Josh

The Democratic Party is weak and ineffectual. At minimum they need new leadership with a new vision, but preferably we just need a new party.

I took a look at it and saw that all it did it badly scrape the exact instructions from Reddit.

Color me severely unimpressed.

Again: we should prioritize and value the human intellect, human effort and work, and human creativity.

A coworker recently said that I was biased against AI when I leveled some fair criticisms about it. I replied "I am biased toward the human intellect."

He had showed me how one of them--probably Gemini--helped him set up a home network.

I keep meaning to restart my blog but life keeps getting in the way.

Can someone invent a machine that adds more time to the day?

Call it a Time-Adder Device.

We can workshop the name.

My love of liminal photography continues unabated.

I wrote a poem and I googled one of the stanzas to see if I was inadvertently copying something (imposter syndrome can pop up at random times). Google decided it would offer me some unwanted juvenile commentary.

Speaking of physical stores--Barnes and Noble just opened a new location really close to me and I found it to be extremely gratifying that so many people were in there. I don't want to read too much into it, but a part of me believes that people might be yearning for that sense of community.

The death of browsing is part of the reason art is the way it is now. Our opinions are largely fed to us by algorithms. Spending a spare 15 minutes wandering around a bookstore or comic shop or video rental place was how you found stuff you wouldn't ordinarily pick up and thereby expanded your taste

I like amateur #Standup because the people who are good at it are so energetic and it's fun to watch them find out who they are on stage.

My transition away from #Microsoft and to #Linux is going well. Lots of things have been easier to manage than I thought, but some difficulties remain. Mostly having to do with conveniences Microsoft gave me as a user that ended up making me a lazy computer user.

And this is why, I think, so many people misunderstand what these "AI" systems actually are and what they can do. The story does manage to ask an important question: what if they get it wrong?

But let's get at the real problem: how can we create meaningful human interaction when there's no human?

I opened my email this morning and saw this headline from the NYT morning. There are so many things wrong with this. The most immediate question I have is: how do you define empathy as applied to a language model? It's not empathy, it's a simulation of empathy. #ChatGPT

One of the key features of a functioning democracy is being able to hold the powerful and connected responsible for their crimes.

Can we do that, America?

The way to address the utter failure that is the #Democrats you must first organize to change its leadership. Obviously they are out of touch with the demands of their base.

This is the weirdest LinkedIn sponsored message I have ever received.

Who... Advertises a matchmaking service on LinkedIn? This would be the equivalent of a matchmaking cold call.

Baffling.

I have so many thoughts about #AppleTV and their adaptation of #Foundation. I'm going back to the source matial and am planning a deep dive.

It is not un-American to say, "No kings."

Our country was founded on that.

Why are people surprised when billionaires and CEOs disconnected from the everyday struggles of normal people act like fools?

This should be expected.

I've been reflecting on the power of narratives. And I think I am missing an important corollary: narratives can also be weak.

Using politics as an example: pointing out hypocracy in political ideology is often counterproductive. It helps to spread the original message.

Have hobbies that do not generate money or create some kind of value for anyone other than yourself. Enrich your life in ways that matter to you. At the end of the day, these ruthless vulture capitalists don't care about you any more than they care about a sprocket or a gear in a machine.

At some point the actual reason to live for a person must be more than "Make money" or "make someone else rich with your labor." What grinding culture really encourages is the enrichment of others through the exploitation of your body, your labor, your time.

Everything is commercialized. And we have even gotten to the point where we are pressured to commercialize our own private time. We can't rest; we must be productive little worker bees. We must be doing, working, grinding.

And this is actually a pretty trenchant observation about the commercialization of absolutely everything (and its consequences, like the enshittification of the internet).

The thing about Fallout series as a video game adaption is that it says what was always implicit about the central premise: the end of the world is commercialized.

One of the lessons that 1984 tried to teach us is that when the meaning of words gets watered down, it allows for abuses to occur. When we disagree about reality, with signs, with the very definition of things... Well, we end up in a place where we have to relitigate slavery. Human-fucking-slavery.

Feel like politics is a farce? Yeah, that's by design. It's a concerted effort not only to demoralize you, but to rewire how you think and perceive the world.

As I have gotten older, my #writing process has changed. I now actually take the time to physically map stories out, and I have come up with a method of using corkboard and white boards to do so. Concept mapping, outline. It helps me see deeper connectioms.

The saving grace is that any interactions with those opposing viewpoints are rarely productive, anyway. Social media actively incentivizes conflict.

While I appreciate the ability to choose which of the myriad social media options I can engage with, I recognize that it comes at a cost: I want to curate my experience so that I can prioritize my mental health. However, I do this at the cost of being exposed to opposing viewpoints.

I got to see him and his brother Brendon perform in live in Chicago last month. Amazing concert. Highlight of the year so far.