While scrolling through the Books I’ve Read, I realized that I don’t remember the first thing about most of them. There are a few standouts, of course, but for the most part reading feels like temporary entertainment. I hope some of it is absorbed and becomes a useful part of my brain, but it doesn’t seem like that’s happening.

I’d almost forgotten that I re-subscribed to Medium a few months ago. After visiting the home page this morning and reading one vapid headline after another, I canceled my membership. I’m sure there’s valuable content there, but it’s hiding behind clickbait and I don’t feel like wading through it.

If they had fed the language machines a diet of cupcake recipes, history might have gone another way.

“Moonbound”, Robin Sloan.

My Applications folder is a toybox, but it should be a toolbox.

I posted a little over on daily.baty.net today. I shouldn’t do that, because it undermines my dream of having One True Blog™. Some days, though, I find it impossible to resist.

# Links for October 16, 2024

• Pluralistic: You should be using an RSS reader

Dan Milnor: Adobe Max Day One

The tools remind me that story is king.

I see a lot of criticism of Tesla’s new taxi design. Specifically, everyone seems confused that it’s a 2-seater. Ridiculous! Now, while I’m critical of everything Tesla, I haven’t seen anyone asking how many passengers the typical cab ride accommodates. Is it 2, maybe? It could be that Tesla did the research. Anyway If I need more room on a specific trip, I can alway call an UberX.

I often analyze tools before I actually need them. That’s silly, and a waste of energy. It leads to a pile of software that I don’t need, but also a bunch of opinions about them that aren’t really valid.

It would be nice if I could hold a thought for more than 30 seconds. My brain is so scattered and unpredictable that it makes it difficult to get anything done. So far this morning I must’ve opened every app, note, and website that I know of. I don’t know what I’m hoping to find, but so far I’ve failed and wasted way too much time.

I’ve added a search page here. Some notes: Searching baty.net

We celebrated my grandson’s 1st birthday yesterday. He’s so great.

There were 75 people there to help celebrate. Everyone had fun. We ate, played games, and watched Lincoln open gifts (with mom’s help). The weather was beautiful, but then it started to thunder, so we took down the tent and put everything away. Shortly after that, it began to pour, so that was a wrap. Perfect timing, actually.

I just realized that there’s no way to search this blog. I wonder if I can use the same tooling as the Hugo blog. This doesn’t seem like fun.

An admission: I’ve been using TheBrain again/still, Like I did late last year. Its value increases over time. Whenever I put something in it, I can always find it later, and quickly. It may be weird and expensive and proprietary and have limited export options, but it’s still the app I’ve found most effective for things that benefit from context and long-term linking.

My problem is that I love different software for different reasons. I love Tinderbox, Emacs, and TiddlyWiki equally for taking notes. Today I’ve been testing The Archive again, because it does certain things really well. Sometimes I use all of them in a single day. It’s not an effective or efficient way of working, but my love of wonderful software makes it difficult for me to avoid the behavior.

“Megalopolis” and “Joker: Folie à Deux”; or, The Virtue of Burning Money

I thought that as soon as I sat my butt down at this computer after four days away that I would have all sorts of things lined up to talk about, but nothing much comes to mind. It’s 11:30 AM, so maybe later?

The whole WordPress thing is boring as f*ck.

The best way I’ve found of preventing photos from looking too digital is to make them with film.

Sometimes I defend people from pile-ons, even when they deserve the pile-on. I feel like too many people wake up and think, “Who can I decide is bad, today?” and that’s just no way to be. So, if you point out that someone did something horrible (and by “horrible”, you usually mean “something I don’t agree with”) and I say “But maybe they just…”, it’s not always because I agree with what they’ve supposedly done, but rather to point out that there might be more to it. We’re complicated. Situations are complicated. You don’t know everything about it, so maybe back off a smidge and consider that.

How about we collectively stop apologizing for how often we write on our blogs or what we write about on our blogs. Newsletters, too, while we’re at it.

I like the new message/alert summaries on my Apple devices. I just used ChatGPT to help me write some emacs lisp for my blogging workflow. DEVONthink can now use AI to intelligently rename files. I use that all the time. Complaints about social and environmental impact of AI use are justified, but it’s probably time to stop suggesting that LLMs aren’t useful.