The Dice — 032

It's an understatement to write "what a week", but that's what comes to mind right now. I'm doing what I can to extend "dry January" to also include the news or at least too much time consuming it. Thankfully I managed to tuck my brain into two books, Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir and The Nineties Book by Chuck Klosterman. I've enjoyed Andy's book but I was quickly reminded that half of his stories are math and science lessons. Chuck's book came to me while researching how our society has changed since the Millennium. It's a great book and I wish I would have read it sooner. What are you reading to kick off this year?

Alright, grab a beverage and get comfortable. Rolling now...

There’s no way we get through this year without seeing, reading, and hearing about artificial general intelligence or AGI. “If you think the current pace of progress in AI is rapid, you haven’t seen anything yet: with AGI, AI will be able to improve itself.” From Vox, “An AI will be generally intelligent if it can do everything a human being can do, as well as a human being can, including meta-tasks like learning to complete new tasks.” In other words. Speaking of Vox, they predict a 30% chance that a “major lab” will claim their robot has achieved AGI this year. Given that current AI can’t remember more than an hour-long conversation, I’d put those odds closer to 1%, but then what do I know? However this shakes out and no matter your perspective on using AI, when this does happen it’s going to be disruptive. And likely in ways many of us haven’t spent time imagining.

In addition, this piece from Every. “After reading more than 20 recaps of 2024 and predictions for this one, it’s clear to me that 2025 won't be about AI versus humans, but rather about those individuals and organizations who harness AI effectively versus those who don’t.”

Now that we’re informed on the future, let's return our attention to rekindling our relationship with curiosity and exploration off-screen with Clive Thompson’s 9 Ways to ‘Rewild Your Attention’. “The concept was that the algorithms in big-tech feeds have two problems. They focus heavily on the hot viral here-and-now: what highly popular folks are talking and arguing about, this very instant. And they focus on material that’s customized for you — except it’s a dull, Demographics 101 cartoon of who you are and what you’re interested in.” Clive suggests putting down the phone, browsing vs. searching, reading blogs and RSS feeds, using real books instead of screens, making your own content, and at times doing absolutely nothing at all. And then rewild yourself.

Related: Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth.

From the Wall Street Journal, The Number of Americans Wanting to Switch Jobs Hits a 10-Year High. “Job satisfaction has fallen to its lowest level in recent years as employees feel more stuck—and frustrated—where they are.” With that in mind, it seems like a good time to repost Quit Your Job by Wolf Tivy. “The world is full of ideas and opportunities to explore, but it takes time outside of structure to even adjust your eyes to the landscape of possibility. You are cramped by your job, unable to make the class of investments that is necessary for a life beyond the existing tracks.” 

Being out on your own is a lot to manage, but have so many more tools to assist in every aspect of the work and life.

This image caught and held my attention this week. It’s a house designed by architect Greg Chasen that is still intact in a neighborhood utterly destroyed by fire this week. Chasen posted the photo with a statement on X, “No words really - just a horror show. Some of the design choices we made here helped. But we were also very lucky.” Perhaps, but the home was constructed with passive house standards, likely why the home still stands. Built primarily for energy efficiency, this type of architecture has the added benefit of sealing the home from fire starters like flying embers. In addition to this house, homes built with concrete also did well against the blaze.

My guess is Greg’s practice is going to be very busy in the years ahead. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the State of California and cities throughout Southern California enact new building code requirements in the near future.

“We detected plastic chemicals in 86% of the foods we tested.” Nat Friedman and a team of four people spent half a year investigating the amount of plastic in our food supply. They tested hundreds of products from raw milk and meat to processed foods. “At least one of the 18 chemicals was found in every baby food, prenatal supplement, human breast milk, yogurt, and ice cream product that we tested, to name only a few categories. We also found plastic chemicals in all the products we tested from Starbucks, Gerber, Chobani, Straus, Celsius, Blue Bottle, RXBAR, Coca-Cola, Tartine, and Ghirardelli.” Although this problem has been known for a year or two, the PlasticList provides an incredibly detailed view that shows the problem is far-reaching, more than I would have thought. Spread the word!

If you do anything new in 2025, get rid of plastic in your kitchen.

I can say with certainty that my life changed dramatically when Barnes & Noble opened a store in Anchorage, Alaska. We had a few bookstores but they were nothing like the large Cathedrals of Print. Amazon decimated that market (RIP Borders) but B&N not only managed to survive, it's growing. They opened 50 new stores in 2024. Says new CEO James Daunt, "All I've done is bring the principles of independent bookselling to a chain and exploded the very notion of what a chain retailer really is." Instead of every store being instructed on how to do everything down to the angle of a book display, store employees are now empowered to make many decisions at the local level. It’s a perfect demonstration of how trust, autonomy, and support from leadership can have major positive outcomes. I'm all for more having more book stores.

It certainly helps that Gen Z loves to read.

Published in Tacoma, Washington with Who's Afraid of the Art of Noise on 11.