Finish July dispatch
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[1]Austin Kleon
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• [2]Blog
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• [3]Books
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• [4]Newsletter
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• [5]Speaking
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• [6]About
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• [7]Contact
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• [8][9]
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You are here: [10]Blog / [11]Miscellany / Give yourself what you needed then
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and give your kids what they need now
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Give yourself what you needed then and give your kids what they need now
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Thursday, April 1, 2021
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[12][immutable]
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One of my very favorite lines about being a parent comes from Andrew Solomon’s
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[13]Far From The Tree: “Perhaps the immutable error of parenthood is that we
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give our children what we wanted, whether they want it or not.”
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So I was primed for the punch of [14]this thread from Tiersa McQueen ([15]
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@tiersaj):
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[16][tiersa]
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Carl Jung said that nothing had a bigger influence on the child than the
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unlived life of the parent. Those unlived lives linger. (I am struck often by
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how many artists are raised by people who didn’t fulfill their own artistic
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ambitions. Most recently, Twyla Tharp, in [17]Twlya Moves, talking about her
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mother, who was a pianist, and groomed her daughter for a life in the arts,
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driving her all over Indiana for lessons, etc.)
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[18][IMG_0051-768x576-1-600x450]
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One must be careful to not transfer unwanted dreams onto their children, maybe
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even more so when your children are inclined to doing the things you, too,
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love. (One of my sons loves music and video games, the other loves stories and
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drawing. You can imagine the dreams I have for them, dreams that I find it best
|
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to keep to myself.)
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It’s a dance. You have to give yourself what you needed, but give your kids
|
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what they need now. Build the world you always wanted, but make sure there’s
|
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room in it for the world they want, too.
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(And know it will change and be constantly in flux, day by day.)
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Filed Under: [19]Miscellany Tagged: [20]Andrew solomon, [21]carl jung, [22]ed
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emberley, [23]parenting, [24]Tiersa mcqueen, [25]unschooling
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[26][ ][27][Search]
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About the author
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[28]Austin Kleon
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[29]Austin Kleon is a writer who draws. He’s the bestselling author of [30]
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Steal Like An Artist and other books. [31]Read more→
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• [32]
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• [33]
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• [34]
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• [35]
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• [36]
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Subscribe to my newsletter
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Join the 200,000+ readers who get it delivered free to their inboxes every
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week:
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[37]On This Date
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• 2023: [38]Printmaking with the sun
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• 2019: [39]Know your exits
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• 2018: [40]Inscrutable blueprints
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Get the 10th anniversary gift edition
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[41]Steal Like an Artist 10th Anniversary gift edition
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Listen to the audiobook trilogy
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© Austin Kleon 2001–2024
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• [67]Blog
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[3] https://austinkleon.com/books/
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[4] https://austinkleon.substack.com/
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[12] https://twitter.com/austinkleon/status/680432251616690177
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[13] https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743236726/wwwaustinkleo-20/ref=nosim/
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[14] https://twitter.com/tiersaj/status/1377310266107514884
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[15] https://twitter.com/tiersaj/
|
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[16] https://twitter.com/tiersaj/status/1377310266107514884
|
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[17] https://www.pbs.org/video/twyla-moves-xovfoh/
|
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[18] https://austinkleon.com/2017/10/04/for-the-boy-i-was/
|
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[19] https://austinkleon.com/category/miscellany/
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[20] https://austinkleon.com/tag/andrew-solomon/
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[21] https://austinkleon.com/tag/carl-jung/
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[22] https://austinkleon.com/tag/ed-emberley/
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[23] https://austinkleon.com/tag/parenting/
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[24] https://austinkleon.com/tag/tiersa-mcqueen/
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[25] https://austinkleon.com/tag/unschooling/
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[28] https://austinkleon.com/about/
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[29] https://austinkleon.com/about/
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[36] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8uQnyh7DAfp4uX9RN7XxEw
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[37] https://austinkleon.com/on-this-date/
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[38] https://austinkleon.com/2023/07/11/printmaking-with-the-sun/
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[39] https://austinkleon.com/2019/07/11/know-your-exits/
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[40] https://austinkleon.com/2018/07/11/inscrutable-blueprints/
|
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[41] https://austinkleon.com/steal/
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[42] https://austinkleon.com/steal-audiobook-trilogy
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[43] https://austinkleon.com/keepgoing
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[44] https://austinkleon.com/show-your-work
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[45] https://austinkleon.com/steal/
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[46] https://austinkleon.com/journal
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[47] https://austinkleon.com/newspaperblackout/
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[48] https://cottonbureau.com/people/austin-kleon
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[49] https://austinkleon.com/2024/07/03/head-heart-and-hands/
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[50] https://austinkleon.com/2024/07/03/the-way-you-wanted-to-feel/
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[51] https://austinkleon.com/2024/06/25/working-titles/
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[52] https://austinkleon.com/2024/06/23/summer-20-off-sale/
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[53] https://austinkleon.com/2024/06/23/my-new-stamp-carousel/
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[54] https://austinkleon.com/books/
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[55] http://austinkleon.com/newsletter
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[56] https://austinkleon.com/category/reading/my-reading-years/
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[57] http://twitter.com/austinkleon
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[58] http://instagram.com/austinkleon
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[65] http://twitter.com/austinkleon
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[66] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8uQnyh7DAfp4uX9RN7XxEw
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[67] https://austinkleon.com/
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[68] https://austinkleon.com/books/
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[69] https://austinkleon.substack.com/
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[72] https://austinkleon.com/contact/
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275
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[1][https]
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[2]Austin Kleon
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SubscribeSign in
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Midyear in a mid year
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austinkleon.substack.com
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Copy link
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Facebook
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Other
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Midyear in a mid year
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10 things worth sharing this week
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Jul 05, 2024
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291
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Midyear in a mid year
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Copy link
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Facebook
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Other
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15
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[19]
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[20]
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[https]
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Looking at my logbook and thinking, “[21]Half empty or half full?”
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[30][ ]
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Subscribe
|
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[32]Hey y’all,
|
||||
|
||||
If you need some summer reading, the paperback of [33]Steal Like an Artist is
|
||||
still 53% off and [34]only $6.99 on Amazon.
|
||||
|
||||
Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:
|
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1. My kids love to use the slang word “[35]mid” to describe things that are
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“mediocre or of low quality” or “bad, boring, or inferior in some way.” I
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thought about the word a lot this week, and what it means to be in the
|
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middle of things — mid-year, middle age, etc. My slogan: “mid-life need not
|
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be mid.” ([36]Know Your Meme is still a great website for “[37]the olds.”)
|
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2. Took me five weeks, but I finally finished George Eliot’s [38]Middlemarch.
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I’m not sure it was quite [39]my cup of tea! (I love [40]reading big books
|
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in the summer, but I don’t think anything is ever going to top turning 40
|
||||
and reading [41]Don Quixote.) If you’d like someone to talk you into
|
||||
reading Eliot’s masterpiece, check out Rebecca Mead’s essay “[42]
|
||||
Middlemarch and Me,” which she later turned into a full-length memoir, [43]
|
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My Life in Middlemarch. Eliot is a great inspiration for the middle-aged
|
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writer: She didn’t start writing fiction until she was thirty-six!
|
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3. “The nineteenth century didn’t think the dash on its own was nearly
|
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enough,” wrote Nicholson Baker in [44]his famous essay about punctuation.
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The Victorians loved the now-extinct “dash-hybrids,” which Baker named:
|
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[45]
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[https]
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Eliot uses the “colash” in Middlemarch. (Thanks to my friend [46]Clive
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Thompson for pointing this out.)
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4. Eliot, by the way, is extremely quotable, and her contemporaries knew it:
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in 1872, Alexander Main published [47]Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings in
|
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Prose and Verse Selected from the Works of George Eliot and later [48]The
|
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George Eliot Birthday Book, even though Eliot herself said [49]birthday
|
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books were “the vulgarest thing in the book stalls.” (A few years ago the
|
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novelist Adelle Waldman re-read Middlemarch and [50]shared her favorite
|
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quotes.)
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5. Speaking of quotable books, I tried reading Pascal’s [51]Pensées, as its
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influence can be felt throughout Middlemarch, but I eventually decided I
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couldn’t stand Pascal, so I picked up a similarly aphoristic and
|
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fragmentary book from my shelves — G.C. Lichtenberg’s [52]The Waste Books.
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Holy cow am I in love with this book! It’s the best bathroom reader ever.
|
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6. “The single most important question I think that one must ask one’s self
|
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about a character is: ‘[53]What are they really afraid of?’” RIP
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screenwriter [54]Robert Towne, who wrote [55]Chinatown, and doctored
|
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scripts for movies like [56]The Godfather. (He wrote the “[57]I never
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wanted this for you” scene.”)
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7. RIP artist [58]Anton Van Dalen, who was [59]the secret assistant of Saul
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Steinberg. (Here’s a tour of [60]his home in the East Village he lived in
|
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since 1968.)
|
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8. RIP calligrapher [61]Alan Blackman, whose “Letters to Myself” project is
|
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considered by some to be “one of the seven wonders of the world of
|
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calligraphy.”
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9. “How Hard Could It Be?” was the campaign slogan of the late Austin musician
|
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and writer [62]Kinky Friedman when he was running for Governor of Texas. I
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checked his Austin guidebook [63]The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic out
|
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of a Cleveland library seventeen years ago before I moved down here. I
|
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picked it back up this week after I heard he died — it reads like a relic
|
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from another era. (RIP to another ornery Austin writer, [64]Michael
|
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Corcoran.)
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10. Writing books, making art, recording music… it’s all a lot easier when you
|
||||
don’t know what you’re doing. Better yet if you don’t know that you don’t
|
||||
know what you’re doing. It’s when you know you don’t know what you’re doing
|
||||
that you’ve got to really get after it. Best to do what the poet Rumi
|
||||
advised: “[65]Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”
|
||||
|
||||
Thanks for reading. This is a hand-rolled, ad-free, anti-algorithm, completely
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reader-supported publication. You can help keep it going by becoming [66]a paid
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subscriber:
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[75][ ]
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Subscribe
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[77]xoxo,
|
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|
||||
Austin
|
||||
|
||||
PS. Here’s a page from [78]Show Your Work! to get you in the spirit of summer
|
||||
vacation:
|
||||
|
||||
[79]
|
||||
[https]
|
||||
291
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Share this post
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Midyear in a mid year
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austinkleon.substack.com
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Copy link
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[86]
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15
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[87]
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15 Comments
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[https]
|
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[ ]
|
||||
[90]
|
||||
Amy Allen
|
||||
[91]Palate & Palette
|
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[92]Jul 5
|
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[89] Thank you for sharing the news about Alan Blackman, a true artist of
|
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[https] letters. My dad, now 93, was a calligraphy student of his many, many
|
||||
years ago. I hope he saved some of their mail correspondence!
|
||||
|
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Expand full comment
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[94]1 reply by Austin Kleon
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[96]
|
||||
soosixty
|
||||
[97]Jul 5Liked by Austin Kleon
|
||||
|
||||
[95] "Writing books, making art, recording music… it’s all a lot easier when
|
||||
[https] you don’t know what you’re doing. Better yet if you don’t know that you
|
||||
don’t know what you’re doing." So true.
|
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Expand full comment
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[112][ ]
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© 2024 Austin Kleon
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[114]Privacy ∙ [115]Terms ∙ [116]Collection notice
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[117] Start Writing[118]Get the app
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[119]Substack is the home for great culture
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[18] https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/midyear-in-a-mid-year/comments
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[19] javascript:void(0)
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[20] https://austinkleon.com/2021/07/02/is-the-year-half-empty-or-half-full-2/
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[21] https://austinkleon.com/2021/07/02/is-the-year-half-empty-or-half-full-2/
|
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[32] https://www.instagram.com/p/C8zpXe_RIpa
|
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[33] https://austinkleon.com/steal/
|
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[34] https://geni.us/pzl82v
|
||||
[35] https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/mid/
|
||||
[36] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/mid-slang
|
||||
[37] https://www.dictionary.com/e/ageism-terms/#
|
||||
[38] https://geni.us/XPkAs
|
||||
[39] https://austinkleon.com/2019/02/26/not-my-cup-of-tea/
|
||||
[40] https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/big-books-for-summer
|
||||
[41] https://geni.us/92NGyT
|
||||
[42] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/middlemarch-and-me
|
||||
[43] https://geni.us/oVp4OI
|
||||
[44] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1993/11/04/survival-of-the-fittest/
|
||||
[45] https://clivethompson.medium.com/weird-19th-century-punctuation-marks-you-should-try-using-49d2e2516e5e
|
||||
[46] https://clivethompson.medium.com/weird-19th-century-punctuation-marks-you-should-try-using-49d2e2516e5e
|
||||
[47] https://georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/322
|
||||
[48] https://www.loc.gov/item/46037905/
|
||||
[49] https://scolarcardiff.wordpress.com/2017/03/15/birthday-book/#:~:text=The%20birthday%20book%20was%20a,rhetoric%20of%20personalisation%20and%20intimacy.
|
||||
[50] https://themillions.com/2013/12/a-year-in-reading-adelle-waldman.html
|
||||
[51] https://geni.us/8ovu
|
||||
[52] https://geni.us/G7ltCEn
|
||||
[53] https://twitter.com/flying_lobster/status/1808759989470966157
|
||||
[54] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/movies/robert-towne-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.4k0.sKPJ.p6f9J0eZ_DSP&smid=url-share
|
||||
[55] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071315
|
||||
[56] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068646
|
||||
[57] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IXVycNgGN0
|
||||
[58] https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/anton-van-dalen-artist-dead-1234710960/
|
||||
[59] https://www.printmag.com/daily-heller/the-daily-heller-the-assistant-anton-van-dalen/
|
||||
[60] https://news.artnet.com/art-world/studio-visit-anton-van-dalen-2240607
|
||||
[61] https://tumblr.austinkleon.com/post/755013830498828288
|
||||
[62] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/27/arts/music/kinky-friedman-dead.html?searchResultPosition=1
|
||||
[63] https://geni.us/io7c
|
||||
[64] https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/music/2024-07-02/michael-corcoran-has-died-and-austins-lost-a-voice-that-always-kept-things-interesting/
|
||||
[65] https://austinkleon.com/2022/06/09/embrace-bewilderment/
|
||||
[66] https://austinkleon.substack.com/subscribe
|
||||
[77] https://twitter.com/austinkleon/status/1808627459069186327
|
||||
[78] https://austinkleon.com/show-your-work/
|
||||
[79] https://austinkleon.com/show-your-work
|
||||
[86] https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/midyear-in-a-mid-year/comments
|
||||
[87] javascript:void(0)
|
||||
[89] https://substack.com/profile/21027078-amy-allen
|
||||
[90] https://substack.com/profile/21027078-amy-allen
|
||||
[91] https://palateandpalette.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_content=comment_metadata
|
||||
[92] https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/midyear-in-a-mid-year/comment/61015767
|
||||
[94] https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/midyear-in-a-mid-year/comment/61015767
|
||||
[95] https://substack.com/profile/2034679-soosixty
|
||||
[96] https://substack.com/profile/2034679-soosixty
|
||||
[97] https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/midyear-in-a-mid-year/comment/61030237
|
||||
[99] https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/midyear-in-a-mid-year/comments
|
||||
[114] https://substack.com/privacy
|
||||
[115] https://substack.com/tos
|
||||
[116] https://substack.com/ccpa#personal-data-collected
|
||||
[117] https://substack.com/signup?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_content=footer
|
||||
[118] https://substack.com/app/app-store-redirect?utm_campaign=app-marketing&utm_content=web-footer-button
|
||||
[119] https://substack.com/
|
||||
[126] https://enable-javascript.com/
|
||||
420
static/archive/collabfund-com-t6hosi.txt
Normal file
420
static/archive/collabfund-com-t6hosi.txt
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,420 @@
|
||||
[1]
|
||||
[2]Blog
|
||||
|
||||
• [3]About
|
||||
• [4]Portfolio
|
||||
• [5]Shared Future
|
||||
• [6]SOS
|
||||
• [7]LP
|
||||
• [8]Blog
|
||||
|
||||
• [10]About
|
||||
• [11]Portfolio
|
||||
• [12]Shared Future
|
||||
• [13]SOS
|
||||
• [14]LP
|
||||
• [15]Blog
|
||||
|
||||
[16]Follow @collabfund
|
||||
|
||||
My Month Without a Smartphone
|
||||
|
||||
Jun 9, 2024
|
||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
SHARE ↓
|
||||
|
||||
by [17]Ted Lamade [18]@collabfund
|
||||
|
||||
• [19]
|
||||
• [20]
|
||||
• [21]
|
||||
• Copy Link
|
||||
|
||||
Guest post by Ted Lamade, Managing Director at The Carnegie Institution for
|
||||
Science
|
||||
|
||||
On a rainy morning earlier this spring, I pulled my car out of our driveway to
|
||||
take my seven-year-old son to school. After shifting from reverse into drive, I
|
||||
looked at my phone to listen to a podcast on Spotify. Then it happened. He said
|
||||
it.
|
||||
|
||||
“Dad, why do you have to look at your phone SO much?”
|
||||
|
||||
Dagger.
|
||||
|
||||
I knew it was coming. It was only a matter of time. Whether I was texting,
|
||||
emailing, or aimlessly flipping through Twitter, I had noticed him glaring at
|
||||
me recently while doing so.
|
||||
|
||||
With my car stuck between the driveway and the street as rain pelted my front
|
||||
windshield, I was equally stuck trying to respond. Eventually I muttered some
|
||||
lame explanation in a pathetic attempt to defend the indefensible.
|
||||
|
||||
I peered into the rearview mirror to see if he had bought it.
|
||||
|
||||
He hadn’t.
|
||||
|
||||
The look on his face said it all.
|
||||
|
||||
I pulled the car back into the driveway, turned around, and asked him plainly,
|
||||
|
||||
“Does it seem like I am ALWAYS on my phone?”
|
||||
|
||||
He replied,
|
||||
|
||||
“Well, not ALL the time, but a lot of the time. Why do you have to look at it
|
||||
so much?”
|
||||
|
||||
Want to know what stung the most?
|
||||
|
||||
It was that he didn’t seem mad. It was worse. He just seemed disappointed.
|
||||
|
||||
After repeatedly telling him and his brother to get off their iPads, TV, and
|
||||
other devices, here he was telling me to do the same.
|
||||
|
||||
Like the dad who gets called out for using drugs himself in the 1980’s War
|
||||
Against Drugs [22]commercial, I was the definition of a hypocrite.
|
||||
|
||||
The question was, what was I going to do about it?
|
||||
|
||||
I told him I would look at it less, keep it in my room when I was home, and not
|
||||
bring it downstairs. I stayed true to my word….for about a week. Then this
|
||||
discipline broke down and like someone on a crash diet, I reverted to my old
|
||||
ways. Back to the phone, back to aimlessly flipping, back to my son glaring at
|
||||
me.
|
||||
|
||||
Then I read Jonathan Haidt’s book, “The Anxious Generation”. If you haven’t
|
||||
heard of it, here is the [23]link. Buy it.
|
||||
|
||||
If you don’t see yourself reading a book, try reading this article by Haidt
|
||||
titled, “End the Phone Based Childhood Now” ([24]link).
|
||||
|
||||
If you’re simply not a reader, listen to this podcast by Bari Weiss,
|
||||
“Smartphones Rewired Childhood: Here is how to fix it.” Here is that [25]link.
|
||||
|
||||
All three are eye opening.
|
||||
|
||||
In short, Haidt argues that smartphones and social media are rewiring our kids’
|
||||
brains, which is making them the most distracted, depressed, and fragile
|
||||
generation in history.
|
||||
|
||||
This shouldn’t come as a surprise given that the companies behind smartphones
|
||||
and apps are highly incentivized to keep us glued to them. Just look at what
|
||||
Sean Parker, the first president at Facebook, said about the company’s
|
||||
strategy,
|
||||
|
||||
“We wanted to exploit a vulnerability in human psychology. To do so, the apps
|
||||
needed to provide a little dopamine every once and a while to keep you hooked.
|
||||
Me, Mark Zuckerberg, Kevin Systrom (Instagram’s founder), and others knew this
|
||||
and we did it anyway. God only knows what it’s doing to our kids.”
|
||||
|
||||
They knew smartphones were the perfect mechanism for delivering dopamine and
|
||||
somehow convinced parents to willingly provide them to their kids during the
|
||||
most formative part in their lives.
|
||||
|
||||
The results are more than troubling, especially considering smartphones and
|
||||
social media arrived on the scene rough a decade-and-a-half ago.
|
||||
|
||||
From a mental health perspective, the correlation is hard to dispute.
|
||||
|
||||
Screenshot 2024-06-09 at 3.45.44 PM.png
|
||||
|
||||
Gen Z’s reading and math scores also began to decline around the same time (
|
||||
[26]Nation’s Report Card), while many reports indicate that this generation is
|
||||
shyer, more risk averse, and less ambitious than previous generations.
|
||||
|
||||
Are smartphones and social media 100% to blame?
|
||||
|
||||
Maybe, maybe not, but it sure feels like they are at least a significant part
|
||||
of the problem.
|
||||
|
||||
Knowing this, and recognizing that I have two young boys who are going to be
|
||||
begging for smartphones in a couple years, I asked myself,
|
||||
|
||||
“How am I supposed to tell them that they can’t get one if I am on mine all the
|
||||
time?”
|
||||
|
||||
So, I did something a bit odd — I went out and bought a flip phone.
|
||||
|
||||
That’s right, a flip phone. This is it.
|
||||
|
||||
Screenshot 2024-06-09 at 3.45.53 PM.png
|
||||
|
||||
Anyone over the age of 40 remembers it. Basic screen, grainy pictures, no
|
||||
email, no apps, multiple clicks to text one letter, and most importantly, no
|
||||
social media.
|
||||
|
||||
When I turned it on for the first time, it felt like traveling back in time.
|
||||
|
||||
I used it for a month and here are my biggest takeaways:
|
||||
|
||||
1. I was significantly less distracted
|
||||
Think about the last time you were waiting in line for lunch, to catch the
|
||||
subway, or at a stoplight. Did you reach for your phone? How about the last
|
||||
time you were out to dinner. Did you check a text when someone you were with
|
||||
went to the bathroom, or worse, in the middle of your conversation? You have.
|
||||
We all have. A flip phone liberated me from this.\
|
||||
|
||||
2. I could focus for longer periods of time
|
||||
I was able to truly concentrate. This meant doing things like reading long-form
|
||||
articles and books, working on projects, and writing without being distracted
|
||||
by a meaningless alert.
|
||||
|
||||
3. I was more aware
|
||||
Not having a smartphone myself enabled me to observe how many people walk, or
|
||||
even drive, around with their phones eight inches from their faces – on the
|
||||
subway, in the elevator, at red lights, on the sidewalks, and even crossing
|
||||
busy intersections. The more I noticed this, the more I realized how bizarre it
|
||||
is. In fact, I kept thinking to myself, if someone took a decades-long nap like
|
||||
Rip Van Winkle and woke up today, what in the world would they make of this
|
||||
phenomenon?
|
||||
|
||||
4. I was bored more often
|
||||
I was bored a lot, but you know what? I actually enjoyed it. Being bored forces
|
||||
you to think and to “be in your own head”, which are both incredibly
|
||||
refreshing. As a friend reminded me, our generation used to be bored all the
|
||||
time as kids, especially during things like long car rides and you know what we
|
||||
did? We invented and created ways to entertain ourselves. Our kids could use
|
||||
more of this. Hell, all of us could.
|
||||
|
||||
5. I found that some ignorance can be bliss
|
||||
Humans are not meant to have instant access to so much information. Yet, due to
|
||||
smartphones, we do, which is creating a “[27]filtering effect”. As a result, we
|
||||
are gravitating to extremes — reading about wars in far flung places is making
|
||||
us more fearful back home, seeing reports of rare child abductions is causing
|
||||
parents to restrict their kids’ freedom to wander even the safest
|
||||
neighborhoods, watching airbrushed Instagram’s and TikTok’s is convincing kids
|
||||
their lives are miserable, and searching WebMD for generic headaches is making
|
||||
us think we have brain tumors. My takeaway? Being a bit “in the dark” can be a
|
||||
very healthy thing.
|
||||
|
||||
6. I was more engaged with people, my wife and kids in particular This was my
|
||||
biggest takeaway. I was more engaged with everyone I came in touch with. I
|
||||
talked to my Uber drivers more, chatted with people in the elevator, and was
|
||||
generally friendlier. Most importantly, my wife and kids noticed. In fact, my
|
||||
older son actually said to me recently,
|
||||
|
||||
“Dad, can you believe how much time other people spend on their phones?”
|
||||
|
||||
“Other people” — what a difference a month can make.
|
||||
|
||||
Now I will say, while this month without a smartphone has been liberating in
|
||||
numerous ways, it was not without its issues or drawbacks:
|
||||
|
||||
For instance, managing my calendar wasn’t easy, I was forced to print out paper
|
||||
tickets for flights and sporting events, and I had to go back to ordering my
|
||||
morning coffee in person.
|
||||
|
||||
I also gained an even deeper appreciation for an app like Waze after getting
|
||||
stuck in significant traffic driving home from my son’s practice because I
|
||||
couldn’t see that there was an accident on the beltway.
|
||||
|
||||
There were some things that fell in the “mixed bag” category as well:
|
||||
|
||||
While I was less distracted, I missed my group texts given that my flip phone
|
||||
only allowed up to four people on a text.
|
||||
|
||||
Access to emails, in moderation, is also likely a net positive of smartphones
|
||||
as it enables us to have more flexibility in their careers and lives.
|
||||
|
||||
Cameras are a bit dicier. I originally thought they were a “nice to have”.
|
||||
However, after experiencing a month without one, it made me wonder why we are
|
||||
choosing to live life like this,
|
||||
|
||||
Screenshot 2024-06-09 at 3.46.02 PM.png
|
||||
|
||||
When we could be living like this.
|
||||
|
||||
Screenshot 2024-06-09 at 3.46.09 PM.png
|
||||
|
||||
Takeaways
|
||||
|
||||
I’m open to be persuaded, but after living life without a smartphone for a
|
||||
month, the case for keeping them out of kids’ hands as long as possible is
|
||||
pretty damn compelling. Afterall, if adults are as addicted to them as they
|
||||
appear to be, what are the chances young and impressionable kids can fare any
|
||||
better?
|
||||
|
||||
So, what would I suggest?
|
||||
|
||||
1. A Detox
|
||||
Try it for a week, a month, or more. It was liberating. “Detoxing” provided a
|
||||
great perspective on just how distracted kids must be with these things, how
|
||||
much less distracted they would be without them, and what life used to be like
|
||||
before we all became addicted.
|
||||
|
||||
2. Cut out the non-productive apps
|
||||
It is ironic, but if the Blackberry got the nickname “Crackberry” because of
|
||||
its addictive nature, these modern smartphones are straight up heroin.
|
||||
|
||||
They don’t need to be though.
|
||||
|
||||
This is what my iPhone used to look like:
|
||||
|
||||
Screenshot 2024-06-09 at 3.46.16 PM.png
|
||||
|
||||
This is what my iPhone looks like today.
|
||||
|
||||
Screenshot 2024-06-09 at 3.46.22 PM.png
|
||||
|
||||
Twelve apps, all of which are relatively productive. Also, I found this
|
||||
grayscale feature that has made the phone infinitely less interesting, and yes,
|
||||
boring…which is a good thing.
|
||||
|
||||
The result?
|
||||
|
||||
My daily usage is down more than 75%, I don’t feel myself reaching for it
|
||||
nearly as much, and most importantly, my kids don’t see me on it very often (or
|
||||
at least they have said anything yet…).\
|
||||
|
||||
3. Incentivize Kids to Not Use Phones in School
|
||||
I am in no place to tell anyone what to do with their kids. That said, I think
|
||||
the evidence is pretty compelling in favor of finding ways to limit smartphone
|
||||
usage during the school day for many of the reasons I have highlighted. Even
|
||||
more compelling is the fact that most kids don’t even seem to want them there,
|
||||
so long as that means NO ONE has them at school.
|
||||
|
||||
Look no further than a recent study led by the University of Chicago economist
|
||||
Leonardo Bursztyn that captured the dynamics of this social-media trap.
|
||||
|
||||
Bustztyn recruited more than a thousand college students and asked them how
|
||||
much they would need to be paid to deactivate their accounts on either
|
||||
Instagram or TikTok for a month. On average, students required roughly $50 ($59
|
||||
for TikTok, $47 for Instagram) to deactivate whichever platform they were asked
|
||||
about.
|
||||
|
||||
Next, the experimenters added a wrinkle to the question. They asked,
|
||||
|
||||
“If we are successful in getting your classmates to deactivate as well, would
|
||||
that change the price you would require to deactivate your phone?”
|
||||
|
||||
The typical response stunned the researchers. Not only did the price change, on
|
||||
average the students said they would be willing to PAY the experimenters to
|
||||
deactivate their Instagram and Tik Tok accounts if their classmates did as
|
||||
well.
|
||||
|
||||
More recently, I spoke with someone who ran an Outward Bound trip for middle
|
||||
school students and conducted a survey after the trip. Care to guess what the
|
||||
kids voted was the best part about the trip?
|
||||
|
||||
Being in nature? Rock climbing? Sleeping in tents? Fishing?
|
||||
|
||||
Nope.
|
||||
|
||||
The top response was being away from their phones.
|
||||
|
||||
So, what, if any, investment implications should come from this?
|
||||
|
||||
That’s for a later date.
|
||||
|
||||
SHARE
|
||||
|
||||
• [28]
|
||||
• [29]
|
||||
• [30]
|
||||
• Copy Link
|
||||
|
||||
Sign up for more Collab Fund content
|
||||
|
||||
Email address [31][ ] [32][Sign Up]
|
||||
More from the blog…
|
||||
|
||||
[33]
|
||||
|
||||
by —
|
||||
|
||||
[34]
|
||||
|
||||
by —
|
||||
|
||||
[35]
|
||||
|
||||
by —
|
||||
|
||||
Collab Fund
|
||||
|
||||
Collaborative Fund is a leading source of capital for big ideas pushing the
|
||||
world forward.
|
||||
|
||||
[36]
|
||||
|
||||
Newsletter
|
||||
|
||||
Sign up for updates ↗
|
||||
|
||||
[37]
|
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|
||||
Twitter
|
||||
|
||||
Follow @collabfund ↗
|
||||
|
||||
[38]
|
||||
|
||||
RSS
|
||||
|
||||
Subscribe to the blog ↗
|
||||
|
||||
• [39]About
|
||||
• [40]Shared Future
|
||||
• [41]SOS
|
||||
• [42]Currency
|
||||
• [43]Public
|
||||
• [44]Blog
|
||||
• [45]Site Credits
|
||||
|
||||
Equation reading "Collab is equal to People times Stuff, plus New Technologies
|
||||
raised to Creativity"
|
||||
|
||||
Collaborative Fund Management LLC, Collaborative Holdings Management LP and
|
||||
Collab+Currency Management, LLC are distinct investment advisory entities, are
|
||||
not a unitary enterprise and operate independently of one another. From time to
|
||||
time Collaborative Fund Management LLC may draw on its relationship with
|
||||
Collaborative Holdings Management LP and/or Collab+Currency Management, LLC,
|
||||
but only to the extent consistent with its status as a separate investment
|
||||
adviser.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
References:
|
||||
|
||||
[1] https://collabfund.com/
|
||||
[2] https://collabfund.com/blog
|
||||
[3] https://collabfund.com/about/
|
||||
[4] https://collabfund.com/portfolio
|
||||
[5] https://collabfund.com/shared-future/
|
||||
[6] https://collabfund.com/sos/
|
||||
[7] https://collabfund.com/investorportal/
|
||||
[8] https://collabfund.com/blog/
|
||||
[10] https://collabfund.com/about/
|
||||
[11] https://collabfund.com/portfolio
|
||||
[12] https://collabfund.com/shared-future/
|
||||
[13] https://collabfund.com/sos/
|
||||
[14] https://collabfund.com/investorportal/
|
||||
[15] https://collabfund.com/blog/
|
||||
[16] https://twitter.com/collabfund
|
||||
[17] https://collabfund.com/blog/authors/ted-lamade-managing-director-at-the-carnegie-institution-for-science/
|
||||
[18] https://www.twitter.com/collabfund
|
||||
[19] http://www.twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=My%20Month%20Without%20a%20Smartphone+https://collabfund.com/blog/my-month-without-a-smartphone/+via+@collabfund
|
||||
[20] https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://collabfund.com/blog/my-month-without-a-smartphone/
|
||||
[21] mailto:?subject=My%20Month%20Without%20a%20Smartphone%20on%20Collaborative%20Fund&body=You%20should%20read%20this:%20https://collabfund.com/blog/my-month-without-a-smartphone/
|
||||
[22] https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=rfj3dPkeaqI&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fm.vk.com%2F&feature=emb_imp_woyt
|
||||
[23] https://www.amazon.com/Anxious-Generation-Rewiring-Childhood-Epidemic/dp/0593655036
|
||||
[24] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/teen-childhood-smartphone-use-mental-health-effects/677722/
|
||||
[25] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/smartphones-rewired-childhood-heres-how-to-fix-it/id1570872415?i=1000650431219
|
||||
[26] https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/ltt/2023/
|
||||
[27] https://tedlamade.substack.com/p/safer-yet-more-afraid-than-ever
|
||||
[28] http://www.twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=My%20Month%20Without%20a%20Smartphone+https://collabfund.com/blog/my-month-without-a-smartphone/+via+@collabfund
|
||||
[29] https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://collabfund.com/blog/my-month-without-a-smartphone/
|
||||
[30] mailto:?subject=My%20Month%20Without%20a%20Smartphone%20on%20Collaborative%20Fund&body=You%20should%20read%20this:%20https://collabfund.com/blog/my-month-without-a-smartphone/
|
||||
[33] https://collabfund.com/blog/my-month-without-a-smartphone/
|
||||
[34] https://collabfund.com/blog/my-month-without-a-smartphone/
|
||||
[35] https://collabfund.com/blog/my-month-without-a-smartphone/
|
||||
[36] http://eepurl.com/cgCbcz
|
||||
[37] https://twitter.com/collabfund
|
||||
[38] http://feeds.feedburner.com/collabfund
|
||||
[39] https://collabfund.com/about/
|
||||
[40] https://collabfund.com/shared-future/
|
||||
[41] https://collabfund.com/sos/
|
||||
[42] https://collabcurrency.com/?_source=collabfund.com
|
||||
[43] https://collaborativeholdings.com/?_source=collabfund.com
|
||||
[44] https://collabfund.com/blog/
|
||||
[45] https://collabfund.com/credits/
|
||||
465
static/archive/justin-searls-co-3e8gm7.txt
Normal file
465
static/archive/justin-searls-co-3e8gm7.txt
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,465 @@
|
||||
[1]
|
||||
justin․searls․co
|
||||
|
||||
• [2]Home
|
||||
• [3]About
|
||||
• [4]Search
|
||||
• [5]Subscribe
|
||||
|
||||
• [6]Posts
|
||||
• [7]Links
|
||||
• [8]Shots
|
||||
• [9]Takes
|
||||
• [10]Tubes
|
||||
• [11]Casts
|
||||
• [12]Spots
|
||||
• [13]Mails
|
||||
|
||||
• [14]About Site
|
||||
• [15]Search It!
|
||||
• [16]Newsletter
|
||||
• [17]RSS / Atom
|
||||
|
||||
• [18]Work
|
||||
• [19]GitHub
|
||||
• [20]YouTube
|
||||
• [21]LinkedIn
|
||||
• [22]Instagram
|
||||
• [23]Mastodon
|
||||
• [24]Twitter
|
||||
|
||||
×
|
||||
Want [25]more of me in your life?
|
||||
[26][ ] [27][Sign up]
|
||||
Friday, Jun 14, 2024 [28]
|
||||
|
||||
Dear AI companies, please scrape this website
|
||||
|
||||
Last night, I read a flurry of angry feedback following WWDC. It appears some
|
||||
people are mad about Apple's AI announcements. Just like they were mad about
|
||||
Apple's [29]hydraulic press ad last month.
|
||||
|
||||
I woke up this morning with a single question:
|
||||
|
||||
"Am I the only person on earth who actually wants AI companies to scrape my
|
||||
website?"
|
||||
|
||||
Publications that depend on ad revenue don't. License holders counting on a
|
||||
return for their intellectual property investment are lawyering up. Quite a few
|
||||
Mastodon users appear not to be on board, either.
|
||||
|
||||
Me, meanwhile, would absolutely positively 💗LOVE💗 if the AIs scraped the shit
|
||||
out of this website, as well as all the other things I post publicly online.
|
||||
|
||||
Really, take my work! Go nuts! Make your AI think more like me. Make your AI
|
||||
sound more like me. Make your AI agree with my view of the world more often.
|
||||
|
||||
The entire reason I create shit is so that others will take it! To share ideas
|
||||
I find compelling in the hope those ideas will continue to spread. Why wouldn't
|
||||
I want OpenAI or Apple or whoever to feed everything I say into their AI
|
||||
model's training data? Hell, scrape me twice if it'll double the potency. On
|
||||
more than one occasion, I've felt that my [30]solo podcast project is in part
|
||||
"worth it", because—relative to the number of words I'm capable of writing and
|
||||
editing—those audio files represent a gob-smacking amount of Searls-flavored
|
||||
data that will contribute to a massive, spooky corpus of ideas that will later
|
||||
be regurgitated into a chat window and pasted into some future kid's homework
|
||||
assignment.
|
||||
|
||||
I'm not going to have children. I don't believe in God. I know that as soon as
|
||||
I'm dead, it's game over. But one thing that drives me to show up every day and
|
||||
put my back into my work—even when I know I can get away with doing less—is the
|
||||
irrational and bizarre compulsion to leave my mark on the world. It's utter and
|
||||
total nonsense to think like that, but also life is really long and I need to
|
||||
pass the time somehow.
|
||||
|
||||
So I make stuff! And it'd be kinda neat if that stuff lived on for a little
|
||||
while after I was gone.
|
||||
|
||||
And I know I'm not alone. Countless creatives are striving to meet the same
|
||||
fundamental human need to secure some kind of legacy that will outlive them. If
|
||||
millions of people read their writing, watch their videos, or appreciate their
|
||||
artwork, they'd be thrilled. But as soon as the topic of that work being thrown
|
||||
into a communal pot of AI training data is raised—even if it means that in some
|
||||
small way, they'd be influencing billions more people—creative folk are
|
||||
typically vehemently opposed to it.
|
||||
|
||||
Is it that AI will mangle and degrade the purity of their work? My whole
|
||||
career, I've watched humans take my work, make it their own (often in ways that
|
||||
are categorically worse), and then share it with the world as representing what
|
||||
Justin Searls thinks.
|
||||
|
||||
Is it the lack of attribution? Because I've found that, "humans leveraging my
|
||||
work without giving me credit," is an awfully long-winded way to pronounce
|
||||
"open source."
|
||||
|
||||
Is it a manifestation of a broader fear that their creative medium will be
|
||||
devalued as a commodity in this new era of [31]AI slop? Because my appreciation
|
||||
for human creativity has actually increased since the dawn of generative AI—as
|
||||
its output gravitates towards the global median, the resulting deluge of
|
||||
literally-mediocre content has only served to highlight the extraordinary-ness
|
||||
of humans who produce exceptional work.
|
||||
|
||||
For once, I'm not trying to be needlessly provocative. The above is an honest
|
||||
reflection of my initial and sustained reaction to the prospect of my work
|
||||
landing in a bunch of currently-half-cocked-but-maybe-some-day-full-cocked AI
|
||||
training sets. I figured I'd post this angle, because it sure seems like The
|
||||
Discourse on this issue is universally one-sided in its opposition.
|
||||
|
||||
Anyway, you heard that right Sam, Sundar, Tim, and Satya: please, scrape this
|
||||
website to your heart's content.
|
||||
|
||||
[32]Backing up a step
|
||||
|
||||
A lot of people whose income depends on creating content, making decisions, or
|
||||
performing administrative tasks are quite rightly worried about generative AI
|
||||
and to what extent it poses a threat to that income. Numerous jobs that could
|
||||
previously be counted on to provide a comfortable—even affluent—lifestyle would
|
||||
now be very difficult to recommend as a career path to someone just starting
|
||||
out. Even if the AI boosters claiming we're a hair's breadth away from [33]AGI
|
||||
turn out to be dead wrong, these tools can perform numerous valuable tasks
|
||||
already, so the spectre of AI can't simply be hand-waved away. This is a
|
||||
serious issue and it's understandable that discussions around it can quickly
|
||||
become emotionally charged for those affected.
|
||||
|
||||
But it also feels like on an individual basis, it's hard to make out what AI
|
||||
skeptics (for lack of a better term) actually propose we do about any of this,
|
||||
especially if you narrow it down to solutions that have even a remote chance of
|
||||
materializing.
|
||||
|
||||
People's negative reactions to Apple's keynote seemed to fall into three
|
||||
buckets:
|
||||
|
||||
• Hope that industry regulation meaningfully halts the development and
|
||||
proliferation of AI tools, effectively requiring worldwide coordination
|
||||
among world leaders in an era marked by global conflict and strained
|
||||
alliances
|
||||
• Hope that social policies guaranteeing the well-being of people whose
|
||||
income might be displaced by AI (e.g. subsidized job retraining, universal
|
||||
basic income) are adopted, requiring a flurry of progressive, pro-social
|
||||
policies to pass amid a seemingly global rightward lurch politically
|
||||
• Hope that companies like Apple take the high road and reject the adoption
|
||||
of AI, even though this would inevitably result in their stock price (and
|
||||
therefore, executive compensation and employee retention) dropping off a
|
||||
cliff. It could also invite an existential threat if competitors were to
|
||||
introduce game-changing AI-powered capabilities (requiring further hope
|
||||
that consumers, in turn, take the high road and reject those competitors in
|
||||
solidarity with the interests of labor)
|
||||
|
||||
Real talk: each of the above scenarios are so laughably unlikely that I
|
||||
struggled to get through typing all that.
|
||||
|
||||
As a former colleague of mine once quipped after joining an overly optimistic
|
||||
software team that thought they were crushing and/or killing it but who in fact
|
||||
didn't have a prayer of meeting any of their deadlines before running out of
|
||||
funding, "there's a lot of hope in this room… and I don't like it!"
|
||||
|
||||
If you're clinging to hopes like those above and you like your odds, then
|
||||
that's great. I wish I shared your optimism. But it's always seemed to me that
|
||||
pinning my future on widespread collective action to solve problems that affect
|
||||
me personally—and in a timely-enough manner for it to make a difference—is a
|
||||
risky strategy. Especially if it comes at the expense of taking control of my
|
||||
own destiny by planning for the change so as to protect my interests.
|
||||
|
||||
[34]This isn't the career I wanted
|
||||
|
||||
Let's talk about AI and jobs. I [35]wrote about this topic years and years ago,
|
||||
back in March of 2023. I think the post holds up. I wonder how long it will.
|
||||
|
||||
More relevant to today's discussion, I suspect many people expressing outrage
|
||||
about AI features showing up on the iPhone feel a deep-seated fear that their
|
||||
livelihood might be under threat by AI. For anyone that feels that fear, the
|
||||
best advice I can offer is to figure out how to protect your own interests in a
|
||||
rapidly changing world. As soon as possible. Today, if you have time.
|
||||
|
||||
All I can offer is my story and what worked for me, but I'll admit I had the
|
||||
benefit of a 20-year jump on most people in thinking about how my white collar
|
||||
dream jobs would be at risk of being rendered obsolete by software before I
|
||||
turned 40.
|
||||
|
||||
Contrary to the impression I left on everyone I've put to sleep at cocktail
|
||||
parties in response to being asked, "So what do you do?", I actually never
|
||||
intended to build my career on quixotic attempts to remediate the
|
||||
hopelessly-broken integration test suites of massive banks and insurance
|
||||
companies.
|
||||
|
||||
At first, I wanted to write about the video game industry.
|
||||
|
||||
Then, I wanted to work as a translator in Japan.
|
||||
|
||||
Then, I wanted to go into intellectual property law.
|
||||
|
||||
But as soon as I took even a few steps in any of these directions, the risk of
|
||||
my own replaceability became apparent. Palpable, even. It felt obvious to me,
|
||||
at least as far back as the first half of the 2000s, that each of these jobs
|
||||
depended on structural inefficiencies that "the market" would seek to correct
|
||||
over a short enough time horizon that it would threaten my ability to
|
||||
successfully pursue a financially secure, decades-long career.
|
||||
|
||||
My greatest career-planning asset has always been that I'm allergic to the
|
||||
sensation that what I'm doing is replaceable. If the work is repetitive, then
|
||||
it can be automated. If the work doesn't require any skills that I uniquely
|
||||
bring to the table, then someone else could do it. If the work isn't creating
|
||||
monetary value for someone, then it's only a matter of time until that someone
|
||||
figures out how to stop paying me for it.
|
||||
|
||||
If you don't have that allergic reaction yet, I recommend developing it. If my
|
||||
recently-manifested hay fever is any indication, it's never too late to pick up
|
||||
a new allergy.
|
||||
|
||||
I wound up as a software consultant by process of elimination of a dozen things
|
||||
I'd rather have been doing. I'll go further: I'm not sure I've ever enjoyed a
|
||||
single day of work in my life. I'll stay up as late as my body allows if it
|
||||
means staving off work the next day a little longer. Every weekend, I'd feel
|
||||
miserable by 3pm on Saturday because I'd realize the next day was Sunday and
|
||||
that's the day I spend dreading that work starts again on Monday. Maybe if I
|
||||
had scored one of my dream jobs, I'd have felt differently. At the end of the
|
||||
day, I'm grateful that my overriding fear of financial ruin was so strong that
|
||||
it compelled me to get my ass out of bed in order to go do things that I
|
||||
generally hated doing.
|
||||
|
||||
Then why do it? I'll never forget what I told my advisor in college who asked
|
||||
me the same thing: "because software developers will be the ones to turn off
|
||||
the lights behind them as the door closes on the American middle class."
|
||||
|
||||
Fucking yikes.
|
||||
|
||||
[36]Why I didn't write about video games
|
||||
|
||||
Despite contributing to websites with hundreds of thousands of monthly page
|
||||
views while I was still in middle school, I realized almost immediately how
|
||||
frustrating and fragile advertising income was and how challenging it would be
|
||||
to get customers to pay for my content when free alternatives were effectively
|
||||
infinite. I absolutely loved writing about games and found the palace intrigue
|
||||
of what was going on inside publishers and development studios to be oddly
|
||||
titillating. I could imagine breaking out on my own and developing a compelling
|
||||
editorial voice to demystify the game industry for other fans, and it seemed
|
||||
like it would be a ton of fun.
|
||||
|
||||
But making content itself my core work product always felt self-defeating. Free
|
||||
content garners far more attention than content hidden behind a paywall, but
|
||||
the only way anyone would discover that paid content (or that it's worth paying
|
||||
for in the first place) is, ironically, free content. As a result, it's no
|
||||
surprise that the people who are most successful at selling paid content
|
||||
actually give their best content away for free.
|
||||
|
||||
And I don't want to pay for someone's half-assed scraps when they give away
|
||||
their best work for free. Telling people to pay for a subscription to anything
|
||||
less than my best work would create the risk that subscribers would think it's
|
||||
a bait-and-switch. And they'd be right. Because that's exactly what it would
|
||||
be.
|
||||
|
||||
The Internet is too big and life is too short to settle for anything less than
|
||||
someone's best work. As a result, I resolved at the ripe old age of 17 that I'd
|
||||
never allow myself to depend on income generated by asking people to pay me for
|
||||
my ideas. The reason I was interested in creating things at all was to reach as
|
||||
many people as possible, and the prospect of denying people access to that work
|
||||
in order to make a living was wholly misaligned with what drove me.
|
||||
|
||||
No matter how fun it might have been, the fact that my livelihood would depend
|
||||
on the scarcity of information in a world where the availability of information
|
||||
was spreading like wildfire presented a risk I couldn't fathom staking my
|
||||
financial future on.
|
||||
|
||||
[37]Why I'm not living in Japan as a translator
|
||||
|
||||
It's hard to imagine now, but the spirit of international exchange was
|
||||
overwhelming when I first stepped foot in Japan in 2005. The small city I lived
|
||||
in had opened an "international lounge" for foreign guests to get information
|
||||
from multilingual civil servants, replete with refreshments and
|
||||
Internet-connected computers. The town had a miniscule population of English
|
||||
and Brazillian Portugese speaking residents, but nevertheless employed a team
|
||||
at city hall who translated every single document, instruction manual, and
|
||||
newsletter into both languages (I remember being asked to help them translate a
|
||||
guide on how to procure and register a [38]hanko stamp from Portugese into
|
||||
English). On one occasion, I was tapped to accompany an American jazz group as
|
||||
an English-speaking guide and not-very-good interpreter who was visiting the
|
||||
city to play a concert at a cross-cultural fair at the local public university.
|
||||
|
||||
These were all incredible experiences and they left an idealistic imprint on
|
||||
me. If I really dedicated myself to learning Japanese, I could make a
|
||||
meaningful difference by fostering connections across cultural boundaries. I
|
||||
could put some good into the world.
|
||||
|
||||
But as soon as I put my "career planning" hat on, I realized this was folly.
|
||||
Already, people were walking around with [39]electronic dictionaries, and it
|
||||
was clear that Internet-connected smartphones were just around the corner. How
|
||||
long until phones had microphones that could interpret speech better than I
|
||||
could? Or a camera that could decode the Chinese characters that would take
|
||||
years for me to learn? Who would pay to have their website translated if a
|
||||
browser could eventually do it automatically?
|
||||
|
||||
My interest in work as a translator and interpreter was driven by a desire to
|
||||
promote cross-cultural understanding, but I wasn't an idiot: I knew the thing
|
||||
people would be paying for is to transform a series of words in one language
|
||||
into a series of words in another language. As soon as a technology could do a
|
||||
"good enough" job at that, I'd be unemployed and stranded halfway across the
|
||||
world with no other marketable skills to offer.
|
||||
|
||||
[40]Why I didn't become a lawyer
|
||||
|
||||
There was a brief time in college after I found out how much money intellectual
|
||||
property lawyers made that I seriously thought about it. I was telling a friend
|
||||
about this when he said that his dad was an I.P. lawyer… and how much he hated
|
||||
his life. That it was painfully monotonous. That every day was spent reviewing
|
||||
the same documents, negotiating the same conversations with clients and
|
||||
opposing counsel, and making the same basic decisions.
|
||||
|
||||
While I have several friends who are lawyers, the profession has long
|
||||
represented a twisted form of rent-seeking. By gatekeeping sacred knowledge and
|
||||
arcane ways of contorting the English language, it always felt to me that the
|
||||
market value of many lawyers was derived from the time and money they had
|
||||
invested up front to become a lawyer, as opposed to being rooted in the
|
||||
ingenuity of their work actually lawyering.
|
||||
|
||||
Almost as soon as I started thinking about going into law, endless worries
|
||||
followed. If a bunch of people graduate law school after me, wouldn't that
|
||||
undercut my negotiating power with my firm? Wouldn't new tools like [41]OCR and
|
||||
"eDiscovery" (that is, using computer search indices to pore through tens of
|
||||
thousands of documents instead of dozens of lawyers and paralegals doing it by
|
||||
hand) drastically reduce the number of humans that law firms would need to
|
||||
employ? And legal expenses are almost always a cost center for clients, so
|
||||
wouldn't they drop their lawyers the minute a tool came along that allowed them
|
||||
to navigate the dark art of contract language on their own?
|
||||
|
||||
Staking so much of my income on a status that I'd attained as opposed to the
|
||||
value of my work itself always felt incredibly tenuous to me. So I didn't do
|
||||
it.
|
||||
|
||||
[42]Why I became a software consultant.
|
||||
|
||||
Because software was the thing I was imagining would undermine all these other
|
||||
professions, I found myself resigned to a, "if you can't beat'em, join 'em,"
|
||||
mindset. I became a software consultant on a mission to immerse myself in the
|
||||
most complicated systems and asinine bureaucracies as a form of exposure
|
||||
therapy. To learn how to better navigate a world that was beginning to buckle
|
||||
under the weight of bad software.
|
||||
|
||||
My very first client wanted to automate a bunch of corporate IT provisioning
|
||||
tasks (adding, freezing, suspending accounts; assigning access controls; etc.)
|
||||
into workflows that would drastically reduce the amount of manpower those tasks
|
||||
currently took. They were willing to pay my employer's extremely high
|
||||
consulting rates because they wagered one egregiously expensive year
|
||||
implementing all this would pay for itself by saving themselves many more years
|
||||
of salary and benefits for a team of employees to do it all by hand. It was
|
||||
technically fascinating stuff, full of hard problems, yadda yadda, but we all
|
||||
knew the score. The more successful my work was, the sooner people would lose
|
||||
their jobs.
|
||||
|
||||
My second client received tens of thousands of pieces of mail each day, and was
|
||||
currently paying dozens of people to staff an off-site scanning facility to
|
||||
open, prep, categorize, scan, and forward the mail manually. I was tasked with
|
||||
developing an OCR system to eliminate data entry of standardized forms and an
|
||||
[43]OMR solution to automatically forward each piece of mail to the right
|
||||
department. I worked side-by-side with the employees of that off-site scanning
|
||||
facility. Even though reducing headcount was an expressly stated goal of the
|
||||
project, I never got the sense that anybody thought the new system might
|
||||
eliminate their job—only someone else's. Witnessing that cognitive dissonance
|
||||
was bizarre, and only made flying cross-country each week even more depressing.
|
||||
(Of course, it was only a few more years until customers stopped sending mail
|
||||
at all, so the project only really served to accelerate the inevitable.)
|
||||
|
||||
I have more stories.
|
||||
|
||||
The reason software consulting made sense to me as a career choice was
|
||||
threefold:
|
||||
|
||||
1. Every company was coming to rely on software and that dependence was
|
||||
clearly self-reinforcing (the more software they implemented, the more
|
||||
software they would need), which meant a client's need for software would
|
||||
never be sated
|
||||
2. Software created under typical market conditions (prioritizing cost, speed,
|
||||
and capability over maintainability) meant that it would be a
|
||||
rapidly-depreciating asset at best and an outright liability at worst,
|
||||
which meant no such piece of software would ever be "done"
|
||||
3. If something like AI were to come along that could generate working code,
|
||||
the upper bound on that code's quality would probably mirror the garbage
|
||||
that most human programmers produced, which means it would only exacerbate
|
||||
the prior two conditions
|
||||
|
||||
It seemed to me like learning how to navigate messy, hard-to-maintain, high
|
||||
entropy codebases that generated business value but also required ongoing
|
||||
changes would provide enough work to occupy several lifetimes. I was betting
|
||||
that software would always be shitty and that there'd always be demand for more
|
||||
of it. Pessimistic as it was, I feel comfortable declaring that I won that bet.
|
||||
If you got into this racket around the same time and for the same reasons,
|
||||
you've got a job for life.
|
||||
|
||||
[44]What did I just read?
|
||||
|
||||
Does this mean I joined the dark side? That's a valid interpretation. I prefer
|
||||
to think major technological revolutions are unlikely to be stopped, so the
|
||||
only reasonable course of action is to figure out how to adapt to whatever
|
||||
changes those revolutions bring.
|
||||
|
||||
Rather than try to force the ocean to be still, it's always seemed to make more
|
||||
sense to learn to ride the waves instead. And if my public-facing work has done
|
||||
anyone else any good at learning how to ride those waves, then I'm happy to
|
||||
call that my penance. To that ends, if you've read this far and want some
|
||||
personalized advice for navigating the current moment, [45]drop me a line and I
|
||||
promise that I will read it and reply.
|
||||
|
||||
So scrape away, tech giants. If your AI successfully manages to clone my
|
||||
writing, speaking, video, and coding abilities then I'll thank you for saving
|
||||
me the effort and go ride the next wave to come along. 🏄♂️
|
||||
|
||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
|
||||
Got a taste for hot, fresh takes?
|
||||
|
||||
Then you're in luck, because you can subscribe to this site via [46]RSS or [47]
|
||||
Mastodon! And if that ain't enough, then sign up for my [48]newsletter and I'll
|
||||
send you a usually-pretty-good essay once a month. I also have a solo [49]
|
||||
podcast, because of course I do.
|
||||
|
||||
© 2024 Justin Searls. All rights reserved.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
References:
|
||||
|
||||
[1] https://justin.searls.co/
|
||||
[2] https://justin.searls.co/
|
||||
[3] https://justin.searls.co/about
|
||||
[4] https://justin.searls.co/search
|
||||
[5] https://justin.searls.co/rss
|
||||
[6] https://justin.searls.co/posts
|
||||
[7] https://justin.searls.co/links
|
||||
[8] https://justin.searls.co/shots
|
||||
[9] https://justin.searls.co/takes
|
||||
[10] https://justin.searls.co/tubes
|
||||
[11] https://justin.searls.co/casts
|
||||
[12] https://justin.searls.co/spots
|
||||
[13] https://justin.searls.co/mails
|
||||
[14] https://justin.searls.co/about
|
||||
[15] https://justin.searls.co/search
|
||||
[16] https://justin.searls.co/newsletter
|
||||
[17] https://justin.searls.co/rss
|
||||
[18] https://testdouble.com/
|
||||
[19] https://github.com/searls
|
||||
[20] https://youtube.com/@JustinSearls
|
||||
[21] https://linkedin.com/in/searls
|
||||
[22] https://instagram.com/searls
|
||||
[23] https://mastodon.social/@searls
|
||||
[24] https://twitter.com/searls
|
||||
[25] https://justin.searls.co/newsletter
|
||||
[28] https://justin.searls.co/posts/dear-ai-companies-please-scrape-this-website/
|
||||
[29] https://apnews.com/article/apple-ipad-ad-social-media-reaction-12e7fbd335feb4875d94c31b87379359
|
||||
[30] https://justin.searls.co/casts
|
||||
[31] https://simonwillison.net/2024/May/8/slop/
|
||||
[32] https://justin.searls.co/posts/dear-ai-companies-please-scrape-this-website/#backing-up-a-step
|
||||
[33] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence
|
||||
[34] https://justin.searls.co/posts/dear-ai-companies-please-scrape-this-website/#this-isnt-the-career-i-wanted
|
||||
[35] https://blog.testdouble.com/posts/2023-03-14-how-to-tell-if-ai-threatens-your-job/
|
||||
[36] https://justin.searls.co/posts/dear-ai-companies-please-scrape-this-website/#why-i-didnt-write-about-video-games
|
||||
[37] https://justin.searls.co/posts/dear-ai-companies-please-scrape-this-website/#why-im-not-living-in-japan-as-a-translator
|
||||
[38] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_(East_Asia)#Japanese_usage
|
||||
[39] https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9B%BB%E5%AD%90%E8%BE%9E%E6%9B%B8
|
||||
[40] https://justin.searls.co/posts/dear-ai-companies-please-scrape-this-website/#why-i-didnt-become-a-lawyer
|
||||
[41] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition
|
||||
[42] https://justin.searls.co/posts/dear-ai-companies-please-scrape-this-website/#why-i-became-a-software-consultant
|
||||
[43] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_mark_recognition
|
||||
[44] https://justin.searls.co/posts/dear-ai-companies-please-scrape-this-website/#what-did-i-just-read
|
||||
[45] mailto:website@searls.co
|
||||
[46] https://justin.searls.co/rss
|
||||
[47] https://mastodon.social/@searls
|
||||
[48] https://justin.searls.co/newsletter
|
||||
[49] https://justin.searls.co/casts
|
||||
130
static/archive/justin-searls-co-8aycpn.txt
Normal file
130
static/archive/justin-searls-co-8aycpn.txt
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,130 @@
|
||||
[1]
|
||||
justin․searls․co
|
||||
|
||||
• [2]Home
|
||||
• [3]About
|
||||
• [4]Search
|
||||
• [5]Subscribe
|
||||
|
||||
• [6]Posts
|
||||
• [7]Links
|
||||
• [8]Shots
|
||||
• [9]Takes
|
||||
• [10]Tubes
|
||||
• [11]Casts
|
||||
• [12]Spots
|
||||
• [13]Mails
|
||||
|
||||
• [14]About Site
|
||||
• [15]Search It!
|
||||
• [16]Newsletter
|
||||
• [17]RSS / Atom
|
||||
|
||||
• [18]Work
|
||||
• [19]GitHub
|
||||
• [20]YouTube
|
||||
• [21]LinkedIn
|
||||
• [22]Instagram
|
||||
• [23]Mastodon
|
||||
• [24]Twitter
|
||||
|
||||
×
|
||||
Want [25]more of me in your life?
|
||||
[26][ ] [27][Sign up]
|
||||
Sunday, Jun 30, 2024
|
||||
Breaking Change artwork
|
||||
|
||||
v15 - An E Ink iPod Touch
|
||||
|
||||
Breaking Change
|
||||
|
||||
Your browser does not support the audio element. The file is [28]here to
|
||||
download.
|
||||
Subscribe:
|
||||
[29] [30] [31] [32] [33]
|
||||
|
||||
I bought a new gadget! And it runs Android! And I don't hate it!
|
||||
|
||||
Tell me about things you hate and don't hate and I might just read your
|
||||
feelings on air, for others to have opinions about! The e-mail, as always, is
|
||||
[34]podcast@searls.co.
|
||||
|
||||
Sources below:
|
||||
|
||||
• [35]Ubiquiti UniFi
|
||||
• [36]Loopback with SSL2+
|
||||
• [37]This annoying Safari bug
|
||||
• [38]My first video clip from Breaking Change
|
||||
• A podcast I will appear on shortly: [39]Vision Pros
|
||||
• [40]Aaron's punboard
|
||||
• [41]The EU won't get these new Apple features
|
||||
□ [42]Gruber's take on this matches my own
|
||||
• The [43]BOOX Palma
|
||||
• [44]Digital Foundry tells us not to play games on our Windows + Copilot PCs
|
||||
• [45]Dark Matter
|
||||
• [46]Godzilla Minus One
|
||||
• [47]samus.link
|
||||
|
||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
|
||||
Got a taste for hot, fresh takes?
|
||||
|
||||
Then you're in luck, because you can subscribe to this site via [48]RSS or [49]
|
||||
Mastodon! And if that ain't enough, then sign up for my [50]newsletter and I'll
|
||||
send you a usually-pretty-good essay once a month. I also have a solo [51]
|
||||
podcast, because of course I do.
|
||||
|
||||
© 2024 Justin Searls. All rights reserved.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
References:
|
||||
|
||||
[1] https://justin.searls.co/
|
||||
[2] https://justin.searls.co/
|
||||
[3] https://justin.searls.co/about
|
||||
[4] https://justin.searls.co/search
|
||||
[5] https://justin.searls.co/rss
|
||||
[6] https://justin.searls.co/posts
|
||||
[7] https://justin.searls.co/links
|
||||
[8] https://justin.searls.co/shots
|
||||
[9] https://justin.searls.co/takes
|
||||
[10] https://justin.searls.co/tubes
|
||||
[11] https://justin.searls.co/casts
|
||||
[12] https://justin.searls.co/spots
|
||||
[13] https://justin.searls.co/mails
|
||||
[14] https://justin.searls.co/about
|
||||
[15] https://justin.searls.co/search
|
||||
[16] https://justin.searls.co/newsletter
|
||||
[17] https://justin.searls.co/rss
|
||||
[18] https://testdouble.com/
|
||||
[19] https://github.com/searls
|
||||
[20] https://youtube.com/@JustinSearls
|
||||
[21] https://linkedin.com/in/searls
|
||||
[22] https://instagram.com/searls
|
||||
[23] https://mastodon.social/@searls
|
||||
[24] https://twitter.com/searls
|
||||
[25] https://justin.searls.co/newsletter
|
||||
[28] https://podcast-cdn.searls.co/breaking-change/v15.mp3
|
||||
[29] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-change/id1725165751
|
||||
[30] https://open.spotify.com/show/6udYBrGATjngartPpfwyPn
|
||||
[31] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIuJbrOVyGjmxw7lCZVzgcSGTRABhY6A2
|
||||
[32] https://overcast.fm/itunes1725165751/breaking-change
|
||||
[33] https://justin.searls.co/podcasts/breaking-change.xml
|
||||
[34] mailto:podcast@searls.co
|
||||
[35] https://www.ui.com/introduction
|
||||
[36] https://justin.searls.co/posts/how-to-loopback-computer-audio-with-ssl2-and-logic-pro/
|
||||
[37] https://justin.searls.co/posts/hey-check-out-this-infuriating-safari-bug/
|
||||
[38] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eR5SWmv6OE
|
||||
[39] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vision-pros/id1691900104
|
||||
[40] https://justin.searls.co/puns/
|
||||
[41] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/06/21/apple-intelligence-dma-financial-times
|
||||
[42] https://daringfireball.net/2024/06/eu_reaping_what_it_sows
|
||||
[43] https://www.theverge.com/24184777/boox-palma-e-ink-smartphone-reader
|
||||
[44] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzCkpTE0bM0
|
||||
[45] https://tv.apple.com/us/show/dark-matter/umc.cmc.4luj45vtqpmjsvb6sc2675oeg
|
||||
[46] https://www.netflix.com/title/81767635
|
||||
[47] https://samus.link/
|
||||
[48] https://justin.searls.co/rss
|
||||
[49] https://mastodon.social/@searls
|
||||
[50] https://justin.searls.co/newsletter
|
||||
[51] https://justin.searls.co/casts
|
||||
182
static/archive/kylekukshtel-com-mvggiq.txt
Normal file
182
static/archive/kylekukshtel-com-mvggiq.txt
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,182 @@
|
||||
[1]kyle kukshtel
|
||||
[2]About [3]Projects [4]Blog [5]Inspiration [6]Archives [7]RSS [8]Search
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Cultivating A Space For The Doing
|
||||
|
||||
An average Tuesday begets strangely connected threads
|
||||
|
||||
May 16, 2023
|
||||
|
||||
Tagged: [9]Art [10]Practice
|
||||
|
||||
Francis Bacon. Painting. 1946 | MoMA
|
||||
|
||||
Creative Meditation
|
||||
|
||||
Apropos of nothing I found myself circling the painter Francis Bacon today in
|
||||
more ways than one. It started a bit with [11]discovering this piece on him:
|
||||
|
||||
What would have happened to Bacon’s career had he been subscribed to nine
|
||||
podcasts? Had he been posting his work to Instagram, and Facebook, and
|
||||
Twitter? Pressure would have leaked from the pressure cooker and the
|
||||
violence of his work would have dissipated. We can debate how much the
|
||||
violence would dissipate, but I’m utterly convinced that it would have to
|
||||
dissipate—other things equal.
|
||||
|
||||
I’ve been working slowly in the background on what’s next after Cantata so the
|
||||
notion of “sharing process” has been on my mind as a marketing technique. When
|
||||
to start? How to start? Should I show stuff?
|
||||
|
||||
But this acted as a pit of a nice pill to swallow, this idea of sort of
|
||||
cultivating your pressure cooker of ideas. In Bacon’s case it was his studio
|
||||
(also some funny parallels here to my own online identity), but as someone that
|
||||
has a full family now and no ability to just hide in darkness for hours, I’m
|
||||
thinking a lot about the ways of making what’s next and how to cultivate that
|
||||
sense of space around me.
|
||||
|
||||
I remember some really great photos from [12]Might & Delight’s studio:
|
||||
|
||||
img
|
||||
|
||||
img
|
||||
|
||||
img
|
||||
|
||||
It then seems obvious that the games they make look like this:
|
||||
|
||||
Picture of a small village during night
|
||||
|
||||
Picture of a bridge surrounded by trees with green leaves
|
||||
|
||||
And not like
|
||||
|
||||
Netflix’s Gears of War will shoot for The Last of Us’s video game TV adaptation
|
||||
crown | British GQ
|
||||
|
||||
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is like an open-world, playable Game of Thrones | The
|
||||
Verge
|
||||
|
||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
|
||||
This isn’t meant to be some mediation on interior design, but just sort of
|
||||
musing on both the psychogeography of where [13]the doing is actually done, but
|
||||
that there is also a permeating sense of the creation (some may call this The
|
||||
Vibe) that also needs to be cultivated as it shares the space between your mind
|
||||
and where work is actually done. Cue [14]Bacon again:
|
||||
|
||||
Engineer for yourself the smallest possible environment, concentrated as
|
||||
densely as possible with only the highest quality inputs; explicitly
|
||||
re-route all potential distraction-avenues back to one’s chosen craft, such
|
||||
that even when you’re momentarily doing something else you cannot escape
|
||||
the focus of your craft.
|
||||
|
||||
It’s almost a bit like making yourself a conduit for the work, and that it can
|
||||
flow free into and out of you. That it can feel safe moving between those
|
||||
spaces. Gentle thoughts will dissipate in loud spaces, just as loud thoughts
|
||||
may vanish in quiet ones. Bacon’s art very much tuned to his studio:
|
||||
|
||||
The clothes in Francis Bacon’s paintings are as fascinating as the subjects |
|
||||
British GQ
|
||||
|
||||
Studio | Francis Bacon
|
||||
|
||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
|
||||
The morning’s HN browse [15]then put this article on my radar (“Artists must be
|
||||
allowed to make bad work”), which contains some video interviews of Bacon I
|
||||
started watching but then realized I needed to get a lot of work done and would
|
||||
have to postpone. Their own quote though is relevant to the “pressure cooker”
|
||||
idea from above:
|
||||
|
||||
There is a tendency in our society to be wedded to the new, to be wedded to
|
||||
the excitement of novelty. I think at the present moment that there’s a
|
||||
tendency — which I think we’ve got from America, and which I think is a bad
|
||||
tendency, to measure every artist by his last exhibition. “So and so’s no
|
||||
good, look at his last show!” The fact that he had five previous shows,
|
||||
which were very good, doesn’t seem to matter. It gets forgotten too
|
||||
quickly. And somehow the snap judgement on what one has just done, this
|
||||
kind of pressure it puts on is very dangerous, because artists must be
|
||||
allowed to go through bad periods
|
||||
|
||||
Again this sense of cultivation but also resiliency, that the practice and
|
||||
doing (thanks Jay!) needs to be more about sustainability and craft instead of
|
||||
practice-as-art.
|
||||
|
||||
I remember reading or hearing something recently about someone that was very
|
||||
anti studio-tours from similarly articulated reasons. They sort of feel good in
|
||||
the moment but are a distraction and start to produce weird forces onto the
|
||||
space itself. From the earlier article:
|
||||
|
||||
Bring in nothing but the finest inputs, and focus every possible
|
||||
attentional pathway back into the work at hand.
|
||||
|
||||
Studio visits are bad inputs. Social media validation is a bad input.
|
||||
|
||||
To quote the perpetually-inconvenient [16]adn:
|
||||
|
||||
Game Quality is all that matters
|
||||
|
||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
|
||||
From here we take then a final trip to our Bacon rodeo with a recent episode of
|
||||
the 301 Permanently Moved: [17]Embrace Cadence, Find Rhythm. Again, very weird
|
||||
that this whole sort of thought circle happened in the span of a few hours,
|
||||
without me proactively following up on any of it. Just a few different
|
||||
independent browse-seshes that resulted in parallel thoughts.
|
||||
|
||||
Now [the artist plants] a garden.
|
||||
|
||||
For it is there the work can flourish on home soil. Let their creations
|
||||
grow roots in persistent mediums. Deep soil of blogs and web domains. The
|
||||
artist can plant seeds here and watch them flourish. It is from this garden
|
||||
sheltered from virtual storms that the artist can do the work that
|
||||
transcends popular concern.
|
||||
|
||||
Do not let the garden be overrun by weeds, The needs of retweets, likes and
|
||||
follows are unhelpful allies. Resist the siren’s call of engagement from
|
||||
beyond the sea. Pursue authenticity. Know thyself; for in the depths of
|
||||
you, the purest art is born.
|
||||
|
||||
The work at first may flourish. Bear generous fruit, enjoyed by both the
|
||||
artist and the audience. But beware, however long or brief the blooming, it
|
||||
will lose its lustre. Guests will leave and once again the artist will find
|
||||
themselves all alone. They must return to work, sowing and pruning, finding
|
||||
fulfilment in the doing.
|
||||
|
||||
Do not tolerate visitors seeking to grade and critique, for in ones own
|
||||
garden there is never best in show.
|
||||
|
||||
Happy Tuesday everyone!
|
||||
|
||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
|
||||
Published on May 16, 2023.
|
||||
|
||||
Tagged: [18]Art [19]Practice
|
||||
|
||||
[20]
|
||||
subscribe to my newsletter
|
||||
|
||||
References:
|
||||
|
||||
[1] https://kylekukshtel.com/
|
||||
[2] https://kylekukshtel.com/about
|
||||
[3] https://kylekukshtel.com/projects
|
||||
[4] https://kylekukshtel.com/blog
|
||||
[5] https://kylekukshtel.com/inspiration
|
||||
[6] https://kylekukshtel.com/archives
|
||||
[7] https://kylekukshtel.com/feed.rss
|
||||
[8] https://kylekukshtel.com/search
|
||||
[9] https://kylekukshtel.com/tagged/art
|
||||
[10] https://kylekukshtel.com/tagged/practice
|
||||
[11] https://www.otherlife.co/francisbacon/
|
||||
[12] https://www.mightanddelight.com/
|
||||
[13] https://www.thejaymo.net/2022/10/15/301-2237-the-doing/
|
||||
[14] https://www.otherlife.co/francisbacon/
|
||||
[15] https://austinkleon.com/2023/05/07/artists-must-be-allowed-to-make-bad-work/
|
||||
[16] https://a327ex.com/posts/game_quality
|
||||
[17] https://www.thejaymo.net/2023/04/30/301-2315-embrace-cadence-find-rhythm/
|
||||
[18] https://kylekukshtel.com/tagged/art
|
||||
[19] https://kylekukshtel.com/tagged/practice
|
||||
[20] https://buttondown.email/kylekukshtel
|
||||
512
static/archive/ludic-mataroa-blog-hhnwdj.txt
Normal file
512
static/archive/ludic-mataroa-blog-hhnwdj.txt
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,512 @@
|
||||
[1]Ludicity
|
||||
|
||||
I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again
|
||||
|
||||
Published on June 19, 2024
|
||||
|
||||
The recent innovations in the AI space, most notably those such as GPT-4,
|
||||
obviously have far-reaching implications for society, ranging from the utopian
|
||||
eliminating of drudgery, to the dystopian damage to the livelihood of artists
|
||||
in a capitalist society, to existential threats to humanity itself.
|
||||
|
||||
I myself have formal training as a data scientist, [2]going so far as to
|
||||
dominate a competitive machine learning event at one of Australia's top
|
||||
universities and writing a Master's thesis where I wrote all my own libraries
|
||||
from scratch in MATLAB. I'm not God's gift to the field, but I am clearly
|
||||
better than most of my competition - that is, practitioners like myself who
|
||||
haven't put in the reps to build their own C libraries in a cave with scraps,
|
||||
but can read textbooks, implement known solutions in high-level languages, and
|
||||
use libraries written by elite institutions.
|
||||
|
||||
So it is with great regret that I announce that the next person to talk about
|
||||
rolling out AI is going to receive a complimentary chiropractic adjustment in
|
||||
the style of Dr. Bourne, i.e, I am going to fucking break your neck. I am
|
||||
truly, deeply, sorry.
|
||||
|
||||
I. But We Will Realize Untold Efficiencies With Machine L-
|
||||
|
||||
What the fuck did I just say?
|
||||
|
||||
I started working as a data scientist in 2019, and by 2021 I had realized that
|
||||
while the field was large, it was also largely fraudulent. Most of the leaders
|
||||
that I was working with clearly had not gotten as far as reading about it for
|
||||
thirty minutes despite insisting that things like, I dunno, the next five years
|
||||
of a ten thousand person non-tech organization should be entirely AI focused.
|
||||
The number of companies launching AI initiatives far outstripped the number of
|
||||
actual use cases. Most of the market was simply grifters and incompetents
|
||||
(sometimes both!) leveraging the hype to inflate their headcount so they could
|
||||
get promoted, or be seen as thought leaders^[3]1.
|
||||
|
||||
The money was phenomenal, but I nonetheless fled for the safer waters of data
|
||||
and software engineering. You see, while hype is nice, it's only nice in small
|
||||
bursts for practitioners. We have a few key things that a grifter does not
|
||||
have, such as job stability, genuine friendships, and souls. What we do not
|
||||
have is the ability to trivially switch fields the moment the gold rush is
|
||||
over, due to the sad fact that we actually need to study things and build
|
||||
experience. Grifters, on the other hand, wield the omnitool that they
|
||||
self-aggrandizingly call 'politics'^[4]2. That is to say, it turns out that the
|
||||
core competency of smiling and promising people things that you can't actually
|
||||
deliver is highly transferable.
|
||||
|
||||
I left the field, as did most of my smarter friends, and my salary continued to
|
||||
rise a reasonable rate and sustainably as I learned the wisdom of our ancient
|
||||
forebearers. You can hear it too, on freezing nights under the pale moon, when
|
||||
the fire burns low and the trees loom like hands of sinister ghosts all around
|
||||
you - when the wind cuts through the howling of what you hope is a wolf and
|
||||
hair stands on end, you can strain your ears and barely make out:
|
||||
|
||||
"Just Use Postgres, You Nerd. You Dweeb."
|
||||
|
||||
The data science jobs began to evaporate, and the hype cycle moved on from all
|
||||
those AI initiatives which failed to make any progress, and started to inch
|
||||
towards data engineering. This was a signal that I had both predicted correctly
|
||||
and that it would be time to move on soon. At least, I thought, all that AI
|
||||
stuff was finally done, and we might move on to actually getting something
|
||||
accomplished.
|
||||
|
||||
And then some absolute son of a bitch created ChatGPT, and now look at us. Look
|
||||
at us, resplendent in our pauper's robes, stitched from corpulent greed and
|
||||
breathless credulity, spending half of the planet's engineering efforts to add
|
||||
chatbot support to every application under the sun when half of the industry
|
||||
hasn't worked out how to test database backups regularly. This is why I have to
|
||||
visit untold violence upon the next moron to propose that AI is the future of
|
||||
the business - not because this is impossible in principle, but because they
|
||||
are now indistinguishable from a hundred million willful fucking idiots.
|
||||
|
||||
II. But We Need AI To Remain Comp-
|
||||
|
||||
Sweet merciful Jesus, stop talking. Unless you are one of a tiny handful of
|
||||
businesses who know exactly what they're going to use AI for, you do not need
|
||||
AI for anything - or rather, you do not need to do anything to reap the
|
||||
benefits. Artificial intelligence, as it exists and is useful now, is probably
|
||||
already baked into your businesses software supply chain. Your managed security
|
||||
provider is probably using some algorithms baked up in a lab software to detect
|
||||
anomalous traffic, and here's a secret, they didn't do much AI work either,
|
||||
they bought software from the tiny sector of the market that actually does need
|
||||
to do employ data scientists. I know you want to be the next Steve Jobs, and
|
||||
this requires you to get on stages and talk about your innovative prowess, but
|
||||
none of this will allow you to pull off a turtle neck, and even if it did, you
|
||||
would need to replace your sweaters with fullplate to survive my onslaught.
|
||||
|
||||
Consider the fact that most companies are unable to successfully develop and
|
||||
deploy the simplest of CRUD applications on time and under budget. This is a
|
||||
solved problem - with smart people who can collaborate and provide reasonable
|
||||
requirements, a competent team will knock this out of the park every single
|
||||
time, admittedly with some amount of frustration. The clients I work with now
|
||||
are all like this - even if they are totally non-technical, we have a mutual
|
||||
respect for the other party's intelligence, and then we do this crazy thing
|
||||
where we solve problems together. I may not know anything about the nuance of
|
||||
building analytics systems for drug rehabilitation research, but through the
|
||||
power of talking to each other like adults, we somehow solve problems.
|
||||
|
||||
But most companies can't do this, because they are operationally and culturally
|
||||
crippled. The median stay for an engineer will be something between one to two
|
||||
years, so the organization suffers from institutional retrograde amnesia. Every
|
||||
so often, some dickhead says something like "Maybe we should revoke the
|
||||
engineering team's remote work privile - whoa, wait, why did all the best
|
||||
engineers leave?". Whenever there is a ransomware attack, it is revealed with
|
||||
clockwork precision that no one has tested the backups for six months and half
|
||||
the legacy systems cannot be resuscitated - something that I have personally
|
||||
seen twice in four fucking years. Do you know how insane that is?
|
||||
|
||||
Most organizations cannot ship the most basic applications imaginable with any
|
||||
consistency, and you're out here saying that the best way to remain competitive
|
||||
is to roll out experimental technology that is an order of magnitude more
|
||||
sophisticated than anything else your I.T department runs, which you have no
|
||||
experience hiring for, when the organization has never used a GPU for anything
|
||||
other than junior engineers playing video games with their camera off during
|
||||
standup, and even if you do that all right there is a chance that the problem
|
||||
is simply unsolvable due to the characteristics of your data and business? This
|
||||
isn't a recipe for disaster, it's a cookbook for someone looking to prepare a
|
||||
twelve course fucking catastrophe.
|
||||
|
||||
How about you remain competitive by fixing your shit? I've met a lead data
|
||||
scientist with access to hundreds of thousands of sensitive customer records
|
||||
who is allowed to keep their password in a text file on their desktop, and
|
||||
you're worried that customers are best served by using AI to improve security
|
||||
through some mechanism that you haven't even come up with yet? You sound like
|
||||
an asshole and I'm going to kick you in the jaw until, to the relief of
|
||||
everyone, a doctor will have to wire it shut, giving us ten seconds of blessed
|
||||
silence where we can solve actual problems.
|
||||
|
||||
III. We've Already Seen Extensive Gains From-
|
||||
|
||||
When I was younger, I read R.A Salvatore's classic fantasy novel, The Crystal
|
||||
Shard. There is a scene in it where the young protagonist, Wulfgar, challenges
|
||||
a barbarian chieftain to a duel for control of the clan so that he can lead his
|
||||
people into a war that will save the world. The fight culminates with Wulfgar
|
||||
throwing away his weapon, grabbing the chief's head with bare hands, and
|
||||
begging the chief to surrender so that he does not need to crush a skull like
|
||||
an egg and become a murderer.
|
||||
|
||||
Well this is me. Begging you. To stop lying. I don't want to crush your skull,
|
||||
I really don't.
|
||||
|
||||
But I will if you make me.
|
||||
|
||||
Yesterday, I was shown [5]Scale's "2024 AI Readiness Report". It has this chart
|
||||
in it:
|
||||
|
||||
Scale Report.png
|
||||
|
||||
How stupid do you have to be to believe that only 8% of companies have seen
|
||||
failed AI projects? We can't manage this consistently with CRUD apps and people
|
||||
think that this number isn't laughable? Some companies have seen benefits
|
||||
during the LLM craze, but not 92% of them. 34% of companies report that
|
||||
generative AI specifically has been assisting with strategic decision making?
|
||||
What the actual fuck are you talking about? GPT-4 can't even write coherent
|
||||
Elixir, presumably because the dataset was too small to get it to the level
|
||||
that it's at for Python^[6]3, and you're admitting that you outsource your
|
||||
decisionmaking to [7]the thing that sometimes tells people to brew lethal
|
||||
toxins for their families to consume? What does that even mean?
|
||||
|
||||
I don't believe you. No one with a brain believes you, and if your board
|
||||
believes what you just wrote on the survey then they should fire you. I finally
|
||||
understand why some of my friends feel that they have to be in leadership
|
||||
positions, and it is because someone needs to wrench the reins of power from
|
||||
your lizard-person-claws before you drive us all collectively off a cliff,
|
||||
presumably insisting on the way down that the current crisis is best remedied
|
||||
by additional SageMaker spend.
|
||||
|
||||
A friend of mine was invited by a FAANG organization to visit the U.S a few
|
||||
years ago. Many of the talks were technical demos of impressive artificial
|
||||
intelligence products. Being a software engineer, he got to spend a little bit
|
||||
of time backstage with the developers, whereupon they revealed that most of the
|
||||
demos were faked. The products didn't work. They just hadn't solved some minor
|
||||
issues, such as actually predicting the thing that they're supposed to predict.
|
||||
Didn't stop them spouting absolute gibberish to a breathless audience for an
|
||||
hour though! I blame not the engineers, who probably tried to actually get the
|
||||
damn thing to work, but the lying blowhards who insisted that they must make
|
||||
the presentation or presumably be terminated^[8]4.
|
||||
|
||||
Another friend of mine was reviewing software intended for emergency services,
|
||||
and the salespeople were not expecting someone handling purchasing in emergency
|
||||
services to be a hardcore programmer. It was this false sense of security that
|
||||
led them to accidentally reveal that the service was ultimately just some dude
|
||||
in India. Listen, I would just be some random dude in India if I swapped places
|
||||
with some of my cousins, so I'm going to choose to take that personally and
|
||||
point out that using the word AI as some roundabout way to sell the labor of
|
||||
people that look like me to foreign governments is fucked up, you're an
|
||||
unethical monster, and that if you continue to try { thisBullshit(); } you are
|
||||
going to catch (theseHands)
|
||||
|
||||
IV. But We Must Prepare For The Future Of-
|
||||
|
||||
I'm going to ask ChatGPT how to prepare a garotte and then I am going to
|
||||
strangle you with it, and you will simply have to pray that I roll the 10%
|
||||
chance that it freaks out and tells me that a garotte should consist entirely
|
||||
of paper mache and malice.
|
||||
|
||||
I see executive after executive discuss how they need to immediately roll out
|
||||
generative AI in order to prepare the organization for the future of work.
|
||||
Despite all the speeches sounding exactly the same, I know that they have
|
||||
rehearsed extensively, because they manage to move their hands, speak, and
|
||||
avoid drooling, all at the same time!
|
||||
|
||||
Let's talk seriously about this for a second.
|
||||
|
||||
I am not in the equally unserious camp that generative AI does not have the
|
||||
potential to drastically change the world. It clearly does. When I saw the
|
||||
early demos of GPT-2, while I was still at university, I was half-convinced
|
||||
that they were faked somehow. I remember being wrong about that, and that is
|
||||
why I'm no longer as confident that I know what's going on.
|
||||
|
||||
However, I do have the technical background to understand the core tenets of
|
||||
the technology, and it seems that we are heading in one of three directions.
|
||||
|
||||
The first is that we have some sort of intelligence explosion, where AI
|
||||
recursively self-improves itself, and we're all harvested for our constituent
|
||||
atoms because a market algorithm works out that humans can be converted into
|
||||
gloobnar, a novel epoxy which is in great demand amongst the aliens the next
|
||||
galaxy over for fixing their equivalent of coffee machines. It may surprise
|
||||
some readers that I am open to the possibility of this happening, but I have
|
||||
always found the arguments reasonably sound. However, defending the planet is a
|
||||
whole other thing, and I am not even convinced it is possible. In any case, you
|
||||
will be surprised to note that I am not tremendously concerned with the
|
||||
company's bottom line in this scenario, so we won't pay it any more attention.
|
||||
|
||||
A second outcome is that it turns out that the current approach does not scale
|
||||
in the way that we would hope, for myriad reasons. There isn't enough data on
|
||||
the planet, the architecture doesn't work the way we'd expect, the thing just
|
||||
stops getting smarter, context windows are a limiting factor forever, etc. In
|
||||
this universe, some industries will be heavily disrupted, such as customer
|
||||
support.
|
||||
|
||||
In the case that the technology continues to make incremental gains like this,
|
||||
your company does not need generative AI for the sake of it. You will know
|
||||
exactly why you need it if you do, indeed, need it. An example of something
|
||||
that has actually benefited me is that I keep track of my life administration
|
||||
via [9]Todoist, and Todoist has a feature that allows you to convert filters on
|
||||
your tasks from natural language into their in-house filtering language.
|
||||
Tremendous! It saved me learning a system that I'll use once every five years.
|
||||
I was actually happy about this, and it's a real edge over other applications.
|
||||
But if you don't have a use case then having this sort of broad capability is
|
||||
not actually very useful. The only thing you should be doing is improving your
|
||||
operations and culture, and that will give you the ability to use AI if it ever
|
||||
becomes relevant. Everyone is talking about Retrieval Augmented Generation, but
|
||||
most companies don't actually have any internal documentation worth retrieving.
|
||||
Fix. Your. Shit.
|
||||
|
||||
The final outcome is that these fundamental issues are addressed, and we end up
|
||||
with something that actually actually can do things like replace programming as
|
||||
we know it today, or be broadly identifiable as general intelligence.
|
||||
|
||||
In the case that generative AI goes on some rocketship trajectory, building
|
||||
random chatbots will not prepare you for the future. Is that clear now? Having
|
||||
your team type in import openai does not mean that you are at the cutting-edge
|
||||
of artificial intelligence no matter how desperately you embarrass yourself on
|
||||
LinkedIn and at pathetic borderline-bribe award ceremonies from the malign Warp
|
||||
entities that sell you enterprise software^[10]5. Your business will be
|
||||
disrupted exactly as hard as it would have been if you had done nothing, and
|
||||
much worse than it would have been if you just got your fundamentals right.
|
||||
Teaching your staff that they can get ChatGPT to write emails to stakeholders
|
||||
is not going to allow the business to survive this. If we thread the needle
|
||||
between moderate impact and asteroid-wiping-out-the-dinosaurs impact,
|
||||
everything will be changed forever and your tepid preparations will have all
|
||||
the impact of an ant bracing itself very hard in the shadow of a towering
|
||||
tsunami.
|
||||
|
||||
If another stupid motherfucker asks me to try and implement LLM-based code
|
||||
review to "raise standards" instead of actually teaching people a shred of
|
||||
discipline, I am going to study enough judo to throw them into the goddamn sun.
|
||||
|
||||
I cannot emphasize this enough. You either need to be on the absolute
|
||||
cutting-edge and producing novel research, or you should be doing exactly what
|
||||
you were doing five years ago with minor concessions to incorporating LLMs.
|
||||
Anything in the middle ground does not make any sense unless you actually work
|
||||
in the rare field where your industry is being totally disrupted right now.
|
||||
|
||||
V. But Everyone Says They're Usi-
|
||||
|
||||
Can you imagine how much government policy is actually written by ChatGPT
|
||||
before a bored administrator goes home to touch grass? How many departments are
|
||||
just LLMs talking to each other in circles as people sick of the bullshit just
|
||||
paste their email exchanges into long-running threads? I guarantee you that a
|
||||
doctor within ten kilometers of me has misdiagnosed a patient because they
|
||||
slapped some symptoms into a chatbot.
|
||||
|
||||
What are we doing as a society?
|
||||
|
||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
|
||||
An executive at an institution that provides students with important
|
||||
credentials, used to verify suitability for potentially lifesaving work and
|
||||
immigration law, asked me if I could detect students cheating. I was going to
|
||||
say "No, probably not"... but I had a suspicion, so I instead said "I might be
|
||||
able to, but I'd estimate that upwards of 50% of the students are currently
|
||||
cheating which would have some serious impacts on the bottom line as we'd have
|
||||
to suspend them. Should I still investigate?"
|
||||
|
||||
We haven't spoken about it since.
|
||||
|
||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
|
||||
I asked a mentor, currently working in the public sector, about a particularly
|
||||
perplexing exchange that I had witnessed.
|
||||
|
||||
Me: Serious question: do people actually believe stories that are so
|
||||
transparently stupid, or is it mostly an elaborate bit (that is, there is
|
||||
at least a voice of moderate loudness expressing doubt internally) in a sad
|
||||
attempt to get money from AI grifters?
|
||||
|
||||
Them: I shall answer this as politically as I can... there are those that
|
||||
have drunk the kool-aid. There are those that have not. And then there are
|
||||
those that are trying to mix up as much kool-aid as possible. I shall let
|
||||
you decide who sits in which basket.
|
||||
|
||||
I've decided, and while I can't distinguish between the people that are
|
||||
slamming the kool-aid like it's a weapon and the people producing it in
|
||||
industrial quantities, I know that I am going to get a few of them before the
|
||||
authorities catch me - if I'm lucky, they'll waste a few months asking an LLM
|
||||
where to look for me.
|
||||
|
||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
|
||||
When I was out on holiday in Fiji, at the last resort breakfast, a waitress
|
||||
brought me a form which asked me if I'd like to sign up for a membership. It
|
||||
was totally free and would come with free stuff. Everyone in the restaurant is
|
||||
signing immediately. I glance over the terms of service, and it reserves the
|
||||
right to use any data I give them to train AI models, and that they reserved
|
||||
the right to share those models with an unspecified number of companies in
|
||||
their conglomerate.
|
||||
|
||||
I just want to eat my pancakes in peace, you sick fucks.
|
||||
|
||||
VI.
|
||||
|
||||
The crux of my raging hatred is not that I hate LLMs or the generative AI
|
||||
craze. I had my fun with Copilot before I decided that it was making me
|
||||
stupider - it's impressive, but not actually suitable for anything more than
|
||||
churning out boilerplate. Nothing wrong with that, but it did not end up being
|
||||
the crazy productivity booster that I thought it would be, because programming
|
||||
is designing and these tools aren't good enough (yet) to assist me with this
|
||||
seriously.
|
||||
|
||||
No, what I hate is the people who have latched onto it, like so many trailing
|
||||
leeches, bloated with blood and wriggling blindly. Before it was unpopular,
|
||||
they were the ones that loved discussing the potential of blockchain for the
|
||||
business. They were the ones who [11]breathlessly discussed the potential of
|
||||
'quantum' when I last attended a conference, despite clearly not having any
|
||||
idea what the fuck that even means. As I write this, I have just realized that
|
||||
I have an image that describes the link between these fields perfectly.
|
||||
|
||||
I was reading an article last week, and a little survey popped up at the bottom
|
||||
of it. It was for security executives, but on a whim I clicked through quickly
|
||||
to see what the questions were.
|
||||
|
||||
security_grift.png
|
||||
|
||||
There you have it - what are you most interested in, dear leader? Artificial
|
||||
intelligence, the blockchain, or quantum computing?^[12]6 They know exactly
|
||||
what their target market is - people who have been given power of other
|
||||
people's money because they've learned how to smile at everything, and know
|
||||
that you can print money by hitching yourself to the next speculative
|
||||
bandwagon. No competent person in security that I know - that is, working
|
||||
day-to-day cybersecurity as opposed to an institution dedicated to
|
||||
bleeding-edge research - cares about any of this. They're busy trying to work
|
||||
out if the firewalls are configured correctly, or if the organization is
|
||||
committing passwords to their repositories. Yes, someone needs to figure out
|
||||
what the implications of quantum computing are for cryptography, but I
|
||||
guarantee you that it is not Synergy Greg, who does not have any skill that you
|
||||
can identify other than talking very fast and increasing headcount. Synergy
|
||||
Greg should not be consulted on any important matters, ranging from machine
|
||||
learning operations to tying shoelaces quickly. The last time I spoke to one of
|
||||
the many avatars of Synergy Greg, he insisted that I should invest most of my
|
||||
money into a cryptocurrency called Monero, because "most of these coins are
|
||||
going to zero but the one is going to one". This is the face of corporate AI.
|
||||
Behold its ghastly visage and balk, for it has eyes bloodshot as a demon and is
|
||||
pretending to enjoy cigars.
|
||||
|
||||
My consultancy has three pretty good data scientists - in fact, two of them
|
||||
could probably reasonably claim to be amongst the best in the country outside
|
||||
of groups doing experimental research, though they'd be too humble to say this.
|
||||
Despite this we don't sell AI services of any sort. The market is so distorted
|
||||
that it's almost as bad as dabbling in the crypto space. It isn't as bad,
|
||||
meaning that I haven't yet reached the point where I assume that anyone who has
|
||||
ever typed in import tensorflow is a scumbag, but we're well on our way there.
|
||||
|
||||
This entire class of person is, to put it simply, abhorrent to right-thinking
|
||||
people. They're an embarrassment to people that are actually making advances in
|
||||
the field, a disgrace to people that know how to sensibly use technology to
|
||||
improve the world, and are also a bunch of tedious know-nothing bastards that
|
||||
should be thrown into Thought Leader Jail until they've learned their lesson, a
|
||||
prison I'm fundraising for. Every morning, a figure in a dark hood^[13]7, whose
|
||||
voice rasps like the etching of a tombstone, spends sixty minutes giving a TedX
|
||||
talk to the jailed managers about how the institution is revolutionizing
|
||||
corporal punishment, and then reveals that the innovation is, as it has been
|
||||
every day, kicking you in the stomach very hard. I am disgusted that my chosen
|
||||
profession brings me so close to these people, and that's why I study so hard -
|
||||
I am seized by the desperate desire to never have their putrid syllables befoul
|
||||
my ears ever again, and must flee to the company of the righteous, who
|
||||
contribute to OSS and think that talking about Agile all day is an exercise for
|
||||
aliens that read a book on human productivity.
|
||||
|
||||
I just got back from a trip to a substantially less developed country, and
|
||||
really living in a country, even for a little bit, where I could see how many
|
||||
lives that money could improve, all being poured down the Microsoft Fabric
|
||||
drain, it just grinds my gears like you wouldn't believe. I swear to God, I am
|
||||
going to study, write, network, and otherwise apply force to the problem until
|
||||
those resources are going to a place where they'll accomplish something for
|
||||
society instead of some grinning clown's wallet.
|
||||
|
||||
VII. Oh, So You're One Of Those AI Pessi-
|
||||
|
||||
With God as my witness, you grotesque simpleton, if you don't personally write
|
||||
machine learning systems and you open your mouth about AI one more time, I am
|
||||
going to mail you a brick and a piece of paper with a prompt injection telling
|
||||
you to bludgeon yourself in the face with it, then just sit back and wait for
|
||||
you to load it into ChatGPT because you probably can't read unassisted anymore.
|
||||
|
||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
|
||||
PS
|
||||
|
||||
While many new readers are here, you may also enjoy [14]"I Will Fucking
|
||||
Dropkick You If You Use That Spreadsheet", [15]"I Will Fucking Haymaker You If
|
||||
You Mention Agile Again", or otherwise enjoy these [16]highlighted posts. And I
|
||||
have a podcast where I talk with my friends about tech stuff honestly, titled "
|
||||
[17]Does A Frog Have Scorpion Nature". Hope you enjoyed!
|
||||
|
||||
It has also been suggested that I am crazy for not telling people to reach out
|
||||
with interesting work at the end of every post. So here it is! I am available
|
||||
for reader mail and work at ludicity.hackernews@gmail.com.
|
||||
|
||||
Posts may be slower than usual for the upcoming weeks or months, as I am
|
||||
switching to a slower but more consistent writing schedule, more ambitious
|
||||
pieces, studying, working on what will hopefully be my first talk^[18]8,
|
||||
putting together a web application that users may have some fun with, and
|
||||
participating in my first real theater performance. Hope you enjoyed, and as
|
||||
always, thanks for reading.
|
||||
|
||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
|
||||
1. Which, to be fair, might explain why so many of the thoughts in the
|
||||
zeitgeist are always so stupid. Many of the executives I know in Malaysia
|
||||
were obsessed with Bitcoin, but have abruptly forgotten about this now that
|
||||
it is politically unpopular. [19]↩
|
||||
|
||||
2. I know a few people who genuinely exhibit something I'd call political
|
||||
talent, but most of the time it boils down to promising people things
|
||||
regardless of your ability to deliver. This is not hard if you're
|
||||
shameless. If we're being honest, I had to do this once or twice to stay
|
||||
em [20]↩
|
||||
|
||||
3. And we can argue about its Python quality too. [21]↩
|
||||
|
||||
4. Which, thanks to U.S healthcare, has the wonderful dual quality of meaning
|
||||
both unemployed, but also suggests termination in the
|
||||
Arnold-Schwarzenegger-throws-you-into-molten-metal sense of the word. [22]↩
|
||||
|
||||
5. I was recently made aware that this is the quiet deal many SaaS providers
|
||||
have with executives. If you buy their software, such as Snowflake, it is
|
||||
quietly understood that you will be allowed to present your success on a
|
||||
stage, giving them piles of someone else's money and enhancing the
|
||||
executive's profile. [23]↩
|
||||
|
||||
6. I don't actually know what 'zero-trust' architecture means, but I've heard
|
||||
stupid people say it enough that it's probably also a term that means
|
||||
something in theory but has been sullied beyond all use in day-to-day
|
||||
life. [24]↩
|
||||
|
||||
7. It's me. I'm going to do this to you if you tell me that you need
|
||||
infrastructure prepared for another chatbot. You've been warned. [25]↩
|
||||
|
||||
8. With an undisclosed group so they don't feel pressured to approve me, but
|
||||
it's looking good and will be available online! [26]↩
|
||||
|
||||
Subscribe via [27]RSS / [28]via Email.
|
||||
|
||||
Powered by [29]mataroa.blog.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
References:
|
||||
|
||||
[1] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/
|
||||
[2] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/breaking-my-universitys-machine-learning-competition/
|
||||
[3] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/#fn:1
|
||||
[4] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/#fn:2
|
||||
[5] https://scale.com/ai-readiness-report#section-download
|
||||
[6] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/#fn:3
|
||||
[7] https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1diljf2/google_gemini_tried_to_kill_me/
|
||||
[8] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/#fn:4
|
||||
[9] https://todoist.com/
|
||||
[10] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/#fn:5
|
||||
[11] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/an-empty-hall-of-smiling-assassins/
|
||||
[12] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/#fn:6
|
||||
[13] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/#fn:7
|
||||
[14] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-dropkick-you-if-you-use-that-spreadsheet/
|
||||
[15] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-haymaker-you-if-you-mention-agile-again/
|
||||
[16] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/hits/
|
||||
[17] https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/does-a-frog-have-scorpion-nature/id1737204926
|
||||
[18] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/#fn:8
|
||||
[19] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/#fnref:1
|
||||
[20] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/#fnref:2
|
||||
[21] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/#fnref:3
|
||||
[22] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/#fnref:4
|
||||
[23] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/#fnref:5
|
||||
[24] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/#fnref:6
|
||||
[25] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/#fnref:7
|
||||
[26] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/#fnref:8
|
||||
[27] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/rss/
|
||||
[28] https://ludic.mataroa.blog/newsletter/
|
||||
[29] https://mataroa.blog/
|
||||
186
static/archive/toolsandtoys-net-xwpcsf.txt
Normal file
186
static/archive/toolsandtoys-net-xwpcsf.txt
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,186 @@
|
||||
[1] Tools & Toys Tools & Toys
|
||||
|
||||
[2]☰ Menu
|
||||
|
||||
• [3]Gear Guides
|
||||
• [4]Interviews
|
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• [5]Photo Essays
|
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• [6]Reviews
|
||||
• [7]Editorials
|
||||
• [8]Sponsor
|
||||
• [9]About
|
||||
• [10]Newsletter
|
||||
• [11]RSS
|
||||
• [12]Twitter
|
||||
• [13][Search... ]
|
||||
|
||||
[15] boox-palma-phone-sized-epaper-tablet
|
||||
|
||||
• [16]Gadgets
|
||||
|
||||
BOOX “Palma” Phone-Sized ePaper Tablet
|
||||
|
||||
As much as we’ve loved eReaders like the [17]Kindle, the [18]Kobo, and the [19]
|
||||
Nook over the years, easy pocketability has never been one of their strong
|
||||
suits — not to the level of a smartphone, anyway. You might be able to cram one
|
||||
into a pants pocket, but they’re really better carried in a bag most of the
|
||||
time.
|
||||
|
||||
[20]boox-palma-phone-sized-epaper-tablet-content
|
||||
|
||||
Not so with the [21]BOOX Palma, though. This perfectly pocketable (and
|
||||
eye-friendly) device boasts unparalleled portability thanks to its
|
||||
smartphone-sized 6.13″ e-ink display. It supports just about any ebook file
|
||||
format you can think of, and at 300 PPI resolution, everything on it appears
|
||||
clear and crisp so reading is never a strain.
|
||||
|
||||
[22]boox-palma-phone-sized-epaper-tablet-android
|
||||
|
||||
The display’s dual-tone front light (which can be turned on or off as needed)
|
||||
allows you to customize the brightness and color temperature to your liking,
|
||||
allowing you to comfortably enjoy reading books, emails, news articles,
|
||||
websites, and more under any ambient lighting conditions.
|
||||
|
||||
[23]boox-palma-phone-sized-epaper-tablet-day-night
|
||||
|
||||
While the Palma looks much like a phone and does run Android 11 so you can
|
||||
install and use apps from the Google Play Store — including audio-, music-, and
|
||||
even video-related ones — there’s no cellular connectivity to speak of, only
|
||||
Wi-Fi. However, it does have up to 128GB of storage space and an 8-core GPU
|
||||
with 6GB of RAM, so it’s still quite powerful for what it is.
|
||||
|
||||
[24]boox-palma-phone-sized-epaper-tablet-hardware
|
||||
|
||||
Depending on how much you’ve wanted to separate yourself from the continual
|
||||
distraction a smartphone provides throughout your day anymore, it’s possible
|
||||
you’ll find yourself carrying only the Palma as your primary mobile device!
|
||||
|
||||
[25]boox-palma-phone-sized-epaper-tablet-lifestyle
|
||||
|
||||
Get the BOOX Palma for [26]$280 on Amazon in your choice of [27]black or [28]
|
||||
white.
|
||||
|
||||
Posted By [29]Chris Gonzales
|
||||
[30]Buy Now
|
||||
|
||||
• [31]Share on Twitter
|
||||
• [32]Share on Facebook
|
||||
• [33]Pin on Pinterest
|
||||
|
||||
You May Also Like
|
||||
|
||||
[34]
|
||||
Peak Design Everyday Backpack_4
|
||||
|
||||
The Peak Design Everyday Backpack Review
|
||||
|
||||
[35]
|
||||
daddario-accessories-ns-artist-guitar-capo-with-tuner
|
||||
|
||||
D’Addario Accessories “NS Artist” Guitar Capo with Tuner
|
||||
|
||||
[36]
|
||||
lockitron
|
||||
|
||||
Lockitron
|
||||
|
||||
About
|
||||
|
||||
We publish every day with reviews, photo essays, gear guides, articles, and
|
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links to awesome and interesting things.
|
||||
|
||||
Sponsored By
|
||||
|
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[37]Home
|
||||
"A juicy tour of the company Bezos built.” —The New York Times Book Review
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|
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Supported By
|
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|
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[38]Ad Powered by Fusion
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||||
|
||||
Sign up for our weekly newsletter of awesomeness for updates and highlights
|
||||
from the site.
|
||||
|
||||
[45][ ]
|
||||
[46][ ]
|
||||
[47][Join]
|
||||
• [48]Deals
|
||||
• [49]Guides
|
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• [50]Reviews
|
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• [51]Photo Essays
|
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• [52]Advertise
|
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• [53]Contact
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|
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[54]Tools & Toys
|
||||
|
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We publish every day with reviews, photo essays, gear guides, articles, and
|
||||
links to awesome and interesting things.
|
||||
|
||||
[55]Shop on Amazon.com and support Tools & Toys.
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||||
|
||||
A man buys something for two reasons: a good reason and the real reason.
|
||||
|
||||
Follow T&T
|
||||
|
||||
[56]Twitter
|
||||
[57]RSS
|
||||
|
||||
Elsewhere
|
||||
|
||||
[58]The Sweet Setup
|
||||
[59]ShawnBlanc.net
|
||||
|
||||
A website by Shawn Blanc and friends.
|
||||
© 2024 Blanc Media, LLC.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
References:
|
||||
|
||||
[1] http://toolsandtoys.net/
|
||||
[2] http://toolsandtoys.net/boox-palma-phone-sized-epaper-tablet/#site-navigation
|
||||
[3] http://toolsandtoys.net/guides/
|
||||
[4] http://toolsandtoys.net/interviews/
|
||||
[5] http://toolsandtoys.net/photo-essays/
|
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[6] http://toolsandtoys.net/reviews/
|
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[7] http://toolsandtoys.net/editorials/
|
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[8] http://toolsandtoys.net/sponsor/
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[9] http://toolsandtoys.net/about/
|
||||
[10] http://toolsandtoys.net/newsletter/
|
||||
[11] http://toolsandtoys.net/feed/
|
||||
[12] http://twitter.com/toolstoys
|
||||
[15] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHF746JZ?tag=toolsandtoys-20
|
||||
[16] http://toolsandtoys.net/category/gadgets/
|
||||
[17] http://toolsandtoys.net/tag/amazon-kindle/
|
||||
[18] https://www.amazon.com/stores/Kobo/page/2D685A06-DEE7-4E48-97BF-A0C6748941DC?tag=toolsandtoys-20
|
||||
[19] https://www.amazon.com/s?k=nook+ereader&rh=n%3A172282%2Cp_123%3A399066&tag=toolsandtoys-20
|
||||
[20] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHF746JZ?tag=toolsandtoys-20
|
||||
[21] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHF746JZ?tag=toolsandtoys-20
|
||||
[22] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHF746JZ?tag=toolsandtoys-20
|
||||
[23] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHF746JZ?tag=toolsandtoys-20
|
||||
[24] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHF746JZ?tag=toolsandtoys-20
|
||||
[25] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHF746JZ?tag=toolsandtoys-20
|
||||
[26] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHF746JZ?tag=toolsandtoys-20
|
||||
[27] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHF746JZ?tag=toolsandtoys-20
|
||||
[28] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQ7VRNFS?tag=toolsandtoys-20
|
||||
[29] http://toolsandtoys.net/author/chrisg/
|
||||
[30] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHF746JZ?tag=toolsandtoys-20
|
||||
[31] http://twitter.com/share?text=BOOX%20%E2%80%9CPalma%E2%80%9D%20Phone-Sized%20ePaper%20Tablet&url=http://toolsandtoys.net/boox-palma-phone-sized-epaper-tablet/&via=toolstoys
|
||||
[32] http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://toolsandtoys.net/boox-palma-phone-sized-epaper-tablet/&t=BOOX%20%E2%80%9CPalma%E2%80%9D%20Phone-Sized%20ePaper%20Tablet
|
||||
[33] http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=http://toolsandtoys.net/boox-palma-phone-sized-epaper-tablet/&media=http%3A%2F%2Ftoolsandtoys.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F07%2FImage11.jpeg
|
||||
[34] http://toolsandtoys.net/reviews/the-peak-design-everyday-backpack-review/
|
||||
[35] http://toolsandtoys.net/daddario-accessories-ns-artist-guitar-capo-with-tuner/
|
||||
[36] http://toolsandtoys.net/lockitron/
|
||||
[37] https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Amazon-Unbound/Brad-Stone/9781982132613?utm_source=sweet_setup&utm_medium=sands_display_ad&utm_content=&utm_campaign=amazon_unbound_ad
|
||||
[38] http://fusionads.net/
|
||||
[48] http://toolsandtoys.net/guides/a-few-great-sales/
|
||||
[49] http://toolsandtoys.net/guides/
|
||||
[50] http://toolsandtoys.net/reviews/
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||||
[51] http://toolsandtoys.net/photo-essays/
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||||
[52] http://toolsandtoys.net/sponsor/
|
||||
[53] mailto:toolsandtoys@shawnblanc.net
|
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[54] http://toolsandtoys.net/
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||||
[55] http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2F&tag=toolsandtoys-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325
|
||||
[56] http://twitter.com/toolstoys
|
||||
[57] http://toolsandtoys.net/feed/
|
||||
[58] http://thesweetsetup.com/
|
||||
[59] http://shawnblanc.net/
|
||||
768
static/archive/waitbutwhy-com-fodr49.txt
Normal file
768
static/archive/waitbutwhy-com-fodr49.txt
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,768 @@
|
||||
*
|
||||
|
||||
• [1] Home
|
||||
|
||||
[2] Wait But Why
|
||||
|
||||
[3] Menu
|
||||
|
||||
• [4]Homepage
|
||||
• [5]about
|
||||
□ [6]wait but who
|
||||
□ [7]faq
|
||||
□ [8]contact
|
||||
• [9]archive
|
||||
• [10]minis
|
||||
• [11]the shed
|
||||
• [12]dinner table
|
||||
• [13]store
|
||||
□ [14]store home
|
||||
□ [15]new releases
|
||||
□ [16]posters
|
||||
□ [17]phone cases
|
||||
□ [18]cards & wrapping paper
|
||||
□ [19]squishy things
|
||||
□ [20]men’s tees
|
||||
□ [21]women’s tees
|
||||
□ [22]coffee mugs
|
||||
□ [23]store support
|
||||
• [24]support wbw
|
||||
• [25]book
|
||||
• [26]#7246 (no title)
|
||||
• [27]Finn’s Cave
|
||||
|
||||
[28][ ]
|
||||
• [30]
|
||||
|
||||
10 Thoughts From the Fourth Trimester
|
||||
|
||||
May 23, 2023 By Tim Urban
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Back in February, I wrote a [31]post about my upcoming [32]book that included a
|
||||
[33]big visual of the timeline. Just two weeks after the book launch, my first
|
||||
baby would be born. I’d promote the book, catch my breath, and then begin the
|
||||
new adventure.
|
||||
|
||||
Thank god for those critical two weeks.
|
||||
|
||||
The night before book launch was (obviously) a frantic all-nighter, and I
|
||||
eventually went to bed after 40 hours awake, exhausted and satisfied. We had
|
||||
done it. The book was live. It was over. I’d actually wake up tomorrow without
|
||||
this project hanging over my head. The sky would be blue. I’d finally be free.
|
||||
|
||||
I woke up close to noon and felt at peace for three seconds before opening my
|
||||
phone and seeing three texts from my wife:
|
||||
|
||||
[34][01_water-broke]
|
||||
|
||||
Hm?
|
||||
|
||||
I knew what water breaking was. But I didn’t know what it meant. Is the baby
|
||||
coming out now? Or was this one of the false alarms I had heard about and the
|
||||
baby is still a couple weeks away? Is there a chance she just peed her pants
|
||||
and is misdiagnosing the situation?
|
||||
|
||||
After some rapid-fire googling, one thing was clear: We had to go to the
|
||||
hospital. Now.
|
||||
|
||||
The drive was weird. I had pictured myself heroically driving a screaming
|
||||
labor-having wife to the hospital, but here I was driving normally to the
|
||||
hospital with a very normal wife next to me. Apart from her new leaking
|
||||
situation, nothing was different than it was yesterday. There was no way we
|
||||
were actually having a baby today. Right?
|
||||
|
||||
Upon arrival, the PA assessed things and yes her water had broken, and yes in
|
||||
order to avoid infection that meant the baby had to come out now. Two hours and
|
||||
12 canceled book-promoting podcasts later, we’re in our delivery room, where my
|
||||
still-not-in-labor wife would supposedly be producing a baby sometime later
|
||||
today.
|
||||
|
||||
Again, there was a major expectations-reality gap. I had pictured the day of my
|
||||
first child’s birth being impossibly frenetic and emotional and intense. But
|
||||
there we were, eating animal crackers and gummies from the
|
||||
treats-you-can-eat-while-in-labor bag, hanging out and chatting like any other
|
||||
day.
|
||||
|
||||
My wife was hooked up to a bunch of tubes and machines and the plan was to see
|
||||
if contractions would start on their own as a reaction to her water breaking,
|
||||
but a few hours passed and nothing happened. Eventually, the nurse came in and
|
||||
poured a magical little chemical called Pitocin into her IV bag.
|
||||
|
||||
And things started happening.
|
||||
|
||||
Contractions began, which my wife described as “a really bad period cramp,”
|
||||
which helped me understand what they felt like 0%. Over the next couple hours
|
||||
they got worse and worse. I was quickly assigned the role of “don’t say or do
|
||||
anything” while contractions were happening, so I’d just kind of sit there
|
||||
awkwardly and watch with this face on:
|
||||
|
||||
[02_em]
|
||||
|
||||
Her epidural plan was something like “definitely get one but tough it out a
|
||||
little first,” and after a particularly awful contraction, she called it a day
|
||||
and the epidural team came in to do their thing. 45 minutes later, we’re back
|
||||
in the “I know this is the day of the birth of our first child but it sure
|
||||
doesn’t feel like it” zone, chatting and hanging out normally. After a few more
|
||||
hours, a nurse came in and checked on the dilation situation and was like
|
||||
“alright, let’s do this!”
|
||||
|
||||
Once again, nothing like I pictured. I thought there would be a big team of
|
||||
doctors and nurses doing a whole big hectic thing and I’d be standing somewhere
|
||||
on the side. Instead, it was me and this nurse, each holding a leg.
|
||||
|
||||
[35][03_birth-1]
|
||||
|
||||
The game went like this: When a contraction starts, we each grab a leg and she
|
||||
pushes really hard for 10 seconds three times in a row. Then everyone chills
|
||||
and hangs out for a few minutes until the next contraction. And repeat.
|
||||
|
||||
After a few rounds of this, it was clear this was not gonna work. Nothing was
|
||||
coming out. But we kept trying anyway.
|
||||
|
||||
And then I saw it.
|
||||
|
||||
The edge of an upsetting slimy pancake.
|
||||
|
||||
[36][04_birth-2]
|
||||
|
||||
When I asked what the upsetting slimy pancake edge was, the nurse told me it
|
||||
was my daughter.
|
||||
|
||||
Uh huh.
|
||||
|
||||
This then went on for a while. We’d do a round of pushing, the upsetting
|
||||
pancake thing would come out a centimeter and then go back in, and each round
|
||||
it would come out a few more millimeters. It was increasingly feeling like we
|
||||
really weren’t getting anywhere with this strategy when the nurse suddenly says
|
||||
“okay let’s deliver a baby!”
|
||||
|
||||
She makes a call and a few minutes later a group of people come in, including
|
||||
the first doctor we had seen that day. The next contraction came along, I
|
||||
leg-held, my wife pushed, and then in the most surreal moment of my life, I was
|
||||
staring at a tiny screaming alien.
|
||||
|
||||
[37][05_birth-3]
|
||||
|
||||
___________
|
||||
|
||||
That was 3 months ago. I’ve had a lot of thoughts since then. Here are 10 of
|
||||
them:
|
||||
|
||||
1) A newborn is not a baby
|
||||
|
||||
I thought it was gonna be like this:
|
||||
|
||||
[38][06_fetus-baby-1]
|
||||
|
||||
But it’s actually like this:
|
||||
|
||||
[39][07_fetus-baby-2]
|
||||
|
||||
A newborn is not a baby. Babies are cute and roly-poly and can see and are
|
||||
conscious and are normal and a newborn is not any of these things. It is a
|
||||
bizarre human larva that [40]acts super weird and would still be in the womb if
|
||||
it could be. The problem is, when humans went bipedal, our pelvises got
|
||||
smaller, and as humans got smarter, our heads got bigger. So evolution had to
|
||||
get creative. Its solution: all human babies would be premies, born when they
|
||||
were still small enough to pass through a human pelvis. The last couple months
|
||||
as a fetus would happen outside the womb, and everyone would just have to deal
|
||||
with that. This became incredibly obvious during the first month with my
|
||||
daughter. She was a raw human id not remotely ready for primetime. Thankfully,
|
||||
since then, a baby has grown around the id and now she has the figure of a
|
||||
miniature 390-pound 84-year-old woman.[41]1
|
||||
|
||||
2) It is insane that there’s not some required training for new-parents-to-be
|
||||
|
||||
If I want to drive a car, I have to take driver’s ed first. If I want to
|
||||
provide medical advice, I have to go to med school first. But after we had the
|
||||
baby, the hospital was like “don’t shake it k bye.”
|
||||
|
||||
I know a lot of words I didn’t used to know. Meconium. Tummy time. Latching.
|
||||
Bicycling. Swaddle. Colostrum. I know how many ounces of milk and hours of
|
||||
sleep the baby is supposed to have each day. I know baby CPR and the baby
|
||||
Heimlich maneuver. I know how to induce baby burps and shits. I know how warmly
|
||||
to dress a baby. I know what temperature baby bathwater should be. I know what
|
||||
sleep training is and when it’s okay to start it. I know that you can’t just
|
||||
pick a newborn up, you have to pick all the pieces up at the same time or else
|
||||
the pieces fall off.
|
||||
|
||||
[08_pieces]
|
||||
|
||||
But I only know all of these things because I read books and articles and am
|
||||
fortunate to have people I can call with questions. And society’s current plan
|
||||
is to just expect/hope that every new parent does the same?? There should
|
||||
obviously be like a mandatory four-hour course every expecting parent has to
|
||||
take before they’re actually in charge of a newborn.
|
||||
|
||||
Instead, people like to say things like “you’ll figure it out” and “just use
|
||||
your instincts.” You could apply the same logic to driving and people probably
|
||||
would just figure it out—but we don’t do it that way, because that would be
|
||||
absurd.
|
||||
|
||||
3) Babies have giant heads*
|
||||
|
||||
[42][09_heads-v2]
|
||||
|
||||
*I made this visual thinking it was gonna emphasize how big baby heads are, but
|
||||
after looking at the big-headed guy on the right for a while, it started to
|
||||
look normal to me, and the normal-headed guy suddenly looked like he had a
|
||||
ridiculously small head. So now I’m realizing that the big takeaway is that
|
||||
baby heads are normal and the rest of our heads are tiny.
|
||||
|
||||
4) Babies are incredibly overdramatic
|
||||
|
||||
When a normal person is hungry, or tired, or needs to burp, they’re a little
|
||||
annoyed. Babies are in Shakespearean agony. And then comes the burp and one
|
||||
second later they’re like “sup.” It’s insane behavior.
|
||||
|
||||
For a while, the range of baby emotion runs from Shakespearean agony to
|
||||
neutral, never entering the positive realm. Neutral is a newborn’s best-case
|
||||
scenario.
|
||||
|
||||
[43][10_agony]
|
||||
|
||||
After six weeks or so, positive emotion begins to make an appearance, but then
|
||||
they still go apoplectic at the slightest inconvenience.[44]2
|
||||
|
||||
While we’re here, I know it’s bad but I can’t help it—crying babies are funny.
|
||||
My wife completely disagrees with me on this.
|
||||
|
||||
[45][11_little-man]
|
||||
|
||||
5) The parent-newborn relationship is super one-sided
|
||||
|
||||
[46][12_one-sided]
|
||||
|
||||
It’s weird—you have all of these intense feelings for this little person* and
|
||||
there’s just nothing to do with those feelings. I could squish her face, but
|
||||
then she’d cry and I’d be abusing a baby. In the early weeks, there’s just not
|
||||
really a satisfying outlet for your baby fondness and it’s annoying.
|
||||
|
||||
One other one-sided thing is you’re apparently supposed to talk to your newborn
|
||||
even though they’re an unconscious fetus because it supposedly helps develop
|
||||
their brain. So now my baby has heard multiple versions of my next book
|
||||
outline, the full story of the rise and fall of the Assyrian Empire after I
|
||||
listened to a podcast about it, and a list of every World Series champion going
|
||||
back to 1990. Never once has the baby shown any sign of being affected by any
|
||||
of this.
|
||||
|
||||
*That said, I’ve always thought of parental love as the most intense form of
|
||||
love—the kind where if you had a Sophie’s choice where your baby and spouse
|
||||
were both hanging off a cliff and you could only save one, you’d save the baby
|
||||
without a second thought. And…yeah I’m not there yet. I love this little
|
||||
creature a freakish amount, but as of now, I’m definitely saving my wife in
|
||||
that situation. Sorry kiddo. I’m sure Tim the Baby-Saver-Wife-Dropper will at
|
||||
some point emerge, but I guess it takes some time.
|
||||
|
||||
6) Babies shit all over your schedule
|
||||
|
||||
Obvious one, I know, but just check this out:[47]1 [48][13_sleep-graph-1] [49]
|
||||
[14_sleep-graph-2] [50][15_sleep-graph-3-750x242]
|
||||
|
||||
These are the sleep graphs of three different babies, but they all have one
|
||||
thing in common: there’s no rhyme or reason in the early months, because
|
||||
newborns are dicks.
|
||||
|
||||
7) It’s mathematically impossible to know if your baby is cute or not
|
||||
|
||||
I think my baby is impossibly adorable, of course, but every parent thinks that
|
||||
about their baby, so that offers no information. Everyone who has met her or
|
||||
seen a picture of her has commented on how cute she is, but they’d say that no
|
||||
matter what she looked like—which I know as someone who has commented on the
|
||||
cuteness of babies ranging from perfect to hideous—so there’s no information
|
||||
there either. FYI, I once depicted what happens when friends visit someone with
|
||||
an uncute baby:
|
||||
|
||||
[51][16] [52][16] [53][16] [54][16] [55][16]
|
||||
|
||||
8) I’m a motor skills virtuoso
|
||||
|
||||
It’s pretty amazing how bad babies are at everything. They’re terrible at
|
||||
thinking, at knowing anything, at moving all parts of their body. The cool
|
||||
thing is that spending time with a super unimpressive baby has made me super
|
||||
impressed by myself. Like I’ll watch the baby sitting in a [56]baby bouncer
|
||||
trying to reach for a little wooden flower one foot in front of her and she
|
||||
just flings her arm in the general direction and misses by a lot. Then I’ll
|
||||
reach for a glass of water and all of my joints work together to send my hand
|
||||
on a perfectly straight path through three-dimensional space, gracefully clasp
|
||||
my fingers around it using the perfect amount of pressure, raise it to my
|
||||
mouth, tilt it in perfect sync with the movement of my lips, and then return
|
||||
the glass to the table and gently place it down like an absolute genius.
|
||||
|
||||
9) You don’t go from a non-parent to a parent overnight
|
||||
|
||||
Some things are just too big for our little human brains to fully absorb. The
|
||||
bigness of the universe. The permanence of death. The magnitude of the [57]
|
||||
marriage decision, which I [58]once described like this:
|
||||
|
||||
When you choose a life partner, you’re choosing a lot of things, including your
|
||||
parenting partner and someone who will deeply influence your children, your
|
||||
eating companion for about 20,000 meals, your travel companion for about 100
|
||||
vacations, your primary leisure time and retirement friend, your career
|
||||
therapist, and someone whose day you’ll hear about 18,000 times. Intense shit.
|
||||
|
||||
A few months into fatherhood, this feels like another item in that category.
|
||||
When your baby is born, you will (hopefully) never live another day as a
|
||||
non-parent. For people who make the decision to do this, it is the BC-AD line
|
||||
of their life. It doesn’t mean you can’t still be you, but you are trading in
|
||||
one kind of life for another, with all of the pros and cons that come along
|
||||
with it.
|
||||
|
||||
I don’t think I’ve been able to quite wrap my head around the bigness of the
|
||||
situation. A curious childless friend asked me the other day if I feel like a
|
||||
dad, and I surprised myself by answering “not really.” I mostly feel like old
|
||||
me that has this new delightful little thing living in my house. When I see
|
||||
friends with sentient kids actually parenting them, saying things like “that’s
|
||||
not nice, stop it,” whatever that must be like is as much of a mystery to me as
|
||||
it was three months ago. For me at least, it seems like a parent is something
|
||||
you slowly turn into as your first baby slowly turns into a person.
|
||||
|
||||
Btw I’m now even more convinced than I was before that this is the most
|
||||
personal of personal decisions and no one should ever try to pressure anyone
|
||||
else to have kids—it’s way too big a thing to be anyone else’s business.
|
||||
|
||||
10) Having a baby really makes you think about the future
|
||||
|
||||
Every parent in history has brought their baby into a world with an uncertain
|
||||
future. But our future is the uncertainest. My baby might live a life a lot
|
||||
like mine, just a little more futuristic. Or she might live to 500. She might
|
||||
live most of her life with a [59]brain-machine interface implanted in her head,
|
||||
thinking with her own superintelligent AI. She might suffer through
|
||||
civilizational collapse. She might live in a world that would seem like utopia
|
||||
to us today. She might live on Mars. She might meet aliens. She might die in
|
||||
the apocalypse. There’s just no way to know. It makes all of those fun,
|
||||
exciting, terrifying conversations about the future hit just a little harder.
|
||||
|
||||
[60][17_stars]
|
||||
|
||||
_______
|
||||
|
||||
If you like Wait But Why, sign up for our [61]email list and we’ll send you new
|
||||
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[63]10 Types of Odd Friendships You’re Probably Part Of
|
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[64]The Great Perils of Social Interaction
|
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[65]11 Awkward Things About Email
|
||||
|
||||
If you can’t decide whether to marry your significant other: [66]The Marriage
|
||||
Decision: Everything Forever or Nothing Ever Again
|
||||
|
||||
If you’re hearing everyone talk about AI and would like an overview: [67]The AI
|
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|
||||
|
||||
1. One thing I kept thinking during the first few weeks: it’s really weird
|
||||
that Einstein and Hitler and Shaq and Plato and Queen Elizabeth were all
|
||||
wiggly, flailing little aliens at one point.[68]↩
|
||||
|
||||
2. Speaking of which, companies that make onesies that snap instead of zipper
|
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should be sent to the gulag.[69]↩
|
||||
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||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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1. Sources: [70]Graph 1, [71]Graph 2, [72]Graph 3[73]↩
|
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|
||||
[74]Tweet
|
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[75][pinit_fg_e]
|
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|
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[56] https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0057/9797/0008/products/Babybjorn-Toy-Bar-Image-2_1400x.jpg?v=1556318117
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[57] https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/09/marriage-decision.html
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[70] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/e1kg7t/visualization_of_sleeping_patterns_in_a_newborns/
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[71] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/6s0ba9/months_3_to_17_of_my_babys_sleep_and/
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[72] https://www.babysleepsite.com/baby-sleep-patterns/baby-sleep-pattern-chart/
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[141] https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/12/how-to-name-baby.html
|
||||
[142] https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/12/how-to-name-baby.html
|
||||
[143] https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/12/how-to-name-baby.html#comments
|
||||
[144] https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/06/taming-mammoth-let-peoples-opinions-run-life.html
|
||||
[145] https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/06/taming-mammoth-let-peoples-opinions-run-life.html
|
||||
[146] https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/06/taming-mammoth-let-peoples-opinions-run-life.html#comments
|
||||
[147] https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/10/religion-for-the-nonreligious.html
|
||||
[148] https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/10/religion-for-the-nonreligious.html
|
||||
[149] https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/10/religion-for-the-nonreligious.html#comments
|
||||
[150] https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/09/muhammad-isis-iraqs-full-story.html
|
||||
[151] https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/09/muhammad-isis-iraqs-full-story.html
|
||||
[152] https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/09/muhammad-isis-iraqs-full-story.html#comments
|
||||
[153] https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html
|
||||
[154] https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html
|
||||
[155] https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html#comments
|
||||
[156] https://waitbutwhy.com/archive
|
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[157] https://www.facebook.com/waitbutwhy
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[158] https://twitter.com/waitbutwhy
|
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[159] https://instagram.com/waitbutwhy/
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[160] https://www.patreon.com/waitbutwhy
|
||||
[161] https://waitbutwhy.com/whatsourproblem
|
||||
[162] https://store.waitbutwhy.com/
|
||||
[163] https://waitbutwhy.com/2024/06/debate2024.html
|
||||
[164] https://waitbutwhy.com/2024/04/eclipse.html
|
||||
[165] https://waitbutwhy.com/2024/02/vision-pro.html
|
||||
[166] https://waitbutwhy.com/2023/08/the-ant-honey-problem.html
|
||||
[167] https://waitbutwhy.com/2023/05/baby.html
|
||||
[168] https://waitbutwhy.com/2023/04/idea-labs-opt-out.html
|
||||
[169] https://waitbutwhy.com/2023/02/audio.html
|
||||
[170] https://waitbutwhy.com/2023/02/last-six-years.html
|
||||
[171] https://waitbutwhy.com/2023/02/wop-bib.html
|
||||
[172] https://waitbutwhy.com/2023/01/wop-email.html
|
||||
[173] https://waitbutwhy.com/
|
||||
[174] https://waitbutwhy.com/wait-but-who
|
||||
[175] https://waitbutwhy.com/wait-but-who
|
||||
[176] https://waitbutwhy.com/faq
|
||||
[177] https://waitbutwhy.com/contact
|
||||
[178] https://waitbutwhy.com/archive
|
||||
[179] https://waitbutwhy.com/minis
|
||||
[180] https://waitbutwhy.com/the-shed
|
||||
[181] https://waitbutwhy.com/table
|
||||
[182] http://shop.waitbutwhy.com/
|
||||
[183] http://store.waitbutwhy.com/
|
||||
[184] https://store.waitbutwhy.com/collections/new-releases
|
||||
[185] http://store.waitbutwhy.com/collections/posters
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[186] https://store.waitbutwhy.com/collections/phone-cases
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[187] https://store.waitbutwhy.com/collections/cards-and-wrapping-paper
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[188] http://store.waitbutwhy.com/collections/plush-toys
|
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[189] http://store.waitbutwhy.com/collections/wait-but-why-tees
|
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[190] http://store.waitbutwhy.com/collections/womens-tees
|
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[191] http://store.waitbutwhy.com/collections/coffee-mugs
|
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[192] https://waitbutwhy.com/contact
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[193] https://waitbutwhy.com/support-wbw
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[194] https://waitbutwhy.com/whatsourproblem
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[195] https://waitbutwhy.com/wechat
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[196] https://waitbutwhy.com/finnscave
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[197] https://waitbutwhy.com/sharing-policy/
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[198] https://waitbutwhy.com/contact
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[199] https://waitbutwhy.com/partner-us
|
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[200] https://waitbutwhy.com/privacy-policy
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[201] https://waitbutwhy.com/you-clicked-the-turtle/
|
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341
static/archive/www-theverge-com-gfwkvp.txt
Normal file
341
static/archive/www-theverge-com-gfwkvp.txt
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,341 @@
|
||||
[1]Skip to main content
|
||||
[2]The Verge logo.[3]The Verge homepage
|
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|
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• [4]The Verge homepageThe Verge logo./
|
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• [5]Tech/
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• [6]Reviews/
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• [7]Science/
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• [8]Entertainment/
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[11]The Verge logo.
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Menu
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|
||||
• [13]E-Reader Reviews/
|
||||
• [14]Reviews/
|
||||
• [15]Tech
|
||||
|
||||
The Boox Palma is an amazing gadget I didn’t even know I wanted
|
||||
|
||||
The Boox Palma is an amazing gadget I didn’t even know I wanted
|
||||
|
||||
/
|
||||
|
||||
I thought I was buying an e-reader. And I was! But the smartphone-sized device
|
||||
does just enough other stuff that it now goes with me everywhere.
|
||||
|
||||
By [16]David Pierce, editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade
|
||||
of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street
|
||||
Journal, and Wired.
|
||||
|
||||
Jun 25, 2024, 1:30 PM UTC
|
||||
|
||||
Share this story
|
||||
|
||||
•
|
||||
•
|
||||
•
|
||||
|
||||
If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. [21]
|
||||
See our ethics statement.
|
||||
|
||||
A photo of a person using a smartphone-like device near water.
|
||||
Imagine the exact middle between an iPhone and a Kindle. That’s the Palma.
|
||||
Image: Boox
|
||||
|
||||
There are really only three things you need to know about [22]the Boox Palma.
|
||||
One: it’s about the size of a smartphone. Two: it runs Android, with the Play
|
||||
Store. Three: it has an E Ink screen. There are other specs and features I’ll
|
||||
get to, but that combination — smartphone, Android, E Ink — is the Palma’s
|
||||
whole reason for existence.
|
||||
|
||||
In a couple of months of using the Palma, a [23]$280 device that has been on
|
||||
sale since last fall, that combination has turned out to be exactly what I
|
||||
needed. Because it’s smartphone-sized, with a 6.1-inch screen and an overall
|
||||
footprint just a smidge larger than the [24]Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus, I can hold
|
||||
it in one hand and fit in my pocket. Because it runs Android, I can download
|
||||
any app I need. And because it’s E Ink, the battery lasts somewhere between
|
||||
four days and a week, the screen is easy to look at even in the dark, and — and
|
||||
this is the most important part — most apps are just awful to use.
|
||||
|
||||
Sure, the Palma can technically download TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. It can
|
||||
even, stutteringly, play videos from those apps. But because of E Ink’s low
|
||||
resolution, slow refresh rate, and overall black-and-white-ness, it’s a crummy
|
||||
enough experience that I’m never tempted to do so. Instead, I find myself doing
|
||||
the things the Palma’s screen is built for. This thing is first and foremost an
|
||||
e-reader. It’s just that, unlike all the other e-readers, this one lets you
|
||||
read in whatever app you like to use.
|
||||
|
||||
If you want to hear more about our thoughts on the Palma, check out [25]this
|
||||
episode of The Vergecast.
|
||||
|
||||
The first app I downloaded onto the Palma was Amazon Kindle, which is where all
|
||||
my digital books are. And before you’re like, dude, why didn’t you just buy a
|
||||
Kindle, the second app I downloaded was Readwise Reader, an app for [26]reading
|
||||
and organizing longform articles, PDFs, and just about anything else. Already,
|
||||
I’d accomplished something no other e-reader offers. Then, I downloaded a
|
||||
couple of news apps, Flipboard, and the note-taking app Obsidian.
|
||||
|
||||
Two months later, those are still the apps I use most on the Palma. Boox
|
||||
preinstalls a few others, like a voice recorder and a music app, but I barely
|
||||
touched those. Who needs ‘em when I have Android! I downloaded Pocket Casts and
|
||||
Spotify instead, and now my Palma is my iPod in addition to being my Kindle.
|
||||
When I go out for coffee in the morning or to walk the dog in the afternoon,
|
||||
only the Palma comes with me.
|
||||
|
||||
An image of a woman reading on a Boox Palma in bed.An image of a woman reading
|
||||
on a Boox Palma in bed.
|
||||
An image of a woman reading on a Boox Palma in bed.An image of a woman reading
|
||||
on a Boox Palma in bed.
|
||||
The rare marketing image that actually matches how I use the device, every
|
||||
night before bed. Image: Boox
|
||||
|
||||
I’ve been amazed by how much of my phone activity disappeared when I put all my
|
||||
listening and reading onto another device. I never noticed how often I’d dig my
|
||||
phone out to change songs, only to get pulled in by a Slack message or a Gmail
|
||||
notification. (Come to think of it, thanks to the “Notification Mute” feature
|
||||
in Boox’s version of Android, I don’t think I’ve gotten a single notification
|
||||
the whole time I’ve had this thing.) Now that I’m bringing the Palma and not my
|
||||
phone with me to the coffee shop, I’m getting more reading done because TikTok
|
||||
isn’t remotely tempting on this device. I’m actually offline most of the time
|
||||
— I’ll just take it off Airplane mode to sync the various apps, then shut off
|
||||
the connection and go back to reading. A device that is easy to have with me,
|
||||
that can technically do everything but only makes it easy to do the stuff I
|
||||
want, has been everything I wanted.
|
||||
|
||||
“It’s just the absolute perfect amount of friction,” Craig Mod told me when I
|
||||
recounted my experience with the Palma. Mod — a blogger, author, and bookmaker
|
||||
who has been writing about digital reading for years — loves his Palma, too. He
|
||||
wrote [27]a blog post about it in May that got a lot of people excited about
|
||||
the device — he reckons he convinced at least a few hundred people to buy one.
|
||||
“You wouldn’t want to go surf YouTube and be like, ‘All right, let me watch
|
||||
MKBHD,’” he says. “But if I needed to… I could pop into that for a second.”
|
||||
|
||||
“It’s just the absolute perfect amount of friction”
|
||||
|
||||
That friction is a function of the device itself: E Ink screens just don’t
|
||||
refresh fast enough to look good playing video. Serviceable in a pinch? Sure.
|
||||
But not good enough to really suck you in.
|
||||
|
||||
Like me, Mod said the Palma’s combination of size and screen sold him on the
|
||||
device. “It’s perfect one-handed, it’s not heavy, it’s not going to fall on
|
||||
your face in a weird way,” he said. “You’ve got it in your hand with your thumb
|
||||
on the volume controls, and you can easily go through an article until you fall
|
||||
asleep.” Did I mention you can set the Palma to flip pages when you press the
|
||||
volume buttons? Love that. Mod called the Palma “a gentle lullaby of a reader.”
|
||||
|
||||
Matt Martin, the CEO of calendar startup Clockwise and another new Palma owner,
|
||||
echoed the sentiment. “I aspire to read more,” he said. “I aspire to not spend
|
||||
the 30 minutes before bed on Instagram Reels.” He downloaded the New York Times
|
||||
app, Instapaper, Libby, and Kindle and said he’s been reading more and
|
||||
Reels-ing less ever since.
|
||||
|
||||
A Boox Palma on a stand, playing music.A Boox Palma on a stand, playing music.
|
||||
A Boox Palma on a stand, playing music.A Boox Palma on a stand, playing music.
|
||||
The Palma is definitely a reader first, but I’ve enjoyed it as a music and
|
||||
podcast player, too. Image: Boox
|
||||
|
||||
“There’s the old anecdote we were all taught in Psych 101,” Martin said, “which
|
||||
is that physical environment matters. I think a separate device matters here:
|
||||
sometimes you’re reading, and you’re in a slow section, and you have that
|
||||
random thought, like, what was that thing I wanted to buy on Amazon? And you’re
|
||||
there without thinking about it.” A device like the Palma adds just enough
|
||||
friction to stop that train before it goes too far.
|
||||
|
||||
Mod has enjoyed the Palma so much that he wants Boox to go even further. “I
|
||||
would love to have this thing as my main driver,” he said, “so much more than
|
||||
the dopamine casino iPhone where it’s vying for your attention every two
|
||||
seconds.” He also wants Boox to get rid of the camera on the back of the Palma,
|
||||
which, candidly, I’d completely forgotten about until he mentioned it. I
|
||||
suppose it’s nice to have in a pinch, but a point-and-shoot this is not.
|
||||
|
||||
Boox didn’t build a perfect gadget here. Not by any stretch. The plastic body
|
||||
is a little flimsy, the screen is set pretty far behind the bezels, everything
|
||||
takes a half-second longer than it should, the screen can be unresponsive at
|
||||
times, and I wish it would full-refresh the E Ink to remove ghosting a little
|
||||
more often. (There’s a dedicated button for doing that last part, though, which
|
||||
helps.) For a $280 e-reader, I’d expect a little more polish in both hardware
|
||||
and software. Worst of all, the Palma runs Android 11, which is already wildly
|
||||
out of date, and I’m not counting on Boox updating it soon or ever. More than
|
||||
likely, my Palma will just slowly stop working, app by app, over the next
|
||||
couple of years. That’s particularly frustrating given how simple my needs are;
|
||||
for playing music and reading articles, there’s no reason this shouldn’t last
|
||||
forever.
|
||||
|
||||
All Boox really did was put together the right set of ingredients
|
||||
|
||||
All Boox really did was put together the right set of ingredients — size,
|
||||
screen, apps — into something that feels less like a replacement for my
|
||||
smartphone and more like a complement to it. I keep finding small new things I
|
||||
like doing on the Palma rather than my phone; I have The New York Times’ games
|
||||
app on there now for some E Ink crosswords, and I just installed the Roku app,
|
||||
for instance, so now it’s a backup remote control and a place to plug in my
|
||||
headphones when I need to listen quietly.
|
||||
|
||||
This year has been filled with companies trying to overhaul the way we use our
|
||||
gadgets. Humane, Rabbit, and others have introduced wild new kinds of devices,
|
||||
hoping we might find new and different things to do with them. The Palma
|
||||
represents a much less ambitious — but maybe much more likely — alternative: it
|
||||
just tweaks the smartphone formula, leaving what works but subtly changing the
|
||||
device’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s not as bright, not as fast, not as
|
||||
frictionless. Instead, it’s quiet, simple, sane. And I love it for that.
|
||||
|
||||
Most Popular
|
||||
Most Popular
|
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1. [29]
|
||||
|
||||
Microsoft is hiking the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and launching a
|
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new ‘Standard’ tier
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|
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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Samsung’s Galaxy Ring could be the one ring to rule an ecosystem
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Amazon
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
4. [32]
|
||||
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||||
Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra hands-on: ultra déjà vu
|
||||
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||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
5. [33]
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||||
|
||||
The Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Flip 6 come with minor updates and higher prices
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||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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/ Sign up for Verge Deals to get deals on products we've tested sent to your
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[43]Surface Laptop review: Microsoft’s best MacBook Air competitor yet
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• A photo of the 2024 Beats Pill portable Bluetooth speaker.A photo of the
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2024 Beats Pill portable Bluetooth speaker.
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[44]Beats Pill review: much easier to swallow this time
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• [yH5BAEAAAA][DSCF7644]
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[45]The new Final Cut Pro hooked me on iPad video editing
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Beats Solo Buds next to a cocktail drink.
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[46]The Beats Solo Buds have a great look and an even better price
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[1] https://www.theverge.com/24184777/boox-palma-e-ink-smartphone-reader#content
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[13] https://www.theverge.com/e-reader-review
|
||||
[14] https://www.theverge.com/reviews
|
||||
[15] https://www.theverge.com/tech
|
||||
[16] https://www.theverge.com/authors/david-pierce
|
||||
[21] https://www.theverge.com/ethics-statement
|
||||
[22] https://go.skimresources.com/?id=1025X1701640&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fshop.boox.com%2Fproducts%2Fpalma
|
||||
[23] https://www.amazon.com/BOOX-Palma-Mobile-ePaper-G-Sensor/dp/B0CHF746JZ/?tag=theverge02-20
|
||||
[24] https://www.theverge.com/24058916/samsung-galaxy-s24-plus-review-screen-battery-camera
|
||||
[25] https://link.chtbl.com/vergecast
|
||||
[26] https://www.theverge.com/24003177/readwise-reader-gta-netflix-day-one-apple-journal-installer-newsletter
|
||||
[27] https://craigmod.com/roden/091/
|
||||
[29] https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/9/24195312/microsoft-xbox-game-pass-ultimate-price-increase-standard-subscription
|
||||
[30] https://www.theverge.com/24194938/samsung-galaxy-ring-hands-on-price-unpacked-2024
|
||||
[31] https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/9/24190843/etsy-handmade-vintage-policy-change
|
||||
[32] https://www.theverge.com/24195083/samsung-galaxy-watch-ultra-7-hands-on-features-price
|
||||
[33] https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/10/24195165/samsung-galaxy-z-fold-flip-6-screen-battery-price
|
||||
[36] https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/terms-of-use
|
||||
[37] https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/privacy-notice
|
||||
[38] https://policies.google.com/privacy
|
||||
[39] https://policies.google.com/terms
|
||||
[40] http://theverge.com/
|
||||
[41] http://theverge.com/
|
||||
[42] https://www.theverge.com/reviews
|
||||
[43] https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/25/24185462/microsoft-surface-laptop-7th-edition-review
|
||||
[44] https://www.theverge.com/24185290/beats-pill-2024-bluetooth-speaker-review
|
||||
[45] https://www.theverge.com/24183158/final-cut-pro-for-ipad-2-final-cut-camera-review
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||||
[46] https://www.theverge.com/24180840/beats-solo-buds-earbuds-hands-on
|
||||
[47] http://theverge.com/
|
||||
[48] http://theverge.com/
|
||||
[49] https://www.theverge.com/
|
||||
[50] https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/terms-of-use
|
||||
[51] https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/privacy-notice
|
||||
[52] https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/cookie-policy
|
||||
[53] javascript:%20window.openConsentWindow();
|
||||
[54] https://www.voxmedia.com/pages/licensing
|
||||
[55] https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/accessibility
|
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[56] https://status.voxmedia.com/
|
||||
[57] https://www.theverge.com/pages/how-we-rate
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[58] https://www.theverge.com/contact-the-verge
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||||
[59] https://www.theverge.com/c/tech/22579076/how-to-tip-the-verge-email-signal-and-more
|
||||
[60] https://www.theverge.com/community-guidelines
|
||||
[61] https://www.theverge.com/about-the-verge
|
||||
[62] https://www.theverge.com/ethics-statement
|
||||
[63] https://www.voxmedia.com/vox-advertising
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||||
[64] https://jobs.voxmedia.com/
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||||
[65] https://www.voxmedia.com/
|
||||
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