Jamie McHale

@jamiemchale.com

580 Followers 815 Following

Runner and reader, freelance coder. Building a community @scottishtechnology.club Organise @edinburghjs.org and @glasgowjs.org 📍Edinburgh / Scotland 🌍 jamiemchale.com

Nestled where the quiet breezes blow, In sought-after Dalkeith, where green fields grow, Stands a secluded period home of stone, With five grand bedrooms to call your own. Look out to the hills where the wild winds meet, To catch the proud summit of Arthur’s Seat. Inside, the warm hearths and refurbished halls Bring modern comfort to character walls.
“I do think that if I had to choose one word to which hope can be tied,” Illich [once said](https://www.davidtinapple.com/illich/1996_illich_and_brown.html), “it is hospitality.” In the same context, he also claimed that “if there is something like a political life to be, to remain for us, in this world of technology, then it begins with friendship.” “Therefore my task,” he explained, “is to cultivate disciplined, self-denying, careful, tasteful friendships. Mutual friendships always. I and you, and I hope a third one, out of which perhaps community can grow. Because perhaps here we can find what the good is.”
Flamingos in the wetlands
H getting out of the sea at Mèze.
Goeldi’s Monkey
The system requirements displays with an emoji
Book cover for The Running Ground
Picture of the audience watching a robot demo
A blue view from the beach with two red ships in the far distance
Book cover on Kindle
People gather in a large hall with a Christmas tree listening to musical performers at the front
Trex Menorah with candles
A row of tenement flats in golden light with an airplane in the distance
Sunrise through a small window with a fish decoration in front
A view over loch Tay to the hills fading in the distance&10;
A yellow house in Dunkeld against autumn leaves
Book cover for 1177BC on eink tablet
Midmar Paddock allotments in the afternoon sunshine
Top of two old Lothian Buses
"Speaking out loud to yourself also increases the dialogical quality of our own speech. Although we have no visible addressee, speaking to ourselves encourages us to actively construct an image of an addressee and activate one’s ‘theory of mind’ – the ability to understand other people’s mental states, and to speak and act according to their imagined expectations. Mute inner speech can appear as an inner dialogue as well, but its truncated form encourages us to create a ‘secret’ abbreviated language and deploy mental shortcuts. By forcing us to articulate ourselves more fully, self-talk summons up the image of an imagined listener or interrogator more vividly. In this way, it allows us to question ourselves more critically by adopting an external perspective on our ideas, and so to consider shortcomings in our arguments – all while using our own speech." (Psyche, Talking Out Loud to Yourself Is a Technology for Thinking)
Me running along next to Jack on his wee balance bike
Angus Young playing guitar at Murrayfield
A kite (bird!) in the cloudless sky
Purple flowers
A Capybara searching for food
Long list of JavaScript meetups
Aileen on an old bridge
Group photo of tech community organisers and org representatives
Me and Gordon at the top
Runner in a yellow top crosses a treelined path
Bust of John Hunter surrounded by animal skulls and specimens
A group of people around an outdoor table with pizza and drinks
"The German army in 1941 invaded the Soviet Union with somewhere between 600,000 and 750,000 horses. The horses were not for riding. They were for moving guns, ammunition and supplies. Weeks prior to the invasion, 15,000 Panje carts were issued to the infantry units that would trail behind the fast-moving Panzers. The vast majority of Germany’s soldiers marched into Russia, as they had into France, on foot." (Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction)
Yellow and green field blue sky, Liberton tower poking out on the horizon
Runners at the finish of Parkrun in front of Arthur's Seat
A turtle, at the loch. On a rock.
Image from the sandwich shop "time for a massive sandwich"
Boats being wheeled across the beach towards the sea. Clouds and blue sky.
“I have no idea how he ended up as an art director when he can’t visualise what he wants in his head unless can see some end results”, Bradley says. Rather than beginning with sketches and ideas, then iterating on those to produce a more finalised image or vision, Bradley says his boss will just keep prompting an AI for images until he finds one he likes, and then the art team will have to backwards engineer the whole thing to make it work. “He doesn't know that the important thing isn't just the end result, it's the journey and the questions you answer along the way”.
Mercantilism is never just about the balance of trade. It’s always and everywhere an attempt to direct state violence against those who wish to shape their own lives unguided by the superior wisdom of the nation, the people, or race. Policing the border means control over romance, marriage, friendship, and gender, that is our most meaningful choices; it is an attempt to control who plays with who and who learns from who. Free trade and free meaningful control over one’s life are the same side of the coin.
View over St Margaret's Loch
Colourful playdough shapes on a wooden chest