For me, October means a new academic year; a new generation of students; exam term students frantically looking for suitable BA/MA topics and thesis advisors; new & exciting administrative misunderstandings and disputes; influenza and Covid shots; and (mostly) terrible weather. Plus, again after four years, the presidential election—which drains me of all my energy in good ways and bad ways this time in particular. (More on that next week.) This year, however, I had even more on my plate. The Freier Deutscher Autorenverband’s North Rhine-Westphalia chapter (of which I’m a board member) prepared and organized this year’s Bundestagung, the FDA’s annual federal conference, from October 25 through 27. The topic we had picked was »Leben und Schreiben im Exil«, and it was such a blast that even my little plush bunny enjoyed it! Still, a vacation would come in handy right now—or, even better, time to sit down and write.
All that notwithstanding, enough stuff accumulated during all the October newsletters I skipped. At my primary blog between drafts, there are several new micro-reviews; a full review of Viktor Kossakovsky’s 2024 Architecton; a review of the Neue Musik concert “Musica do Brasil Meets ‘Save the Rainforest’”; and a blog post “Winter (Term) Is Coming!” on teaching game design to first-year students. At my secret level just drafts, there’s one new blog post and two linked-list items on LLM/GPT/AI topics: “François Chollet on the Prospects of Developing General Artificial Intelligence”; “Call Off the Asteroid, We Found an In-House Solution”; and “The Most Outlandishly Expensive Snake Oil Ever Peddled.” Finally, there are a few thoughts on “Midpoint, Revisited” at my Voidpunk blog. As for photographs, my set of Malaysia albums (Penang Island, Perak, Melaka, Kuala Lumpur) at Flickr is now complete! Plus, new entries for my Neighborhoods and Düsseldorf buckets, and the usual vintage-style travel squaries over at Pixelfed.
For theSunday Tuesday Funnies, here are some brand-new Greek heroes; a cartoon about math stand-up comedy; and Elle Cordova’s new clip “File types hanging out.”
Enjoy!
J.
All that notwithstanding, enough stuff accumulated during all the October newsletters I skipped. At my primary blog between drafts, there are several new micro-reviews; a full review of Viktor Kossakovsky’s 2024 Architecton; a review of the Neue Musik concert “Musica do Brasil Meets ‘Save the Rainforest’”; and a blog post “Winter (Term) Is Coming!” on teaching game design to first-year students. At my secret level just drafts, there’s one new blog post and two linked-list items on LLM/GPT/AI topics: “François Chollet on the Prospects of Developing General Artificial Intelligence”; “Call Off the Asteroid, We Found an In-House Solution”; and “The Most Outlandishly Expensive Snake Oil Ever Peddled.” Finally, there are a few thoughts on “Midpoint, Revisited” at my Voidpunk blog. As for photographs, my set of Malaysia albums (Penang Island, Perak, Melaka, Kuala Lumpur) at Flickr is now complete! Plus, new entries for my Neighborhoods and Düsseldorf buckets, and the usual vintage-style travel squaries over at Pixelfed.
For the
Enjoy!
J.