Thoughts
I agree with everything that Om Malik wrote in this post about how AI IS Changing Writing, in particular the following:
My approach to AI has been to embrace and extend my capabilities. I use quite a few tools with AI inside. Many of them have boosted my productivity. I am on the lookout for more to add to my arsenal, so I can become more effective when it comes to my creative output. I don’t need it to write for me. I need AI to make sure I don’t make spelling mistakes, point out some overused phrases, repetitive usage of phrases, and what my editors used to call “Om” things.
I don’t understand why an individual will want AI to write for them because I own (and want to own) my words because they reflect me. My writing is never about producing content and I don’t make a dime from any of my web sites. I may be biased, but I think what makes it blogging is whether or not one is making money.
Today I am enjoying my first vacation day, or what I like to call retirement practice, of the year. My company provides the Presidents Day holiday on Monday, so thus I have a four day weekend. Now that the Super Bowl is in February, I wonder why the NFL hasn’t decided to make Super Bowl Sunday be the day before Presidents Day every year, enabling many to have a day off on the Monday after the Super Bowl.
If you think you are not religious then you don’t know what is religion. I think Americans are more religious today than ever before, but don’t recognize it because we equate religion with a specific association to specific organizations or specific beliefs in deities.
Religion is much more fundamental to who we are as humans. For example, if you identify yourself with an NFL team, like I say I am a Packers fan, you are religious. The religion, which is that to which you connect or bind yourself (re-ligio) is professional U.S. football. Republicans? Democrat? Conservative? Liberal? Progressive? All religions. Yes, even atheism is a religion. Religion is an aspect of our ego.
The problem in all of this is we have no understanding of our true selves, and the decisions we make are to maintain all these false selves that don’t really add value to who we are and what we truly need. It is the stranglehold of our religions that is driving decisions that we make against our own best interests.
I use Readwise Reader to read articles that I select from my RSS subscriptions, and I think it has information that would like to extract. For example, from which domains do I most frequently read from? This is the type of question that if Readwise provided an API I might dabble with some programming.
With AI, Focus On The People
If I were in charge of marketing a foldable phone, I think I would call it a mobile 2-in-1 rather than foldable because that puts emphasis on the functionality. From using the original Surface Duo learned that you have to think of these devices as a small tablet first and a smartphone second.
I could be a target consumer for these devices because I am a heavy tablet user and a lite phone user, and I use both devices every day. The problem is, no foldable is ever going to be as thin as a standard smartphone and feel comfortable in front pants pockets.
Price is a real constraint right now. When the price drops to a comparable to smartphone + tablet then it will be more compelling. So I wonder, how long will it take for a new foldable to cost $800 or less?
Rule one of being a United States citizen, and really a citizen of any country, ought to be, ignore all political advertising. It’s shocking to that this fundamental advice is not taken seriously by enough people. Frankly, I would prefer all political advertising, to which the vast majority of campaign funds is spent, were outlawed so that our tools to evaluate candidates were primarily their record and debates.
The advent of Large Language Models appearing as artificial intelligence makes this advice more important then ever. We will see video clips of people who appear to be saying things they did not say. Money is not a constraint (thanks SCOTUS) and technology is no constraint (thanks capitalism).
The U.S. Constitution puts in place a structure of “checks and balances” between the three branches of government to prevent tyranny, and it is that concept that limits the degree of oversight of SCOTUS by Congress. However, this structure also enables tyranny when the same wealthy parties buy SCOTUS justices and members of Congress.
If members of Congress, no matter party, are unwilling to actually impeach those who support their ideology to maintain freedom for all citizens and not just a select few, you have in place opportunity for corruption and defacto dictatorship.
The founders imagined that the threat of impeachment would be sufficient to keep people in line, but we now know that is not true. Impeachment itself is useless without conviction. If Senators are unwilling to convict a sitting President for inciting an insurrection, then for what will it ever convict a President for?
I think the reason why some are concerned about chatGPT is that they know the tendencies of most towards laziness. For most, if they read something that is not obviously wrong they will accept it as fact. Laziness might not be the right word, I know that I don’t want to live in a world in which I have to question everything. Constant skepticism is not healthy, we need to be able to trust some people. Such skepticism taken to the extreme leads to a person fearful of everything and everyone, and that leads to them to shooting a kid who unexpectedly rings their doorbell.
Straight Jacket Voting
With all the banning of books and now social media, it really feels as though we are living in 1984.
This YouTube video of A History of Rock in Guitar Riffs from 1965 to now is really cool.
I think Dave misunderstands what manton is doing in regards to the character limit. The character limit does not apply to blog posts, the character limit applies to what appears in the micro.blog timeline. As has always been, posts that are longer than X character are linked to the associated blog post that contains all of the content. From my perspective, how micro.blog handles long posts in it’s timeline is the same as how Feedland handles long posts in the feeds list.
Manton could change how the timeline works to expand/collapse long posts like Dave does in the Feedland “news” display, but that is his prerogative as the hosting/platform provider. As a writer, I am willing to work within the constraints that he is providing. I don’t see the constraint as limiting me as a writer in any way because the full content is provided on my blog, which frankly is where I prefer people to actual go and read what I write.
Look In The Mirror, There Is a Gun In Your Hands
The sooner everyone lets go of Twitter, the better. Musk is not a benevolent dictator and you can see that Twitter is going to end up with a Private Equity firm that will be less benevolent.
United States Empire
It's All By Design
Building Versus Buying
Profits Above All
It seems to happen every time there is a migration of people from one application to another. When the new people start using the new application they seem to expect that the features and functions of the previous application to exist in the new one. When they can’t find the function, they ask where it is, and if they are told that it doesn’t exist it seems they then start to complain or at least doubt the reasons for why the function doesn’t exist with the alternate application.
In my opinion, the idea that every application should work exactly the same is problematic. Micro.blog was created specifically to not be Twitter and Mastodon was created specifically to not be Twitter, and the value of these applications are that they are not Twitter!
And you know what, it’s ok! Life can exist without a “like” button and it can exist without a quote “tweet.” We don’t need to change the minds of those who disagree, we just need to figure out how to co-exist.