Maybe I'm hopeful

Matt Willey

This week went by painfully, but thankfully also quite quickly. The co-op has a slate of ongoing projects that required attention, but I also helped close two projects this week. I would be pleased to have a bit less on my plate, but, alas, two closed and I've been onboarded to a different two. We don't have enough projects lined up for the near future – several of these projects are rather small. It's good to have work to do, so I'm not really complaining.

I finished writing a keynote proposal linking together recognition and the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. I'll be submitting said proposal next week, once my brain is fresh enough to read through it and make sure this week's Laura was making sense. You might have already noticed that I'm interested in the connection between human happiness and saving the world. Activist burnout is a lived experience, so I'm clearly trying to be careful in how much I think about this stuff.

What if climate change meant not doom — but abundance? > https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/15/rebecca-solnit-climate-change-wealth-abundance/
We need the right kind of climate optimism > https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23622511/climate-doomerism-optimism-progress-environmentalism
Slow Learning > https://www.itcilo.org/resources/why-dont-you-slow-down

Maybe I'm traumatised

Isaac Cordal

Maybe it's finally time for me to write about my trauma. I've kind of written about it before, as a shadow. Cryptic and without the nuance. Just brain vomit spat out as words. And maybe I should write about it now without feeding anything into AI, as I'm wont to do lately. I ask the AI to spit some crap out and then completely change it. It's a good tool, these massive language learning models. But AI can't feel and thus it can't write about the trauma that has been bubbling up all week.

The AI hype is funny to me, so reminiscent of the crypto hype from last year. March of 2024 will probably have some hilarious news articles about the downfall of OpenAI and AI startups and their ethical fuck ups and more about the collapse of humanity's ability to think and so on.

I did write about my trauma a bit this week. I thought about sending it to you, but as with most of my "Laura has the devil inside" writings, I think it might be better as a book. It's been started as a book for damn near a decade, but I haven't written it yet. Maybe it's time.

How to Wake Up > https://leanpub.com/howtowakeup
The stupidity of AI > https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/16/the-stupidity-of-ai-artificial-intelligence-dall-e-chatgpt
Two Harvard Grads Saw Big Profits in African Education. Children Paid the Price. > https://theintercept.com/2023/03/23/bridge-schools-africa-kenya-education

Maybe I need help?

It's going to be a strange couple of weeks in April, as my closet colleague will be on vacation. We work together a lot so it will feel strange to be the one left in the office (I was just off for three weeks at the end of February and beginning of March). Although my vacation is rather fresh, I'm already feeling like I need another. I think it's the over-expenditure of emotions this week. My PTSD was triggered. I'm tired.

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