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“‘AI’ is pretty much just shorthand for mediocre”

Just read through “You sound like a bot” by Adi Robertson in the Verge. I hadn’t really put my finger on the right word for my feelings about AI until reading that article but that’s it: it feels very mediocre.

If you want to get a rough overview of how the average frontend engineer might feel about a JavaScript framework, ChatGPT is useful enough. If you’re willing to ignore the questionable origins of the training data in use, Midjourney can be useful for rapid image generation for an early storyboard.

But as of right now, the output always feels meh, “yeah ok”. Never really surprises you with a unique perspective, or an unexpected visual language. That vibe is only becoming stronger as AI developers continue to sand off the “rough” edges on their products.

Maybe that will change. As Robertson says, “Maybe the schism between artists and AI developers will resolve, and we’ll see more tools that amplify human idiosyncrasy instead of offering a lowest-common-denominator replacement for it.”

That’s not happening any time soon. One reason is that artists have been given about 1,000 reasons to distrust AI, and I think that it is only widespread artistic use and input that could actually lead to that sort of breakthrough.

Another reason: spewing mediocrity is a pretty strong sweet spot for AI. AI is useful as a summarizer so long as you take the response with a grain of salt and follow up on sources. Case in point: Elicit seems pretty cool! Listen to this ShopTalk Show episode with Maggie Appleton for more.

Anyways, maybe we’ll eventually get to the point where AI has that human “spark”, who knows. Maybe it’ll happen next month and I’ll eat my words. Until then, as most of the content we experience online becomes more grey and sludgy, the personal will become far more valuable.

In Anil Dash’s article “The Internet Is About to Get Weird Again” for Rolling Stone late last year, he says that “the human web, the one made by regular people, is resurgent”. He places a lot of emphasis on the breakdown of the content silos we’ve relied on for so many years, which definitely seems like the major catalyst for the shift. But AI’s growing mediocrity will be the force that drives it home and really makes the human web stick.

(Related side point: clearly I need to read Filterworld by Kyle Chayka.)

Edit 21 Feb 2024: Maybe I should eat my words sooner? OpenAI just came out with Sora. Which is impressive! But… IDK, it still feels meh somehow? Maybe it’s just because it’s still early days, we’ll see.

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Reading recs from Gem

Reading recs from Gem:

  • 📕 The “living autobiography” series by Deborah Levy
  • 📖 Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
  • 📖 Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson (though she did say I might find this tough, I have a hair-trigger emotional core since B was born)
  • 📖 The Overstory by Richard Powers (“wasn’t amazing the whole time, but there were a lot of beautiful moments”, “sort of about trees”)
  • 📕 Having and Being Had by Eula Biss (yet another Biss book on my list, I really need to get going)

Going to keep track of my reading this year à la Lucy Bellwood, emojis and all. Need to get rid of this WordPress emoji conversion script though, yuck.

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New Kobo, more illness, intentions

  • I am LOVING my new Kobo Clara 2E. Just wild that all of Brooklyn Public Library’s e-books are at my fingertips at the click of a button. I just need to figure out how to get my old Walthamstow Library card set up too…
  • B seems to have become a whole new little person over the course of the week and a half we were visiting family. He has very particular ideas about which lights should be on, which drapes should be open, and whether or not fans are running. Cuddly stuff is, as ever, a favorite. He may or may not think his name is Stu? Two new teeth!
  • Grandpa came down with something in the wee hours of Christmas morning and we had to take him to the ER. He had to have surgery (first time ever, at 99yrs old!) which was scary, but his recuperation has been great. We got to see him before we left which was a relief, I wasn’t sure we would.
  • Never been much of a resolutions person, though I do constantly think about self and improvement. But two basic intentions for 2023 are to cook and read a bit more. Both are things I have always loved, but somehow felt very difficult or fell by the wayside. Reading was a long slow fall (getting a Kindle way back when was a MISTAKE), cooking’s decline was precipitous and very tied to B being born. Will enjoy doing more of both, have already read more books in the past week or so than I had in months.
  • Related to resolutions, see Virginia Woolf’s new year’s resolutions for 1931 shared by Gem. “To have none. Not to be tied.”
  • To read: The Performance Inequality Gap, 2023: When digital is society’s default, slow is exclusionary
  • Been watching a lot of In The Night Garden with B because of travel and since he hasn’t been feeling great. Maka Paka is the best character.
  • “I think we humans can feel we don’t exist if we live unwitnessed.” That phrase really resonated, from this article in Philippa Perry’s “agony aunt” Guardian column. Sharing photos online, gathering followers, collecting likes.
  • I have a cold, yet again. This one has lasted over two weeks, yet again. I think that in addition to all the normal baby stuff that people put on registries, they should add things like economy-sized jars of ibuprofen, NeilMed Sinus Rinse bottles (one for each parent) and a subscription to those saline packets, and roughly 10,000 hankies.

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READING LIST from the Glasgow Women’s Library

Graphic designers Kaisa Lassinaro and Maeve Redmond have designed READING LIST, a series of t-shirts that reference books, which they have selected, from the Glasgow Women’s Library catalogue. All of these books (and many more!) are free to borrow from Glasgow Women’s Library.

So the Reading List t-shirts are really cool, but I would feel like an absolute phony buying one without having read the books. One of them I’m on top of, I have A Room of One’s Own on my nightstand. BW, sorry it has taken me approximately a million years to get round to reading it. But here’s the full list to work through, nonfiction and fiction (including a bit of speculative sci fi!), from oldest to most recent.

  • A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, 1929
  • Sisterhood Is Powerful Ed. Robin Morgan, 1970
  • The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark, 1970
  • Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy, 1976
  • The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd, 1977
  • Our Bodies Ourselves by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, 1978
  • The Politics of Housework Ed. Ellen Malos, 1980
  • The Color Purple by Alice Walker, 1982
  • Gender Trouble by Judith Butler, 1990
  • How To Be Both by Ali Smith, 2014

And how cool is the Glasgow Women’s Library? It’s “the only Accredited Museum in the UK dedicated to women’s lives, histories and achievements”. Neat.

Thx, SB, for sharing this with me.

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To read: Rest of World

To read: Rest of World

We document what happens when technology, culture and the human experience collide, in places that are typically overlooked and underestimated. We believe the story about technology is as big as the world that’s using it, and that everyone — from those building technology to those using it — can benefit from a broader global perspective.

And

A note on our name: If you don’t recognize it, “rest of world” is a ridiculous corporate term commonly used in global business operations. It’s a catch-all phrase that means, basically, “everyone else.” And it generally represents billions of people outside of the Western world. We know that their stories matter. The term “rest of world” is a symptom of a larger problem: a Western-centric worldview that leaves innumerable insights, opportunities and complexity out of the conversation.

I’ve come across so many great stories on here since I subscribed via RSS. Here is a small handful of the more recent articles I’ve enjoyed:

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“Like a poet writing thrillers”

To read: The “Your Face Tomorrow” trilogy by Javier Marías

I found this tribute in the Guardian incredibly interesting. I don’t often come across an author that I have 100% never heard of but also seems so very up my alley.

I think my FIL would also be super in to his stuff, might get us both a copy of the first in the trilogy and read it together.

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“I feel like my lounge is going to tip over”

Really need to make a habit of reading something that makes me giggle before bed. It sort of sets the day straight.

I’m reading He Used Thought As A Wife, Tim Key’s first lockdown book. It’s perfect. Funny, poignant, captures so many of the absurdities of the first lockdown in the UK. Also the title is perfection, though I didn’t really get it until I got going.

This is the part that made me giggle last night. It’s the middle of a vignette titled “Book Arrangements”, the designer of this book speaking with him about his progress on said book.

JUNIPER: Get anything down today?

KEY: Huh?

Key approaches the SodaStream, strokes its shoulders and smashes a flask up it. Bubbles and a honk. Infinitesimal animated prisms are released into the air, kissing themselves to death and falling to the counter. Key pours the magic into his Simpsons mug.

JUNIPER: Tim?

KEY: I’ve placed my books in order of how many pages they’ve got in them.

Key nods at what he has said.

JUNIPER: You should be writing.

KEY: Well, I did that in the end.

JUNIPER: How does it look?

KEY: Unbalanced, I feel like my lounge is going to tip over.

JUNIPER: Richard E. Grant has his arranged by spine colour.

KEY: Classy.

JUNIPER: So you’ve not made a start then?

KEY: You listen to Five Live enough, you start to believe it’s fine to do fuck all.

JUNIPER: It is Tim.

Ugh, kind of regretting writing that down here because reading back through it, the humor is gone without the context. Leaving it in since it took a few minutes to format.

Just read the book, it’s great.

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Memory dump

Life has felt kind of hard recently. Water running through my hands. So many things backed up in my “Blog stuff” folder in Notes, things I didn’t want to forget but wasn’t able to sit down and put in a post. Here’s a bunch so they don’t languish there forever. Oldest to newest.

Image of color gradient from white in lower left corner, through light blue to navy, with a tiny bit of pink in the upper right corner

I want to make a “Uses” page, but not just software/hardware. Skincare, furniture, kitchen tools, etc.

To read: Werner Herzog’s new book, The Twilight World. Or books? I don’t think the other one from lockdown is out yet. See this New Yorker interview. Via RS.

People talk about finding joy in the way your kid looks at the world. I really didn’t understand how moving that could be until recently. Hilarious, pure, and sometimes a little melancholic.

B was being funny about dinner because of a long day, so we just gave him a huge block of cheese to go ham. He couldn’t believe it. Imagine being handed a whole forearm-sized block of the best thing you’ve ever tasted in your short life.

He’d never seen anything like it, and I’ve never seen someone eyes go like that.

Generally more interested in the process than the outcome. In my work and others’. See CBToF (again), also the guy that’s piloting a tiny speedboat around Britain at his own pace. Boat guy via SB.

People in the US seem individualist to a fault.

A generalization, and obviously that individualism has certain upsides as well—don’t get me started on the way that UK schools force you to choose subjects so young—but I see the negative effects every day.

Was talking to DB, she mentioned how in the UK, there is a natural flow to walking. For example, getting between platforms on the tube. In NYC, it’s an absolute free for all.

Woman on the stairs at Broadway and Lafayette, walking up the left hand side of the stairs not holding on to the handrail when the person walking down, their right, clearly needs the handrail. “You see me fuckin comin, right?!” Wild.

[And do not tell me this is just a thing in US cities. I’ve seen it in suburban Tennessee, the middle of Ohio, all over the place. It just comes in different guises. An able-bodied person parking in a handicap spot in a packed Walmart parking lot, believing that Andrew Wakefield’s vaccine bullshit is more important than your children’s friends’ health, asserting that your right to any gun that could possibly exist is more important than reducing the likelihood of serious injury or death during a shooting in our schools and places of worship, etc.]

I think one of my least favorite phrases in the whole entire world has to be “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”.

It’s a turning away from the world. Announcing that, no, I don’t want to learn anymore thank you very much. No thank you, life is perfect for me as it is, heaven forbid I grow or change. Much better for the world to bend to me.

Gross.

Great article on accessibility: “Writing even more CSS with Accessibility in Mind, Part 2: Respecting user preferences” by Manuel Matzo.

See also: “Accessibility for Vestibular Disorders: How My Temporary Disability Changed My Perspective” by Facundo Corradini.

Came across these while writing a manual accessibility testing guide, an auditing system, etc. for SuperHi.

If things have been calm for a while in life, little stress and so on, I feel like my body can build up stress of its own accord. Is this some sort of innate expectation that if things are going well for a while, surely they must go wrong soon? A sort of fight/flight overture? If so, it kind of makes sense that exercise could help. Literally getting your ya yas out. Don’t know.

Getting properly dressed in the morning, makeup and everything, is such an important part of my day working from home. Don’t know what it is, but I really don’t feel like myself otherwise. I fell out of the cycle once a while back and it actually led to some really low points. It helps if my skin is cooperating.

Related to current events: So one time I had to get a birth control prescription refilled while we were visiting family in the Tennessee. This was in high school (maybe early college?). It was a little more complicated at that point to get a prescription transferred between pharmacies, especially between states, so it had stressed me out but I was able to get it sorted. Anyways, I got the prescription filled and went on my way. It was a very forgettable experience.

Until I got a text from the pharmacist. He used the private contact information in my file to reach out and ask if I was available.

I should have done something about it, but I didn’t know what to do. Thank god I didn’t live there, imagine having to go back.

The shooting in Uvalde happened, and I reflexively went on Twitter. I don’t know what it was about that moment in time, but the instant I started scrolling I felt actual revulsion. It suddenly clicked, how horrible Twitter can make me feel. It didn’t used to be like that. I haven’t really used it since then. I met some great people on it in the past, but that hasn’t happened in a long time. I hope people realize they can always reach out to me here.

Read Notes on maintaining an internal React component library, an article by Gabe Scholz. Via CDM.

Watch How I Code and Use a Computer at 1,000 WPM!! by blind coder Sina Bahram. See also Coyote, “a project developed by cultural heritage professionals and people from the accessibility community to encourage the use of visual description in museum practice”. Very cool. Via RS.

Read about Meno’s Paradox on this University of Washington faculty page. I do not know how to summarize it, only that I have tried to articulate this and have failed every time. Now maybe I can just refer to Meno’s Paradox, or at least to this page. Via CDM.

Read this Guardian article on a neurologist’s tips for fighting memory loss and Alzheimers. “Samuel Johnson said that the art of memory is the art of attention.”

Claire McCardell was incredible. She popularized separates for women! Capsule wardrobes! In like, the 30s!! This is a great article about her contribution to fashion: Claire McCardell originated The American Look (part 1)

Explore philosopher.life. Via LS.

To read: Social Warming: How Social Media Polarises Us All by Charles Arthur. Or not. It sounds worthy, but depressing.

Dig further in to Roni Horn’s work. Specifically, “Still Water (The River Thames, for Example)”. Via BL.

There is no reason to be anything but nice to strangers. It makes you both feel good. Being a dick to someone makes you both feel bad.

Yep, exactly. Well said, and happy birthday, Chris Coyier!

Thanks to B for the photo ❤️

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“I think crypto…is an amplifier”

Read “Eric Hu Will Not Take Web3 For Granted” on the Zora blog.

I think crypto…is an amplifier: if you’re a libertarian asshole, it’s going to help you become an even more libertarian, more asshole-y person. But if you believe that the people that help you out should be taken care of, and that we can have a place where we could take care of our friends, and our friends can take care of us, and it’s not about fighting over scraps and the narcissism of small differences, we can take part.

I think this is pretty spot on. So maybe people’s opinions of whether Web3 is going to be “good” or “bad” on the whole comes down to whether they feel optimistic or pessimistic about humanity at large. IDK.

Also:

I think when people are like, ‘Oh, Web3 is going to liberate people’, I get really angry. I’m like, ‘Dude, when you say that, it just makes us all more lazy; we just expect that Web3 is going to be inherently better than Web2’.

No, this is a conscious choice. We have to make protocols that aren’t trying to be extractive—all of that takes effort. I have full faith in Web3’s ability to do some amazing things, but I also have full faith in humanity’s tendency to just become selfish once it gets to a certain point. Web3 has a lot of promises it can offer, but it’s not going to happen automatically.

Also, Eric mentions that some people prefer using the term DISCO (Distributed Cooperative Organization) instead of DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations). I like this, much prefer DISCO. “Autonomous” makes it feel very robot-y. “Cooperative” is much more human.🕺🏻

Twitter can make it seem like the Web3 “war” is purely binary. But there are so many more nuanced takes out there, including this interview and others. Thx SB for sharing it with me.