Welcome new readers, thanks for joining! Quick reminder that if you’re in Montréal I also host a very informal coffee chat every couple of months, you can signup to be notified here, it’s called Les ponts (jusqu’à maintenant, plutôt en français mais “on parle bilingue”). ✕ Capitalism Killed Our Climate Momentum, Not “Human Nature” This at the […]
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I’m very happy to say that starting in August I’ll be helming another newsletter, this one a collaboration with Atelier 10, who publish the excellent Nouveau Projet print magazine. It’s called Repères and you can subscribe here. It’s in French and will be sent monthly, threading much the same topic selection as Sentiers. Lastly, since finishing up an important contract a […]
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For this issue, in the end, I kept a Cities section but I’m toying with the idea of streamlining things, having the usual few “featured” articles to start (any topic), then a Tech section (absorbing The Churn and AI), followed with something perhaps titled Shorts regrouping everything else. Oft included sections like Cities and Milieu would be folded in there. Thoughts? Yeas or nays? ✕ Elizabeth Denham: ‘Data […]
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You might have noticed that I did end up skipping two weeks to properly enjoy my vacation. I hope you used the time to catchup on past issues and other newsletter because this one is gigantic. I’m not sure if I should say “sorry” or “enjoy”. ✕ Future Human Not a new section/category but rather […]
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As you read this I am on vacation. As such, for once, I have enforced a hard deadline on myself and closed up shop before dinner/supper Friday. That has meant cutting reading and writing short a bit, making this issue more succinct than usual. Next Sunday is definitely off, then if I do manage to […]
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Happy father’s day to the dads around here. I hope some of what I include in these newsletters helps you in understanding the world we are leaving our kids and in taking some actions. ✕ Tackling the Ethical Challenges of Slippery Technology Anab Jain, starting from Google’s AI principles, show us some of the thorny […]
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This is a long one. It’s all good stuff (of course) but there are two main parts if you want to focus; ‘books and learning,’ followed by a ‘technology’ section. Then a short ‘cities’ and a very miscellaneous ‘miscellany.’ ✕ Don’t Eat Before Reading This I can’t say Anthony Bourdain is much in my usual “beats” […]
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This week ended up with something of a futures theme with critics of technology, design fiction, and a very dark future by Charlie Stross. Lots of drones. And my extreme 😡 of the week with Trudeau ignoring the future and purchasing a pipeline, with Bill McKibben’s reaction. ✕ Futuring “Why don’t you go live in […]
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Hello and sorry for the delayed arrival, quite a hectic week and the coming one will likely be the same so a shorter issue than the last few. ✕ ❤️ Barcelona is leading the fightback against smart city surveillance I really want to see an update on this in a year (or even 6 months), because […]
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The longest section this week is the one titled ‘Milieu’ which makes me realize again that I never did publish that glossary of terms a couple of people asked for. The use of ‘Milieu’ is something we used in The Alpine Review to encompass the natural world, our impact, and the related solutions and tools we come […]
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Lots of reading material this week as I did a bit of catching up and, as always, there’s a lot happening. Includes duplicitous Duplex, neo-colonialism, thoughtless AI, replicable cities, alchemy and hauntings, and minimal ethics for the anthropocene. ✕ Duplicitous About Google Duplex but it could easily have gone under The Churn. Google Duplex: An […]
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Welcome to new subscribers coming from my short stint at Kottke.org this week. I hope you enjoyed what I posted there. To those who didn’t follow, imho I did a pretty darn good job. So after a day away, breezing through the blog this morning, I decided to link to a few in the last section below. I do encourage you […]
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Sorry for sending this a bit late, the last couple of days didn’t turn out as expected. On the (very) positive side though, next week I’ll be guest editing Kottke.org. That’s a huge honour, I’ve been reading Jason pretty much since the beginning and I’ve always been a fan. I’ve said this before here but look at […]
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Busy weeks ahead but at least spring seems to finally be here in Montréal, a few week late. There are at least four or five longform articles I didn’t manage to read for this issue, hopefully for the next. I’m still playing around with the balance between “this just happened” and more evergreen stuff I […]
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There’s the very loose idea around this newsletter that it might, at some point, turn into something more like a magazine, or lead to a magazine project. Or a “publication,” which I see as a more bookish, less regular, but still periodical “thing.” CLOG being one example. Following a reader’s comment this week as well as a […]
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