My daughter loves her music. Listening to it. Making it. Learning it. She enjoys her music classes and recently started self-learning Ukelele through YouTube. It didn’t take her long to get the chords right for one of her favourite songs. As she performed, I recorded it and up it went on her channel. A new video is out now.
She’s also super excited that she is a click away from reaching 100 subscribers. I calm her down. But the excitement of any milestone is challenging to push away.
Your blessing in life is when you find the torture you’re comfortable with.
What a brilliant quote. And timely for me.
I haven’t posted anything since I last wondered “why I even write anymore in public”. This question still crowds my mind. But I read what other folks write, which, in turn, makes me want to do that. So, I am not going to stop writing on my blog anytime soon.
What do I write about? Well, about nothing and everything. That has been my mantra.
I usually do not have a set template for my posts. I start writing, and the thoughts pour themselves out. The only thing I have to do is sit down at my desk and start hammering on my keyboard.
Recently, I read some excellent posts on blogging versus social media. The first is Robb Knight talking about how the web is fantastic. This feeling resonated with my current state of mind.
Blogs and RSS never died. Some of us just took a little break from it while we all shitposted on Twitter for likes, retweets, and validation. While we wrote long, unfindable threads instead of blog posts. I’m as guilty of this as anyone.
It’s been some time now since I posted to any social network. 20 days to be exact. It’s freeing to not worry about how my posts look on different timelines or how people react to them. I write on and for my blog. I have also accepted that I won’t get any reaction on even my most thoughtful posts.
I have yet to find a frictionless way to respond to a post I read. I want that.
The second post is Chris McLeod vouching for the resurgence of blogging.
[S]tumbling into such a trove of active blogs has enthused me about blogging as a medium again. It’s sparked a thought that through a combination of increased blogging activity, declining platforms, and increasing adoption of open standards to glue everything together, that maybe — just maybe — we can swing the web back towards the blog again.
I share Chris’s optimism – posting micro thoughts on social media led to the discovery of many good bloggers. I maintain my apprehensions about micro posts on the blog – I cannot write and post them. But I am okay with others doing it.
Anyway, I continue to read blogs through RSS. I continue to write on my blog. All’s well.
Sam Altman to return as OpenAI CEO →
The move would appear to bring resolution to a roller coaster drama that began Friday when OpenAI announced that its non-profit board had voted to remove Altman.
So much drama in just five days. I am sure many secret meetings were convened, and scenarios explored.
Blogging is a lifeline, a connection to people and a world that might not be possible offline because of the reticence to interact and the fear doing so generates. I can’t think of a better reason to do it.
Source: Colin Walker on Blogging →
Is it true? Is it necessary or at least useful? Is it compassionate or at least unharmful?
A sign on Ursula Le Guin’s desk. h/t: Seth Godin →
Numberphile’s bread and butter remains the intimate, idiosyncratic one-on-ones with a veritable who’s who of mathematicians and math communicators that have both endeared Haran to his presenters and humanized for viewers a subject often perceived as devoid of color or personality.
Source: A Duodecade of Numberphile →
Numberphile remains one of the few channels that I never miss an episode from.
Adults do well when they seek to be childlike, and that’s possible without being childish.
Source: Childish or childlike? →
Sensitivity is a gift but handling it requires skill. Change is what life is, yes, but it still disorients. Learning how to navigate change without terror (or with less terror) is necessary.
Source: Rumbling at the bones →
I wish I would someday be able to write with the same clarity as Annie. Another must-read post from her.
Success at an extreme level is usually the overlap of many competing factors, only some of which are in your control. If your personal definition of success or happiness depends on being in a rarefied elite, this analysis should chasten you to the reality of that goal.
Straight drives with so little fuss it felt like the fulfilment of a pact. “Just be a good ball and go for four, okay?” Back-foot punches that combined the grace of a ballet dancer with the power of a heavyweight fighter. And those flicks. If they could talk, they’d be like, “Come on, man. Don’t make it this easy.” He was geometric perfection.
Source - Sachin Tendulkar at 50 - The stranger we kept calling by his first name →
Until digital video arrived in the late 1990s, 16-millimeter film was the mainstay of the amateur or independent filmmaker, requiring neither the investment nor the know-how of commercial cinema.
Source: Happy 100th Birthday, 16-Millimeter Film →
Fascinating. I had no idea about this history.
The winner of a major photography prize has rejected the award after revealing that the winning image was generated by AI.
Source - Major Photography Prize Winner Reveals Image Is AI-Generated, Rejects Award →
Had to happen sooner or later. This is just a start.
While (Apple’s) market share in India is sub-10% today, we believe Apple through its unmatched marketing and brand presence will be able to turn India into an incremental growth catalyst
Source: Apple Bets On Growth In India With Retail, Manufacturing Expansion →
Wish they did more and looked at India as a very different market. Strategies from first world won’t work here unfortunately.
Lawmakers have begun to contemplate new rules around authorship and ownership in connection with creative machines, and the stakes are huge for both the businesses that depend on creative work and the investors who poured billions into new AI tools.
Source - Who Owns a Song Created by AI? →
This is an important debate that needs addressed before it becomes a legal mess.
The researchers input one paragraph per character into ChatGPT, describing their occupation, relationship with other agents, and memories they have
Source: Google Tells AI Agents to Behave Like ‘Believable Humans’ to Create ‘Artificial Society’ →
This is fascinating direction of research. This should start the debate on who says we aren’t the agents in some other worldly simulation.
I’ve learned through experience that skipping the rest your body is telling you it needs will only make it worse
Source - Women taking time for themselves →
There’s a funny conflict to the idea of user interfaces: a good one tends to go unnoticed, the thoughtful design decisions too subtle to notice; a bad UX or UI is one that makes you want to scream
A key concept to understand in the “Why are modern movies so dark?” debate is “motivated” light
Source - Why movies today look so dark today, in theaters and at home - Polygon →
Photography is a visual art, and as with most art forms, there are no rigid rules or formulas that guarantee a captivating image. However, there are certain key elements that often contribute to an image’s impact and appeal.
Source - 7 Essential Elements to a Good Photo →
Silence is golden. Amidst friends, it is not. →
It was Holi today, and I was surrounded by friends or people I knew once as friends. Yet there was hardly anyone I could walk up to and converse with without things getting awkward pretty soon. I knew then that some threads between us were broken.
One of the questions people like to ask lexicographers is this: Can you sneak something into the dictionary?
The more that text generated by large-language models gets published on the Web, the more the Web becomes a blurrier version of itself.
Source - ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web →
If you read only one analysis on ChatGPT, it should be this on The New Yorker.
It’s time to shake things up, to turn the ship around. To innovate. Meta’s big, new idea: Charge people for basic support features and … a blue check mark.
Source - Why Would Anyone Pay for Facebook? →
Email really is an amazing, miraculous technology. But at the end of the day, it’s in the hands of humans who are always going to screw it up.
Source: Why Is Email Still So Terrible? →