Feeling Techy

My day in the light is here, and by that I mean my day in the snow! Now don't get me wrong, I love summer like the next impossibly pale person with a sun allergy, but snow is the tops. And Seattle has snow, in the city proper! Which, for a New Englander transplant, is a very specific brand of fluffy joy and hardened self-critique facing the fact I don't own a proper shovel anymore. Lemon, my dog, experienced her first real dusting today, and with me videotaping every single second of this momentous encounter she communicated that she couldn't care less. So, we do not have that in common. But moreover it’s the smell of snow, you know? Well if you don't, read all about it here. 

Anthropic recently released a deep dive into measuring AI agent autonomy in practice that highlights some of the swirly identity things we're going to have to deal with as we bring agents along for the ride. They found that as users gain experience, they move away from approving every single action and instead shift toward a "monitor and intervene" model. I've been musing how the learners-by-doers will thrive in that space and how our Bayesian processing brains will work when we are less incentivized to soak up a ton of different pattern signals on how work is done. We’re moving into an era where we may be just as influenced by Chain of Thought (CoT) frameworks from AI systems as we are by hearing how our grandparents walked to school in the snow, uphill, both ways. If you want more on those hill-less frameworks, take a gander: [2503.09567] Towards Reasoning Era: A Survey of Long Chain-of-Thought for Reasoning Large Language Models.

Per above, AI kind of feels like it's eating into everything! And tbh that's probably not a balanced breakfast. Conveniently, art has been holding tech advances and human advances and their separateness in the same hand this whole time!! Thank you, artists, for doing the work! Artnet is calling the "Materiality Revival" this year, centering on visible texture, textiles, and even 3D-printed art designed specifically for the visually impaired to explore through touch. Museums are releasing high-res 3D tactile models of their collections, which I think is a reassuringly human use of technology and also very open-source-centric of them (ShoutOut PyRIT!). It’s a reminder that we are accidentally physical beings despite basically computerizing everything about ourselves (or flies) via unread small print T&Cs!

Speaking of not-in-silica, the dearest of friends of mine recently launched The Lucy Bran House Collective, hosting stuff and textiles inspired by the life of Lucy Bran who lived in the house he and his husband are lovingly fixing up as their home. Lucy was an indigenous weaver in the late 1700s who lived entirely through her own craft. Joey and Felipe are some of the warmest, inviting, creative, hilarious, and stylish people I've come across in my life- their homage to her and the way she's inspired their life has been a brilliant spot in my past month and, like them, very on trend per The Latest Fashion Isn’t in Your Closet — It’s on the Table - The New York Times. A la International Women's Day; the strength of a woman who spent her days literally creating the fabric of her community, and the astounding reverberation of her story and space through 100's of years bringing them so much community as they craft their lives and home. 

Welcome to, or fond first farewell, to On a High Note. I'll be here, in a winter wonderland blanketing the whole word that I can see.

May your snowfall always be fresh,

Tori