↬ Half of April, half of May 2023

Hello there,
after last month’s issue was already late, this one comes even later! I originally planned to be on time this month, but truth be told, I didn’t feel I had much to say at the end of April and also those days were frantically busy: Earlier this year we had decided to spend all of May in the Peak District in the UK (like we did in September 2022), so the end of April was all about packing, cleaning the apartment and organizing the trip. Days flew by, suddenly it’s early May and we find ourselves in the car, driving to the UK. Then, after arriving here in Bakewell, writing a newsletter was honestly the last thing on my mind. Instead, we enjoyed long hikes through the English countryside, while the laptop remained firmly shut.

Now that my 1.5 weeks of holidays are over and we’re settling into work mode in our cottage, I feel like I can type up a few bullet points:

Village One update 1: Sev Furneaux is officially our fifth member of the co-op – he initially helped us out as a freelancer and it went so well that we simply couldn‘t let him go. Next week I’ll drive up to Yorkshire to meet him in person to sign some paperwork and afterwards he’s gonna be an equal co-owner of the company. So cool. Get to know him in this fun little interview here and also check out Doro’s / Christoph’s.
Village One update 2: Over the last months we’ve been working with Good Conversations / ZEIT ONLINE to help bring The World Talks to life: The event’s idea is that people from all over the world sign up to have private 1on1 conversations about important societal questions (or anything else, they decide). Each participant answers a short survey and then gets matched with a friendly stranger far far away, to have their conversation on June 25. I’ve signed up already, along with > 1000 others! More here, including a fun interactive globe we made.
Social media 1: I am very happy to have made Mastodon my primary social media destination, but it can feel a bit too serious at times. Does anyone have a spare BlueSky invite? I’d like to check it out!
Social media 2: I’m still posting daily GameBoy Camera photos – nobody knows why, including myself, but at this point I’m just aiming to complete a whole year’s cycle. Check out those pixels!
Incredible photos of slime molds (yes!)
Damn, I’ve reached the 500 tabs limit in Mobile Safari … AGAIN!
Last time we came to the UK the Queen died the next day, this time we arrived just in time to watch the coronation on TV. Such pomp. Good article on the monarchy.
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom came out last Friday and while it initially looked like BotW DLC, it’s turned out better than anyone could have hoped for. Over the weekend I spent every minute with it and it’s so addictive, so vast, so much to do. Can I take a sabbatical in Hyrule please? Good article if you’re not sure what the hype is about. Also it’s ironic that much of Hyrule, the fictional kingdom Zelda games are set in, looks much like the Peak District. My physical and virtual realities are oddly in sync right now.
Two good articles putting the AI hype into perspective: Naomi Klein in the Guardian (if you read only one thing, make it this one), Ted Chiang in the New Yorker. We recently got a request for a “use ChatGPT to make medical information more accessible” project at Village One and after a bit of internal discussion we respectfully declined. Too much hype, too dangerous, too technology-driven. Feels good to stick to our values, even if it involved declining a (presumably) large budget.