I spend a big chunk of my summers in nowhere cow-ville France (la Creuse). No Michelin star restaurants, no art galleries, no shopping worth note. Just landscapes, hiking, lakes and slower life. BUT what surprises me most is how often I describe this to people, even the French, and they’re like “why / pourquoi ?!” Is it not obvious? There’s a reason people say they need a vacation after their vacation. I think it’s that people are expecting too much of their vacations.
Having a family, the best rest for me is the 2-3 days when I'm back at work after vacation. No kids running around, no need to plan anything, just slowly going through hundreds of already irrelevant emails, pretending to do something productive, sipping coffee while telling everyone that I'm "catching up, sorry, can't help ya".
Sounds like there's two kinds of vacations, the one to relax, decompress, slow down and go offline for a bit, and the one where you explore the world and experience new things. Both are valid, and combining the two is great.
I'm now thinking of USAmericans taking a eurotrip and visiting a different city every day. I hope some of them mix it up and stay in cowville, France for a few days.
When I spent 3 weeks in Türkiye solo traveling (from the US) I tried to have a few home bases. For example 5 full days of hiking 15-20 km in Cappadocia, 3 days near Selçuk and the rest in Istanbul.
You wouldn't think a massive city like Istanbul would be relaxing but it is when you're out of your hotel for 15 hours a day on foot with nothing but a list of bullet points that don't depend on planning anything ahead of time other than to make sure the thing you want to see is open when you're near the area.
Everyone is different but for me, I like not needing to be at X location at Y time a bunch of times in a row. A few of those are fine, but it can't be a majority of the trip. I try to treat road trips the same, 3-4 nights per stop (maybe 2 nights if it's a smaller place).
Time to decompress and explore is important IMO. Walking around while seeing new things is the ultimate form of decompression for me.
Was lucky enough to spend a week in Rome this summer, and even that was not enough time (and I've been before, still not enough combined time). It's wild when I hear about people hitting 4 different EU cities in the same time period, sounds exhausting.
I quit paris to work on the coast to sail at least every two weekends (and took up foiling for the evenings), I'd say I now need way, way less vacations than I used to.
Apparently CloudFlare’s turnstile can’t, as evidenced by several public-facing CRUD and mail routines we maintain that no longer are warding off the spam.
Meanwhile the moment I (a human, of which I'm reasonably confident) see a Cloudflare captcha I nope immediately out of the site and block it forevermore in Kagi. It's not worth the waiting game. "Verifying..." lasts ages.
The anime girl captcha works fine and provides no such annoyance.
You seem to think that having a random anime girl is not an annoyance. anything that deviates from showing me the content that I've requested is an annoyance. Just because you prefer A over B does not mean that A is not still an annoyance.
Yeah, we benchmarked against a few bot detection provides end of last year (https://research.roundtable.ai/bot-benchmarking/), and Turnstile didn't do great when it came to AI agent detection. We hypothesized that Turnstile primarily focuses on device/network characteristics, which AI agents can bypass
I’m not a furniture maker, but I have a rather close connection to the industry. I used to hate ikea furniture. In fact I hated almost all modern furniture that mass market, that wasn’t high end. I was a huge proponent of vintage furniture ( and still am), but I have really come around on ikea. They sure still make some crap, but they also make some genuinely innovative pieces that can last if you treat them with a basic level of care. I’d specifically call out / praise a few of their beds with built in drawer solutions. A few good desks too. They also have other mostly solid wood products too. It really depends. Just my $0.02.
Agreed. I was a carpenter for a long time and have built everything from completely disposable structures to things that ended up in Design Within Reach.
I think Ikea is great. Sure, the cheaper stuff consists of veneered particle board at best. But they (at least used to) use thicker veneers, often include relatively high quality hardware, and make some products that are just completely solid (stainless kitchen gear, simple but serviceable pine furniture, standing desks, some bedding).
What gets to me are places like West Elm and similar companies. Mid-Century design, but it's the same veneered particle board as the much cheaper Ikea stuff, and costs far more.
Many of Ikea's wood (wood-like?) products are pretty flimsy, designed to be built once and never moved or taken apart. (cough - all cupboards, most cabinets - cough)
But somewhat ironically their steel kitchenware is competitive with catering equipment. It may not be as well designed for maximum functionality and storage packing efficiency, but costs about the same or even less than comparable Vogue gear. Over the years I've spotted an increasing number of street food vendors using Ikea bowls and trays, so the price and availability advantage appears to be real.
Billy bookshelves seem pretty good even though they are veneered board of some kind. I have several and they have lasted many years (eve ones bought second hand) and moves. Not the best, but not terrible and great value for money.
The cubical storage units are pretty solid and practical.
On the other hand the IKEA wardrobe I have is falling to pieces.
> What gets to me are places like West Elm and similar companies. Mid-Century design, but it's the same veneered particle board as the much cheaper Ikea stuff, and costs far more.
Somewhat similar to what I was thinking. In the UK John Lewis sell (or used to) sell bookshelves very similar to a Billy (in construction and appearance depending on the veneer) at three times the price.
Agree completely. As I said, Ikea provide a valuable service. And I'm sure that for some pieces, quality is compatible with the core design values of cost and transportability.
And, to extend the analogy, I'm sure Google's AI results will be perfectly serviceable for some people in some situations.
But for my wife's odd, non-standard, situation I had to build it myself. And for some people's odd, non-standard, situation they'll need to construct (or find) a bespoke information service that matches their needs. That will probably cost them more and the joinery won't be as neat.
“ Humans must not blindly trust the output of AI systems. AI-generated content must not be treated as authoritative without independent verification appropriate to its context.”
I’m lost, how do individuals actually do this in our current world? Is each person expected to keep a “white list” of reliable sources of truth in their head. Please don’t confuse what I’m saying with a suggestion that there is no truth. It just seems like there are far more sources of mis- of half-truths and it’s increasingly difficult for people to identify them.
I... am not sure. Computers are machines that create order (like db tables) from the chaos of reality. Now we have LLMs that make computers spit out chaos as well.
They don't have to though, we can still leverage LLMs to organize chaos, which is what I hope they ultimately end up doing.
For example an AI therapist is a nightmare, people putting the chaos of their mental state into a machine that spits dangerous chaos back out. An AI tool that parsed responses for hard data (i.e. rate 0-9 how happy was the person) and then returned that as ordered data (how happy was I each day for the last month) that an actual therapist and patient could review is the correct use of AI and could be highly trusted. The raw token output from LLMs should just be used for thinking steps that lead to a parseable hard data answer that can be high trust.
Of course that isn't going to happen, but I can see some extremely cool and high trust products being built using LLMs once we stop treating them like miracle machines.
Did AI change anything in that regard? I believe that same as before, you couldn't trust everything you see, and research effort was always more than keeping a white list; means vary, case-by-case.
And same it is now. It's a change in quantity, but not quality.
Humanity has spent millennia creating and evolving institutions to address exactly this problem, and have recently decided to essentially throw out the whole lot and replace it with nothing.
Critical thinking and reading comprehension and the primary tools in determining truth, AFAIK. Knowing facts beforehand helps too but a trustworthy source can provide false information as much as an untrustworthy source can provide true information.
This has always been an issue, and in the past it was a more difficult issue because your sources of knowledge were more limited. Nowadays its mostly about choosing the right source(s) rather than having to go out of your way to find them (like traveling to a regional/university library).
A sincere question : In a home environment, what information do devices like this provide that you regularly act upon and how? Can you give some examples? I’m trying to understand the use case given I already have a thermostat with humidity readings and look at the weather for air quality. Is it more than after cooking, the PPMs are high, open the window or turn on the vent fan (which I do out of habit anyways)?
I self imposed a rule when I went through the process of having a child — to avoid (negative) information that I couldn’t or wouldn’t really act upon (e.g. learning about genetic markers/hints that couldn’t be prevented and wouldn’t make me think about extreme measures, such as blindness). For me it’s an issue of anxiety management.
I mostly use mine just for monitoring humidity (I use a humidifier, but don’t want the humidity going up past 60% or bad things can start to grow) and CO2 which I try to keep below 800-ish PPM by keeping the window slightly open (except during pollen season, which is now)
There was an initial effort of doing things and seeing the effects and eventually finding a nice equilibrium. I now have a feel for what’s needed and it’s not something I put any thought into. I basically check it when the seasons change. Rather than contributing to anxiety, I am now relieved of unknowns.
I’m quite allergic to pollen, and very sensitive to things like smoke, so I’ve already someone more focused on managing my environment than a normal person. A wick based humidifier (don’t use ultrasonic, those breed bacteria and launch them into the air) and large air filter with a big but quiet fan are the most important things in my room. Yes, even the bed.
These devices can also be a good way to catch localized air pollution that exceeds safety limits, though where I live that’s not an issue. Citizens capable of checking air and water quality is a positive in my opinion.
>I use a humidifier, but don’t want the humidity going up past 60%
out of curiosity, what part of the globe do you live (or when was your home built) that you need a humidifier? I have a dehumidifier as it is quite often > 50% humidity in my home, easily as much as 65%, but that's due to the high humidity outside where it can easily be 85%. Just looked at my sensor, it is currently 81% outside and 55% inside. That 55% is where it really starts to become uncomfortable. I struggle to keep it <50% inside. At these indoor humidity levels, it limits some of the things that I can do indoors as it has a negative affect on things I make/do. So adding humidity is just one of those things that makes me tilt my head sideways and go huh? like a dog because it is so out of my experience.
The Pacific Northwest, where today’s humidity is 70%.
However that’s basically irrelevant because the place I rent has a 20+ year old central heating and cooling system, so inside the humidity can drop below 40% and I’ll get painfully dry sinuses and nose bleeds.
In cold climates the humidity can drop to uncomfortable levels during the winter (sub 30% where I live). Especially when combined with wood fired stoves.
Not the OP, but my airgradients are part of my home assistant setup. They measure the temperature and humidity, and the values are used for controlling the radiators and the humidifiers. Whenever the co2 or ppm count is too high, I flash some leds red to remind whoever is in the room to open a window - which is extremely important because a lot of people don’t have a natural reflex for getting fresh air. This is especially important when we have guests over, in our small living room, the air goes bad fast.
I was able to improve my sleep because I found out that my waking up in the night was correlated with high co2 values. Same thing with performance in my home office. It’s a small room and the reminder to open a window while I’m in the flow is just amazing.
But: my airgradient devices were anything but “rock solid“. Constant reboots, hung ESPs, I had to swap out the senseair sensors because apparently they go bad, etc.
> I was able to improve my sleep because I found out that my waking up in the night was correlated with high co2 values.
What did you change? I assume it's non-trivial to automatically open windows based on sensor data? Or do you mean you've been able to improve it by knowing about it and opening a window before going to sleep, which now that I write it sounds much more sensible :D
Haha, opening a window automatically was my initial idea, but like you I quickly converged on the latter! In addition, I just keep the bedroom door open as well, which helps a little bit too
I'm also an AirGradient user. AirGradient prioritizes accuracy and it's fully OSS. The sensors are fully replaceable; not if but when they eventually lose accuracy. I'd argue that monitoring PM2.5 levels indoors is even more crucial than outdoors. In our home, we have good air recirculation and HEPA filters in every room. Since we began keeping indoor air clean, our spring allergies (and general allergy issues throughout the year) have become much less severe. IMO AirGradient is the best way verify current levels and ultimately ensure the filtration works.
https://imgur.com/a/UIkkANL
Not a fan of my own medical example there. If I knew my kid was going to be blind, there are lots of actions I would take: Educating myself, potentially preparing the home environment etc.
During wildfire season (which was never a thing for most the USA, but now is thanks to Canadian wildfires and climate change), it's really helpful to get instant particle counts indoors and outdoors. Indoors, you can mitigate with "circulation" mode on your hvac system (to filter through the furnace fitler), or by running air purifiers. Outdoors you can just avoid exposure by coming inside / avoiding trips.
That seems like at strange dig at Canada. Since I was a kid, we’ve known about California wildfires even though I’m not from California. Your comment makes it sound like Americans have never had to deal with wildfire smoke pollution until Canada caught fire. That’s just not true
"Thanks to" was never meant to be a dig! It's certainly not their fault that their forests are drying out, probably from climate change. Wildfires are a tough ecological management problem.
But yes, the upper midwest and east coast essentially never have had to deal with wildfire smoke like we have now. It's as bad as when I lived in LA, but there we expected it. People in Minnesota, for example, are totally unaccustomed to woodsmog for days on end. The current air quality is very unhealthy - also unheard of. Particle counts in the 100s ppm!
I´m living in the middle of a city, and PM2.5 levels get very high at times. We are way above the yearly 5ug/m3 recommendation. So I just bought a lot of air purifiers (just HEPA, everything else commercially available is useless) and they get switched on if the levels get high (via HomeAssistant). I have a device in the garden and another inside, so I am monitoring the difference on a regular basis. I optimize (manually, no fancy data crunching) for low noise produced by the filters and low <2-3ug/m3 PM2.5 values indoors. I don´t have forced ventilation, so I need to know how much do I open the windows to get humidity and VOCs down, while not letting in too much smog. Sounds more complicated than it really is.
If you live in a part of the country where wildfire smoke is common, you can use a PM2.5 sensor (which airgradient has -- and air lab does not) to determine if you're effectively keeping the smoke out of your home and can help you determine whether or not to eg use air purifiers.
Among the probably most important and universally relevant measurements offered by air quality monitors is carbon dioxide/monoxide. Humans are not really built for realising when these are elevated, other than feeling sleepy and generally experiencing reduced mental capacity, which by its self-referential nature is not conducive to understanding that you are experiencing reduced mental capacity or being motivated to take measures about it (such as opening windows).
These are all of the ways in which air monitoring information is actionable for me:
— Excessive carbon dioxide: as mentioned, it’s a call to open windows and possibly doors, depending on wind direction and window/door configuration in the flat and the building. It can reach surprising, and in my case unsafe by at least one country’s standards, levels overnight if your flat has decent insulation and little airflow. Besides, it just feels nice to have more oxygen knocking about your internals.
— Excessive (which should really mean non-zero, but in today’s ecology let’s say “elevated”) PM2.5 means I should close windows (usually this pollution comes from outside) and ramp up air filtering, and potentially postpone exercise while particulate matter is too high. I have a separate cheap air filter but lately it turned out that a Mitsubishi dehumidifier does a great job at this—which, by the way, I have realized only thanks to an air monitor.
— If both carbon dioxide and particulate matter are high, I’d most likely open the windows first to lower the former then close the windows and run air filtering while hanging out at the office or having a walk (potentially with an N95 mask on if it’s really bad outside).
— VOC, which often originate from chemicals used in furniture or flooring, if your monitor measures those, could probably be addressed by adding activated carbon layer to your air filter (and by opening windows). I think they are filtered slowly and this might take months, but my monitor did not measure VOCs so I don’t have first-hand experience. An air quality monitor could help you understand whether you are wrong or right in thinking your new floor made your air full of VOCs when all you can go by otherwise is just a vague chemical smell.
— Elevated background radiation means you should probably just move, usually it is building materials or something not easily removable anyway.
I would say that with these numbers available there is a danger you’d stress over and min/max them. It’s probably better to just use the measurements to understand the patterns and see if something is really out of ordinary or elevated for prolonged periods of time. I did that first (and did not expect to see how quickly carbon dioxide builds up, how quickly everything deteriorates with any cooking, including when done by a neighbour if I open windows and the wind blows the wrong way, the speed with which outside pollution permeates the indoor space, how effective my air filtering is, etc.), now my air monitor is broken and I am not overly concerned until I have to move to a new place.
Wow, what an interesting piece of journalism, in regards to the presentation. It reminded me of when I saw the NYT’s Snow Fall piece for the first time. At the time, it was an amazing display of cutting edge UI skills that exhibited both skill and restraint. Great storytelling to boot.
As a native (suburban) Detroiter (who departed 20 years ago), I don’t want to throw shade but articles like these rarely give a good sense of the size or scope of decades of decay. There are still miles (and miles) of apocalyptic looking neighborhoods. As a teenager, we had our pick of hundreds of abandoned warehouses to party (“rave”).
I'd love to see it flourish, and maybe if the area could get past its car addiction, I’d even want to call it home again one day.
*Removed inaccurate statement about the city’s size.
There are some serious attempts at removing the car addiction. The qLine rail goes down Woodward avenue providing a rather nice alternative to the bus systems, and the I have heard recently there are talks to expand the People Mover as it was intended when it was designed. I'm hoping that the bus systems make efforts to bounce back and start serving the suburbs better.
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