Reverse centaurs

Almost a year after our beer at Savoy, Gabriel and I got to meet up for lunch in Malmö today. Having grown up together in Kalmar, Gabriel has been a recurring character on the pages of Rawls & Me, with shared adventures stretching from Serbia to Sävar, but today we just got to hang out for a bit in Folkets Park.

Among the many things we covered, Gabriel brought up Cory Doctorow’s work on “reverse centaurs”: situations where machine intelligence does the directing while the human provides a cheap, disposable physical body to execute tasks, i.e. the exact opposite of what the AI revolution originally promised it would do. Like the suggestion that AI stands for “African Intelligence” (as its abilities depend on the underpaid work of millions in digital sweatshops across Africa), such concepts definitely have analytical purchase, even if their implications for the future remain ambiguous.

As much as I have spent the last 20+ years arguing for the democratic steering of technology, I am afraid that my personal response to AI embodies a certain degree of fatalism, a bit like Too-ticky in Moominland Midwinter: “All things are so very uncertain, and that’s exactly what makes me feel reassured”.

Outdoor office

While waiting to have lunch with Gabriel in Malmö, I walked down Friisgatan only to discover an “outdoor office” of sorts, a place where one can sit down without having to buy something. Small acts of resistance.

Low pressure

After a dry summer in Europe, the familiar Atlantic low-pressure systems have returned, bringing desperately needed rain to the British Isles and thoroughly soaking Eddie and me on the way to the station this morning. After sending him off to school in Gothenburg, I returned home and went for a rainbow run along Västra stranden.

And while I got caught in another shower, the views across Laholmsbukten definitely made up for it. Now on a train to Malmö, I am looking out over the stormy sea, pondering whether I should get off in Helsingborg for some more coastal air and a coffee. Having invested in a monthly ticket with Skånetrafiken (which, at 50% off, is one of the few really good things the current government has done), I suddenly have a lot of freedom when it comes to travelling around southern Sweden.

Otherwise, Eddie and I had a great evening yesterday, watching Erik Sandberg's Lönesänkarna to give him some historical background for his school assignment. Though short, I am still very happy that we get to have these moments together, even as a more permanent arrangement remains to be worked out.

Heidelbeeren

SD-Kuriren landed in my mailbox this morning. With no return envelope provided, I suppose I will have to fold it into a paper plane and send it back to the 1930s myself. As for more uplifting journeys through space and time, I found a small package of Darbo blueberry marmalade for my bakery roll, making it feel like I was back in Austria for a moment.

 

After pushing my luck to the limit with electric scooters over the summer, today marked my return to biking to work. Unfortunately, I forgot my helmet, but I will try to remember it next time.

Staff days

Today and tomorrow, we are having staff days. Unlike in 2023, when we got to stay overnight at Hotel Riviera in Båstad, this time we have remained in Halmstad and in our usual building. The day was nevertheless very rewarding, with plenty of food for thought and some important decisions made about the upcoming semester.

Starting the day with a run to Jansa Brygga and some fresh bread rolls from Bärlin, and ending it with a glass of wine at Mårtenssons, I am happy that Eddie is at least coming down to Halmstad tomorrow and bringing some responsibility back into my life. Already on Thursday, however, I am heading down to Malmö to see Gabriel for lunch, something that is well overdue.

Pixels

For the past few months, images on Rawls & Me have been rendering somewhat strangely, showing blurry, pixelated versions instead of the high-resolution photos originally intended. Luckily, with the help of OpenAI, I was able to fix the problem with a little JavaScript earlier today, so everything should look great again.

Otherwise, I have spent most of the day in Teams meetings, including an interview as part of an assessment of teaching expertise at Mid Sweden University. After running two half marathons this weekend, I decided to take a recovery day from running and just swing by the gym for a bit of strength training. Now back home, I have microwaved yesterday's leftovers and opened a small can of red wine from Catalonia to celebrate having submitted my fifth pedagogical portfolio assessment.

The Great Steppe

Of all the travels I dream of one day doing, Central Asia remains high on my list. From Samarkand to hikes in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, adventures beckon. As such, I was thrilled to read – yes, in the same Vagabond – about two young Swedes travelling overland on trains from Sweden to Bangkok (well, almost: they had to take a short flight from Georgia to Uzbekistan). In discussing what they would like to have done differently, they say that perhaps they should have waited for international relations to calm down so that they could have travelled across Russia or Iran.

Reading this somehow made me both sad and hopeful at the same time. After all, this is a generation that has grown up with international relations deteriorating and conflicts intensifying everywhere from the Middle East to Ukraine, and for whom the formative events of my own generation, like 9/11, must appear just as distant as the Vietnam War did for me. Indeed, looking through the list of students starting their studies now in September, the majority were born in 2006 or 2007. And yet, there was something profoundly hopeful in the casual assumption that the world might calm down again, that closed borders might reopen, and that the Great Steppe could once more be crossed rather than flown over.

Two halves

In the end, Eddie decided to stay in Gothenburg with his girlfriend over the weekend, leaving me with a bit of time to catch up on work and running. With Malmö Marathon only seven weeks away, I thought that running two half marathons on consecutive days, while focusing on keeping my heart rate down (137 and 133 bpm on average, respectively), would be a good way to build some aerobic volume. By running half the distance on asphalt, I also hoped to get some practice on harder surfaces, much as I prefer running on trails.

Coming out to Tylösand, the weather was all wind and grey skies, with big waves rolling in and a sense of summer drawing to an end. On the way back, there was a bit of rain too and, passing the surfers at Sandhamn, the melancholy in the air was palpable. But a few hours into the afternoon, the sky has cleared again, so perhaps I should take a break from work and go for a walk into the city centre.

Members Truck

To presumably soften the blow of the recent 100 SEK per month price hike, American Express is currently touring the country with a silvery truck, giving out pastries and chances to win Michelin-starred dining experiences.

Seeing that the truck was in Helsingborg today, I got off my absolutely jam-packed Öresund train to pick up a bag. Sadly, I did not win anything Michelin-starred, but I did get a baked treat by Roy Fares (yes, the cousin of Josef Fares), which made for a perfect “calorie offset” after my half marathon around Tylösand.

Spanish Roadstead

For all my global travels, there are still all these white spots on the map: tracts that one has only ever passed through on the major roads, hinterlands one has somehow missed. Taking the train to Kristianstad yesterday, I got to experience both the deeply wooded lake country around Immeln and what Linnéa very fittingly described as Sweden's Louisiana: the watery landscape of the lower Helge å, where the river dissolves into wetlands, flooded meadows, and reed beds on its way towards Hanöbukten. Once there, the name “Spanska Redden” on the map immediately stuck with me as a promise of future adventures. Otherwise, the obvious six-letter clue for the Vagabond reading crowd would be “creole”.

Now on the train back to Halmstad, I hope to end this week with a few more long runs in Halland and plenty of coastal sunshine before a week that I will spend mostly indoors in different conference rooms.