One organization in Baltimore talked about creating a central event calendar for Literal Years but...never produced anything. AI allows me, as a volunteer, to publish charmcity.theater as a free service to the city. I manually review the updates. I think this is good, not bad. Recent feedback:

This post was about Hank Green but then I read what he actually did and it was... fine? Using the statistics robot to research massive quantities of information to help you find things is...a genuinely good use of AI? Y'all we've got to engage AI with more nuance, the stark extremes ain't helping.

Chris Ashworth@chris.ashworth.io · 4d ago

can you imagine being a fallible human being in front of millions of people? and then making a mistake? yeah, me neither, the only reasonable response in a healthy society is castigation

can you imagine being a fallible human being in front of millions of people? and then making a mistake? yeah, me neither, the only reasonable response in a healthy society is castigation

I have maybe the best job in the world, at a company I literally founded and of which I own 100%, and I _still_ feel trapped from considering any other life choices because I don't know for sure I could get good insurance without continuing to OWN A COMPANY. USA, land of the free, is doing great!

NPR's Planet Money@planetmoney.bsky.social · 5d ago

We are looking to talk with folks who may want to leave their current job but are staying for the health insurance only. Does that sound like you or someone you know? Email your story to indicator@npr.org and we may reach out.

I'm not a big scents & perfumes guy but how about someone who smells like tomatoes 🍅😍

just had an AI tell me to "Go to sleep. I'll have {stuff we've been working on} ready for you to review in the morning." and I gotta say there was a brief hit of "hey thanks for taking care of me" so that's... weird.

here, let me help clarify: OpenAI is reportedly lobbying for restrictions on open AI even though they nominally signed support for open AI because it was needed to defend against an autonomous attack by OpenAI's own AI.

some day, when I retire, I might catch up on the public ranting I wanted to do that would have been politically indelicate at the time.

alec@alecsparks.bsky.social · 3mo ago

if I was the largest grantmaking organization at the intersection of the arts and technology I would simply attempt to produce actual deliverables that benefit the field

my kid's art teacher (who is great) said that if you are late it's fine because then you just learn how to be on time the next time, and I don't think I've ever heard a louder "I'm not ADHD" flag in my life

mumbling “load-bearing blast radius” in my sleep

me an hour and a half in to a "30 minute" NYT recipe: 😡😡😡 (recipe prep times should be listed as the median time of user-reported values)

For me the game is starting to feel like: - I want a professional programmer sweating every line of the tools. I'm fine with them using AI, but I want them to inspect, understand, and own the results as if they hadn't - I want to use those vetted tools with AI; let the robot stack the blocks.

Here’s the thing — and I’ll be honest, because you’d want me to: it’s not just worth being precise about the shape of what landed, it’s that the precision itself is doing real work. That distinction is load-bearing. And I want to sit with that for a second, because it’s the part that matters.

soap opera voice: "as the infinite scrolls down our phone screens.... these are the days of our lives" ⏳

you do not need to replace any word online with "un-aliving". thank you for your attention to this matter

As developers learn what we can trust AI to do, it can feel tremendously freeing. We've been self-censoring our own ideas so hard for so long because most ideas were infeasible.

the biggest b.s. that brains ever pulled is that we can be simultaneously fine and not fine at the same time — a feelings double exposure. get it together brains! pick one!

I was asked to give a Convocation talk at my alma mater @carleton.edu This is quite intimidating, as genuinely Big Fish people have spoken—like Senator Obama, who spoke when I was a student. (I skipped his. 😅) I said yes because exciting, but no idea what to talk about. What would be interesting?

an endangered piping plover

hadn't gone more than 30 meters down the trail this morning when we spotted a scarlet tanager (I wish I had a nicer lens, or had a way of getting closer, or both!)

a whole family of common yellowthroat warblers here on Martha's Vineyard

I'm a few houses down the road from the place David Lilienthal bought in late 1948. I'm reading volume 2 of his journals, which opens the day after America dropped the first atomic bomb. This paragraph on atomic energy brings to mind some questions we might ask today about artificial intelligence.

"dad, can we do a photoshoot?"

morning visitors (bluebird, flycatcher, downy woodpecker, cowbird)

breakfast in a hotel in Norway: fresh bread, yogurt, handmade chocolate, fruit, coffee, tea, five kinds of cheese, four kinds of pickles, three kinds of fish, two kinds of cake breakfast in a hotel in America: variously shaped carbs, sausage product, eggs poured from a box

clutching ferociously to the true meaning of "literally" until they metaphorically pull it from my cold, dead hands

even though 8th graders stopped going to school almost 2 weeks ago, my loyal, sentimental, devoted daughter wanted to go to the very last day of 8th grade first day of kindergarten / last day of 8th grade 😭

went to the dentist yesterday, or as I've started to think of it, "the judgement chair"

large swaths of Star Wars are a great example of how having people's understanding and attention is more valuable than doing a good job

trying on a new avatar from last week's magical trip to Oslo. I ran up through a public art park near the city; didn't have a camera of my own but my host Martin snapped me exploring this light and sound installation in the forest 🤩 I would love to see it at night, and already dreaming of going back