. I also follow artifacts from museums and could choose to follow the written statements made to the House of Commons (UK) or the House of Lords (UK), among other UK government documents.

Open (Social) Networks are not immune to (social) problems but they are a viable alternative to X, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Last week, I wrote a blog post to invite others to learn more about ActivityPub with hopes that they try it.

If you are interested in joining the fediverse but are stuck, feel free to reach out and I'll help out if I can.

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