A week filled with martial arts practice, conversations around AI, Copyright, and what it means to be an author in today’s society, and more League of Legends Arena than I care to admit.
I finally decided to get back to martial arts, and have started attending a local Wing Chun school after work two days a week. Even just in my first couple days, I can tell it is a very different style from when I previously studied Choy Li Fut. The classes are about 1.5 hours long and are a mix of form practice, partner practice, and learning new techniques. I know the first third or so of Siu Nim Tao form and have been practicing it a couple times a day outside of class.
I’m really excited to be participating in this class, and it’s nice to get to interact with people who aren’t just purely in tech. I realize that I’ve really over-optimized my life for interacting with people in tech. Most of the people I’ve met in the class aren’t in tech, though I did overhear a couple high school students talking about the latest League of Legends patch changes, and one of them mentioned he was going to study Computer Science starting in the fall. One tech-adjacent person in the class besides me is a pretty good ratio for the bay area, I think.
I’ve also done a few 30 minute sessions of yoga at home, which isn’t really related to Wing Chun but also doesn’t deserve its own section. I’ve never done yoga before this week, but it has been helpful in stretching and increasing flexibility. I still have a long way to go, though, and I might try to start attending a yoga class at the local YMCA.
One other thing that always surprises me, though it shouldn’t by now, is how much I want healthier foods when I’m more active. I went for a ruck on Wednesday and stopped at Whole Foods on my way back just to buy some fruit.
I attended an event at Internet Archive on Friday titled “Authorship in an Age of Monopoly and Moral Panic.” It was hosted by Authors Alliance and covered a variety of topics surrounding the use of LLMs in the production of creative works, copyright implications for the input and output of LLMs, as well as discussion around the open access to media, both scientific and generally published media.
Cory Doctorow gave the keynote and covered topics in line with the theme of the event, and also very familiar topics from The Internet Con, which I finished reading a few weeks ago.
Overall I really enjoyed the event. It was my first time visiting Internet Archive, and I left with new thoughts around how we interact with LLMs as a society. I wish I had written down the names of all the panelists, but I thought every one of them brought interesting ideas to the table.
Bruce Lee: Artist of Life
By Bruce Lee, John Little
ISBN: 978-0804832632
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I read through the sections on Jeet Kune Do and Acting, and I’m in the final sections of the book, Self-Knowledge followed by Letters. I think one thing that I’ve always really liked is that Bruce Lee’s outlook on life was this sort of blend of taoist and zen philosophies, mixed with practical modern (at the time) philosophies. He aimed to be an “artist of life”, as the title suggests, and I really like this sentiment. Why do I have to be just a hacker, or just a security engineer, or just a rapper, or just an anything? It’s all just part of life.