A five mile mostly out and back trail (one small loop element) near the Carquinez Strait.
Start at the parking area close to Eckley Pier (worth a quick detour, be careful crossing the train tracks). Follow Bull Valley Trail up to Carquinez Overlook Loop Trail and down to Port Costa. Go through Port Costa (I'd download the route for this bit) and follow an unnamed (as far as I can tell) trail up to the top of Carquinez Strait Regional Shoreline Park for dramatic views over to the Benicia-Martinez Bridge and Mt. Diablo. The whole hike is pretty exposed but very attractive with great views and a nice town in the middle. Highly recommended.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Bull Valley Trail to Port Costa #hike#bullvalley#map Five mile hike from Eckley Pier to Port Costa via Bull Valley Trail and then up again to the top of Carquinez Strait Regional Shoreline Park.)
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, February 19, 2022.
Timelapse video of the super flower blood moon lunar eclipse on May 26, 2021:
I left my GoPro Hero 8 out overnight in the hopes that the San Francisco fog would cooperate. It did, somewhat! There is some cloud cover scudding by but you can see the eclipse pretty clearly. The advantage of the GoPro is that it has a wide field of view to capture the entire eclipse and is water (fog) proof and so unconcerning to leave out all night. The disadvantage is that you can't really nail the exposure. In nightlapse mode the shortest shutter speed you can set is five seconds in raw mode - way too long. In regular timelapse mode you can't set the shutter speed at all. I dialed in 2 stops of exposure compensation but that wasn't really enough. Better than the last one I accidentally caught on a dropcam so progress at least.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Super Flower Blood Moon Eclipse #timelapse#moon#eclipse#video Timelapse of the super flower blood moon eclipse on May 26, 2021 shot from San Francisco California on a GoPro Hero 8 Black.)
There is some controversy at the moment over the great highway in San Francisco. Should it stay closed to traffic as the pandemic eases? I enjoy walking and cycling here without cars, but it must be a pain to live nearby with all that traffic shifted to residential streets. It might be moot if the sand keeps flowing inland...
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Sand on Great Highway #photo#sanfrancisco Should the great highway in San Francisco reopen to traffic? It could be moot if the sand continues to build up. Photo of sand starting to cover the great highway.)
(Published to the Fediverse as:
San Francisco from Twin Peaks #photo#sanfrancisco#twinpeaks Downtown San Francisco, including Market Street to the ferry building, shot from Twin Peaks.)
I want to be well informed and, to the greatest extent possible, free from any kind of filter bubble. Hard to do that on Facebook. So the first step is to delete Facebook and Twitter. Now you have some time to design your news consumption.
Feedly
To me the very best part of the web is RSS feeds so I can quickly skim through hundreds of sites with a consistent interface and no ads. I used to do this with Google Reader but since that was killed I've found Feedly to be an awesome tool and I happily pay for the Pro version. The Android app is great. The web version sometimes gets lost in the list but is fast to use with keyboard shortcuts for cruising through your list. I keep Feedly stocked with news sites, hobbies, work related niche publications and everything I know I want to keep an eye on. The only gap is those unknown unknowns.
Google News
Google News is my current fix for finding the stories and context that I don't get through RSS.
What works
As a learning system Google News pretty quickly figures out what you're interested in. It's not perfect so you have to spend some time training it. Once in a while it will decide you need every word written about Ina Garten, but you can easily tell it that it's wrong. A more subtle tip is to often click sources that you violently disagree with. Google News has some tendency to surface different angles but it definitely helps to signal that you are open to uncomfortable takes on a story. This is a powerful filter bubble burster.
Feed mechanics
Having escaped most social media (I still have LinkedIn which is the cockroach of platforms) I really hate the feed based approach that Google takes with News. I understand it but I hate it. Probably the worst usability crime is that it will often refresh without being asked. I'll be halfway down the list, spot an interesting article, get distracted, and then when I switch back I see that tempting story for a fraction of a second before the whole feed reloads. Often that story is then nowhere to be found. There is a feature to save for later, but I try to avoid this because future me isn't likely to have time either and it adds the burden of yet another to-do list to keep track of.
Don't make me read it twice
Related to the feed is the tendency to show me the same story again, and again, and again. Other than ignoring a topic or publication there is no mechanism to just dismiss a story. I know that the algorithm has worked really really hard to find it but I don't need to see it every day for a week or more. It's OK, in fact desirable, to be done with the news. As with the feed I know that it's someone's job at Google to work on engagement and my time is an externality to their optimization algorithm. It's a big irritation all the same.
Podcasts
Lastly for me I also get a lot of context from podcasts. I use Podkicker Pro on Android (also worth paying for). We live in peak podcast times and I don't have enough time to listen to everything that I want to.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Doing news right with Feedly and Google News #etc#news#google#feedly#facebook How to use Feedly, Google News and Podcasts to develop intentional news consumption after kicking the social media habit.)
This is an interesting and profound question. Do we live in a block universe where every action we take is predetermined or are we actually capable of making choices. It certainly feels like choices are possible, but reality doesn't care about feelings and it could be the case that free will is an illusion. Unfortunately Burkeman repeatedly makes this mistake:
""For the free will sceptic," writes Gregg Caruso in his new book Just Deserts, a collection of dialogues with his fellow philosopher Daniel Dennett, "it is never fair to treat anyone as morally responsible." Were we to accept the full implications of that idea, the way we treat each other – and especially the way we treat criminals – might change beyond recognition."
The presence or absence of free will is presumably a global phenomenon. If the criminal has no choice then we also have no choice in how we treat criminals. It gets worse:
"Smilansky is an advocate of what he calls "illusionism", the idea that although free will as conventionally defined is unreal, it’s crucial people go on believing otherwise – from which it follows that an article like this one might be actively dangerous."
This might be a dangerous article, but not for this reason. If there is no free will then people are going to believe what they were always going to believe. The risky proposition that could actually lead to bad consequences is that people believe that there is no free will when there actually is. Even if we prove conclusively that reality is completely deterministic then nothing changes (that wasn't always going to change that way in the first place - see my (somewhat) tongue in cheek solution to the Fermi Paradox).
So what should we believe? I think it's important to consider that we don't understand enough biology and we don't understand enough physics.
On biology:
"And from the 1980s onwards, various specific neuroscientific findings have offered troubling clues that our so-called free choices might actually originate in our brains several milliseconds, or even much longer, before we’re first aware of even thinking of them."
These results are fascinating but have never troubled me. It actually takes the brain a little while to process all the data from our senses but we live in a physical reality that doesn't hang around waiting for this latency. So of course we need to respond quickly to events, often before we're aware of them. This leaves plenty of room for free will in how we train ourselves to respond. The brain simulates likely situations and how it should react to them. This could be an inevitable consequence of the big bang, or it could be that free will has a meaningful influence. I don't believe that we have enough evidence to say either way.
We don't even understand the biological basis for consciousness. It's called the hard problem for a reason. Consciousness is (presumably) expensive and it seems odd that evolution would have selected for it if it has no purpose. Of course in the block universe it's possible that this doesn't matter. It's a mistake that was always going to be made. It could be that we decode the algorithm and can run it on a computer and that if we start with the same conditions we always get the same results. Consciousness is classical and we can prove that it is deterministic. Or it could be that it hinges on quantum effects that mean we can't understand the biology without understanding the physics.
On physics:
""This sort of free will is ruled out, simply and decisively, by the laws of physics," says one of the most strident of the free will sceptics, the evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne."
Maybe, but doesn't that depend on what the laws of physics actually are?
There are different interpretations of the physical basis of quantum mechanics. Is decoherence truly random? If so this might be a basis for free will. Run the same starting conditions twice and you get a different outcome. Or is the many worlds interpretation correct? In this case we potentially still live in a block universe, just an unimaginably larger one where every permutation of every decoherence event exists at the same time. Every possible version of you is out there, but each one is trapped in their own predetermined path through the multiverse.
I can't wait to see further progress in both areas. Until we know more the free will question seems impossible to answer. If we prove it's a fiction then nothing matters and nothing can be changed. Absent proof it's probably best to assume that free will exists and that this post was written because I chose to.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Was there ever any doubt that I would eventually write this post? #etc#freewill Why our understanding of biology and physics means that we can't answer the free will question and why it doesn't matter even if we could.)
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, February 19, 2022.
This short timelapse video shows three Starlink satellite trains passing over San Francisco.
I use findstarlink to look for good viewing conditions after a launch. It's tough to get both a good pass and reasonably clear skies but last night was excellent for both. According to the site the first train is Starlink-18 and the second is Starlink-25. The third train wasn't listed. It certainly looks similar but I guess it could be something else. The timelapse shows all three as they happened and then zooms in for a better view of each.
Shot on a Sony A7C, 20mm f1.8 1s ISO800 (2s interval) and then post processed with LRTimelapse. Lightroom Classic, DaVinci Resolve and Filmstro Pro.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Timelapse of three Starlink Trains #timelapse#starlink#stars#video Timelapse video of three trains of Starlink satellites passing over San Francisco, California.)
