Welcome to new subscribers, to Notes from the Edge!
This is the 2nd issue of the Weekly Review: a short selection of research/links/interesting things that I’ve been looking at this week. My goal is to have at least one thing that you can take away from this issue, that will change or improve your day.
Enjoy!
This week for me
As my daughter comes up for her second ever Christmas, I am - like I think many other people - keen to just get on with it and get all the decorations up and have something else to think about given 🫲🏻 everything that’s going on 🫱🏻
However, I’m stopping myself from doing anything until at least my birthday (early December) because to do otherwise would feel as unnatural as the rainy, warm period we’re currently going through this November. The climate may be changing but our seasonal rituals should be the things to ground us.
This week I’ve been busy user testing our Palliate product. We’ve had a slow development cycle for a while, so its been so great to sit down with members of the public and see how they get on learning how to prepare and inject end-of-life medications. (That sentence fills me with equal amounts of joy and apprehension…!) I’ve been enjoying both the fact that people want to learn this sort of thing and that as a designer its the simple things - making something quite complicated, easier to use - that brings a lot of satisfaction.
Onto the links!
Research on the edges
🌗 A Theological Reckoning with ‘Bad Trips’
“Some days, I think psychedelics healed me by not healing me at all—which may just mean they made me more comfortable with paradox.”
"It's one thing to label something as existential angst and it's another to know how to identify it in someone's life and … to understand where they came from in the first place, to learn why the modern world would give rise to anxiety,"
🛣 Lucid dying: Patients recall death experience
“Our results offer evidence that while on the brink of death and in a coma, people undergo a unique inner conscious experience, including awareness without distress.”
New frontiers of technology
A delightfully minimal private online journal with powerful self-reflection guides to help you grow into your best self.
🤖 Elicit
Elicit is a research assistant using language models like GPT-3 to automate parts of researchers’ workflows. Currently, the main workflow in Elicit is Literature Review. If you ask a question, Elicit will show relevant papers and summaries of key information about those papers in an easy-to-use table.
🎧 Listen
Over the years many people have covered Aphex Twins’ music. A lot of his ambient work has been re-made with instruments (rather than electronic equipment) for example. A lot of it is good, but not much better than the original.
This video - I wouldn’t really call it a cover - elevates what is probably one of his most sublime ambient pieces, into something transcendent. I come back to it every once in a while to just bring me down but also pick me up.
As someone in the comments writes: Even though I am inside, I am outside. Even though I am alone here, I am with all of you. Even though this is now, I am outside of time.
🤔 Last thought
I’ve never been a fan of car shows, especially Fifth Gear. I’m just not a car guy, and I find Jeremy Clarkson particularly offensive.
However, for some reason I’ve always had a soft spot for Richard Hammond. I think he just reminds me of a few people I grew up with, he seems like a nice guy.
So years ago, I was saddened when he almost died in a horrific car crash - which put him into a very serious coma. He survived, but something obviously happened to him during that time.
In this excerpt, he talks about that coma, and his experience. How he describes it is nothing short of astonishing.
See you next time 👋🏻
“We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”