This looks like something I’d want to attend. Smart people talking about the future and technology. Great speaker list…Carver Mead, Esther Dyson and Craig Ventner in particular. I’d listen to those three opine about anything.

I don’t watch much NFL football these days – in fact, almost zero – but I did tune in to the last quarter and the OT of the Kansas City v. Buffalo game last night. Pretty exciting stuff. If regular season games were played with that pace and energy, I’d watch more often. That game is already being talked about as one of the all-time greats, and I agree.

Between feeling crummy and dozens of hours spent on Board issues, last week was a total loss for creative writing. I intend to do better this week, road to hell notwithstanding.

I’m definitely getting hooked on Wordle. I’m not a fan of puzzles and crosswords, but Wordle hits the sweet spot in terms of difficulty and time to complete. So far I’m a solid 4.5 in terms of the number of words I need to solve. Pretty average, I would think. <Sixty minutes later.> Shit, I no sooner wrote that than I ran into the toughest Wordle yet. It was extra tough because I had the rules wrong. I thought each letter could be used once and only once, but noooo. RTFM.

Finally, I finished all 600+ pages of Surface Detail this morning. What a fantastic story. My writers group would *hate* Banks, with his excessive world-building and unconventional dialogues among machines, but I love it (perhaps a mismatch there). I can only hope that our world is being observed by The Culture at this very moment, and that Special Circumstances has agents here on Earth to help us through our problematic societal childhood.