Hello there, reader, and welcome back to another on-schedule Sunday issue of Kat’s Kable. As always, 10 great things to read - across topics. There’s a couple of themes today - mostly AI and profiles. Before I leave you to them, I have a request. For the last two years, I think, I’ve actually had degrowth in my subscriber base. That’s not nice, is it, huh. It’s my birthday this coming week, so as a present, I ask you to forward this issue of the Kable to five friends who you think might like it.
That’s that, then - I myself am fresh off a pretty tiring two-city work trip, so 8:45am sounds perfect for the first nap of the day.
1. I’ve Gone to Look for America - Atavist Magazine
Lovely piece by Masha Hamilton - she talks about a roadtrip she and her oldest son take up the Interstate 95 from Miami to Maine, and the conversations along the way - it’s really really nice.
In between the peacocks and the chocolate were startling revelations and moments of grace. They came from a Cajun great-grandmother driving an 18-wheeler. A philosophical cop from Georgia. An unhoused community living in cars, inventing rest-stop resilience. Conversations arrived unexpected, unguarded. Some drifted open, while others cracked wide in an instant. There were bursts of candor at vending machines and outside bathrooms—intimacy in the unlikeliest of places, with the murmur of the interstate a constant soundtrack.
2. Delivering Parcels in Beijing - Dial Magazine
This is a translated excerpt from Hu Anyan’s book I Deliver Parcels in Beijing - fun slice of life essay about delivering parcels in Beijing. I loved the whimsical interactions with some of the customers to whom Anyan was delivering his parcels.
I had no interest in falling out with my partner and bargaining with him at every turn. But neither did I want to work with someone who was going to take advantage. Imagine finishing later than a colleague every day yet earning less than them — of course I was going to feel irritated and dissatisfied, and at some point, I would stop really caring about the job. There is a reason that deep-sea fish are blind, and animals in the desert tolerant of thirst — a big part of who I am is determined by my environment and not my nature.
3. Ari Emanuel Takes on the World - New Yorker
I recently found a thread where people shared their favourite longform profiles - this one and the next are from that thread. I had no idea about Ari Emanuel before reading this piece, and wow. Emanuel is CEO of a company that owns major entertainment brands like UFC and WWE. His journey to get to this point has everything to do with his personality - his ability to talk, charm, fundraise and always look for the next big deal. Superb story.
4. The Secret History of Tiger Woods - ESPN
2016 profile of Tiger Woods - it primarily talks about how a lot of things in his life went downhill after his dad died. The entire thing made me feel pretty sad about the way things turned out. What I didn’t really appreciate, though, was that the entire essay seemed to be quite apologetic for Woods’ actions. I don’t think his actions are justified in the context of his grief and his inability to cope normally, but the detailed context I learnt by reading this profile helps to understand it to some extent, I guess.
5. Selling Lemons - Frank Chimero’s blog
The thinking goes like this: if a buyer can’t distinguish between good and bad, everything gets priced somewhere in the middle. If you’re selling junk, this is fantastic news—you’ll probably get paid more than your lemon is worth. If you’re selling a quality used car, this price is insultingly low. As a result, people with good cars leave the market to sell their stuff elsewhere, which pushes the overall quality and price down even further, until eventually all that’s left on the market are lemons.
I think we’re in the lemon stage of the internet.
6. Think of language models like ChatGPT as a “calculator for words” - Simon Willison’s blog
This is a 2023 blog post that I just stumbled upon - but I think it’s a really useful framework. Things are a bit different now with most LLM chatbots hooked up to search engines, but primarily they are word calculators. They can manipulate words well - so use them when that’s what you want to do.
7. if not agency? - LessWrong
Interesting post on the LessWrong blog about AI - some interesting things I found: the concept of high-actuation instead of automation, in the sense that a photograph is not an automated painting, rather a new form of visual output made possible by new types of “actuators”. Another interesting thing being that AI will enable a lot of software “soloware” (you vibe-coding your own software), and how it would be useful to create a community around that. All of this wraps around the central idea that “good” AI is that which enhances our agency.
The agentic frame on AI fits with the automation meme I pointed out: an agentic AI is a sort of automated human, engineered to replace human work. A co-agentic AI would instead be engineered with the high-actuation philosophy in mind, designed to enhance what humans can do.
8. Claude Code Is All You Need - Gareth Dwyer’s blog
Fun piece about vibe-coding with Claude Code and how good it is. I’ve never used it, and honestly don’t have any immediate ideas of what to do, but maybe I should. Have you made fun soloware with Claude Code? Lemme know!
9. Confessions of a Watch Geek - New Yorker
2017 piece by Gary Shteyngart about his journey into watch obsession, and becoming a “W.I.S”, i.e. a Watch Idiot Savant. Pretty fun read overall especially juxtaposed with his journey coinciding with the rise of Trump (1.0) in the US.
10. The Eagle Hunters of Kyrgyzstan - Atavist
I did not know that nomads in Kyrgyzstan hunted with eagles. This is so cool! Amazing pictures and what a cool story.
