Hello. Today is 3 August — halfway through the Great Heat, with Risshū, the first day of autumn, in sight.
This morning began with weeding and mowing the rice field. I sweated more than any day this summer, but doesn't a good sweat in summer feel refreshing?
Meanwhile, I'd asked AI to do some office work, and when I got home one task was done. So handy. It's no different from having an employee.
While weeding I was listening to Ittoku Tomano's Voicy. The theme was "the value of reading in the age of AI".
This is the season when weeding has to be done, but soon I won't be able to get into the field, so the hours spent weeding can go to reading and other things. Have you read David Graeber and David Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything"? I've finally picked it up, and next I want to read "Debt".
Rain is forecast for the afternoon, and I hope it comes. The field is parched, but even so, the Asamurasaki (black rice) has started to head.
A grain of rice is a lump of starch; making it needs photosynthesis, so water and sunlight matter — but since last year even the river has started to dry up.
Average temperatures are nothing like ten years ago, and this morning I saw a forecast that El Niño will intensify into October. What effects will a super El Niño bring?
28 July, the first rainy day in a long while:
lying down, giving myself to the sound of the rain and the coolness it made, looking up at the sky, I saw many swallows flying high.
Actually, this is the second time I've written this issue.
I finished it on the night of 26 July and was waiting for the moment to send it, when I lost the manuscript.
I'd bought a new Mac, and before backing up the old Mac's data, initialisation suddenly started and I lost everything.
Well — such things happen, it turns out.
I use Obsidian as a second brain for working with AI, and in the middle of building it up every day and planning to keep growing it, it all vanished and I was back to square one.
Please take care, all of you. It's mostly recovered now and growing afresh.
Now, to the main subject.
Let me tell you about the newsletter going forward.
Besides Kakuuchi, I've decided to send a business newsletter.
It's a separate mailing, delivered only to those who want it.
Here's why.
Kakuuchi will continue, as before, in the style of sending you trifling letters.
Every character thought up by me, typos and all (please forgive them), an organic email with no AI at all.
The new business newsletter will borrow AI's power to the full.
I'd like to go as far as taking on the possibilities of AI for an ordinary person.
That doesn't mean having AI write sales emails.
Since Claude Fable 5 arrived, I've found the joy of giving shape to ideas using AI.
Things I'd given up on for lack of skill or capital — with Fable, they just get done. More and more of that.
What shall I make next? What shall I give shape to? That's what I'm thinking.
Based on those exchanges with AI, from planning to realisation, I'm making digital DIY course materials.
And the writing style reflects my own context, stored up in Obsidian.
A weak yen, rising prices, a shrinking population — the state of Japan. On top of that, living as a sole proprietor in the countryside: what use of AI is possible?
It's a public experiment of trial and error. I'd like you to watch me fail and take something from it.
Think of it as inquiry-based learning, shared.
Also, I've been studying marketing since this year. The course defines it this way: "marketing is creating good change in society".
Until now I'd seen marketing as money-making, about the level of social-media marketing. In today's currents: how to ride the attention business, how to hack the algorithm. I thought it was a kind of pointless bullshit job, the logic of money-worshippers.
I was ignorant and shallow.
While saying "things have many sides", I'd been looking at only one. I reflected on that.
Ninomiya Sontoku's view of virtue and wealth doesn't disappear with the times, does it.
Before the name B Corp existed — the one companies like Patagonia and Klean Kanteen belong to — the idea of the social entrepreneur was in fashion.
The spirit of sanpō-yoshi (good for the seller, the buyer and society) goes back to around the Edo period, I suppose.
Similar themes appear in passages of the Analects and the Buddha's teachings.
Oh yes — it's been a year since I started learning Eastern thought, too.
Marketing and Eastern thought? They may look like opposites at first glance,
but "the way of great learning lies in illuminating bright virtue" and "marketing is creating good change in society" are, seen from their purpose, roughly the same, aren't they?
I have a half-resigned feeling that to live, one can only survive the capitalism game. But even playing the same game of Old Maid, surely we can play it enjoyably. Helping each other should be possible too. For that, we mustn't forget respect and gratitude towards others.
To that end, I think it matters to learn from Eastern thought and Western philosophy, from art and music, from the things humans create and from culture; to ask how I want to live and how I want to be; to remember the words of Confucius; and not to seek answers from AI, but to be careful when alone.
Kakuuchi will continue about once a week, with trifling content as before.
The business newsletter will first deliver an email course on building a publishing system, one every three days. After that, occasional event announcements and the like.
If the business newsletter interests you, please sign up from the link below.
(The sign-up link from the time has since closed. Newsletter sign-up is now here.)
flow Yamagen, Hideo
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I'm on Substack
Do you know Substack?
It's a newsletter platform with social features.
It can read articles aloud like a podcast, so you can listen while doing something else — handy.
Unlike other social media, there are no ads, which is nice. With less of the attention-economy flavour, it has social elements but can be enjoyed by people tired of social media.
Join me if you like!
https://substack.com/@flowhideo
