Sebastian Abbott

These are the books I finished reading in 2025. A more detailed post about it all is under construction…

An unusual musical event for me as I attended a concert by the Gospel group Getogether (just the one ’t'), in which a colleague of mine sings. It’s really not my thing, but I appreciated the passion with which they sang, as well as some witty arrangements of Christmas carols!

Another happenstance connection of links after the previous one on vast numbers. I read this article on the Large Language Mistake of LLMs, in which the author, Benjamin Riley, posits that language does not engender intelligence; and then the essay from Luciano Floridi On Saussure and Heidegger about language, in which he compares Ferdinand de Saussure’s conclusion that no language has closer access to reality than any other, in direct contrast to the wishful thinking of Heidegger that German is the ultimate discoverer of reality.

Basically, then, LLMs reflect neither intelligence nor reality…

A weird reading connection: from a Rands in Repose post called Become the consequence about becoming good in a role (you need about three years) and developing delegation skills to the point where you - as a good manager - can say: “otherwise I’ll do this…”, to an article in the The Guardian about Norway’s Sovereign Wealth Fund rejecting Tesla’s obscene “compensation” package for their obscene CEO, which, combined, mention millions, billions and trillions, in which each next is a factor of a thousand larger than the previous. As Rands says:

our mental model isn’t remotely close to why this is hard. It’s akin to trying to visualize the difference between one million and one billion. Yes, one is bigger than the other, but in your head… they’re kind’a the same? At a distance? They aren’t. A billion is one thousand times more than a million. We lack experiential reference points for both numbers because we’ve never seen one million or one billion anything in one place.

Then we have another newsletter from The Guardian talking about the mind-boggling valuations of AI companies which just ramps things up to the absurd. Again, here:

The difficulty in comprehending the financials of the AI boom makes it difficult to criticize with clarity or force. What could I say to an avalanche? Even the most insightful analysis seems like it will be bowled over and crushed beneath the weight of a billion-dollar datacenter. All of these numbers buck understanding. There is nothing in your individual human life that you could compare them with. How would I spend $91bn? How would I make hundreds of billions of choices? Thinking about them feels bizarre.

This gets to the heart of our difficulties imagining the wealth of those billionaires, the sheer vast scale at which money is being ploughed into tech and billionaires, whilst they complain about and block or restrict public healthcare, equality and human wellbeing. It’s a financial, philosophical and ethical mismatch - quite disturbing, if you (can at all) think about it.

Spent an inordinate amount of time today reading and listening to AI-sceptic views from Ed Zitron (on his Better Offline podcast, plus articles like The Case Against Generative AI), The Verge with its Vergecast pod, with the Episode AI can’t even turn on the lights (you may want to skip the whole baby-tech portion at the beginning) and various associated links from these main sources (Colton Voege’s post No, AI is not Making Engineers 10x as Productive is a great one).

They align with (and are massively better researched, considered and thought-through than) my own thoughts - more feelings - on the matter, which are basically sceptical and uneasy about using such tools for very much at all.

Fundamentally, it boils down to the fact that these tools can be good, but there is no way that any gains they may produce can justify enterprises (or advertisers) spending enough money on the LLM providers to recoup the simply mind-boggling costs that they are incurring but also forcing through to “beat” all the others in gaining some kind of edge through which they will survive the bursting of the bubble.I have subscribed to one additional, smaller, model - Le Chat, by Mistral - along with the standard Gemini model that comes with my Google One subscription, and another cat, called Lumo, part of another data and mail provider, Proton. They’ve been good when researching vague topics, not great when researching something very specific to the world of trombones - and not earth-shatteringly good.

The bigger, global arguments about their being an investment sink and massive consumers of power and water are much more important to us all, and I will, where I can, try to ensure that my employer deploys a good amount of scepticism and due-diligence when looking to implement AI into its systems. From what I’ve heard thus far, we’re doing well on that front, not leaping into AI too madly

I’ll have to be careful not to turn this into a blog on my ailments, but I was at least relieved to be given the “nothing to worry about” sign by an eye specialist to my half-filled with deep red right eye: it was a small burst vein that’ll heal and clear up quickly.

It was a bit of a scare, especially when thinking about possible causes: I’ll have to get around to getting my blood pressure measured - perhaps I could ask the company doc, since I really don’t trust our local doctor to have my interests closer to heart than those of his wallet.

First rehearsal of the orchestras winter season, actually and simply really good to be back playing, feeling the sense of challenge for the technically tricky sections, of accomplishment for some nice sound and tuning and the appreciation, the reactivation, of those specialist muscles around the embouchure and breathing apparatus. And of really long sentences.

My microbiome is proving to be a tough adversally (aderversary-ally), causing discomfort and preventing me from sleeping well: I’m pretty much exhausted not, alas.

I have the feeling that there’s a war of audio escalation going on in the trams of the Rhein-Neckar area. The more people wear headphones and earbuds, the louder the trams set their announcements, with the effect that the Carl-Benz-Straße stop in Mannheim starts with an unbearable “Kchh-” sound that is just painful.

Of course, it could also be that the RNV has turned it all up for the inclusion of the hard of hearing - but has thereby made it more difficult for the overly sensitive of hearing.

Today I began my research and attempts to improve my gut health in earnest. I received my stool analysis a few days ago, on Thursday, and managed a few hours to actually go into the details, to start researching.

It is of course a minefield of information, science and quackery, but I’m determined to normalise the mystique surrounding the various key players rejoicing under the names of Firmicutes, Prevotella and Akermansia Mucaphilia (who was that Mr or Ms. Ackermans, anyway?) - but also susceptible to the allure of buying supplements - pre- and probiotica, tumeric and cloves, to see if they’ll help to normalise my stomach.

It seems to me that the hope that this has brought on is just as important as the cure, as it has already brought a change to my view on diet (more plant matter!) and my bloating (they’re just doing what they do, and some of those bacteria are my friends and need feeding). Interesting microbial times!

Yesterday I cycled the 23.5 km to (and again back from) work, a ride I try to make at least once a month. The route between Heidelberg and North West Mannheim can be tricky, but I have settled on two options, depending mostly on the weather: if it’s too wet, I’ll avoid the narrow track directly by the Neckar river in Ladenbuerg, but that’s the route that made me feel best, with its appealing mix of rough and the exceedingly smooth, along the “Fahrradautobahn” through the old US-NATO Spinelli Barracks in Mannheim.

Today I was back meeting from home, trying once again to balance the direct interactions of meetings with the “post-processing” of writing up minutes and condensing meaning and actions from all the descriptions and proposals.

I finished the day with a short ride to the allotment garden with my daughter, starting to see it wind down, though there are still pumpkins coming along: the raspberries are still going astonishingly strong!

Yes, dull garden stuff, but it is genuinely a great way of switching over from the work mindset.

That, plus a bit of Star Trek Voyager, general browsing (the Stupids are still in charge in many places, it seems), and now looking forward for a quiet read and - a long-standing wish (or dream?) of mine - a good night’s sleep

The notion I raised yesterday of the tidy desk leading to tidiness and clarity of thought proved illusory: when a project is still at the complex and messy stage, when meetings and calls result in more questions and tasks than in decisions taken, a little stretch of blank desk between me and the screen really doesn’t help at all.

Indeed, I think I should fill a little of that space again with a jotter pad and a pen for scribbling key words and ideas that I can’t be discussing and minuting at the same time.

It is, however, nicer to approach in the morning, so there is that, for those couple of minutes before I’m fully logged in.

Took the day off to be around and have lunch ready for when the girls arrived back, tired and jet-lagged from their first day of the new school year. I also wanted to tidy my desk and have a bit of an admin day, at which I only partially succeeded. At least the piles on the floor are pretty well sorted: what to do with them - finished books, partially read books, notebooks, letters and assorted pens - remains an open issue, which will no doubt resolve itself by procrastinating.

The desk feels nice and open again, a blank, undistracting area of light wood between me and the screen. I’ll have to see if it makes any difference tomorrow at work, leaping straight into a meeting at 08:30

Read some more views and opinions about Israel-Palestine (an intractable situation, completely lacking in empathy or brotherhood), and about the recent far-right marches in London, full of drunkards completely lacking in empathy or brotherhood - but at least closely monitored and enclosed by the police.

The AfD had its strongest showing in the NRW election, but still reached only 15%, which is heartening when you think about the centrist-left-green mix of parties who at least continue to show respect for democracy and internationalism without descending into pure grievance and simplistic solutions.

Today I took the girls to the swimming pool - but left them to enter alone, whilst I took my rucksack with its the contents of laptop, book, notebook and a coffee across the river on the ferry to a bench on the promenade to write, read, jot and sip contentedly for an hour or so.

Reading

I was nearing the end of Naomi Klein’s excellent book Doppelganger (which I find hard to type without the ä), all about her deep exploration of the world of her semi-namesake Naomi Wolf and the latter’s drift and then hard turn into the role of right-wing conspiracy-fantasy superstar. The book is also a powerful critique of the interlinked inhumanities of colonialism and rapacious capitalism, and a hard-nosed but also sympathetic analysis of the loss of self that all of this engenders.

Observing

The only antidote that Klein sees for this unhelpful turn is being sociable again. I’m not the world’s most gregarious person, but today I genuinely enjoyed looking up from my words to see and hear the passers by, and even to end up chatting to a group of dog-walkers who had happened to congregate just in front of me. Equally I could watch the kayaks and barges paddling or churning by, thinking lightly about the gamut of human endeavour, from sport and recreation to heavy industry and transport.

Being uncertain

Should we cease all transport, all progress, all industry? Of course not, but we should focus as much as possible on maintaining our environment, helping it as well as our societies heal. Our societies have a long way to go: the AfD is heading for a strong showing in the municipal elections in Nordrhein-Westphalia, and, back in the UK, the far right staged a demonstration attended virtually by stupidifier-in-chief Elon Musk, who called for the dissolution of the UK’s current Parliament - which got me thinking again about replacing our otherwise excellent Tesla.

Last Thursday night, my wife and I went to the German Film Festival in Ludwigshafen on the Rhein, where we watched the distinctly "non-art" German-American media-ethical thriller September 5, about the ABC film crew who captured live footage of the terrorist hostage-taking of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

The question of effectively live-streaming a terrorist attack, reporting hopeful hearsay and then having those hopes dashed was all well put together: I did find the timing of things confusing though, as some characters drove off to a nearby airfield, and a few minutes later were back again - the film was fast and pacey, so lacked any feeling of the longeurs between key events, the filling time, switching from the unfathomably new to the routine - and back again.

After the film, we went to the food hall for dinner and a filmic glass of wine, to find the whole zone staffed by school kids and students. Now, that's fine, particularly as it's all just temping and short-term holiday or evening jobs - but it did get me wondering how else it could have worked, who could have benefitted from the work, been trusted and integrated to work the tills, cook the Flammkuchen, pour the drinks, beyond the kids.

We enjoyed out meal huddled on a bench beneath a thankfully large and leafy tree as the rain poured down, drenching those still watching an open-air film showing. The evening ended with a stroll down by the river, and then the drive home.

During our trip to Ireland (where my daughter and I contracted COVID-19), we visited Mizen Head , "Ireland's most Southwesterly point". We all loved it there, with its spectacular geology and scenery, the wild craggy outcrops slicing into the battering Atlantic Ocean, spotting seals from above.

For me, though, the whole was made more reminiscent still by the Signal Station, a collection of buildings and towers forming a radio station and originally a lighthouse (which is now situated on Fastnet Rock). It was originally a research station for Marconi, but also formed part of the CIL, the Commission of Irish Lights:

The gate was rusting - a normal situation for a coastal site, and a bit of a dream for an old metals engineer like me, who battled for so long to prevent corrosion in the automotive industry. 

The displays in the Signal Station are well worth visiting and spending time with, from old radio equipment to how the light- and… what? Radioguards lived. I know we all get used to most situations, butI could imagine spending far too much time gazing out of this window:

I didn't get the chance to stay for it all, but the old 1970s documentary on the lives of Irish lighthouse keepers, called The Land is the Danger, was wonderfully slow, reflective, wistful and realistic. They even have it up on their website, if you want to have a look:

mizenhead.ie/guide/miz…

I was also transfixed by the music at the end of the video, which, after some research, I found to be Variation Nr. 1 - L’Istesso Tempo from Max Reger’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart. Look it up!

Finally, if you’re not sure where Mizen Head is, here’s a hint:

It's with us again, that COVID-19 virus, once again after visiting the British Isles. Our youngest got it first, whilst we were in Ireland. I caught it there, too, but only started to develop symptoms during our return trip: super spreading? I hope not, hope bolstered by our eldest and my wife remaining stubbornly negative in testing.

What are my symptoms? This time nothing overblown, though in one sense I wish it was - a blitz and then done. Now, it's a full-body and -mind lethargy. Dizziness when I go for my usual lunchtime walk or help out in the kitchen (when the others are out of there, of course), and a sense of unchangingness, constant sameyness.

I worked for the two days we were back last week, but was careful to postpone all of my meetings to this coming week, hopeful that I'd be back to full fitness by then. That seems like a significant overestimate today, Sunday.

Reading: Black Gold, by Antony ("Tony") Wild, a 2005 history of the development of coffee as a global drink, gifted to me by my uncle Jack. It's another picture of the utter callousness of the Great Powers, the indifference to humanity, the blindness to the costs, that profit and pleasure can lead to. It's also, however, enlightening with regard to the discussions within Islam about the drink itself: is it intoxicating, dangerous, explicitly banned - or does it reek of jaziri ta’ assub, a fanatical non-textual conviction based on an exaggerated sense of piety? I'm about half way through - it's a light enough read that my COVID-19 haziness doesn't really matter - and I'll no doubt have the pleasure of re-reading it again a few years down the line. But not during v.2029 of COVID!

In a recent episode of the Climate Denier’s Playbook (their “Mailbag” one, where they answer listeners' questions), Nicole Conlon referred to an post by Hamilton Nolan on his blog How Things Work , called When Do You Need to Quit Your Job?. It’s a call for people working at scummy, fascism- and climate-denialism-enabling companies (tech, mostly, but big oil, too, of course), to quite for the sake of their souls and our societies.

Nolan is a strong proponent of organiz(s)ed labo(u)r in the US, and encourages people in companies and industries that are worth fighting for, to do so by unionising and fighting to rebalance the economy towards society at large. This chimes with much of my recent reading (I am planning a post on that!), about society and capitalism in particular: Nolan channels a righteous anger that I’ve not been focussed enough to write myself, so I’m grateful for that.

The question of ethical work is something that niggles at me a where I work, since a major customer of our sensor systems is the fossil fuel industry. I can only hope that our sensors help them to be as efficient as possible and minimise leaks, etc, whilst our other sensors in renewable energies, pharma and other neutral-to-positive industries gain in importance.