Tripped over this video of Richard Socher talking about AI: Richard Socher says your view on AI depends on what you think your job is for. If you optimize for output -- more stories, more illustrations, more healthy people -- AI is a gift. But if your role is about getting paid by the hour, AI feels like a threat. pic.twitter.com/QluGnQg7Dw — vitrupo (@vitrupo) April 22, 2025 The start of his response going something like: ...
Days slip through your fingers like water. You need a goal or objective and you must to keep moving toward it. Otherwise, time passes, you look up and you have lost weeks, months, years with nothing to show for it. The time is all burned up. Consumed. Spent. Stolen. Each and every day matters. Set aside a block of time and make progress toward the current thing. Once the objective is reached, set a new one. Fast. ...
I watched Dune: Prophecy recently. Meh. There was a cool scene were all the sisters were hypnotized as a group and proceeded to perform automatic drawing together. Without obvious suggestion, they all draw the same things in image after image. A shared nightmare. The final image they all draw is black with two white eyes. The two eyes are motif from the season. Very cool idea. The whole scene is great. ...
I finished Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods” yesterday. Reading Bryson is comfort food. Comforting writing? This is not disparaging in the slightest. Bryson is a warm crackling fire on a winters night. He’s a great writer, and his topics are interesting, but reading him is very comforting. And I’m sure zillions of people would agree. He moves books. I probably have two comfort writers. Bill Bryson and David Sedaris. ...
My latest novella has been published, yay! Squidstone Hollow: A Historical Investigation Into The Leviathan Of Port Phillip Here’s the cover: Here are some links: Paperback Kindle Audible It’s also on goodreads and there’s a preview on google books. Like the last novella, All Our Eyes, it was written for my eldest. The mandate for this one was “less complex”. Like the last one, it is didactic, although the focus with this story is history of Melbourne/Port Phillip. It blurs the line so that although he’ll get a lot of history while reading, he won’t know what is real history and what is history that I’ve invented. ...
I first heard Bob Lazar’s story on the Joe Rogan podcast. On it, I remember he mentioning that UFO craft were apparently found as part of an archaeological dig. I later read his book “Dreamland” and saw no mention of this, which was disappointing, because it’s one of this nuggets that really gets your imagination going. Regardless, it’s all fun stuff. Here’s the clip from the episode: Bob Lazar Says UFO was an Archaeological Finding A rough quote transcribed from the auto-generated subtitles: ...
I read “Incident at Devils Den” yesterday. A spooky story for sure. True? I have no idea, nor care. What I liked the most was the structure of the story telling. Specifically, the lead-up to the “1977 incident” and the twice retelling. It’s a great progression. First, we get hints while retelling background and prior incidents. It’s why the the book exists, to document an encounter: The genesis of this book is an event that occurred in 1977. While camping at a state park, a friend and I encountered an enormous UFO. It was triangular-shaped, and each side was approximately a city block in length. ...
I am working my way through the latest season of Black Mirror (S7) and watched the Plaything episode (E4) the other day. Here’s a one paragraph summary via grok3: In Black Mirror’s “Plaything,” set in the Bandersnatch universe and aired on April 10, 2025, Cameron Walker (Peter Capaldi and Lewis Gribben) faces murder charges in 2034 and recounts his 1990s past as a video game journalist. Invited by eccentric programmer Colin Ritman (Will Poulter) to review Tuckersoft’s Thronglets—a game featuring digital creatures without conflict—Cameron becomes obsessed, believing he can communicate with them after an LSD-fueled night. His fixation escalates as he upgrades his computer to enhance their interactions, leading to a violent act tied to the murder charge. Exploring AI, human connection, and digital ethics, the episode, written by Charlie Brooker and directed by David Slade, was praised for its unsettling tone and accompanied by a real-world Thronglets mobile game. ...
I re-read Solaris last week. There is a great scene in the book, an interview with a pilot named Berton who “saw things”. It starts with the pilot’s log, then moves into an interview. And it’s super creepy as we discover what he, a top pilot, saw and the effect it had on him, and the fact that the panel of interviewers think him insane. While I was still some distance away, I noticed a pale, almost white, object floating on the surface. My first thought was that it was Fechner’s flying-suit, especially as it looked vaguely human in form. I brought the aircraft round sharply, afraid of losing my way and being unable to find the same spot again. The shape, the body, was moving; sometimes it seemed to be standing upright in the trough of the waves. I accelerated and went down so low that the machine bounced gently. I must have hit the crest of a huge wave I was overflying. The body — yes, it was a human body, not an atmosphere-suit — the body was moving. ...
I’m re-reading “The Case for Keto”. I re-read this one a lot. It has a great group feeling while reading, as in “some people just can’t eat carbs, and that includes you and me”, e.g. the author too. “The message should be straightforward: Carbohydrate-rich foods are fattening. Or to complicate it slightly such that naturally lean people might more likely understand: For those of us who fatten and particularly those who fatten easily, it’s the carbohydrates that we eat—the quantity and the quality—that are responsible. The relevant mechanism appears to be simple, as well: Carbohydrate-rich foods—grains, starchy vegetables, and sugars—work to keep insulin elevated in our circulation, and that traps the fat we eat in our fat cells and inhibits the use of that fat for fuel.” ...