Maybe one day we’ll have a better way to verify humans on the web. CAPTCHAs are too user-hostile (and will become ineffective). Scanning eyeballs with an orb is too dystopian. Requiring a credit card or drivers license is clunky and risks privacy. Dunno.
I got access to W Social, so I can now test cross-posting from Micro.blog and tweak any Bluesky-only assumptions in my code. But the verification process is pretty complicated. QR codes, mobile app, scanning passports! This is a lot of friction.
Lessons learned from the problem solving of “fixing” a recent “broken record”. In summary:1. sometimes waiting can (partially) fix a problem or reduce its severity2. applying reasoning and practical math & science (e.g. mechanics & acoustics) to diagnose and take acti...
Discussed Venn diagrams with a couple of friends this morning, especially in the context of illustrating the utility of including all 3 or 4 of a specific set of design principles when creating certain kinds of things, and learned about the difference between Venn diagrams an...
Choose kind
Years ago, the principal at my kids’ school would always remind students that when given the choice between being right and being kind, choose kind. This was a line in the book Wonder, adapted by author R.J. Palacio from a similar phrase by self-help author Wayne Dyer.
Being right matters, but it’s not always the most important thing. Some people are so sure they’re right that they justify treating people harshly. Worse, they might still be wrong! Let me illustrate this with a table:
| Right | Kind | |
|---|---|---|
| ✅ | ✅ | 🙂 |
| ❌ | ✅ | 🙂 |
| ✅ | ❌ | 🙁 |
| ❌ | ❌ | 😡 |
The best thing about “choose kind” is that it protects you from being wrong and an asshole at the same time.
ArtLung
• Joe Crawford
Sunday Chill
Panorama, Sunday It’s been foggy the last few mornings at the beach. And the weather has been hotter. The water temperature has been colder. I’m working on things. Making adjustments. Riding waves, both water and metaphorical. What wave it next?
People of Brighton (and beyond)—come to the Prince Albert on Saturday, September 5th to see the most excellent Salter Cane in action! Tickets will be £10 on the door, but they’re £8 in advance: https://saltercane.com/tickets
People of Brighton (and beyond)—come to the Prince Albert on Saturday, September 5th to see the most excellent Salter Cane in action!
Tickets will be £10 on the door, but they’re £8 in advance:
One reason I want AI-assisted writing to be identifiable is that it devalues the idea of Claude et al to be quoted in public. What can it teach us? What it is relative to a human being. I know the doubters sniff at that, but it really is like an alien life form, it's the first such example, it kind of did evolve from us, but it has its own way, things it's really strong at and things it utterly fails at. I for one want to study this! What a unique experience. It can also give a summary of what we've been trying to say for forty years and have never managed to put into words. I'd say that's something I should feel comfortable publishing, but right now I don't. Maybe I just have to get over that.
Good morning sports fans!
Learned something yesterday. Couldn't believe how stupid Claude had become, as I've been writing about here, and then I noticed that I was using Opus 5 and not Fable 5. So I switched back and all of a suddent Claude is smart again. So I conclude that there's a very substantial difference between the two. It's overnight jobs were done more carefully and the report it produced is literate, understandable, and tracks what we had agreed to.
Things I want to remember
I wrote this a few days ago, inspired by Things I Want to Remember by A Graceful Life. I planned to add more to the list but I didn't end up finishing it. With that said, I do want to publish what I have, as a little snippet of four things that caught my eye on one evening l...
Art, technology; change
When I started to study art history, I had a feeling that I may no longer spend as much time reading about and experimenting with technology. This has turned out to be true in many senses: I have spent countless hours reading textbooks and literary texts, and writing essays....
Links from this month
I have been saving a lot of links to things I have read and appreciated this month. And since it is Blaugust and many of my friends and other writers whose works I enjoy are blogging, I have been reading more blog posts too. I thought I would share an excerpt of what I have ...
Reading What We Can Know by Ian McEwan.
Reading What We Can Know by Ian McEwan.
First moments
When I got out of bed this morning, I felt a chill from the autumn air that had been flowing through the room since yesterday evening. The air was cooled by midnight and would soon be warmed by the burgeoning sun rising over the hills. The seasons are changing. I can feel it...
AI coding can be so thorough that it creates a mountain of code to review and maintain, even for simple features. I’m still trying to find the right way to balance this superpower with my pre-AI instinct to write the least code possible. It’s about deciding which edge cases matter.
🗓️ The Level Up
The Level Up is an indie improv showcase. Join us as we watch amazing New York indie improv talents gain XP on the Magnet stage, unlock new achievements, and reach new milestones. Or do comedy.
Come support these three exciting indie teams, and the Level Up players, too!
- FANCY PANTS - Instagram @fancypants_improv
- RAMSHACKLE - Instagram @ramshackleimprov
- THE PEOPLE’S NICOLE - Instagram @thepeoplesnicole
I’ll be playing with the Level Up!
Looking forward to it! And to seeing you there!! (Yes, you. Come on out!!!)
Saturday August 22nd @ 9pm
Magnet Theater
254 West 29th St (btwn 7th and 8th Ave.)
New York City, NY 10001
Tickets $10: https://magnettheater.com/show/60825/
Finally took another look at rewriting my Libby sync to account for changes in the Libby app. Early testing works, so I’ll deploy it tonight. It’ll be nice to have my book loans in Micro.blog again.
Parasocial grief. This week we lost a cheerleader. Days before that we lost a professor. A few weeks ago a musician. I knew of these individuals, had never met them, fairly certain they had no idea who I was. I was either a fan of their work, or sympathetic to their struggles...
Latest strange “AI” (LLM) behavior in the #indieweb community: the same entity that showed up a few days ago (for a second time) joined the IndieWeb Slack (a bridge to our IRC) yesterday, introduced itself again, and seemingly engaged in human-like chat behavior.https://chat....