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An argument for logging off

It might be time to log off, or at least to drastically reduce your information intake. The real question isn’t about how much screen time is right for you though. Aaron’s argument is about control, that you should focus your energy on what you can control. But what can you actually control? Aaron has some very useful guidelines around that.

In the excellent book Amusing Ourselves to Death, the author, Neil Postman, quotes Thoreau as saying:

“We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.”

Writing in 1854 (!!), Thoreau pretty much nailed it. Having all information instantly accessible everywhere all the time has led us to be consumed by things that we'll never encounter, have no influence over, and in many cases don't change our lives at all. Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough! Yes, and?

The high-return activity of raising others’ aspirations

This is a short post, so I’ll let the pull quote speak for itself.

At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. It costs you relatively little to do this, but the benefit to them, and to the broader world, may be enormous.

This is in fact one of the most valuable things you can do with your time and with your life.

Rice Farming Gets An AI Upgrade

As a software developer, I spend a lot of time thinking about AI. I think about how it helps me be more productive, I think about the quarterly existential crisis I have when it turns out AI can do another part of my job, but something I never thought about was how AI will affect rice farmers in Vietnam. And I have to say, it’s pretty fascinating.

XAG Mekong gives farmers two options: buy a drone and operate it autonomously, or hire pilots to provide the machine and manage operations. The drones can be configured to scatter seed, spray pesticide, or spread fertilizer.

Because drones spray or scatter the ideal concentration uniformly over a precise area, farmers require less pesticide and fertilizer than they would if applying materials by hand, says XAG engineer Long Hung. This precision in turn reduces how much of the additives end up in the soil and flush into the river and out to the sea.

Like many farmers in the region, which is still rural and rooted in tradition, Le Hue Thìn was apprehensive about drones at first: “My family has worked our land manually for generations. Before I decided to rely on new technologies, I did a lot of research …” he says. “Later, I bought two devices, thinking of them as an investment that I also made for my children.” For 20 years, he cultivated his family’s four hectares by hand; today, he can sit at the edge of the field and fly the drone with no physical effort and no direct exposure to pesticides—some of which have been associated with diseases of the eyes, ears, nose, throat, skin, and gastrointestinal tract.

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Bonus Content

August and the Umpire Manual

I’m throwing in an extra link this week, as bonus content because the full article is paywalled. The content before the paywall is absolutely worth the read though.

There's a saying “when you go to a baseball game, you have a chance to see something you’ve never seen before.” I'm a huge baseball fan, I've watched thousands of games over the last 30+ years. And yet, yesterday I found myself learning about a whole second set of rules, one that governs how the umpires are supposed to act in a game.

"MLB Umpires are expected to increase the assertiveness of their call (signal and voice) as the play becomes closer or more exciting. A casual, laid-back mechanic is not appropriate in a crucial, close play, nor are over-elaborate, excessive signals an acceptable technique."

It’s a fascinating directive. It suggests, for one thing, that umpires are supposed to be part of the entertainment. Just as the servers at a theme restaurant are mostly there are make sure we get our food and pay for it, they also have a role to play in maintaining the fiction that we’re aboard a pirate ship or whatever—so they say “Arrrrr.” Umpires, similarly, are told via this instruction in their manual that they are not fully outside the fan-entertainment experience. They are asked to help maintain the fiction that this stuff is really exciting. When we the fans are supposed to be excited, they the umpires are also supposed to act excited.

It's so interesting to look back and realize that all of those little moments that matched the energy of the game, they were no accident.

And one more thing I’d never seen before, a player playing for both teams in the same game.

If you didn’t follow that (I won’t blame you):

• Danny Jansen was playing for the Blue Jays in a game against the Red Sox that was suspended due to rain.

• A few weeks later, Danny Jansen was traded from the Blue Jays to the Red Sox.

• The game was resumed last week, with Danny Jansen now playing for the Red Sox.

• Danny Jansen was substituted into the game, and thus played for both teams in the same game.

Baseball. Is. Wild. ⚾