Humans have done a bad job of collaborating with other species. If animals could get a message in our mind, that’s what it would be. From the human perspective, animals will always be incomprehensible because of our belief in our own dominance. Werner Herzog has spoken about nature’s “indifference.” It’s not indifference on nature’s part, it’s incomprehension on ours. We refuse to understand nature or live with it equitably.

Watching The Beatles: Get Back from Peter Jackson and liking it. Didn’t think I would! But the lads clown around in a messy rehearsal and then suddenly come out with the soundtrack of my teenage years—an early lyric or a guitar riff that is not on the album, but so close—it’s a great pleasure. Since there are so many hours of footage, it’s also an ASMR experience. I leave the Beatles on in the background and let them work out their set.

Finished reading: The New Naturals by Gabriel Bump 📚

This is who is swatting at me as I remove tennis shoes. I may make him my new coach. #caturday

Experimenting with Claude.ai to write marketing copy. Not bad. Especially when I give it a source text, my own notes, to work with.

Gruber on meta AI

I keep circling back to the notion that OpenAI has no moat. ChatGPT is certainly the best-known LLM, and perhaps still the best, but I don’t think that’s any more of a long-term competitive advantage than some company in 1986 having “the best C compiler”. What’s needed are ways to bring LLMs to users. To give them purpose, in products. That’s what Meta is doing, by integrating their AI into all of their major products.

Daring Fireball

TOP OF MIND Remember when the internet was nice? When I look back to earlier days of the public web (probably through a haze of nostalgia), I recall an online world where people pursued odd conversations about toy poodles and pencils, where silliness was innocent, and the thrill of discovering … read more

It’s happening ……

500 Words is a publication of FutureX.Studio. TOP OF MIND Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. – Arthur C. Clarke The quote from science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke is provocative, but only tells part of the story. In our age, technology has turned out … read more

Hello, and welcome to 500 Words. TOP OF MIND Tamagotchi are virtual pets that hit peak popularity in the late 1990s. You picked up a handheld device to play with, feed, and meet your Tamagotchi’s needs. This widespread human-machine love relationship was the first of its kind. And the love … read more

I keep black notebooks for daily journals and red notebooks for fiction work. I number each spine and index the contents by page number.

Writing the cover blurb for my next novel before I’ve written the novel. It’s hell, even though the scene looks peaceful.

The best thing about notebooks is that they only do one thing.

Here’s what editors are good at. Sometimes I need to write my way into a scene and I write too much. My editor will strip away anything unnecessary, like playing editorial Jenga. With the redundant scaffolding removed, my meaning can come through. #writing

As I was running I was struck by a thought: Even if my time in races doesn’t improve, there’s not much I can do about it. I’ve gotten older, and time has taken its toll. It’s nobody’s fault. Those are the rules of the game.

Haruki Murakami, What I talk about when I talk about running 🏃

Wow, the on-air talent at NBC got listened to. NBC News Cuts Ties With Ronna McDaniel After Network Firestorm Makes me wonder if the top brass types realized they actually need those on-air people to do stuff, like read the news, report, and interview people, and a mass rebellion was not going to be good.

Look, maybe I like books too much, but the Netflix adaptation of The Three Body Problem (Or as Netflix has it, The 3 Body Problem) has problems. Thankfully, they’ve left the action alone that takes place in China, but the UK scenes are populated by people who seem like TV actors, not real … read more

TOP OF MIND I teach a class for USC, in the Architecture Department, and I’ve learned one thing these past few years. If I don’t keep up reviewing student assignments, I will be buried. For example, this past Monday, after USC’s spring break, I had 40 assignments to review and … read more

If you need to improve your mood, may I suggest a dopamine editor? There will be a model called a Dupy available in 28 years.

I like playing a Ravi Shankar playlist on a Monday. His joie de vivre and invention charge things up.