126. The Human Machine
I.
Stepfanie Tyler has written an article on her Substack about the importance of curation and discernment (via Erwin van der Zande). We live in times of abundance. Thanks to the internet, we can look up anything; thanks to AI, we can have anything created. That has many advantages, but it also creates the danger of drowning in excess.
I would recommend reading the whole article. Tyler writes in infectious one-liners. âCuration is care. It shows: Iâve thought about this. Iâve chosen this. I havenât just shared it on a whim. I havenât simply regurgitated the trendy opinion. Iâve taken the time to decide what was worth passing on.â
I think thatâs what you commit to when you start your own blog. Itâs certainly what I try to do. I filter what I want to share and put it online. The reader does with it what they will; I write about whatâs on my mind at that moment. Sometimes thatâs walking in Scotland, sometimes a book by Carry Slee, sometimes an album by Christopher Owens that nobodyâs talking about.
Anyone who spends a lot of time online (myself included) has to deal with algorithms, personalised suggestions, trends and hypes. Thatâs not always a bad thing. The point is to practise taking a moment to reflect on what you see and think more often. The internet keeps pumping a constant stream of stimuli through your eyes, and if youâre not careful, youâll process less and less of it yourself.
II.
My esteemed colleague Jeroen Kraan sent me this article on artificial intelligence. It describes how we often project human characteristics onto non-humans. We see a little face in the front of cars, we see dogs smiling at us and talk to ChatGPT as if it were a friend. (I also often have to be careful not to refer to an AI model using âheâ or âsheâ.)
Of course, there is nothing human about an AI chatbot. They simply string together pre-programmed responses without any real understanding. Theyâre very good at some things, but not at others. Last week, the best AI chatbots from OpenAI, Google and xAI competed against each other, and the standard was frankly ridiculous. I wrote about it on my blog for NU.nl.
There are chess computers specifically designed to play chess extremely well. They are practically unbeatable â the worldâs best human players agree. But ultimately, that doesnât matter either. We donât go to a Taylor Swift concert to hear her sing flawlessly, writes Adam Mastroianni in his article, âwe go because we appreciate the person behind itâ.
That is why he sees no point in using AI to write an essay. âJust as itâs nonsense to take a forklift to the gym,â he writes. âOf course it can lift weights, but Iâm not trying to lift a barbell off the ground for fun. I lift it because I want to become the sort of person who can do that. Just as I write because I want to become the sort of person who can think.â Checkmate!
III.
I knew that American crayfish were a problem here in the Netherlands, but if I can ignore creatures like this, I always will. Until I stepped out of the metro in Amsterdam this week and there was one sitting there, looking quite the part, on the pavement. At first I thought it was a branch. This crayfish sat perfectly still with its claws raised. Ready to attack.
Crayfish are no longer confined to rural areas; they are now swarming in urban waters and crossing the roads. In short: before you know it, theyâll be in your house.
I tried to find out how many of these American crayfish are estimated to be in the Netherlands. I couldnât find that information, probably because itâs an impossible task. A few weeks ago, Nieuwsuur aired a programme on the crayfish problem (https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/video/2575802). A few men are standing in the water next to a golf course and I see them scooping up buckets full of crayfish. A little later in the report, a researcher from Wageningen University explains that hundreds of kilos of crayfish are removed from the ditches of the Lekkerkerk polder every week.
This invasive alien species has been a problem in the Netherlands for decades, but in recent years the situation has really got out of hand. It is not five minutes to midnight, but five minutes past midnight, if we are to believe the Delfland Water Board. They are a plague and are causing damage to the natural environment. Not only is water quality declining, but their digging also damages banks, dykes and quays. And they destroy plants and kill frogs.
Loads of crayfish are now being delivered to restaurants, but apparently weâre not eating enough of them. Thereâs another clever system: traps where crayfish end up in a sort of natural pool, so that birds (or people) can easily catch them. It looks like this:
- - -PS.
Columnist Rafael Behr of The Guardian writes about the peace that comes from going offline. Not necessarily new insights, but I appreciate that people keep finding new ways to describe the sense of change. Behr puts it beautifully: âThe benefit isnât immediate. The cacophony rings in your ears for a few days before you notice the stillness, the change in tempo. It is the difference between gliding on thermal currents of private thought and hurtling along rails, propelled by the burning urgency of other peopleâs opinions. The contrast is even starker in reverse, the roar of the tunnel as you go back to work, the jostle of notifications, the bowed head, scrolling the horizon away.â
Coffee connoisseur and YouTuber James Hoffmann bought one of the coffee machines auctioned off from David Lynchâs personal collection. It is an electric moka pot, the Espresso Minibar by Velox Ferrara. The machine dates from the 1970s and has the look and feel of that decade. But whether Lynch used it often⌠probably not.
- - -One of the creators of the internet cult phenomenon Mastermovies is Merijn Scholte Albers. These days he is best known as one half of the electronic music duo Weval, but making funny films is apparently still in his blood. Scholte Albers has now directed STRAF, a Dutch comedy film about a secondary school music teacher who is constantly being bullied. Until heâs had enough.
- - -I love lighthouses. As beacons for lost sailors. The mystery surrounding the lonely existence of the lighthouse keeper. The metre-high waves crashing against the cliffs. This life was magnified to mythical proportions in Dave Eggersâ film The Lighthouse. The BBC Archive now features a 1973 documentary about life and work at the last English lighthouse. (Via Henk van Straten.)
- - -Youâve just read blog post â126, written during the week of 4 to 10 August 2025. Subscribe to my free newsletter to receive this blog in your inbox every Sunday.