• 🎉 We had our end of the year party at work. As the team has grown so much in the past year, it's difficult to find a restaurant that can fit us all, so we cruised along the sumida river. We have two traditions in Japan: 1) We dress up nice, and 2) Someone writes/reads a Christmas poem in front of the group. For number 2, the person who needs to write/read the poem is given 48 hours notice.
  

  

  
  Why do I mention the 48 hour rule? Because this year, I was picked 😱. I'm someone that's never understood / gotten poetry (I reckon this is typical of programmers), so I had a bit of a panic when I first heard about it. Thankfully, in this past year, the machines have gotten a lot smarter, so I was able to augment my creativity and write a poem quickly. I'm also happy to say that the poem was well received.
  

  

• 🎄 The following day was Leo's school's Christmas pageant.  We've seen the it 3 times now, each year Leo has been at school. The past two years the pageant had been at the city's auditorium, which made it feel quite special. I thought that was normal, but they only held it there because of covid. This year it returned to being held at the school itself...which made it feel less special and wasn't as comfortable (not enough seating for everyone/3 rows of chairs vs theater style seats on an incline).
  
   Each year his role has changed - and as a top year they put on a play where each kid had a speaking part. When it was Leo's turn to say his line he spoke his line's loudly so we could all hear them.
• 🥳 The next day Leo's cousin came to town and we celebrated his birthday. We ate sushi and for dessert we had the one cake that all of the kids have been wanting since they saw it: a Mario themed ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins. Happy birthday Leo's cousin, 11 years old!
• 🎅 The following day we went to a Christmas party at a school friend's house...and it was a lot of fun. One of the dad's that I chatted with when helped set things up at sports day was there and we got to chat more. We barbecued and drank sparkling wine under the clear blue skies. We also promised to barbecue by the local river next time so we don't need to worry about the neighbors. Looking forward to it.
• 🐙 A small work update this week. In The Week #165 that we were looking for a Senior Product Manager to join the team and this week they started! I'm really excited about this one. The other neat thing that happened is we got a $800 million dollar round of investment so we can accelerate growth and expansion of low-carbon tech. Very exciting times!

Decades after sending it to design purgatory, the space agency celebrates a logo it still calls the worm.

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• ⛩️ We went to a local shrine for Leo's shichi-go-san...and like that, the big event is over. We went to the photo studio, where we rented Leo's hakama, so he could change and so we could pickup the prints from last time. As a thank you we could pick one of a few different gifts, including a free photoshoot.
  
  We were a bit pressed for time, as we were all dressed up and the likelihood of us getting a decent photo at the shrine were slim, we decided to take some photos. Naturally just the photoshoot was free, we still had to pay for prints (which makes sense...but also makes it feel less like a "gift" and more like an upsell). Be that as it may, I'm glad we did take photos because as it turns out every photo was shot at the shrine was pretty much a dud for one reason or the other.
  

  

• 🧦 I have too many pairs of socks. And yet, I ordered a new pair of nice wool socks from L.L. Bean. These are to replace some cotton socks that I have that appear warm but are in-fact, not so. They're so comfortable and warm. If you haven't ordered yourself a pair of wool socks recently, you should.
• 🎸 This week marked the 43rd anniversary of John Lennon's death. Coinciding with that, Apple released a new docuseries, John Lennon: Murder without a Trial, which I binge watched. I always get a bit sad this time of year when I think about what could have been and what was taken from the world. I know it's silly, he died before I was born....but the series is well worth the couple of hours of your time.
• 💈 Leo and I got haircuts at the local barber shop. He has hit hair cut by the person who usually does it and I was across the room getting my haircut eavesdropping. I won't divulge their full conversation, but I'm glad in their conversation about vegetables and primary school, she also told him that tomatoes and other such things he "doesn't like" will appear in school lunches. I can already see see start of a wonder barber relationship between them and I'm excited for them.

The point here – the point I made 20 years ago to Chris Anderson – is that this is the foreseeable, inevitable result of designing devices for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades.

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