Note
A lot of people are fleeing from Twitter/X looking for the next place where ‘everybody is.’ But consider that the scale required for a place where everybody is might be the whole problem. Or at least attract the worst of social network health.
Last night at a middle school band concert, the director announced a student would play “a little ditty” but all the kids heard “play a little Diddy” and they all went nuts.
Brooding: Should Our Children Have a Political Party?
Most of us have loved ones whose beliefs don’t perfectly align with ours, and kids need help making sense of that beyond a binary of right and wrong. Our biases are often simultaneously irrational and grounded in experience. Understanding this is not moral relativism, it’s social intelligence. Belonging to a group feels good, but teaching your kids how to identify group dynamics can feel good too.This was from before the election, but will continue to be relevant.
Accountability sinks | A Working Library
Once you start looking for accountability sinks, you see them all over the place. When your health insurance declines a procedure; when the airline cancels your flight; when a government agency declares that you are ineligible for a benefit; when an investor tells all their companies to shovel so-called AI into their apps. Everywhere, broken links between the people who face the consequences of the decision and the people making the decisions.
I’m thinking about how accountability sinks might operate in my context, the local church. Sometimes you get opposing sinks: the pastor concludes the church doesn’t move forward because of the stubbornness of the laity; the laity conclude the pastor is to blame; everyone escapes accountability as the community degrades. The consequences, though, are much harder to discern in this case.
“merlin mann” apple site:music.apple.com at DuckDuckGo
Merlin doesn’t share his profile on Apple Music but you can find his public playlists with this search.
Perhaps [‘the history of anarchism, almost alone among modern social movements, is one of unrelieved failure.’]; but its failures are different and less shameful than the failures of Marxism. There are many ways for a social movement to fail, and I prefer those that don’t result in the murder of tens of millions of human beings.
Maybe a good question for leaders of any social movement: how will you fail? Failure is guaranteed but not all failure is equal.
A great test for Large Language Model AI’s would be to remove some artist’s specific work and see if it could be anticipated based on the remaining work. I don’t think the nature of super large datasets would ever allow this, though.
The First Battleground of the Age of AI Is Art
Kottke says:
Like, just think about how powerful this is: normal people who have ideas but lack technical skills can now create imagery. Is it art? Perhaps not in most cases, but some of it will be.
My definition of art is “craft + courage.” I think it’s pretty clear that typing a prompt into a text box to make art isn’t an act of courage. So for now I’ll say that generating images using AI – especially in honing the prompts – is craft but not art.
In agreement with my 2023 goal of doing work that cannot be replaced by AI.
Whether you’re into AI or not, it’s worth spending some time honoring what is not machine-like in you.And if you’re going to spend time with machines, be sure to spend time with machines that make you feel more human.
I know there are bookmarklets, but I’d love a Safari extension that put micropub actions onto a button…
No one ever tells the bad guys, “This time you’ve gone exactly the right amount of far.” I mean, maybe with the right feedback…
Pack your own parachute, Roll your own rig. If you want to make a Newton, Bring your own fig.
We have a lot of Fake News; It’s the worst. If you want to share an article, READ IT FIRST.
Maybe we should re-examine our trope that kids today are such ‘snowflakes’ that they cry when asked difficult questions in job interviews.
Maybe we should re-examine our trope that kids today are so entitled that they think they can get away with anything and write about it in public places.
Really appreciate the great, quick updates with excellent release notes from @joec and his app RECaf.
No, not everyone is Ernest Hemingway, but imagine for a moment a world where the majority of people had access and encouragement to craft their thoughts into blog posts. I used to scoff at “everyone’s a blogger” but now I hope for it.