Tag Archives: humanity

Review: 2023

Posted on Monday, 25. December 2023 by hmvh

Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war. As of 2023 I’ve officially stopped giving a shit. Continue reading →

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Review: 2022

Posted on Monday, 26. December 2022 by hmvh

2022 was a bit of a blurry blemish despite several significant events in my personal life. If it wasn’t for calendars, one could be forgiven for feeling that we’re still in 2020 or went way back to the year 1920. Indeed, 2022 may be remembered as the fuzzy period during which the world turned into a steaming pile of shit – but only in part due to pollution or climate change: it’s humanity that’s lagging behind its own technological advances. Continue reading →

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Revision: 2020

Posted on Saturday, 2. January 2021 by hmvh

2020 was a year of infamy. It will probably go down as the year of SARS-CoV-2 but sorry, we’re still in the middle of the very same pandemic. We still have a stretch to go. Continue reading →

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A few thoughts on the current coronavirus crisis

Posted on Friday, 10. April 2020 by hmvh

Here’s to another day of “social distancing” and “home office”. This is my fourth week of “lockdown”. City streets are deserted, roads are empty. Nature is taking a breather. My dining table has become my temporary office desk (I need the space for the monitors). This may become the “new normal”. While I’m no stranger to “remote working” and some of the luxuries it affords on account of my job functions I still think this ain’t right. Continue reading →

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Christmas Wars

Posted on Monday, 23. December 2019 by hmvh

Why the fuck am I driving anywhere near such a congregation of fools with more money than time management skills — on the last Sunday before Christmas, of all days? Never before have we witnessed such masses descend upon these holy temples of consumerist worship. You may know them as malls or shopping centres; I call it the place where the cinema happens to be. Continue reading →

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Blade Runner 2019

Posted on Monday, 18. November 2019 by hmvh

It is November 2019. This is when the classic 1982 film Blade Runner takes place. For over three decades I’ve wondered what the year 2019 would really be like. Continue reading →

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The fall of walls

Posted on Saturday, 9. November 2019 by hmvh

It was thirty years ago today that the Berlin Wall fell. The Iron Curtain had been breached, the Eastern Bloc was beginning to crumble. This most cruel of social experiments had finally run its course. A peaceful revolution was under way, and there was no stopping this tide from turning. The world was evolving. Even in a country as far away as South Africa, the developments made headlines. Continue reading →

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Something is weird about YouTube

Posted on Monday, 4. November 2019 by hmvh

“YouTube’s algorithm is easy to game. It’s a system that rewards creators for figuring out what works, and then doing that same thing over and over again.” Continue reading →

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