8.0.0 — Smash That Like Button

https://activitypub.blog/2026/03/05/8-0-0-smash-that-like-button/

Indian Creek Trail Ride

https://youtu.be/M5cMd8Mm8lI

First ride with the Action 5. I still have a lot of kinks to work out, including wind noises, random cut outs, settings, etc. But I think this was a good start. Ironically, this was the ride with the most unexpected things happening, including our first flat in two years of riding, and I ended up turning off the camera during arguably the most interesting part.

We rode most of the Indian Creek Trail in Overland Park, stopping for a beer and a snack at half way. It was the first sustained stretch of warm weather for the year and a great first ride for the season. Looking forward to many more!

Waymo

Last week I used Waymo for the first time. I’d been looking forward to trying it out for a while and was glad to finally experience it for myself while in Phoenix for a wedding.

For anyone who’s experienced Tesla’s Autopilot before, it’s probably a bit less novel. I even found myself thinking that Autopilot does a better job, drives more confidently. On my rides, Waymo went exactly the speed limit, didn’t use highways, frequently inched its way into an intersection with no one around, and was extremely blinker-happy without changing direction.

So the self-driving part wasn’t even what stood out to me. It was something more unexpected:

When your Waymo arrives to pick you up, it feels like your car arrives.

Not someone else’s car, set up to their liking, the radio playing their music. Your car, displaying your initials, the AC set at your preferred temperature, Spotify connected to your account, playing your music. That was what’s novel.

Small talk with drivers has never been my strong suit, so the lack of social pressure is nice. The cars are all (mostly) the same, so you know exactly what to expect. The Jaguars are comfortable, a step up from most UberX or Lyfts, though you can tell differences in cabin wear. I’m curious to see how their second generation of cars will feel.

This isn’t to say I don’t have reservations. I worry about a monopolization of ride-hailing—there are parts of this development that I’m hesitant about. But as a hobby economist, it’s also hard to deny the infinitely better product it provides.

Autonomously self-driving (electric) cars are the future. I can’t wait for them to be so good and so prevalent that most people (myself included) don’t even need to own cars anymore. It’s amazing to see we’re on our way there.

#Phoenix

Phoenix Art Museum

This week we spent a few hours exploring the Phoenix Art Museum, one of the largest art museums in the Southwest. The collection spans centuries and continents and they had a good mix of exhibitions during our visit.

Mary Corse – Untitled, 1966

Mary Corse had to take quantum physics courses(!) just to get certified to install the Tesla coils that power this piece. They’re hidden in the wall behind it and there are no visible wires, no plugs, just a glowing white rectangle. I almost walked right past it. It looked so unassuming, it had to be pointed out to me.

Yayoi Kusama Infinity Room

I’ve been to two other of her rooms at The Broad in Los Angeles and Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, but this was probably my favorite. The colors slowly shift and it feels like you’re floating in space. With the other ones you can always see yourself in the mirrors, with this one almost not at all, which made it feel like the trippiest of them all.

Art of Asia: Chinese Qing Dynasty Cloisonné

The Art of Asia galleries house a collection of Chinese cloisonné enamelwork from the Qing dynasty (1644-1912). These two pieces stood out to me with their popping colors

Radical Clay: Japanese Women Ceramicists

This was one of my favorite parts. It’s a special exhibition featuring contemporary Japanese women artists working with clay, and it was astounding. These pieces don’t look like anything you’d expect from ceramics.

What struck me most was the sheer amount of labor in each work. One sculpture is built from hundreds of paper-thin clay
layers. Another is covered entirely in hand-applied curls of clay, inside and out. When you get close and see the detail, you
start to realize just how much time and dedication has gone into each piece.

The gallery also featured a live ikebana display, the Japanese art of flower arrangement

#art #museums