Notes

“How Good Engineers Write Bad Code at Big Companies”:

To pure engineers - engineers working on self-contained technical projects, like a programming language - the only explanation for bad code is incompetence. But impure engineers operate more like plumbers or electricians. They’re working to deadlines on projects that are relatively new to them, and even if their technical fundamentals are impeccable, there’s always something about the particular setup of this situation that’s awkward or surprising. To impure engineers, bad code is inevitable. As long as the overall system works well enough, the project is a success.

[I]t’s a mistake to attribute primary responsibility to the engineers at those companies. If you could wave a magic wand and make every engineer twice as strong, you would still have bad code, because almost nobody can come into a brand new codebase and quickly make changes with zero mistakes. The root cause is that most big company engineers are forced to do most of their work in unfamiliar codebases.

A pretty high percentage of code changes are made by “beginners”: people who have onboarded to the company, the codebase, or even the programming language in the past six months.

[The big companies are] giving up some amount of expertise and software quality in order to gain the ability to rapidly deploy skilled engineers onto whatever the problem-of-the-month is.

“Bringing Sexy Back”:

But the pushback against #MeToo reveals a certain peril to storytelling as politics, not only in the retraumatization evident in the practice of revealing one’s most intimate harms before an infinite online audience, which could always include those listening in bad faith. But also, a discursive market opened up in which trauma became a kind of currency of authenticity, resulting in a doubled exploitation. This idea, while not very nice, lingers in the use of harm as an authoritative form of rhetorical defense. The problem here is not what is said, but how it is used. A friction has since emerged between an awareness of weaponization of harm and emotion and the continued need to express oneself as vulnerably as possible in order to come off as sincere. This friction is unresolved.

Punishing strangers for their perceived perversion is a form of compensation for a process that is already completed: the erosion of erotic and emotional privacy through internet-driven surveillance practices, practices we have since turned inward on ourselves. In short, we have become our own panopticons.

When it became desirable and permissible to transform our own lives into content, it didn’t take long before a sense of entitlement emerged that extended that transformation to people we know and to strangers.

Such unproductive and antisocial behavior [of submitting screenshots, notes, videos, and photos with calls for collective judgement] is justified as a step toward liberation from predation, misogyny, or any number of other harms. But the punitive mindset we’ve developed towards relationships is indicative of an inability to imagine a future of gendered or sexual relations without subjugation. To couch that in the language of harm reduction and trauma delegitimizes both.

[…] More

“The Claims of Close Reading”:

In our work, we assumed—before anything else, before any evidence—that there was meaning, and that we were rational, and we decided that we treat texts, ourselves, and each other this way.

On the first day of each new class, I tell my students about the philosopher Donald Davidson’s idea of radical interpretation. To make sense of a foreign language, or indeed any language, Davidson argues, a listener must begin with a stance of good faith by assuming that the person they’re listening to has rational beliefs and is making meaning. This must happen before the listener can begin to interpret what that meaning is and whether she agrees with it.

“The Fatal Flaw in Using Bitcoin as a Currency”:

The value of any currency never depends on rigid control of money supply. The most basic economics textbook will tell you that any value depends on the balance of supply and demand. To ignore money demand is to court disaster — because the demand for money is not stable.

The original issuers of paper currency understood the importance of money demand. In 10th century China, paper currency was introduced with a simultaneous legal requirement that taxes to the government be paid in paper. This immediately created a demand for paper currency alongside its supply, which gave it value. As long as the supply of and demand for paper money were balanced, value was maintained. When demand for the new paper currency fell short of what the government chose to supply, inflation and hyperinflation were the inevitable result.

This lack of an automatic demand for crypto is a problem, but not the fatal flaw which prevents crypto acting as a currency. The flaw is that bitcoin supply can only rise, not fall.

this must be the funniest thing i’ve ever typed

“The Invention of the Modern Self”:

The history of modern selfhood […] centers on the inescapable and ultimately unresolvable tension between a desire for uniqueness, accompanied by a belief in the power of self-transformation, and the recognition of how deeply we are shaped by our biology and social origins.

[T]he modern self, at least in its European and North American varieties, [is] a kind of paradox. On the one hand, in the 18th century, as the mental grip of religion weakened, “the idea spread that ordinary people had the potential for autonomy and were capable of exerting their liberty, whether in the choice of spouse, occupation, religious beliefs, or governing bodies.” But at the very same time, “individuals came to be viewed as creatures shaped by social conditioning…. Original sin lost its hold, but seeping into its place [came] the idea that our identities are formed by class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, age, profession, and marital status.”

“The existential struggle between being a ‘we’ and an ‘us’”:

In extending the existential and phenomenological importance of ‘the Look’ to collective (rather than individual) experience, Sartre draws a distinction between the ‘we-subject’ (le nous-sujet) and the ‘we-object’ (le nous-objet). Since nous in French is used for the first-person plural, in English we could translate Sartre (as his American translator Hazel Barnes did) as drawing a distinction between the ‘we’ and the ‘us’. Sartre himself was wary of deriving theoretical insights from mere grammatical categories, especially when many languages do not even use or differentiate between a first-person plural pronoun. But, as the philosopher Sarah Pawlett-Jackson argues in The Phenomenology of the Second-Person Plural (2025), pronouns came into use precisely in order to capture a particular form of lived experience, a particular phenomenological standpoint.

In order to experience the world from a ‘we-perspective’, certain basic criteria need to be met. First of all, there must be a plurality of subjects who are undergoing the experience. If I am the only person enjoying the sunset, my enjoyment is felt by me as an individual subject, rather than by we as a plural subject. Secondly, the subjects must be unified in some sense. If a stranger sitting near me is enjoying the same sunset, it would be presumptuous to say that we experienced it together unless our enjoyment has been communicated to one another. We haven’t created the necessary unity.

[W]hereas a we-experience can take place between a dyad, an us-experience is necessarily triadic in its structure. A felt sense of ‘us-ness’ can arise only in relation to an external Third element.

[…] More

Henrik Karlsson:

I notice two kinds of happiness in the diary: a soft joy, which makes me ease up and feel more like myself, and a hard one that again and again leads me into shame.

The soft one is private—I struggle to share it with others—whereas the one that drives me into misery is social.

[The hard one is a] happiness I have to share. I want to force it upon people. I’m ashamed but I can’t stop myself: the excitement, it seems, comes from being seen as the sort of person that this or that person desires.

It was a strange mix of relief and discomfort to meet a person who loved me in the Erich Fromm sense (“I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.”) A relief because it was like decompression to let go of all of the fear and insecurity that made me shape myself for approval, and to feel my own sense of curiosity and value unfold. But discomfort because it put me on a collision course with the life I had been living and many of the people I interacted with. When I understood my values, I had to confront the pain of looking stupid and having people get angry at me when they disagreed with my decisions; I had to let go of the safety of social status and the coping mechanisms I had relied on.

The Witness on the newcomer injunctions in Hong Kong:

高等法院在 2019 至 2020 年間，先後應機場管理局、港鐵、律政司及警務處申請，批出共 6 項臨時禁制令，分別針對阻礙機場及港鐵站運作、阻礙或破壞紀律部隊宿舍、「起底」及滋擾警務人員及家人、在網上發布煽動暴力言論，以及於 2020 年底應律政司申請，頒令禁止「起底」及滋擾司法人員及家人。

翻查資料，當時高院原訟庭頒發此 6 項臨時禁制令，均是應原告方單方面申請（ex parte application）批准。被告一方多數列為「非法及故意作出申索書中…所禁止的任何行為的人」 （persons unlawfully and wilfully conducting themselves in the acts prohibited… of the indorsement of claim），沒有確切身分。

上述 6 項禁令頒發時，均屬臨時禁制令（interim injunction），並於獲頒臨時禁制令同年，獲法院批准延長「至正式審訊或另作命令（until trial or further order）」。

臨時禁制令（interim injunction）與永久禁制令（permanent injunction）的分別，在於後者一般都是在官司完結後頒布，例如在誹謗案件中，如原告一方勝訴，他可要求法庭頒布永久禁制令，禁止被告一方繼續發布誹謗言論。

而臨時禁制令，則通常是在審訊未完結、甚至未開始之前，原告可基於情況緊急、若不立即禁制被告行為會造成無法彌補的損失為由，以及向法庭證明案件牽涉重要而須審訊的議題（serious question to be tried），向法庭單方面申請批出臨時禁制令。

在一般民事案件中，法庭頒令臨時禁制令生效「至正式審訊或另作命令」，是常見做法，由於原告及被告雙方均有利益，一般會積極推動審訊進行。

但上述 2019 至 2020 年間申請的幾項禁制令，被告人均是「無名氏」，因禁制令並非針對確切身分人士，而是任何作出受禁行為的人。

如沒有被告或其他人介入審訊，除非原告，即律政司及警方主動撤銷禁制令，否則目前禁制令不會自動失效，「所以依家臨時禁制令，變相係永久禁制令。」

英國近年亦有不少針對非特定被告人的禁制令，以打擊近年常見的「流水式示威」。惟英國最高法院在 2023 年一宗案例中訂明，此類針對任何後來干犯受禁行為的禁制令（newcomer injunction），其有效地域、時間須有嚴格限制，以免萬一沒有人挑戰，禁制令會永遠生效。

法院確實有酌情權頒布此類禁制令，惟申請人須證明頒布禁制令，是為了保障其他公民權利、制止反社會行為，或為達致其他法定目標的迫切需要（compelling needs）。 判詞又指，除非真的沒有其他替代方法以達致相同目標，而相關禁制令只會維持一段短時間，並會於短期內審訊，以讓雙方能正式就理據作爭辯，否則一般不應頒布此類禁制令。

英判詞指，這種禁制令應被視為特殊的措施，且須符合相稱性，故必須訂明嚴格時間及地域限制，「以使它們無法超越其所依賴的迫切情況（that they neither outflank or outlast the compelling circumstances relied upon）」。最高法院又認為，除非有人申請延長，並提供理據延續禁制令，否則此類禁制令應在一年後失效。

坐了夺命（literally）小巴，但是遇上一个只开 80 出头的佛系司机，太子到落马洲开了 35 分钟，命保住了。

“The growing problem with China’s unreliable numbers”:

Rather than one single number, statisticians usually produce three. The expenditure approach to GDP — which many countries consider the best way to capture activity in a modern economy — measures consumption, investment and net exports.

The production approach instead tries to capture companies’ output minus their inputs. The income approach estimates what individuals and businesses earn and pay in tax. In theory, the three different approaches should equal each other.

Until 1993, China went a fourth way. Its material product scheme, the offspring of an approach pioneered in the Soviet Union, counted commodities and goods produced across state-run factories.

Eager to understand its own growth as it reopened to global trade, and under pressure to improve its data, Beijing drew on international guidance. Canada’s national statistical agency launched a partnership with the NBS in the 1990s.

All other large economies publish quarterly breakdowns of the expenditure approach to GDP, including investment, consumption and net exports. They also publish subcomponents of those broad categories, which can provide useful insights into what is driving the headline figures. […]

China does not publish this data. Emerging Advisors, a consultancy, says that across 40 emerging economies it tracks, only four others do not publish such quarterly data, and they are countries with economies based on hydrocarbons. “We can’t stress enough how abnormal this is for an economy of any significant size,” noted economist Jonathan Anderson in a report this year.

Instead, China publishes quarterly data based on the production approach, which is harder to analyse. The expenditure GDP data is only published in nominal terms for the whole year.

[…] More

What counts as an “architecture” in discussions on Linux architecture support:

For example, Linux supports the User Mode Linux “architecture”, which lets the kernel run as an unprivileged process inside an existing kernel for testing purposes. By most normal definitions, User Mode Linux isn’t really a CPU architecture, even if the code for it lives alongside the kernel’s other architecture support code. On the other hand, the kernel considers all PowerPC CPUs to be one architecture, regardless of whether they’re running in big-endian or little-endian mode; most distributions count those as two architectures because software compiled for different endiannesses must be packaged separately. Even without architecture-wide incompatibilities like that, several architectures also offer different “levels” or optional extensions that make describing a piece of software’s requirements a bit difficult. RISC-V has, at the time of writing, 48 different standards adding a larger number of extensions.

“The Ozempic Era Should Change How We Think About Self-Control”:

Someone who is overweight may have just as much willpower as a thinner person but need to deploy this willpower against stronger desires for food. In effect, thinner individuals might be getting credit for winning a battle that they never had to fight.

We can get clearer about the effects of GLP-1 drugs on self-control by drawing on a distinction between two different ways of acting moderately, which traces back to Aristotle. The first kind of moderate action lines up with how most people think of self-control: effortfully resisting doing something that you believe you shouldn’t do. The ancient Greek word for this form of moderation is enkrateia, which is usually translated into English as ‘continence’ (despite its contemporary associations with bladder control).

As we’ve seen, Ozempic does not seem to make those who take it more continent; it doesn’t help them resist strong temptations to eat more than they think they should. Rather, taking GLP-1 drugs brings people closer to the other form of moderation: sophrosyne, which is usually translated as ‘temperance’. While the continent person experiences many tempting desires and successfully resists them, the temperate person doesn’t face temptations in the first place.

[B]eing a highly self-controlled person seems mainly to involve using proactive strategies to avoid and manage temptations, rather than being good at directly and effortfully resisting them through sheer willpower.

Frankly, I still don’t feel totally comfortable with the idea of Ozempic for both the

[…] More

noir^3

now i’m really having difficulty dealing with good weather

“Review: Leah Libresco Sargeant’s ‘Dignity of Dependence’”:

Sexism has two pillars: the insistence that female biology is moral destiny, and the insistence that female moral destiny is inferior.

What is at stake is nothing less than affording women access to the tumult of total humanity. To propose that a woman’s biology consigns her to a single corner of the moral universe is to force her to undergo a violent truncation — a shrinkage of the sort that always attends the indignity of specialization.

Nothing innovative here, but the phrase the tumult of total humanity is so majestic that I can’t help gazing at it.

“An Ant Is Drowning: Here’s How to Decide if You Should Save It”:

Queries like ‘Do individual ants deserve moral concern?’ risk conflating the scientific question of whether ants are sentient, the ethical question of whether only sentient beings deserve moral concern, and the practical question of whether a policy of caring for ants in a particular way is achievable or sustainable.

Scientifically, we can assess how likely particular beings are to possess capacities like sentience, by evaluating the available evidence. Ethically, we can assess how likely these capacities are to matter morally, by evaluating the available arguments. Practically, we can then put it all together to assess how likely these beings are to matter – and how to factor this into the way we live our lives.

“The Hidden Costs of Masking for Women With ADHD and Autism”:

The harder someone works to appear ‘normal’, the more their difference disappears from view – and the less the world learns to make room for it. In hiding to belong, they only deepen the loneliness that made them hide in the first place.

In a perfect world, of course, I would lean toward unmasking. And I know many of you who are neurodivergent – and just as tired of pretending – would agree. It would be a relief to move through the world as our full selves, without apology. But the truth is, that kind of openness comes with risk. We still live among people who judge and criticise, who prefer – often unconsciously – those who resemble themselves.

“Women Undergoing IVF” (translations mine):

What makes it even more difficult is that your entire life schedule becomes tied to it. You can’t plan what you’ll do next because it entirely depends on your hormone levels—something beyond your control. All aspects of your daily life—work, socializing, rest—must unconditionally give way to the treatment.

When we say these women have subjectivity, it doesn’t mean their decisions are completely free and unconstrained. On the contrary, what I observed is a form of subjectivity arising under structural pressure, or, a situational, struggling subjectivity. Throughout the long IVF process, they learn, make decisions, and communicate with doctors. This process itself is a profound practice of subjectivity. They internalize external expectations, such as those from family or society, and eventually articulate them as “my own decision.” Behind the statement “I want a child to complete my life,” there may be concerns for marital stability, anxiety about age, or imaginations of a “normal” family life. It is subjectivity operating in complex situations to translate external pressure into internal needs.

I want to portray the resilience, contradictions, and genuine realities of women navigating the intersections of technology, the body, family, and social structures. This fluid and situational subjectivity is the most authentic insight I’ve gained from my research.

“The Goon Squad”:

But I can’t get entirely behind the few-bad-apples theory. Nor can I so neatly separate the gooners as a whole from the rest of us. Think about it for a second: What are these gooners actually doing? Wasting hours each day consuming short-form video content. Chasing intensities of sensation across platforms. Parasocially fixating on microcelebrities who want their money. Broadcasting their love for those microcelebrities in public forums. Conducting bizarre self-experiments because someone on the internet told them to. In general, abjuring connective, other-directed pleasures for the comfort of staring at screens alone. Does any of this sound familiar? Do you maybe know some folks who get up to stuff like this? It’s true that gooners are masturbating while they engage in these behaviors. You could say that only makes them more honest.

at least i was shown the first rung of the ladder

“The Art of the Impersonal Essay”:

By the mid-nineties, the mind you were encouraged to develop, at King’s, was basically unchanged from the one students were expected to form in the mid-fifteen-hundreds. (The college was founded by Henry VI in 1441.) A discursive, objective, ironical, philosophical, elegant, rational mind. I was none of those things. I was expressive, messy, chaotic, and increasingly infuriated. A lot of my fury was directed at the university itself. The more I heard about the prior lives of my fellow-students, the more enraged I became.

I understood all three men to be “personal essayists” in the sense that they cared passionately about their subjects, but they themselves were rarely figures in any particular piece; their energies were directed elsewhere. And I followed their example, channelling my furies into coolly expressed explication, description, analysis.

That tone, for better or worse, has stayed with me. I was trained to write like this, and I write like this. I just can’t bleed out onto the page as some people do, or use all caps or italics to express emotion, even when I know it’s what’s expected and that many people not only prefer it but see it as a sign of authenticity. The essay-writing habits of my school days have never left me. I find I still don’t want people to relate to what I’m saying in an essay, or even be moved by the way I say it. (With fiction, I feel the opposite.) I just want to think out loud about the things that matter most to me.

[…] More

Wong, Sampson. Urban Strollology: Learning From Hong Kong [城市散步學：以香港作為起點]. Breakthrough, 2023.

捕捉和收集城市環境中所有美麗、有趣、啟發思考與聯想的空間與細節，就是我的 Pokémon GO 了。

「看出所以然」的意思，連向的就是所謂的「學術關懷」和「地方關懷」。

[社會學家理查‧桑內特（Richard Sennett）的《棲居》（Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City）]中指出城市必然由兩種事物構成，一種是實體被建造的環境和各種觸摸得到的東西（樓宇），一種是人物生活時無盡的活動與實踐（棲居），兩者互為因果，如何互動影響，千絲萬縷，某程度上城市研究就是拆解它們之間的關係。這本書的知識觀點是，散步與觀看是「棲居」的一部分。我們若有意識地散步與觀看，將有可能進一步改變實體的城市空間。退一萬步而言，當我們持續有意識地散步與觀看，也立刻改變了實踐者本來的「城市生活」，因為頻頻散步的人，不再只功能性地使用城市環境。

當我說散步，我說的是享受觀看城市（第一個目標），以及從帶有反思性的觀看實踐中，得到真切的「地方感」，跟城市更為休戚與共（第二個目標）。

觀看城市時能獲得無窮趣味的訣竅（trick），是先假設每座建築物都值得一看，而每座建築物都可能（可以）打動自己

我很喜歡「習得的口味」（acquired tastes）的說法，有些事物可能特別討好，初遇時就自然喜歡，也有些事物擁有獨特的形態，可能需要經過時間訓練，才能懂得欣賞，而一旦懂得它的魅力，就無法忽視。

遇上每一座建築，我們可以問，它是「高矮肥瘦」？我喜歡它的形狀、比例、線條、組件、顏色、物料和質地（texture）嗎？這建築物座落在怎樣的環境中，喜歡它跟四周的連繫嗎？它有讓我想起其他的建築物？我是否要把它放在我的偏愛清單上？若然把這些問題都記下來，不羞於跟身邊人談論，已足夠讓散步變成繁忙的觀看活動了。

我很喜歡留意中電、港燈和電訊等公用服務、基礎設施相關的建築。這些建築總設在鬧市，但沒有依從旁邊其他建築的設計，往往都顯然有用心。

通道的吸引，必須走在其中才能體會，不能純粹遠觀；若你走得興奮，或有驚喜的發現，就是來自道路上不同元素構成的混合狀態：一條路的寬窄、高低、設施與旁邊建築物的關係，甚或兩端有什麼，種種一切加起來，才是這條路的整體。

通道的美更涉及移動的經驗，而不單純取決於外觀 […]

我們說的開放空間，是人們願意逗留其中，並會因逗留而促成其他事情發生的地方。

留白的空間，不一定是所謂公共的。公共的定義有許多，有人着眼於法理上的擁有權，有人着眼於誰人可自由進出，而有一派城市研究者特別在意空間是否容讓有風險和不可測的事情發生。他們說，真正的「公共」，來自人與人自由而不可預計的對話與互動，而這種不可預計代表空間沒有嘗試計劃一切。當周遭的一切沒有被完全掌控，就代表有風險，或有意料之外、無法計算的事情發生；同時，風險帶來自由，而自由醞釀的，就是觀察公共空間時最具趣味的一環。留白，有機會促成「公共性」。

我們觀看城市裏的留白空間，是在看不同空間有否開創了一種公共性。公共性是指人們樂意在其中逗留，並在逗留時出現不明顯的細微協商。這種協商不是傳統上所指的經談判達致共識，而是當我們都在此活動，可能產生的自行協調與不明顯的細微互動。愈來愈多學者說公共空間之所以「公共」，是因為市民給予它這樣的公共性，願意在其中看見彼此的存在，你眼望我眼，感受到「我們加起來就是公共」。開創公共空間，是拓展人們想要使用的地方，更在體現我們的公民身分。

我想起多番論述公共性的哲學家漢娜‧鄂蘭（Hannah Arendt），特別關心「行動」這個概念。公共，來自眾人的活動與行動，每個人在看見彼此的空間中活動，構想自己下一步的行動，沒有必然的決定與軌跡，由此產生了開創性的力量：創造性來自你我皆不知道下一秒會是怎樣，是以下一秒鐘，我可能會做各樣事情，你也可能會做各樣事情，而我們的活動與互動，或會開創新的狀態與局面，這就是公共性的核心所在。從這角度觀看城市，也是觀察「大家都來到這兒」的時刻，有沒有爆發出意想不到的力量。如果說城市會啟動人的自由與可能性，一方面因為留白空間的存在，有片刻沒有預設我們要做什麼，另一方面因為人們的互動，帶來變數與新可能。

論到留白空間，最先聯想到的是公園、廣場、遊樂場等，是被特意規劃出來的開放空間，然後也有私人、半公共的留白。散步時，觀察它們，可看空間的設計構造、如何形塑人在這片空間的活動與互動。另一種則是市民開創的空間。人的活動挪用了一些空地，是行動創造了新的開放空間，但是開放空間可以誕生，也源於城市有意外地留白，即使有些本意不是讓人使用的剩餘空間。

以物件作為觀看的焦點，延伸的思考與關懷是，從這些物件如何被安放、被安放在哪裏，而看見權力的互動。

城市觀察除了可看物件的存在與繁多，也可看物件有沒有被允許，是不是只是一個臨時的存在，或正在掙扎想長期留下。大眾的意志，有時可以共同決定一些物件是不是留在社區，我們觀看時也值得觀看這樣的意志與進程。

把在城市裏遇上的一切視為「文本」，也就是除了觀察，作出美學上的判斷外，也把城市裏所有東西視為「符號」。當有「符號」，我們就需要解碼（decoding）、消化、解讀、解釋，讓不同東西對我「說話」。更準確地說，有些信息甚至是我們自行產生（generate）的，城市裏的東西接通了我的記憶、思考，產生了一些想法、意義，而通過我的特殊解讀和詮釋，一下子變成了只有我才閱讀得到的信息。這種信息比上述所講的更迂迴了，甚至不是「間接」的信息，而是一種很個人、只有在我腦海出現的想法與想像。

當城市忽然在各個角落重複出現一系列的信息，對我來說，是展現了一種難得的詩意和神秘感。我最喜歡的一個例子，就是農曆新年時，店舖習慣在鐵閘貼上「初 X 啟市」，本身只是一種資訊，告訴客人店舖什麼時候開始營業，但當每家每戶都這樣貼的時候，就像變成一場復工的比較。

當社會上很多人開始談論地方，以至對地方的愛和聯想，就可以形成一張地方的意義網。地方的意義可以由大量的對話與交流被激活。當很多人一起講述一個地方、一個角落、一個城市的不同元素，而你聽過別人講解以後，散步時忽然記起其他人的講法，那就如在街上得到了新的聯想和信息，即便這信息沒有被展示出來──那是社群對話所構造的信息。

千禧年之後，地理學是其中一個最多學者反思「什麼是自然」的學科，而我心目中把這概念論述得最清楚的是地理學家 Noel Castree。他一錘定音地指人們大致對「自然」一詞有三種理解。第一，泛指所有「非人類」（non-human），包括動植物和地球的各種物質；第二，指向一種宏觀的力量和秩序，即當我們用到「大自然」（Nature）去講述世界時；第三則是延伸成一種價值判斷，形容一些比較沒有人為參與和改變的情況，像人們會說，暑熱時不開冷氣，是過着比較自然的（natural）生活。而城市研究學者也接續了這課題，在城市空間中探問、注視「城市中的自然」（urban nature），幫助我們多看到什麼、多理解什麼。

這樣的討論非常有趣，點出了看似矛盾的說法。「都市人造環境」的用法一方面提醒我們，城市裏差不多沒有脫離人為這回事，幾乎所有東西都是人為砌出來的。即使是看似最自然、最綠色、最遠離繁喧的中央公園，都是高度人為的產物，由第一代園境大師歐姆斯德（Frederick Law Olmsted）苦心設計經營而成，牽涉大量的建造與日常維護。另一方面，城市裏非人的東西卻又無處不在，植物和動物自然是其中的例子，一切我們賴以維生的水和食物皆取於自然，鋪地和建屋的物料完全取自地球的沙石。因此，「非人的東西」無處不在，不過它們經過極大幅度的人為改造（reworking），再被安放和出現在這片被稱為城市的地方中。如果採納這種理論性思考，在城市中觀看自然，更清晰的說法，就是觀看「非人」的東西，如何被「安放」在城市中，經過怎樣的「改造」過程而進入我們的視線。

在城市中看見動物的樂趣，其實也源於城市是被人類管治的環境，尋找和觀看其他生物，也像把我們帶離了日常和機械式的工作與生活。雖然這跟散步觀看未必有直接關係，但不少研究者提出，城市這種人造環境也會徹底改變一些生物的行為，改變牠們演化的進程。如此一來，有些我們接觸的生物，是物種在城市的版本，也是經過人造環境的改造，是「原產自」城市的。循這樣理解，即使是野生動物，它們也是在過城市的生活，是城市的一員。遇見牠們是看見「城市真實」（urban reality），正視這是被不同物種分享的空間。

城市研究者創造了一個理論化的詞彙 zoopolis，大意可譯為像動物園的城邦，捕捉在人造環境中，人如何治理各種生物的存在形態。我們許多時都忘記了，動物有牠們的行動力和生命力，有機會活出人類意料之外的模樣。

Craig Mod:

For me, a walk is a way to force practice on a number of crafts manifesting in GOOD WORK (“the reward of good work is more work”).

“Behind the Scenes on How Windows 95 Application Compatibility Patched Broken Programs”:

On very rare occasions, the problem is too deeply embedded in the program, and the only reasonable option is to patch it. Out of safety, the Windows 95 team got written permission from the vendor whenever they needed to patch a program. The consultation included detailed information on what the problem was and how it was going to be patched. In exchange, the team requested information from the vendor on what versions of their product are affected (and if they could send those versions for analysis), as well as a promise to fix the problem in their next version, because the next version won’t have the benefit of the patch.