Rubenerd

I’ll admit to being one of those people who roll their eyes at billion dollar stadium upgrades, especially given the steep opportunity cost. But Jack Snape may have proved me wrong:

A total of 96,000 people turned up on Friday. Then 96,000 on Saturday. And 96,000 on Sunday, highlighting the increasing popularity of arena spectaculars. Globally, shows in the top 100 stadiums grossed US$3.6bn ($5.5bn) in 2023 according to live music trade publication Pollstar, up 35% on the year before and more than double 2019, the year before the pandemic set in.

With every passing concert – and every glowing wristband handed out – the role of stadiums in the community is slowly being transformed, according to those working in the sector. From exorbitant athletic indulgences, or worse, white elephants, large venues are aspiring to be cultural hubs and economic engine rooms for cosmopolitan cities.

Jack is referring to Taylor Swift’s current Australian tour here, though Clara and I had a similar experience seeing Paul McCartney in Sydney last year. AAAAAAAAA we saw Paul McCartney! But I digress.

Seeing these as entertainment and cultural venues puts their functions and societal role in a completely different light. These aren’t just catherdrals to sport, they’re for everyone.

This raises some interesting questions. What can stadium desginers do to better accomodate a range of cultural activities, whether it be someone projecting a ball or their voice? Do we even call these stadiums anymore? How do we designate priorities, or schedule conflicting uses?

The Romans had this figured out thousands of years ago, along with concrete and numbers. Wait, scratch number III.

This week marked the one decade anniversary of the end of the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine, and the Revolution of Dignity that ended the corrupt Yanucovych regime. Having lost his puppet, Putin began his invasion of the country in Crimea, which he accelerated in 2022 with his lie of a “special military operation”.

We’ve also had the news recently that Alexei Navalny died while in custody in Russia. If you believe the official narrative, you probably bought the lie of WMDs in Iraq too.

These are dark times for my Eastern European friends. It’s also not much better in other parts of the world right now. I wish I had something profound or useful to say, but I’m a loss for words.

Here’s a novel idea for aggressor politicians everywhere: stop killing people. I know, what a fucking concept.

So the story goes, is a phrase with four words. Woz’s creativity and engineering prowess are the stuff of legend, in particular his ruthless ability for optimisation. He could look at a printed circuit board, rewire it, and remove half the components while maintaining the same functionality.

I do not possess such skill, at least not when it comes to electronics. But every now and then I look at the page source on a random website, and am bowled over at how much cruft there is. I then feel this irrational and unproductive urge to clear it all out, and recreate it with basic HTML tags, just to remind myself it’s still possible.

Someone shared a link to a CNN article with me recently. It was 9,667 lines of HTML, for 30 paragraphs of text. Even with all the extra things pages are expected to serve now… 9,667 lines. And they weren’t even word-wrapped.

The web hasn’t been crafted by human hands for a long time, but it still surprises me just how deep the rabbit hole goes on these pages now. Do you really need twenty nested divs to render a sentence, or an entire block of JavaScript to show a code sample? Evidently the answer is yes.

My Design and Tech teacher in high school often said she admired people who were so committed to their craft, they’d put effort into things people wouldn’t see. Her example was a tradie who smoothed out a perfect layer of adhesive before placing a tile, where a blob or two would suffice. The only people who’d likely ever notice were the wreckers or renovators who’d attack the wall decades later.

HTML is blobs now. Which is probably fine, and I should get over it. I should also exercise more, eat more salads, and spend less on coffee.

One of Phil’s latest newsletters enumerated happiness boosters, which I’m all for. This one stuck out for me:

Three Cheers for the Day: Each night, think of 3-5 cool things that happened. It could be anything, from a tasty coffee to nailing a work task.

I can’t tell you how much this has helped me. Wait, yes I can, I’m doing it now. It’s helped me a lot!

I’ve gone as far as maintaing a text file of small accomplishments. Sometimes I can add large projects to them, other times the tasks are as simple as “unstuck kitchen drawer”.

I’ve mentioned a few times how easy it is to pick apart inaccuracies in media coverage on a topic you know about, and the unease that sets in when you realise every topic likely has the same issues.

I’m by no means the first person to notice this! Wikipedia quotes a portion of a speech by American author and filmmaker Michael Crichton:

The pear is native to coastal and mildly temperate regions of the Old World, from Western Europe and North Africa east across Asia. It is a medium-sized tree, reaching 10–17 m (33–56 ft) tall, often with a tall, narrow crown; a few species are shrubby.

That’s clearly the wrong article. Let’s try again:

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories.

That same page also references this New York Times article from 1982, attributed to journalist Erwin Knoll:

Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.

Baseband management controllers are what separate desktops (and even some billing themselves as workstations) from proper servers.

Surprisingly, BMCs can also stand for other things, including:

• Brisbane Melbourne Canberra
• Big, mighty cranium
• Bedok MacPherson… Canberra
• Brandishing my cutlass
• Brewed morning coffee
• Bánh mì chicken
• Belgians make chocolate
• Borrowed mandolin case

Thank you.

Recently I had a discussion with a friend who’s art was stolen by a generative AI user, and regurgitated onto online stores. She said it hurt, but that she wasn’t “qualified to comment”, given her lack of IT education and experience. I respected her caution; can you imagine if everyone admitted their ignorance? Many politicians, journalists, and managers would be out a job!

But I disagree with her premise for a simple reason. An artist is a stakeholder (can you tell I’ve been writing tenders and docs at work again)? Stakeholders are integral to the success of any system, and their feedback is vital to evaluating its performance, impact, and areas for improvement. A layperson’s comments provide badly needed context, and serve as a reality check. I know from my own experience that IT engineers and talking heads are easily blinkered by complexity and the shiny, and can miss the forest for the trees. We all know of examples.

In a similar vain, if you’re at all into the modern urbanist movement, you may have also seen The Nth Review’s critique of YouTubers not providing actionable advocacy advice. This isn’t true, but he also fell into this professional comment trap:

The problem is, few of these creators [sigh –ed] aren’t actually urban or traffic planning professionals, except maybe Dave from City Beautiful or Ray at CityNerd. These other creators, including NotJustBikes and myself, are enthusiasts, and fans. And we may know some key lingo, but we’re not in the bureaucratic murk fighting battles day to day.

He’s right to an extent. The specifics are beyond the scope of this post, but people need the experience and expertise to successfully advocate for change, and its important to get one’s hands dirty. I’ve learned a lot over the last year or so about how to engage with my local and state government in Australia.

But again, I think he sells himself short in the same way my friend did. Expertise isn’t a prerequisite to being a stakeholder. You don’t need to be a statistician to have opinions on generative AI, nor do you need to be a traffic planner to resent being hit by a land yacht on wheels. Someone may lack sufficient understanding to recommend prescriptive steps to resolve an issue. But if a system affects you, you have a right to report on how it works (or doesn’t) for you. This is crucial.

I think this caution comes from a good place. We see how unfettered, unchecked ignorance has lead to bad actors wielding disproportionate amounts of power, whether they be corrupt politicians or online trolls. I still remember our former prime minister commenting that “the laws of mathematics don’t trump the laws of Australia” when discussing cryptography. And he even had previous industry experience!

Here comes the proverbial posterior prognostication: but… someone with good faith concerns are just as valid as the engineer like me who’s building the system. A robust team and process can accept this advice and weigh it appropriately.

His image gallery of responses are wonderful:

1. Do not reply to deny my lived experience.

2. Do not reply unless you have direct experience.

3. This is an observation.

4. Do not reply with a software suggestion.

5. Do not reply to tell me to use open source software.

6. Do not reply to teach me about capitalism or enshittification. I know.

7. Do not reply to tell me you don’t have this problem.

8. Do not reply to mansplain my post back to me.

9. I’m just complaining, not asking for help.

10. Do not reply to tell me why a thing I like is bad.

The visceral, gleeful response to these stickers being shared around speaks to how common these replies have become. I know from experience that I can expect a wall of such comments whenever I appear on the Orange Peanut Gallery or similar.

I’d classify these into two groups: lacking empathy, and missing context.

A few years ago I was in an office building with a failing lift that crashed so violently into the basement, I ended up with swollen ankles. It was terrifying, and it hurt! I was assured that what I felt was impossible, because safety elevators are a thing. Why did people feel the need to post this? Was it pride that they watched the same documentary about how lifts worked?

An example of missing context is macOS. I’ll post some frustration about a bug Apple hasn’t fixed, and I’ll receive comments that they don’t have the same problem, or that I should use Linux distro X. It doesn’t factor in than I did have the problem, and that I can’t run this program for my job on desktop Linux. I’ve called these replies unhelpful helpful comments before, because the solutions people offer aren’t relevant or actionable.

I generally get friendly comments, in a low-enough volume that I’m able to factor in intent when reading them. Someone telling me to try Linux when I post about Windows 3.1 isn’t being obtuse, they just haven’t read many of my other posts about retrocomputing. But I can see why they’d grate if you were receiving hundreds of them.

I’d only add one to Dan’s list: do not reply asking why I did/didn’t do something. The former is both a lack of empathy and context, and the latter is proving a negative, which is nigh impossible.

It’s Music Monday time! Each and every Monday (cough), I impart some information about a song, musician, or album such that we may Ravel in their artistry. No, I’m not apologising for that.

Today’s installment has a fun backstory. For the last couple of years I’ve been following the progress of the History FX team and their Lusitania: The Greyhound’s Wake efforts. Billed as a virtual museum, this team of talented artists and 3D designers have been faithfully recreating all the major rooms and decks of my favourite ever ocean liner, the RMS Lusitania. I can’t wait to be able to play it!

Part of their research lead them to record and produce an album of music from the time period, which I’ve been playing on repeat since I bought and downloaded it. Each song has two versions: a polished studio production, and a vintage-style recording straight from the piano. There’s definitely something about the latter that places you right there in the dining saloon, or the first class reception as you steam across the ocean at the turn of last century.

I say old chap, are we about to capture the Blue Riband? Jolly good!

If you’re into old-timey tunes with a bit of history, this was a lot of fun. The landing page lets you purchase the accompanying eBook, but they also have links to online stores to download the tracks.