Last weekend, my good friend showed me how I could train an LLM to write blog posts just like me. The LLM generously assessed my voice and tone (which made me feel understood!), and then spat out a blog post that could’ve been a first draft for me. While I felt curious about it, I […] The post The privilege and point of writing  appeared first on Herbert Lui.

Broadband update Abbreviated version: Hurrah, my broadband finally started working again yesterday afternoon. I had eleven days without. What happened: A couple of Saturdays ago a fibre optic cabre somewhere in Mile End failed. Before dawn on Monday Openreach sent an engineer round who confirmed someone needed to come back in daylight. On Tuesday someone came back in daylight, opened up a manhole and found flooding down there. Faffing around in the water proved ineffective so Openreach realised they'd need to source hydraulic pumps. Several attempts were pencilled in but the issue was not solved, hence the protracted delay. How I found this out: On Tuesday I finally managed to speak to a human on a BT helpline. I think they could hear the surprise in my voice. They did some digging into my broadbandlessness and confirmed it was infrastructural damage so an Openreach issue, not a BT problem. They didn't know when pumps might tame the flooding allowing the cable to be repaired, but it was reassuring to know this was a real problem and they were trying to solve it. I will eventually receive some daily compensation. How it ended: Yesterday I spotted an Openreach engineer fiddling with a cabinet beside an open manhole at the end of Fairfield Road. This looks hopeful, I thought, but when I got home I still had no broadband. I checked online and they were hoping for a fix by 10am this morning. But a few minutes later the red ring on my BT Hub turned blue and I had broadband again. Oh the relief of being able to do everything online again. How Joni Mitchell summed it up: Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. Flickr update fewest views. I hope to update this list several times during the day. 1) Dover to Deal (25 photos, 0 views): Uploaded yesterday, four days after I wrote about my clifftop walk. Please have a look :) 2) Redditch (20 photos, 75 views): Nobody gave a damn about this West Midlands new town last year. 3) Cheltenham & Gloucester (25 photos, 79 views): The lovely spa and cathedral towns, not the building society. 4) Slough (30 photos, 98 views): I should have guessed my Slough collection (Mars, Herschel, Thunderbirds) would underperform. 5) Welwyn Hatfield (26 photos, 107 views): Perhaps it's new towns that don't generally attract attention. 6) Wensum bridges (12 photos, 113 views): Bridges in Norwich proved a bit niche last year. 7) Ironbridge (30 photos, 128 views): What's wrong with you? Ironbridge and Coalbrookdale are fabulous. 8) Prime Meridian (40 photos, 146 views): From the Thames to the Humber (skipping from Stratford to Cleethorpes). 9) Poole (40 photos, 148 views): Perhaps if I'd mentioned Brownsea Island it'd've performed better. 10) Dartford (25 photos, 160 views): Yeah I get that. 11) Foro/Palatino (30 photos, 188 views): The astonishing classical treasures in the centre of Rome. Bow Roundabout update Silvertown Tunnel webpage explains why. All physical mitigation works are now complete. The link under the flyover at Bow will remain closed until we complete more works to protect the structure later in 2025. I suspect they've realised it'll take more than a small low headroom sign to protect the underside of the flyover from potential damage so will be adding more signs or some other kind of protection. A lorry hitting the concrete structure could be incredibly disruptive. Superloop update Every 8 minutes: SL4 (Canary Wharf → Grove Park) Every 10 minutes: SL8 (Shepherds Bush → Uxbridge) Every 12 minutes: SL1, SL2, SL3, SL5, SL9, SL10 Every 15 minutes: SL6, SL7 London Loop update section 18, i.e. Chingford to Enfield Lock. This is another section that can be ridiculously muddy even in normal weather, indeed at the end of February the Inner London Ramblers warned of "slippery mud" and "extensive flooding" and strongly recommended the wearing of "good boots". I can confirm that after six weeks with no rain it was merely a very pleasant ramble and unusually solid underfoot. Here, in addition to the absence of mud, are the ten things which most surprised us along the way. 1) A seafood takeway on a boat at Enfield Lock selling tiger prawns, calamari and octopus. 2) Wondering why all the ducks along the Lea were in groups of three, in each case two males pursuing one female. 3) Crossing the Greenwich Meridian in the middle of a car boot sale. 4) A songbird in a tree on Sewardstone Marsh belting out a ridiculously wide range of chirpy songs, as if working through the preset tunes on an old Casio keyboard. 5) An Islamic cemetery that definitely wasn't on the hillside last time I walked this. 6) A girl dangling her feet in a freshly dug grave and laughing while on the phone to a friend. 7) Noticing that all the graves were pointing in a southwesterly direction that definitely wasn't southeast towards Mecca (then using Google to confirm that Muslim graves are always aligned at right angles). 8) The Leopard Gates outside the Scouts National HQ at Gilwell Park, where one of the leopards got damaged so the 97 year-old sculptor came out of retirement to carve a new one. 9) The absolutely excellent view across London from the top of Yates Meadow, which the official Loop route inexplicably bypasses. 10) Walking round a corner and suddenly passing two young men coming the other way, one wearing a straightjacket and looking immensely embarrassed at being spotted in what they'd hoped was the middle of nowhere. 60+ card update E-bike update xxx I think we can agree this is not the best possible announcement. It draws more attention to two obscure cross-river services than to the e-bikes themselves. It's like saying the asterisk out loud. But as we discussed and discovered, it's hard to do better.-->

A ponzi scheme takes place when the schemer uses cash from later investors to pay returns to early investors.  My friend Peter makes the case that when an entrepreneur borrows from their business’s future to pay off present and past obligations, they are operating it like a ponzi scheme. Peter’s framing of the situation resonated […] The post Do you borrow from your future to pay for the present and past? appeared first on Herbert Lui.

Route 129: Lewisham to Gallions Reach Location: London southeast, crossriver Length of bus journey: 9 miles, 70 minutes 129 has been searching for a purpose ever since it was introduced as a stumpy three mile route in 2006. The original idea was to connect the new Millennium Village on the peninsula to the centre of Greenwich, a double decker shuttle which was one of the ten shortest bus routes in London. Planners intended it would one day be extended to new developments on Surrey Canal Road and thence to Peckham, but New Bermondsey Overground station remains a mirage two decades later so that never happened. Jump ahead to 2022 and the 129 was extended instead to Lewisham, this to make up for route 180 being diverted for Crossrail reasons, although that didn't bring a huge rush of punters either. Now it's become one of three cross-river buses in east London, striking out through the Silvertown Tunnel to connect Lewisham to City Airport and Beckton, and we wait to see if this is a link anyone genuinely needs. 129's first stop ought to be outside the Lewisham Centre but it's closed due to 'Urban Realm development works', which according to a poster were supposed to finish last week but evidently haven't. At least it tells you where to go instead. The second stop alas has no poster, just a Countdown screen insisting several 129s are due in the next few minutes when in fact bugger all are coming. Here I meet a flustered old lady trying to get to Canary Wharf with the aid of some scribbled instructions her nephew gave her. Alas her intended chain of buses fails at square one, causing instant confusion, and trying to persuade her to give up waiting and catch the DLR instead falls on deaf ears. displaced 400 much-peeved residents. Then finally we're back on line of route, where I can confirm nobody has bothered to put up a new 129 timetable at the Lewisham Station stop because of TfL's usual uncoordinated backroom inefficiencies. Things have started badly. We've reached the start of the original runty 129 outside the Old Royal Naval College, suddenly with so many more miles to go. Potential passengers are asking the driver if he's going to North Greenwich, because last week that was the key destination on the front of the bus but it's now vanished in favour of a less helpful housing estate in Newham. For a direct bus they really should have taken the 188 which takes a shortcut whereas we're doing the full length of constricted Trafalgar Road before heading north. "Are you going under the tunnel?" asks one keen old lady, and technically the answer's no but the driver helpfully says yes. We exit the bus station novelly by turning right at the roundabout, then right again down a special canyon-like bus lane. Three hi-vis-ed stewards wave us on, just this once. In no time we're turning into the main flow of traffic almost immediately before the tunnel portal, and then we're in. A double decker in a Thames tunnel is a proper novelty for London. We stick to the left lane along with the HGVs while everything else sticks to the right, all proceeding at just under 30mph and all contributing to the Mayoral coffers. It's less straight than I was expecting but not as wonky as the Blackwall Tunnel. As sightseeing trips go it's not especially incredible, although if you stop and think precisely what we're ducking under maybe it is. One final bend and then daylight appears in the distance and then we're out - just under a mile, fractionally under two minutes. The first stop is a good half mile beyond the tunnel outside West Silvertown station, or technically just past. Here the pile-off begins as we lose the passengers who merely wanted to ride through the tunnel, which is the vast majority. The 129 then begins its new life threading through the Newham hinterland, an estuarine strip initially bursting with fresh flats. It can't currently stop at the next bus stop because extensive cycleway works are in progress but 'Thames Barrier' is announced anyway. Nobody is inconvenienced. The announcements then glitch into overdrive and start mentioning future stops, repeated stops and especially Connaught Bridge, perhaps because we're stopping there twice but more likely teething troubles. When Crossrail started in 2022 TfL entirely rejigged bus stopping patterns in this corner of Beckton, mysteriously rerouting the 300 and leaving Royal Albert Way unbussed. The 129 now follows its former path, making sense of the former subtraction as if this were the plan all along. We pass a few parks, a closed city farm and not many houses before lining up on Tollgate Road where potential passengers are far more plentiful. None oblige. One of the remaining enthusiasts in the front seat lifts his sleeve to reveal the bus-related tattoo he just got, and the other is perhaps less impressed than he'd hoped. We've now been going over an hour, and as a blessing the driver doesn't deviate into Beckton bus station but stops outside. I have no interest in riding the 129 back the other way because it's pretty mundane apart from the two magic subterranean minutes in the middle. Let's hope other people find it useful and it doesn't prove a wasted connection.

The story of The Courage to Be Disliked is told mostly in dialogue, between a student and a philosopher. Spoiler alert: While the student starts off opposing the philosopher, hellbent on proving the philosopher and their school of thinking—Adlerian psychology—wrong, he starts to come around.  By the end of the book, the student’s intention has […] The post Why you feel lost, what to do next appeared first on Herbert Lui.