Generationship: Ep. #39, Simon Willison. I recorded this podcast episode with Rachel Chalmers a few weeks ago. We talked about the resurgence of blogging, the legacy of Google Reader, learning in public, LLMs as weirdly confident interns, AI-assisted search, prompt injection, human augmentation over replacement and we finished with this delightful aside about pelicans which I'll quote here in full:
Rachel: My last question, my favorite question. If you had a generation ship, a star ship that takes more than a human generation to get to Alpha Centauri, what would you call it?
Simon: I'd call it Squadron, because that is the collective noun for pelicans. And I love pelicans.
Rachel: Pelicans are the best.
Simon: They're the best. I live in Half Moon Bay. We have the second largest mega roost of the California brown pelican in the world, in our local harbor [...] last year we had over a thousand pelicans diving into the water at the same time at peak anchovy season or whatever it was.
The largest mega roost, because I know you want to know, is in Alameda, over by the aircraft carrier.
Rachel: The hornet.
Simon: Yeah. It's got the largest mega roost of the California brown pelican at certain times of the year. They're so photogenic. They've got charisma. They don't look properly shaped for flying.
Rachel: They look like the Spruce Goose. They've got the big front. And they look like they're made of wood.
Simon: That's such a great comparison, because I saw the Spruce Goose a couple of years ago. Up in Portland, there's this museum that has the Spruce Goose, and I went to see it. And it's incredible. Everyone makes fun of the Spruce Goose until you see the thing. And it's this colossal, beautiful wooden aircraft. Until recently it was the largest aircraft in the world. And it's such a stunning vehicle.
So yeah, pelicans and the Spruce Goose. I'm going to go with that one.