Grief, Growth, Bluets, Theatre, AI, Sustainability
Theatre, disability, sustainability, AI, and architecture. Insights from Bluets, economic innovations, AI commentaries, Terry Tao on maths; Ethiopian factory work, and Jhana meditation.
Theatre/Poetry: Bluets, performance; a meditation
Theatre/Disability: Perfect Show for Rachel
Sustainability/Economics: Advance Market Commitments guide (Nan Ransohoff)
AI: Leopold Aschenbrenner on AI, Dwakesh Patel commentary
Terry Tao: On Maths and AI, Scientific America; progress on Rieman hypothesis
Sustainability: Bloomberg NEF forecasts, RMI forecasts
Architecture: Hana Loftus and Sunspot
Economics: Working in an Ethiopian factory (Oliver Kim)
Jhana practice: Nadia Asparouhova switching off consciousness
Links: Moths, cutting onions, neglected disease R&D
I sneaked out for a little theatre. Bluets. A Perfect Show for Rachel. Both have stayed with me for different reasons.
Bluets is an intense poetic performance art meditation on grief, loss and solitude. Knowing the poem helps in experiencing the play, I think. I had reflections:
Bluets dances with a multitude of threads. Threads that fray. Threads that loop. Threads that splice. Threads that twist.
One thread is a form of love story which is also a sex story which is also a blue story which is also an identity story which is also a grief story which is also a loss story.
Maggie Nelson’s Bluets is structured as 240 numbers prose-poem-aphoristic-sentence-paragraphs.
The numbers are linear. The threads are non-linear.
I see within Nelson’s Bluets a kaleidoscope of threaded images. Micro-vignettes. Fractured tableaus.
I say I see
as this is the readers’ share, the audiences’ share, the viewers’ share of the work.
In Katie Mitchell’s Bluets I see these vignettes created into physical on stage tableaus. Images projected on screen. Images made by the performers. Vignettes shapes by the stage hands. The stage hand who cast shadow and light and absence, who cast negative space and liminal space and forgotten space.
In Margaret Perry’s Bluets I hear the breaks the caesuras the cuts for the performers.
All of these Bluets orbit the feminist.
My full blog on it here, which is more if you are interested in the ideas of - grief - love - sex - identity - poetic form - language form - colour - culture - philosophy - queer - non-queer - theatre.
I admit that the work is probably a niche for many. My further reflections are here.
I’d like to commend the work of my friend Hana Loftus. One of her team’s projects - Sunspot - at Jaywick Sands - recently won the award of ‘Best Use of Brownfield Land in Placemaking’ at the Planning Magazine awards amongst a few other commendations this year. We speak about it at length in this podcast.
Jaywick Sands is one of the poorest places in England with multiple challenges. Sunspot (at c. only GBP5m) to my mind is part of a design and place based solution and touches on notions of what an element of civic pride might be. Guardian review here.
RIBA: Sunspot is the product of unusual initiative and diligence on the part of architect HAT Projects. When the Colchester-based practice was commissioned to develop a Place Plan for the coastal village of Jaywick – often called the most deprived place in England – its task was to develop a long-term regeneration strategy. Talking to residents, however, the architect saw an immediate opportunity to address local unemployment through the construction of new workspace. HAT Projects took the idea to its local authority client and was appointed to conduct a feasibility study. By surveying potential tenants rather than agents it gathered sufficient evidence of demand, and its business case and economic impact assessment won additional funding from central government.
The two-storey building provides 24 well-considered spaces to suit a range of small businesses: shops, offices, light-industrial units and a double-height market hall. It stands in the centre of Jaywick, on a seafront site that had been vacant since the demolition of the Sunspot amusement arcade 20 years ago, and needed a distinctive character befitting its important civic role. A see-saw roofline echoes the street-facing gables of Jaywick’s pre-war chalet bungalows, and makes the building seem bigger than it is. Brightly coloured metal awnings further increase its apparent size, and add playful flourishes to what is in essence an economical shed.
I was reading this piece (What is it like to work in an Ethiopian factory by Oliver Kim, HT Tyler Cowen) which references field work in low wage factory work in Ethiopia. It struck me that one of the reasons for the Sunspot success was the detailed fieldwork - also known as stakeholder interviews / surveys etc. - that Hana’s team did.
One of the challenges for international development such as what to do about economic development in Ethiopia is that what people think in theory, sitting away from the ground can be very different from the practical realities.
To give you a sense of some stats - the LGBTQ+ UK population is about 2%. The learning disabled population is also about 2% and wider disability is almost 20%.
I have an interest in what disability or the atypical tells us about what it might mean to be human.
I’ve had several podcast conversations touching on this topic.
Disability (or in part crip) philosophy and rights: my conversations with:
And in part SEN education with Naomi Fisher (education)
The theatre piece, Perfect Show for Rachel puts Rachel who is learning disabled in the centre of the show and more or less in charge - although who is in charge of a group of improvisers is debatable at times.
It occurred to me I have never knowingly seen a theatre show with a learning disabled person at its centre.
We can discuss the practical accommodations theatres might have to make in making such theatre but perhaps that is making excuses for ourselves.
Most theatres do not allow you to re-enter the majority of their shows and most performances are not “relaxed”. I believe these type of rules were imposed by the richer classes over the poorer classes starting in the 17 and 1800s, an indication that perhaps these sorts of rules are outmoded (and definitely not inclusive).
Shakespeare’s performances were always relaxed and never strict. Groundlings were famously boisterous.
One central joy and satisfying piece of dramaturgy was the way the audience and performers are drawn into Rachel’s world. A non-sequitur joke is funny to Rachel and her world. Initially, those not in her world may not “get it”. Yet, the improv technique of repetition brings the audience in on the joke. Or not, if you don’t get it that’s fine. Rachel does. And as the performers remind us, it is Rachel’s “Perfect Show”, not ours.
There is much more to comedy and jokes than laughter. I speak to director Lee Simpson about the language of Improv in this podcast. A little introspection reveals the show observes a great deal on what disability means and what it means to be human. It’s funny and full of energy. This is theatre that is aware and alert and attuned. It leans into the idea of theatre as a medium to understand what others might feel and think and by doing so understand ourselves better, and maybe understand what being human might mean.
From the Guardian review (of course Rachel doesn’t care about reviews):
Why can’t more theatre be like this? Open, relaxed, fun and full of love, Perfect Show for Rachel has been created by Flo O’Mahony and the brilliant members of Zoo Co. It is directed by Flo’s older sister Rachel, who has learning disabilities and lives in a care home. Rachel sits at a control desk with 39 colourful buzzers, each of which represents a different scene, song or game that the company has created in collaboration with her. The fart buzzer will get quite a work out. But so too will the birthday, Kylie and bag buzzer, alongside all sorts of carefully crafted moments that will take us into Rachel’s world with generosity, imagination and heart.
Every performance Zoo Co creates is “relaxed” and they have really mastered the art. The cast mills about on stage – dancing, smiling and waving – as we find our seats. Rachel chats easily throughout the show and her words are projected on to a screen. At her request, we are also shown a live-feed of her watching the show. It’s a total delight: such joy and concentration. But also: boredom and distraction. Everything is captured and everything is allowed (rarely have I heard such a happy and giggly audience).
Recommended for anyone thinking about what theatre can be. Run is currently ended, but might come back. Blurb on show here.
Nan Ransohoff on AMCs. Advance market commitments allow us to buy products that don’t yet exist, giving innovators an incentive to invent and scale new products. This is a practical guide on how to start an AMC
This is using some economic ideas on how to accelerate and spur innovation/transition in risky markets.
The number of deep experts on AI is limited. I suspect the number is in the thousands, maybe low 10,000s I understand enough to know I am nowhere near expert but enough to judge if others do have expertise.
Leopold Aschenbrenner (I podcast with him in 2021 here) is an expert. He has well formed views on AI. These may be wrong, but are highly considered. So for those interested, it’s worth reading his current thesis of where we are and where we might be going.
Also his recent podcast discussion with Dwakesh Patel; and Zvi dissects and agrees and disagrees with many of the ideas.
Also on AI, I think these comments by one of the world’s greatest mathematicians - some argue currently the world’s best, although I am unsure how exactly you measure this - on how AI can help maths is interesting.
With formalization projects, what we’ve noticed is that you can collaborate with people who don’t understand the entire mathematics of the entire project, but they understand one tiny little piece. It’s like any modern device. No single person can build a computer on their own, mine all the metals and refine them, and then create the hardware and the software. We have all these specialists, and we have a big logistics supply chain, and eventually we can create a smartphone or whatever. Right now, in a mathematical collaboration, everyone has to know pretty much all the mathematics, and that is a stumbling block, as [Scholze] mentioned. But with these formalizations, it is possible to compartmentalize and contribute to a project only knowing a piece of it. I think also we should start formalizing textbooks. If a textbook is formalized, you can create these very interactive textbooks, where you could describe the proof of a result in a very high-level sense, assuming lots of knowledge. But if there are steps that you don’t understand, you can expand them and go into details—all the way down the axioms if you want to. No one does this right now for textbooks because it’s too much work. But if you’re already formalizing it, the computer can create these interactive textbooks for you. It will make it easier for a mathematician in one field to start contributing to another because you can precisely specify subtasks of a big task that don’t require understanding everything. (H/T Tyler Cowen).
If you have any interest in maths then the interview in Scientic American is worth reading.
I was even more moved by this description of progress other mathematicans have made on the Rieman hypothesis. The maths is so alien to the lay person that even this “lay” description falls into the poetic and alien. The summary is:
There has been a remarkable breakthrough towards the Riemann hypothesis (though still very far from fully resolving this conjecture) by Guth and Maynard making the first substantial improvement to a classical 1940 bound of Ingham regarding the zeroes of the Riemann zeta function (and more generally, controlling the large values of various Dirichlet series):
I found this passage oddly poetic, both alien but comforting:
“The arguments are largely Fourier analytic in nature. The first few steps are standard, and many analytic number theorists, including myself, who have attempted to break the Ingham bound, will recognize them; but they do a number of clever and unexpected maneuvers, including controlling a key matrix of phases 𝑛𝑖𝑡=𝑒𝑖𝑡log𝑛
by raising it to the sixth (!) power (which on the surface makes it significantly more complicated and intractable); refusing to simplify a certain complicated Fourier integral using stationary phase, and thus conceding a significant amount in the exponents, in order to retain a certain factorized form that ultimately turns out to be more useful than the stationary phase approximation; and dividing into cases depending on whether the locations where the large values of a Dirichlet series occur have small, medium, or large additive energy, and treating each case by a somewhat different argument. Here, the precise form of the phase function
𝑡log𝑛
that is implicit in a Dirichlet series becomes incredibly important; this is an unexpected way to exploit the special features of the exponential sums arising from analytic number theory, as opposed to the more general exponential sums that one may encounter in harmonic analysis.”
The blog section is on Terry Tao’s Mastodon here. (HT Michael Nielsen).
Forecasts and models are always wrong. Some are helpful. BNEF have one of the most thorough and the 2024 update is out.
BloombergNEF’s Energy Transition Investment Trends 2024 finds that renewable energy, electric vehicles, hydrogen and carbon capture all drive investment growth year-on-year
• China leads with $676 billion invested in 2023, or 38% of the global total
• Together, the EU, US and UK invested more than China in 2023, which was not the case in 2022
• Investment in the clean energy supply chain hit $135 billion globally in 2023, and could rise to $259 billion by 2025
The report finds that electrified transport is now the largest sector for spending in the energy transition, growing 36% in 2023 to $634 billion. This figure includes spending on electric cars, buses, two- and three-wheelers and commercial vehicles, as well as associated infrastructure.
One to read for energy geeks or sustainability interested folk.
Also, somewhat techno-optimist (techno-realist?) is the RMI annual review also recently out.
The RMI energy presentation, Kingsmill Bond et al: "The energy system is being transformed by the exponential forces of renewables, electrification, and efficiency.
• The orthodox view of slow change is wrong. New clean technologies beat old fossil commodities because clean technologies' costs fall over time on learning curves, they are universal, and they grow quickly.
Exponential change has been remarkable in the past decade. Cleantech costs have fallen by up to 80 percent, while investment is up nearly tenfold and solar generation has risen twelvefold. Electricity has become the largest source of useful energy, and the deep force of efficiency has reduced energy demand by a fifth.
On my linkedin. Another for energy geeks, but the slides are easy to digest for the lay person.
I am open minded about what meditation, consciousness and similar practices might mean for us as humans. I view Nadia Asparouhova as smart, curious and open minded and this is her recent guide to jhanas.
The jhanas are a series of eight (or nine) altered mental states, which progress from euphoria, to calm, to dissolution of reality – culminating in cessation, or loss of consciousness. They are induced via sustained concentration, without any external stimuli or substances. This is a practical guide on how to do them yourself.
J1 (Pleasant Sensations): euphoric, bright, sunny, yellow
J2 (Joy): gratitude, beaming, radiating, hot pink
J3 (Contentment): content, reasoned, soft, wide, robin’s egg blue
J4 (Utter Peacefulness): dissociative, stillness, bathtub, cashmere, felt, muted lavender
J5 (Infinity of Space): disembodied, infinite, outer space, grayscale
J6 (Infinity of Consciousness): beauty, benevolence, grace, psychedelic, rose petal pink
J7 (No-thingness): —— (nothing in nothingness)
J8 (Neither Perception Nor Non-Perception): surreal, dissolution, black velvet studded with colorful ’80s rhinestones and gold that wink in and out of existence
J9 (Cessation): [cannot be described; no direct experience; consciousness is switched off]
The word jhana comes from Buddhist scriptures, where they were first described. However, as many meditators like to point out, jhanas predate Buddhism. The Buddha experienced jhanas spontaneously as a child, and likely is not the first or only person to have experienced them.
I am not a Buddhist, nor would I describe myself as a meditator. I’m just a curious person who wanted to try a new thing, and was gobsmacked by what I experienced. Prior to attempting the jhanas, I’d guess that I had maybe 30 hours of lifetime meditation experience, scattered over a decade or more: in other words, not much. But with just over 20 hours of practice, I progressed through all nine jhanic states.
Links:
How to cut an onion (NYT)
https://x.com/benyeohben/status/1801524767071060134
Lost the war on moths (Atlantic)
https://x.com/benyeohben/status/1796486345185210615
Return on R&D on neglected diseases
https://x.com/benyeohben/status/1796071926290383242
Thanks for reading. Be well.