No. 92 — 🧭 Year in Review 2024
resisting, outwitting, skipping, or subverting
Time is repetition, a circle. This is obvious. Day and night, the seasons, tell us this. Even so, we don’t believe it.
—Joy Williams
This year was about repetition. Mondays with the same rice bowls, trips between Helsinki and Paris, the rhythms of parenting and work. I read somewhere that middle age is when firsts happen rarely. This, but also a time when lasts happen more often, they just slip by quietly, and only later do you realize they’ve passed.
Maybe I slept through the night again. Maybe I read again like it was 2021. Maybe there was more fall days, where I felt like an old version of myself. Or maybe I just stopped using battle metaphors, and resisted, outwitted, skipped and subverted
The years too repeat. This is the eleventh time writing this. Here are 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014.
And here is 2024:
January
Stefan Zweig described Parisian parks where “each hour is inscribed for eternity in the book of memory”. I feel like I’ve come to learn Parc Monceau in every season and every hour. Except for the snowy ones, then the playground is closed to the dismay of a Finn.
H. visited us for a few days. I was very grateful for American Library’s Toddler Time. Finnish presidential elections. Toward the end of the month, I was back in Helsinki, balancing meetings and playground planning. Saw Poor Things with M.
Every Monday we had a variation of Gyeran Bap. Some other favorites of the year: Dumpling salad, Bouillabaisse, Miso Leeks with White Beans, Thai-Inspired Chicken Meatball Soup, Slow Cooker Chipotle-Honey Chicken Tacos. There are other recipe sites I follow, but NYT is so seasonal and smart I end up always back there.
This resonated a lot: “We can’t restructure our society without restructuring the English language. One reflects the other. A lot of people are getting tired of the huge pool of metaphors that have to do with war and conflict [and] the proliferation of battle metaphors, such as being a warrior, righting, defeating, and so on. In response, I could say that once you become conscious of these battle metaphors, you can start “fighting” against them. That’s one option. Another is to realize that conflict is not the only human response to a situation and to begin to find other metaphors, such as resisting, outwitting, skipping, or subverting. This kind of consciousness can open the door to all sorts of new behavior.” Ursula K. Le Guin
A rainy Sunday afternoon at the Grand Gallery of Evolution, nodding to each other, we should come pack. Centquatre for the children’s playtime. Multiplayer Mandelbrot, pair with Mandelbrot map
Wrote No. 67 — 🧭 Year in Review 2023 and No. 68 — They All Saw a Cat ⫶ How Big is YouTube? ⫶ Moonbound
Read
You Are Not Expected to Understand This: How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World by Torie Bosch et co. Lovely essays on computer science.
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrel
Journeys by Stefan Zweig. Zweig is forever my favorite.
A Dying Breed by Peter Hanington
Rakennenautintoja by Selja Ahava & Emma Puikkonen. This was wonderful.
In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonder of Complex Systems by Giorgio Parisi
How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World by Deb Chachra. I liked this a lot!
Edith Södergran : Elämä by Agneta Rahikainen
In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki. Still think about this book almost weekly.
The Moonday Letters by Emmi Itäranta
In the Distance by Hernan Diaz
February
A young girl reading Dumas in the metro. He has “les yeux sages” remarks an old lady in the metro. Brie in the creche. No as the beginning of the negotiation in France.
Had an in-person board meeting at Hive! It’s been now six years of building a new kind of school and the work feels as meaningful as ever. Did a lot of work on the look and feel of my narrative non-fiction book. Admired FT for the Microchip story.
A lovely, reassuring call with D. Started working with Irma. H. & M. in Paris. We had a lovely trip to Spain to spend some time with family G. Only theater of the year: Uuteen nousuun at Q-teatteri. 4 x 4 to the extreme.
Most of February I was sick, one flu after the other. I’ll forever remember the last week of February as utterly miserable: our kid had febrile seizures (again), which are so scary and I had a late first trimester miscarriage, which turned again the year upside down. On the other hand, ended up seeing lots of friends in Helsinki.
Wrote No. 69 — Ternary citrus ⫶ Warm-blooded plants ⫶ Ruby’s Exceptional Creatures and No. 70 — Edit/mode ⫶ Paper hole puncher ⫶ The Day I Met Björk
Read
Hajonneen maailman käyttöohje by Ville-Juhani Sutinen
Oranges by John McPhee. Wrote about this!
The Secret Lives of Numbers: A Hidden History of Math’s Unsung Trailblazers by Kate Kitagawa and Timothy Revell
Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum
Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.F. Kuang
Sydänhämärä by Harry Salmenniemi
March
A lot of spring weekends followed the pattern: pick an arrondisement, visit a museum, meander back. B. and S. started playing tennis and I would join them by the court. Easter was a mix of Paris, friends and family visiting. Organised my first egg hunt.
Celebrated E. Baby L. was born. Visited Winchester again. I wrote later a bit about the activities we did, and it was so nice to pilot new work with the educators. Lots of discussions on AI.
Had H, E and K. in town as well as T. - felt like a Railsberry rendez-vous after 12 years. Lots of other friends visited too - March is clearly a great month to visit Paris. Saw Max Richter at LV Fondation. And later Benjamin Millepied and Nico Muhly. J. took us to see Atelier Clot. Seeing those big litography machines made me want to experiment with printing presses. Etienne Jacob and Man Ray.
Watched Three Body Problem, but didn’t get the same thrills as before. All in all a mediocre year of TV for me. Overall favorites were Alice Rowheder for everything, Havumetsän lapset, the Martha Stewart documentary and yes, Nobody Wants This during a week when sleep was evading me.
Showed my book manuscript for the first person outside of family & editor. Thank you E! A daytrip to Stockholm, where the discussions also were very AI. Decided to avoid any hot takes on AI. Not everyone needs to have an opinion.
Wrote No. 71 — Why so capable ⫶ Fitzcarraldo blue ⫶ Loop, patch, library and No. 72 — A matrix of AIs ⫶ Retired playground animals ⫶ Hello Ruby - Cuộc Phiêu Lưu Vào Thế Giới Lập Trình
Read
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
Wool by Hugh Howey
Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik. I ended up reading three books from Gopnik. Love his style. (Alison Gopnik, his sister, also kept recurring in my reading)
Literary Theory for Robots: How Computers Learned to Write by Dennis Yi Tenen. Wrote about this.
Shift by Hugh Howey
Dust by Hugh Howey
Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton
April
Spent a few weeks in exile with water damage at our apartment - and started in earnest to look for a new home. Was introduced to Bokbar. Easily the Instagram account I most save items from.
One of my favorite purchases of the year was La Droguerie by Diptyque, a scented candle with the perfect blend of tomato, basil and mint. Decades of retro anime technology.
Olympics were starting to show around the city. Escaped one weekend to the Meudon woods. Good ideas in Computer Science
Obsessed with this and this and this too - perception, playgrounds and full-sight-experiences. Applied for a group thing, wasn’t accepted. And finally visited a real bouillon!
Another lovely event at the American Library with Lillian Davies on Playgrounds. Polly pocket paired with this discussion on god of small things
Wrote No. 73 — CAPTCHAs ⫶ Intelligence of a Single Cell ⫶ Tricks, cheats and shortcuts and No. 74 — They All Saw A Computer ⫶ Lavender Velvet ⫶ Inventing Kindergarten and No. 75 — LEGO Dots ⫶ Parallel lives ⫶ Reproduction
Read
Wellness by Nathan Hill
Impossible City: Paris in the Twenty-First Century by Simon Kuper
Rakas Eeva Kilpi. Nämä juhlat jatkuvat vielä by Anna-Riikka Carlson
Through the Children’s Gate: A Home in New York by Adam Gopnik
Tappio tai kuolema by Tuukka Sandström
Reproduction by Louisa Hall. One of my favorites of the year.
Marijan rakkaus by Joel Haahtela
You Are Here by David Nicholls
May
A classic visit to Switzerland over the long weekend. Vitra museum (first of two Höller slides of the year!), Buckminster Fuller and Piet Oudolf. Another lovely lunch at Burgenstock. Briefly entertained the idea of applying to study landscape architecture.
Spent a week in Helsinki. It was unseasonally warm and felt like we experienced one summer already. Finnish playgrounds turned 110. Went swimming with M. and kids. Had a long lunch with M. Saw a dear friend for the last time. Re-read Joan Didion’s Goodbye to All That (PDF) and was reminded that it’s always easiest to see beginnings. A favorite discussions of the year: This conversation made me a sharper editor.
Visited Stripe Press pop-up in Paris. Ate at Yamt’cha on a whim. Visited D. in Antony. Weaving a year.
A friend wisely said: in your profession it is fine to miss a few years of work because of raising small kids. But I was starting to miss work a lot! Kept thinking about this.
Related to everything else: “Optimization presumes a kind of certainty about the circumstances one is optimizing for, but that certainty is, more often than not, illusory…. Another way to look at this is that you cannot optimize for resilience. Resilience requires a kind of elasticity, an ability to stretch and reach but then to return, to spring back into a former shape—or perhaps to shapeshift into something new if the circumstances require it. Resilience is stretchy where optimization is brittle; resilience invites change where optimization demands continuity.” - Mandy Brown
Wrote No 76 — Playground construction ⫶ Worldbuilding ⫶ Jean Bartik and No. 77 — Taste ⫶ Books as an act of resistance ⫶ Embarrassingly parallel
Read
The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing
The Membranes by Chi Ta-wei
Sellainen mies by Erkka Mykkänen
Clock Dance by Anne Tyler
A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
June
I look at French politics from the sideline, but echos of De Gaulle (“Moi ou le chaos”) were felt throughout the summer months. Worked a lot on the manuscript, maps and making things happen. Resonated: Should this be a map or 500 maps?
Lived for ludotheques and street parties and ex tempore jazz concerts in the neighbourhood. Fete de la musique. Magical afternoon at Maquis d’Emmerveille, My only festival of the summer was LV Family Festival. French children’s culture at it’s best. Book of toys
Berlin for a day, first time in five years. Walking around, feeling like one season of life had definitely ended. J. visited us. Helped H. start her company. Favorite discussion on AI.
Weekend trip to Hangar Y, recommended! Real world of technology
“Fiction is a backdoor into a communal vision. A novel – maybe every novel – is a prototype of the future. And if the ideas that the tech industry is pursuing feel stagnant, feel from the same old paratactic lists, maybe it points to a shortage of compelling fictions for what the world could be.”
K & A had a lovely wedding in Puglia, enjoyed the trip just the two grownups.
Wrote No. 78 - Umarell : Star Stuff : A tinkering bibliography
Read
Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education by Salman Khan
Long Island by Colm Tóibín
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez
Moonbound by Robin Sloan. Loved this! (And especially the mini site.)
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
Swimming in Paris by Colombe Schneck. This was wonderful - I’ll try reading more Schneck, maybe in French next time..
All Fours by Miranda July
Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe
July
Classic summer Finland: driving around western Uusimaa. Was a regular at Library of Kirkkonummi, visited Adlerfelt and Suomenlinna. Watched many hours of 90s Moomins. Visited the new Töölönlahti play-area and Oodi. Dreamt of Cyanokites. Admired Pier 26 in New York
“The world is combinatorially weird and fractally interesting. And therefore, omnivorous curiosity is the only proper response. … let’s optimize instead for the interesting, the strange, and the weird. Ideas and topics that ignite our curiosity are worthy of our attention, because they might lead to advances and insights that we can’t anticipate.” I love this personal philosophy by Samuel.
Ate icecream in pouring rain in Haukilahti, spent two days alone in my old apartment working. Somewhere here I caught the other terrible flu of the year, which lasted for some five weeks. Almost made a dress! Well, admired other members of family and their craftmanship at Taitojamit.
Deep in teaching materials. Posters. teaching using manipulatives, Yorkshipre Sculpture Park, Sean Scully - inspiration came from many places.
Wrote No. 79 - Summer books : Antique book patterns : Centripetal / Centrifugal and No. 80 - Booleans : Primeval numbers : Incomplete City
Read
The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food by Adam Gopnik
There Are No Grown-ups: A Midlife Coming-of-Age Story by Pamela Druckerman
Kirjailijoiden salattu elämä by Guillaume Musso
Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About by Donald Knuth. I bought this years ago, but read only now. Happy to have picked it up.
Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller. A favorite!
The Reunion by Musso, Guillaume
At the Strangers' Gate: Arrivals in New York by Adam Gopnik. I read a lot of Gopnik and loved all his books!
August
“I have done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again” - Georgia O’Keeffe.
This year I knew better than to stay in Paris for the vacations + Olympics combo. So lots of travel, first in Helsinki, later in London, In London I realised that outside of bookstores most ecerything I did was free: V&A, National Gallery, outdoors, playgrounds and parks. Gossip protocol.
A. made me feel like a grownup by taking me shopping one fall morning. Took new literary/author photos too. Found the name of my new book.
Seafront sauna and long lunch with girlfriends. Saw the opera C had worked on.
Dinner at H. & M. A funeral. Gloves on.
“I really view language models as a new kind of scientific and creative instrument, like a microscope for a mathematical space of ideas. And as our understanding of this mathematical space and our instrument improves, I think we’ll see rapid progress in our ability to craft new ideas and imagine new worlds, just as we’ve seen for color and music.” - Linus Lee
Wrote No. 81 - A Playground of One's Own : Calculating Empires : Susuwatari and No. 82 — How to get to Sesame Street ⫶ The Distractor ⫶ Where are the computers? and No. 83 — Look longer ⫶ Remake old Masters ⫶ Zucchini jam
Read
In Ascension by Martin MacInnes
Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look by Susanna Avery-Quash
Viimeinen yhteinen leikki by Riikka Pulkkinen
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
Speak by Louisa Hall
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
September
One of the things I love about the rentrée is how it offers energy for any new endeavour. For me it was not only the return of school, but also the return to apartment hunting, return to full-time working, return to reading.
Ordered Le Parisien as a paper copy. Had a lovely week in Helsinki around the new Architecture and Design Museum and playground opening. Wallpaper and Monocle wrote about the park. I made a reel! Had many great calls asking advice.
After many years of online shopping, found myself at Le Bon Marché several times. Celebrated M. and C. turned two. We had a party in the playground. Loved these RFCs by Oxide.
Henrik Berrgruen at Orangerie and Elmgreen and Dragset at Orsay were my favorite exhibitions of the year. Loved also the new family space at Orangerie and the fall break in Orsay. Finally made it to Musee Albert Kahn.
Wrote No. 84 — La Rentrée ⫶ NGEs ⫶ Aleatory AI art and No. 85 — Playing in the streets ⫶ Pop-up computing ⫶ Shelf space
Read
Playground by Richard Powers. I liked this too!
Luottamisen taito - Rakkaudesta ja muista tunteista by Merete Mazzarella
Aulikki Oksanen: hyppy syreenien tuleen by Helena Ruuska
Iltatähti by Laura Malmivaara
Jäämeren laulu by Ingeborg Arvola
Valvoja by Maisku Myllymäki. Liked this a lot - and figured out the genre I’m very prone to - fiction that describes real-world art!
October
Official opening of the playground on 0110 day! It was a pleasure to meet in person a lot of the people who I had worked with for many years. Related: How to grow a shoreline.
Paris had started to seem like a permanent thing for us and after three years, I decided to properly relocate, including setting up a company, insurances, taxes, agreements - everything that goes into a permanent life. Learned - “C’est original” is not a compliment. Finnish Institute with B. and C. Kodawari Ramen with J. What is Life? made my head spin.
Art Basel was in town and so were A. and E. I especially liked Carsten Höller’s giant mushroom. Found a local restaurant, L’art du Quotidien. Grand Palais reopened and feels like we got a new destination to visit. Saw Alvin Ailey’s Revelations. Celebrated baby E. and not-so-baby J.
My favorite fall tradition is visiting South of France. This time we did also a trip to Aix-en-Provence. A lovely visit to LUMA Arles, a leisurely lunch at La Chassagnette and on the way home a stop at Château La Coste, then a storm like I haven’t seen in a long time.
I was stuck with work for the entire month.
Wrote No. 86 — A playground to outlast the feed and No. 87 — Playground process ⫶ The Anchor Song ⫶ Berlin next week
Read
Darkome by Hannu Rajaniemi. Wrote about Darkome!
Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin
The Rings of Saturn by W.G.Sebald. I should have loved this - so many writers I love are deeply inspired by Sebald, but.. no?
Mon premier Picasso by Heinz Bergrruen. Found my reading-in-French-groove with this little book.
White Holes: Inside the Horizon by Carlo Rovelli
The Upside-Down World: Meetings with the Dutch Masters by Benjamin Moser
The Gentleman From Peru by André Aciman
The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Contact: Art and the Pull of Print by Jennifer L. Roberts. Love love loved this!
November
It still felt like it was raining all the time. Later I discovered this was true. Ran into the famous French bureaucracy: opening a bank account for a company has now taken me three months. A. came for a much needed visit and forcing me to put some words on paper.
Letting go of parenting a baby, and moving to parenting a toddler. Every day became a practice of noticing: what is their intent? How do they move through the world?
Visited Berlin again. Same with Helsinki and Tampere. All the leaving was never-ending. Loved Musee Philharmonie des enfants. Tried pilates! On the nature of time.
Saw Mayerling with J & B. Spoke with Sam about his upcoming book! (“The world is combinatorially weird and fractally interesting.”) Had a lovely Beaujoilaus Soiree at MN Writer’s Club. Visited Elämäni biisi, a beloved Finnish tv show.
N., J and I. visited Paris and we had a joyful time in Petit Palais and having ramen on a cold Saturday afternoon. Otherwise felt frustrated and sad for much of the month.
Wrote No. 88 — Darkome ⫶ Subjective synthetic biology curriculum ⫶ House Rules in Fortnite and No. 89 — A Playground Worth a Thousand Programmes ⫶ AMA ⫶ Le Jardin Robo
Read
Death and Croissants by Ian Moore
Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell. A favorite.
Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony by Lewis Thomas. My first, but not last, Thomas
Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell
Twelve Words for Moss by Elizabeth-Jane Burnett
hetkinen by Saku Tuominen
Rakel by Satu Rämö
Eftermiddag i augusti by Philip Teir
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
December
Got my Daylight Tablet and enjoyed reading and writing with it. Bret Victor on hands: “Hands feel things, and hands manipulate things.”
Started moving pieces around new playgrounds. Loved the energy of having new discussions. Wrote at the Pompidou library on many nights. Björk and Aleppo had a buzzing installation I shuffled past everytime I took the elevator.
Lovely weekend in London with H. and family and seeing old friends. Went to Cafe Troppea, where we had our first date almost five years ago. Saw Harold Cohen’s work live at Tate Modern and ran into a William Blake statue while trying to catch the train. (Later, learned Sendak was obsessed with Blake)
Long lunch with P. and for the first time I was late from school pick-up, oops. Loved Luciatåg at the Swedish church, a mixture of homesickness and sense of awe.
Little Wednesday tradition: first afternoon coffee and cake at a cafeteria, then to the library. Found a new apartment, finally. Was featured on The Creative Independent!
Saw Kesäkirja in the Finnish premier. It’s complicated seeing one’s favorite book a film, but this one was lovely. Our neighbourhood Christmas market was a huge hit. Champagne and oysters didn’t belong to our Finnish traditions!
Learned that a “coquille” in French is a shell, but it’s also a typo. Started over using embeddings as a crossover term.
Wrote No. 90 — thoughts.txt ⫶ Portals ⫶ Reader Survey and No. 91 — Books of 2024
Read
La vie est un roman by Guillaume Musso
Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton: An Autobiography by J.G Ballard. I absolutely loved this - will be reading much more Ballard next year.
The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas
Vedestä ja surusta by Salli Kari. Same for this - hope this gets translated.
The Position of Spoons: And Other Intimacies by Deborah Levy
Question 7 by Richard Flanagan
The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer
I am exclusively steeped in American english. Do you find the languages you interact with sidestep the problem Le Guin recognized?