haruki zaemon

The FLUX Review, Ep. 97:

Oftentimes, when we look at a successful or failed project, we tend to look for internal factors to explain the outcome. We assume it is the fault of the seed if it didn’t sprout. We decide that undesirable outcomes come from bad ideas. However, what this lens teaches us is that success or failure is more nuanced. An offhand comment from an executive can lead to an unintentional and unwanted project — a weed. A good idea that fails to thrive might have been planted in the barren soil of an org whose incentive structure doesn’t meet the project’s needs.

Amazon Prime Video rearchitected their streaming service from a distributed microservices architecture to a monolith application, resulting in higher scale, resilience, and reduced costs.

Werner Vogels:

My rule of thumb has been that with every order of magnitude of growth you should revisit your architecture, and determine whether it can still support the next order level of growth.

if there are a set of services that always contribute to the response, have the exact same scaling and performance requirements, same security vectors, and most importantly, are managed by a single team, it is a worthwhile effort to see if combining them simplifies your architecture.

(via Michael Neale)

A leaked internal document says Google are in a pickle when it comes to AI, and are being “lapped” by public efforts:

Open-source models are faster, more customizable, more private, and pound-for-pound more capable. They are doing things with $100 and 13B params that we struggle with at $10M and 540B. And they are doing so in weeks, not months. This has profound implications for us.

It would seem that Google’s strength—a monolith with access to vast amounts of data and resources—has become it’s weakness:

Part of what makes LoRA so effective is that it’s stackable. This means that as new and better datasets and tasks become available, the model can be cheaply kept up to date, without ever having to pay the cost of a full run.

By contrast, training giant models from scratch not only throws away the pretraining, but also any iterative improvements that have been made on top. In the open source world, it doesn’t take long before these improvements dominate, making a full retrain extremely costly.

Google are also hampered by trying to attack a generic problem, rather than specific use-cases:

LoRA updates are very cheap to produce (~$100) for the most popular model sizes. This means that almost anyone with an idea can generate one and distribute it. Training times under a day are the norm. At that pace, it doesn’t take long before the cumulative effect of all of these fine-tunings overcomes starting off at a size disadvantage.

These models are used and created by people who are deeply immersed in their particular subgenre, lending a depth of knowledge and empathy we cannot hope to match.

(via The FLUX Review, Ep. 98)

One crowdfunding campaign has raised enough money to build remote-operated mounted machine guns that can be controlled with a Steam Deck, a portable gaming computer with joysticks and buttons on the sides (similar to the Nintendo Switch). They’ve given these guns to Ukrainian soldiers, who will be able to swivel the guns around and shoot while not being exposed to gunfire themselves.

Jess and I read it at the same time on a road trip and we both took a lot from it. It’s full of examples that seemed like they were taken specifically from our marriage! At least half-a-dozen times we both laughed at how close the examples matched the exact arguments we’d had.

Giving feedback is hard and tailoring it to the individual can be challenging. When you get it right, it can pay off big time. Thankfully, the book has plenty of advice for how to improve the way we give advice.

Of course, not everyone will be great at delivering feedback, and even when they’re good at it, they’re not going to get it right every time. The likelihood that we will receive feedback exactly the way we want is low. Unsurprisingly, given the title, the book has plenty of advice for how we can equip ourselves to be better at receiving feedback.

I realised while reading this book that when I have resented feedback in the past, it was often because I felt obliged to do something concrete with it. Appreciating that ultimately it’s up to me to decide whether and how I respond to the feedback has made it much easier to welcome, receive, and process feedback.

I read the book with the intention to put the lessons into practice at work; it also improved the way Jess and I give and receive feedback as well.

No matter how hard to hear, there’s always something useful behind the feedback we receive. Be open to it. Receive it in good faith. And remember, you’re always in control of what you do with it.

Williams battled the establishment to get his book published, eventually financing it himself. To my layperson’s eyes, he puts forward an eye-opening and compelling narrative that capitalism as we know it has its roots in white supremacy, racism, and slavery.

I got the impression that Williams was writing for a majority white, largely racist, academic audience and, while he touches on other countries, he focuses primarily on Britain as the model for slavery across the globe.

One thing that continues to ring in my ears since I read (actually listened to) the book is something Williams calls “The Triangular Trade”: Britain took people from Africa and enslaved them in the West Indies to cultivate crops. Those crops were sent to Britain and powered the manufacturing industries of Manchester, Bristol, Liverpool, Glasgow, etc. Manufactured goods were then shipped across the globe, including to the colonies in Africa.

In the end, slavery was abolished in Britain not due to idealism or humanitarianism, but through the resistance of Africans themselves and because, in the battle between the old Mercantile and new Industrialist classes, it was no longer profitable.

Recently, I’ve been thinking and about how to make Aikido more accessible. I wondered: perhaps if people understood a little bit more about me and my personal journey then hopefully they might get more out of their own Aikido training.

I didn’t have a particularly great childhood. I didn’t go for want of food or clothing but family life was tough and I was unhappy, angry and directionless. I searched desperately for an escape, something to bring some structure to my life. I did just about everything you can imagine: Athletics, Gymnastics, Yoga, Jazz Ballet, you name it. Some of it I was naturally good at; some of it not so much. But ultimately, nothing held my attention and I continued to feel lost.

When I was 15, I saw a TV show called The Way of the Warrior, which documented various martial arts. The one that stood out for me was Aikido. It had a man seemingly effortlessly locking, pinning and throwing. That’s what I wanted to do! So I found a Dojo and started.

It was like nothing else I had done before. It was seemingly easy enough for anyone to learn and yet difficult enough that its secrets have remained elusive for nearly 30 years—and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. For anyone who’s ever hiked, Aikido practice is a bit like climbing along a ridge line—you see the top but the moment you reach it, you realise there’s another peak just behind it.

I can’t say for sure what ultimately convinced my parents but I suspect due in part to sheer desperation, six months later I was in Japan studying under a direct student of O’Sensei (lit. Great Teacher; Ueshiba Morihei, Founder of Aikido) in the Founder’s very own Dojo (lit. way place). For the next 12 months I lived in the Dojo, slept on the mats, worked in the field of the Dojo farm, and trained a minimum of 2 hours every day—sometimes 4-6 hours if there was a university group visiting.

It was tough to be sure, but it was also the most incredible time of my life. I had structure, I had good role models, and I was growing physically and mentally fitter and stronger. Sensei (teacher) and his family were strict but they were also the most kind and generous people a young person could hope to come in to their life. In short, it changed my life. It also changed what Aikido meant to me.

In your training do not be in a hurry. Never think of yourself as an all-knowing, perfected master; you must continue to train daily with your friends and students and progress together in Aikido.
— O’Sensei

Aikido is Budo. To most people Martial Arts and Budo are probably interchangeable but they are not. At the risk of sounding clichéd, Budo is more than an activity, more than a sport. It’s not about fitness or fighting. There are no rules; no competition. Budo is living, and by extension practising in the Dojo as if every moment is life or death. Training in Japan feels like this—every class, every day as a live-in student feels as though at any moment something might happen. Morihiro Sensei (9th degree black belt and direct student of O’Sensei) said that Aikido techniques are 80-90% striking; we happen to focus on the other 10-20%.

Morihiro Sensei also said that “Aikido is like a mirror on your soul.” With vigorous training and constant vigilance your awareness heightens and your empathy grows. You begin to understand what others are thinking. You begin to anticipate what is needed in any given situation. You begin to read people more intuitively. You begin to see people for who they really are. But more importantly you see yourself and the way you handle the fear, the anxiety, the excitement, and the nerves that are part and parcel of the training.

Aikido builds strength both mentally and physically. Aikido practice is hard. The throws are vigorous and they toughen the outer layers of your body. The locks and pins are effective and strengthen your muscles and joints. Techniques are painful but at the same time they don’t last forever. They strengthen your mind by teaching you that it’s just pain and it will end.

Aikido is an internal art—more in common with Bagua than say Judo or Jiujitsu even though that’s where the obvious roots lie. Everything in Aikido moves around centrelines. Everything draws power up from the ground, through the feet, legs and hips, and delivered outwards through the rest of your body. There is more, much more to Aikido than the physical manifestation of the techniques. That said, it is through the vigorous practice of these physical techniques that the other aspects will manifest themselves.

Aikido is a life long endeavour. There is no point at which you can say “I have mastered Aikido.” Even as a teacher you are a student. Through circumstance rather than choice alone, I just happen to be a little further along than my students. Every class, no matter how experienced you believe you are, you should try your best to achieve “beginners mind” and look at every technique and every situation a new.

Aikido is mosogi (purification). The mindset, the self-reflection and introspection, the physical and mental strengthening, the development of internal power, and the constant and relentless renewal of your understanding and awareness can and hopefully will leave you feeling calm, confident, relaxed, and refreshed—even after a long hard practice or a tough day at work.

Aikido is family. No matter where I go in the world, I always have somewhere to stay and somewhere to train. The friendships I make on the mat extend far beyond the boundaries of the Dojo, or Japan or whichever city or country I happen to be in. When we are on the mat we train like life depends on it; off the mat we are always there for each other.

One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train.
— O’Sensei

The Dojo is a special space and demands special behaviour and attention. Traditionally, Aikido tatami (straw mats) are hard and covered in a rough canvas—in the old days mats were only used on special occasions and instead they trained on floor boards with nails sticking out that needed to be hit back in before each class. The tatami have a unique smell which, when combined with the wood of the Dojo walls, transports your mind away from the outside world. It’s almost impossible to replicate that outside of Japan but nevertheless it’s your mindset as much as anything that is important.

When you walk through the door of the Dojo and bow toward the shomen (front), take off your shoes and put on your clean white dogi (uniform), you begin the process of misogi. This is further reinforced as you clean the mats and then bow at the beginning and end of each class. Look around the Dojo for there are always things that need cleaning, fixing, tidying. Use each step as an opportunity to leave your worries behind and recapture your beginners mind.

Be respectful to the space and to others. Be aware and respectful of other classes that may be in progress. Say “onegaishimasu” (please) when you bow in to your partner, and “domo arigatou gozaimashita” (thank you) when you bow out. Aikido is an inherently dangerous activity. Your partner is giving themselves to you. Understand and respect this and return the gesture.

Even though there is a hierarchy of rank between students there is only one Sensei and for the most part all students are otherwise treated equally. Class is an opportunity for you to practice and learn—instruction is the role of Sensei—so keep chit chat to a minimum. If you have a question, ask it after class. Understand that not everything will make sense and not everything you practice will be directly relatable to a “real situation.”

Hold on firmly and strike effectively. Learn the intent behind each attack—it’s not always obvious. As uke (receiver) your primary role is to help your partner learn through diligent, genuine and respectful attacks. If you end up in a wrestling match or a “but what if someone does this?” situation, nobody is learning anything. The best way to get better is to help your partner get better.

Above all enjoy yourself. Practiced correctly, you will grow stronger physically, mentally and technically. However, as you improve so too will your partner. As everyone grows stronger so too will the attacks, grips, resistance, etc. and the frustrating side effect of this is that you never quite feel like you’ve improved but you have. When a beginner joins the class take a look at them. That was once you. See how far you have progressed?

The purpose of training is to tighten up the slack, toughen the body, and polish the spirit.
— O’Sensei

As you may have gathered, Aikido is a very traditional art and the practice is no less so. We are not focused on winning a fight or a competition. Just like scales on the piano, not every technique you practice will have an obvious practical application but every technique embodies some principle that is important.

Learn to be an effective uke (literally, receiver). Learn to protect yourself whilst delivering an attack. Learn to fall safely without exposing yourself to counter-attacks. When you’re thrown get up quickly—every minute of practice counts. Learn your own limits—only attack at a pace and with a level of strength you could comfortably handle in return. Use your turn as uke to practice your footwork, to develop a better, stronger grip and to feel what does and doesn’t work. If you only focus on doing the technique you’ve wasted half the class.

You should be able to knock a bird in flight out of the sky.
— O’Sensei

A ki-ai (short yell or shout uttered when performing a move) is integral to every movement we make in Aikido. It promotes correct breathing. It helps develop internal strength. And as O’Sensei alludes to, performed well a ki-ai is in itself a form of defence and attack.

Every open-handed—as opposed to weapons—class starts with Tai-no-henko (literally, body, change). It’s a seemingly innocuous practice but its simplicity belies the inner secrets of Aikido. At face value it teaches you to merge rather than clash with your partner’s strength; to generate movement and power through your feet and develop strong, stable hips as well as the subtle train ma’ai (distance) and intention. And for your partner, by holding on strongly and never letting go, it’s a great way to develop strength that starts from your belly, extends through your torso and culminates in an iron grip.

Next we take Tai-no-henko and attempt to perform it ki-no-nagare (literally, energy flow). Again, it’s not just the person performing the technique that benefits. Your partner is also practicing the application of a controlling grab whilst moving.

Together, these two practices set the pattern for learning everything else: first perform a technique statically a few times; then attempt it a number of times on the move. You will find that techniques “work” when performed statically and likely fall apart once they are done in a more flowing fashion. This is perfectly natural. Observe your self on the move: Where are the holes in the technique? Where did you feel yourself come unstuck or lose balance? Then try to fix those deficiencies when next you have the opportunity to practice statically.

The third practice we do every class is morote-dori koku-nage (literally, two-hand grip breath throw). This takes the principles of the first two techniques and introduces the concept of kokyu (breath power) and oshidashi (pushing power). It’s also the first time you will throw (and be thrown). Remember, when someone is learning to throw they will be ineffective at it. As uke, use this as an opportunity to hold strongly, keeping your feet anchored to the ground and not stepping forward. Practice your falling even when you don’t necessarily feel that your balance has been broken. Start to understand the subtleties of resisting your partners movement without stopping them completely.

Taken together these three practices embody so much of Aikido that they will continue to baffle and reward in equal parts for your entire Aikido life.

By this stage you should already be sweating. In Japan I have often looked up at the clock after the first few techniques and thought “What?! There’s till 45 mins to go!” As nage you have been working hard to move your body in the face of resistance; as uke you have been trying to find that balance between giving your partner enough resistance to learn, but not so much as to prevent them from moving. Remember, if your partner can’t move at all they’re never going to learn and your role as uke is to help them learn.

From here classes consist of various techniques from the Aikido syllabus. When you consider all the different combinations of attacks, throws, locks and pins, Aikido has literally thousands of variations. At first this can be daunting but slowly you come to realise that there are common threads that run throughout them all. Try to learn the names of the various forms and attacks. Understand the relationships between them all.

There are standing techniques, seated techniques, half standing/half-seated techniques, sword, staff and knife techniques. There are techniques to the front and to the rear. Some techniques will be throws; otherwise will be locks and pins. Again, not all techniques have obvious practical application—in fact there are techniques specifically called oyowaza (applied techniques)—but all are designed to teach you something or strengthen you in some way. Be open to them all. It’s not a fight. It’s not wrestling. There are no rules. There are simply pre-arranged ways of learning and practicing.

We preserve and share the great influence of my father Morihiro while remaining faithful to the technical and spiritual heritage left by the Founder Morihei Ueshiba. We continually try to improve ourselves through the intensive and systematic practice of kihon (basics), and we believe each training session is a unique opportunity to feel closer to the Founder. I firstly apply this permanent training to myself.
— Saito Hitohira Jukucho

My Sensei once told me you should spend at least 5 years finding a practice and a teacher that is right for you because ultimately your life and your martial arts journey is very personal.

Just as there are many styles of martial art, there are many styles of Aikido. The style of Aikido we practice is very traditional, very rigorous, very technical and can be traced directly from the Founder. It is hard work. It takes a long time to learn. And it has held my interest and kept me fit and healthy for nearly 2/3 of my life.

It’s important to develop a strategy to listen to and act on complaints, harness their benefits, and mitigate their destructive potential. When employees believe their manager doesn’t care about, minimizes, or ignores valid concerns, it can increase stress, decrease engagement, and ignite turnover.

“Telling employees to ‘put a lid’ on [their] feelings is both ineffective and destructive; the emotions will just come out later in counterproductive ways.”

Start with interest and curiosity, consider the intention.

Encourage and help facilitate constructive complaints.

It was lovely to meet and chat with such a great bunch of open, curious, and pragmatic leaders:

• Kunal Madhav, GoodHuman’s CTO.
• Nadeesha Cabral, Mr Yum’s Director of Engineering.
• Sumesh Suvarna, Aesop’s Head of Engineering.

We discussed challenges, approaches, mistakes, and lessons we’ve learnt scaling teams.

Mostly though, I just enjoyed the conversation. It didn’t necessarily always stay on topic, in a good way.

(via Kottke)

(via Benji)

I used to drive one of these in Japan. The dojo had one as the primary means for the live-in students to move heavy goods and run errands beyond the local village. They are the perfect size.

Unlike new vehicles with onboard computers and complicated proprietary parts, Kei trucks are easy to modify and repair. […] “MotoCheez”, a mechanic from Connecticut, says his YouTube channel’s popularity soared after he started featuring his Kei truck.

[astronaut John] Glenn, with the help of NASA engineers, quickly modified the [$40 autofocus, mechanical] camera [he bought at a drug store] to make it usable with his bulky astronaut gloves. They flipped the camera upside down, attached a pistol grip with special buttons to control both the shutter and film advance, and even moved the eyepiece to the bottom, which was now the top of the camera because they had flipped it.

This is just MAD. He gets pretty confident towards the end.

It’s great for rental agents, but not so great for vulnerable renters who find themselves on the wrong end of the algorithms that are can determine who does, and doesn’t, win a tenancy in a tough rental market.

[…] some of the technology already in use is programmed to filter through the data and arrive at what the platform determines are the best prospects. 

It’s a process that leaves people who rent at the mercy of automated decision-making over which they have no control.

In many ways, online rental applications circumvent existing tenancy laws, effectively serving as a tenants check, in much the same way as tenant databases or ‘blacklists’.»

My new favourite background music.

These scenarios certainly resonated with me as in many ways they speak to reducing cycle time.

All organisations waste a huge amount of time believing that they are making progress on decisions, when in fact they’re just involved in the theatre of decision making. This happens through indirect actions that feel like progress is being made, but in fact contribute nothing to it. Small changes can speed up progress dramatically.

Tangentially related, I often need to emphasise with my Aikido students the importance of reducing intervals between techniques. Reducing a 15 second changeover to 5 seconds could mean getting in another 10 practice runs.

If, like me, you believe in iterating to learn, reducing cycle time is critical.

Counterintuitive research for 7 points, please:

Ruminants have lower feed use efficiency than monogastric livestock, and produce higher reactive nitrogen and methane emissions, but can utilize human-inedible biomass through foraging and straw feedstock. Here we conduct a counterfactual analysis, replacing ruminants with monogastric livestock to quantify the changes in nitrogen loss and greenhouse gas emissions globally from a whole life cycle perspective. Switching 12% of global livestock production from monogastric to ruminant livestock could reduce nitrogen emissions by 2% and greenhouse gas emissions by 5% due to land use change and lower demand for cropland areas for ruminant feed. The output from released cropland could feed up to 525 million people worldwide. More ruminant products, in addition to optimized management, would generate overall benefits valued at US$468 billion through reducing adverse impacts on human and ecosystem health, and mitigating climate impacts.

It only takes a few minutes to induce learned helplessness by exploiting our need for social acceptance.

This can happen through deliberate acts, and it can happen inadvertently as a consequence of poor leadership.

Starting from the point of view that this is probably a management failure – rather than something inherent to the person – correctly puts the onus on the manager for letting someone get into a situation like this. Sure, there are situations where there’s not much the manager could have done, but those are rare.

Well delivered feedback drives improvement, whilst poorly delivered feedback decreases performance and can cause real damage, sometimes lasting for years afterwards.

Good feedback is: Well intentioned; Non-trivial; Truthful; Consensual; Actionable; Timely; Specific; Private; Delivered from your perspective, not that of others; A two-way conversation; Focused; About behaviours and performance, not personalities or style; Combined with positive encouragement.