Looking Sideways: 10 Things
ACM is hiring, a disappointing reading experience, and Christina heads for the moon
1. Our pal Christina is on her way to the moon!
I’ve been very excited and tickled to see the great Christina Koch finally take off on Artemis II this week. One of my fondest memories of recent years was meeting for lunch in London in February 2023 (above) and asking her how work was going: “Well, looks like I’m off to the moon in a year or so”.
If you’ve yet to listen to my episode with Christina, in which we discussed her experiences as an astronaut, and why she loves surfing so much, catch up below. (And yes, I will be inviting her back for a second round once she’s back down on earth).
10 Things will always be free, but it takes a lot of effort, love and curiosity to pull this thing together each week.
So if you want to support Looking Sideways without taking out a paid sub - you can! Click right here.
2. My agency ACM is hiring. Know anybody out there who’d be suitable for this, or who might want to come and join our team? Click this link to find out more.
More simple ways to support Looking Sideways - use any of these codes and I’ll get a small commission 🫡
LOOKINGSIDEWAYS10 for 10% off any order from Finisterre
LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for HUGE savings on ski and snowboard hire with Intersport this winter.
LOOKINGSIDEWAYSXDB for 15% off anything from Db
LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 15% off any Stance order
LOOKINGSIDEWAYS2026 for 15% off any Albion purchase
LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for a whopping 20% off anything from Goodrays.
3. Congratulations to the gang behind Hotpipe Hillbillies for winning the Best Emerging Talent award at the recent North East Surf Film Festival, which sounds like it went right off last weekend.
4. Speaking of Sal McGee from Yonder (one of the organisers of last weekend’s event) this is a really nice back-and-forth between her and Easkey Britten on Finisterre’s excellent Broadcast blog.
5. Rest in peace, The Face magazine. Again.
6. I know I’m sharing a lot of Len Necefer posts at the moment, but I’m finding his entire take on the AI conversation to be provocative and fascinating. His latest piece is another example - I would love to know what people out there think of the arguments he’s making.
7. I’ve been enjoying The Horrors on the BBC’s reliably excellent Artist in Residence series (UK only)
8. Interesting read from Yvette - Wave Wahines - if you’ve been following me for a while you’ll know I’ve been making this point for years now (notably here and here - and yes I made my usual points in the comment section of this piece).
Interestingly, I’ve yet to hear anybody responsible for organising these conferences credibly defend the practise.
9. This week I read the most remarkable piece by Jamie Brisick about the 2019 Woolsey Fire that took all of his possessions.
Naturally, being by Jamie, our most talented surf writer, it’s about so much more than that.
Reading this story took me back to the first time we met in person, which was in Malibu in 2019, a few months after the fire.
We sat in the ashes of his former home and recorded a beautiful and honest Looking Sideways conversation about life, love and loss; and how he was processing the impact of this cataclysmic event.
At the time I remember being struck by the generosity with which Jamie approached what must have been a really difficult morning with two people he didn’t really know. Owen captured this moment in a series of typically brilliant pictures, which I’m sharing here.
Since then we have stayed close, and his support and friendship have become increasingly important to me.
I love the fact that we tend to only see each other in fairly random and impromptu places( Malibu, Santa Monica, Biarritz, London); that our conversations take flight in unexpected directions each time we meet; and that he’s such a champion of my own work. Listen to our conversation below:
10. It’s always a slightly discomfiting experience to find a beloved book a bit ‘meh’, which has been my experience with Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend. Anybody else out there read it? What am I missing?
Which of these stories did you enjoy this week? Let me know ✌️
Hey Matt, a good selection of interesting stuff as usual. I enjoyed the Early Adopter article in particular. Also looking forward to reading the Jamie Briswick article and maybe relistening to that episode again. Driving through Malibu last summer, the devastation still evident was an eye-opener. (Guided by my copy of Looking Sideways vol 1, naturally!)
I wrote a very long comment after Alex Roddie and James Carson's debate last year, and most of that still stands absolutely.
I am still choosing to avoid using AI as much as possible.
Dr Len’s posts on his use of AI are interesting, provocative and have challenged my own thinking, particularly around intersectional issues. The (few) genuinely compelling use-cases for AI tools that I’ve seen are for equity and access. When you are, like me, in a position of considerable privilege it’s important to read the perspectives of people like Dr Len.
I think he is right in nearly everything he says, but despite his ‘I am an actual expert in this - I dare you to challenge me’ he’s missing a great deal, and skims over very brief mentions of counter-arguements as if they have no real merit. He seems to be dismissing the moral and environmental arguments because now anyone can build very niche apps.
In the article you linked to this week, he makes the point that early adopters get to lead how the future is built.
There’s the rub. Early adopters like Zuckerberg, Bezos, Altman, Musk et al? A lovely bunch of chaps.
I believe that AI technologies are unconscionable for environmental and moral reasons, but mostly for democratic reasons.
‘We the people’ have no representation. We have no say over who owns them and who profits from them. We have no oversight, nor control of how they are built, tested, deployed nor used. Our representatives in parliament and congress are either powerless or bought, and you can read Carole Cadwalladr to see how that’s playing out.
Although I’ll keep reading people like Dr Len I think the bad will outweigh the good in the short-term. The future is built upon the rubble of what stands now.