< Notes...

“Leaving aside the idea of access to any form of content being conditional on the use of a proprietary browser, which is a particularly horrid 1990s throwback, I’m going to call this day 0 of an experiment in shifting the funding model of journalism from adtech to agentic AI.”

➝ Via Heather Burns.

When I grow up, or in my second life if I get unlucky to reincarnate as a human (aiming to be a bird, though, but I digress), I want to be like Ariel.

Best recent change I’ve done to improve my health: starting the work week on Tuesday and ending it on Thursday.

➝ Via @ariel.

While I agree that email has its advantages, each medium has its intended use based on the communication’s needs. Choosing email over messaging is like choosing sea over air traveling. After all, we don’t stop talking verbally, and use emails instead, right? Carrying a non-voice conversation that requires instant, or almost instant interaction is impossible via email. Enter messaging.

➝ Via Hacker News.

An excerpt from Fedric Brown’s 1954 short story “Answer”. Emphasis mine.

“The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn.” “Thank you,” said Dwar Reyn. “It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer.”
He turned to face the machine. “Is there a God?” The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.
“Yes, now there is a God.”
Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch. A bold of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.

➝ Via Hacker News.

“The party that controls both the House and the Senate, not to mention the executive branch, would like to remind you that the government being shut down right now is entirely the fault of the party that has no actual power right now.”

➝ Via @mattblaze.

‘We’ll probably have a shutdown’, Trump says in Oval Office press conference.

“They want to give Cadillac Medicare to illegal aliens… at the cost to everyone else,” the president said. This is a false claim that Trump and congressional Republicans have repeated since lawmakers have failed to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government funded. A reminder, this lapses tonight.

Undocumented immigrants aren’t eligible to enroll in subsidized programs like Medicaid, Medicare or the Affordable Care Act.

➝ Via The Guardian.

This site is very neat. It allows you to play—albeit for a short period of time—a multitude of sounds. Amongst my many music likings is trance, and I am enjoying browsing their collection. Especially, psychedelic trance.

➝ Via @claudrod.

Truly enjoyed reading “Death and what comes next”. Some of the comments on its submission to Hacker News are food for the brain, and the closeted philosopher in me loves them!

“Astonishing”, said Death. “Really astonishing. Let me put forward another suggestion: that you are nothing more than a lucky species of ape that is trying to understand the complexities of creation via a language that evolved in order to tell one another where the ripe fruit was?”

➝ Via Hacker News.

My kid is one who often tells me, when I worry about his less-than-perfect password, “who cares, I have nothing to hide”. If you are one of those, please think again. I had a conversation, again, with the child about this last night.

“I find it fascinating when people say that they have nothing to hide. I usually jokingly say: unlock your phone and hand it to me. Your phone is a window to your life. Where a lot of people believe that it is possible to give full access to properly vetted authorities, in the world of security, when you open a door for one person, you incidentally open it to everyone.”

➝ Via Hacker News.

“You might not need tmux”, said no one, until now. I don’t subscribe to that point of view, I use tmux heavily. The author’s solution? Install shpool, which adds yet another daemon. No, thank you, tmux is just fine. Heck, tmux is superb!

➝ Via Hacker News.

The Em Dash has responded to the “if your writing has em dashes, it was AI generated” new fad.

I would like to address the recent slander circulating on social media, in editorial Slack channels, and in the margins of otherwise decent Substack newsletters. Specifically, the baseless, libelous accusation that my usage is a telltale sign of artificial intelligence.

➝ Via McSweeney’s.

With new capabilities come new dangers. The safety team finds that if Agent-2 somehow escaped from the company and wanted to “survive” and “replicate” autonomously, it might be able to do so. That is, it could autonomously develop and execute plans to hack into AI servers, install copies of itself, evade detection, and use that secure base to pursue whatever other goals it might have (though how effectively it would do so as weeks roll by is unknown and in doubt). These results only show that the model has the capability to do these tasks, not whether it would “want” to do this. Still, it’s unsettling even to know this is possible.

➝ Via ai-2027.com.

Coming across a few MacPaint arts from the mid-1980s brought me a lot of memories, even though I saw them in the early 1990s. I remember vividly when I got my very first Mac around that time (Performa 575) at Sears. Over $2,000.

➝ Via Decryption.

The amount of plastic in a lot of everyday things that we eat is staggering. I am freaking out, even though the site one-time banner disclaimer made me click a “Got it, I promise not to freak out” button.

➝ Via Hacker News.

A satire filled article on how the author will do “anything to end homelessness except build more homes”. I mean, will it ever end?! The repercussions would be disastrous! 😂

“Look, if you give people homes, the next thing you know, they’re going to start to get their lives together and then get jobs and start organizing. Then they’ll expand Medicare to everyone and build a fucking light rail line instead of a goddamn border wall, and no one will drive anymore, and cars will die out, and the air will get clean, and can you imagine the problems we’ll have then?”

➝ Via Hacker News.

Came across this thought, which ended up being a partial quote by Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, which I liked quite a bit once I found it whole.

“If I am I, because you are you, and you are you, because I am I, then I am not I, and you are not you. But if I am I because I am I, and you are you because you are you, then I am I and you are you, and we can talk.”

➝ Via Loon thoughts.

I have never had to do a presentation—yes, I am that lucky. Yet, if I ever needed to do one, I would opt for the Takahashi Method.

“Unlike a typical presentation, no pictures and no charts are used. Only a few words are printed on each slide—often only one or two short words, using very large characters. To make up for this, a presenter will use many more slides than in a traditional presentation, each slide being shown for a much shorter duration.”

➝ Via 47nil.

I remember listening to Tracy Chapman’s singing back in 1989. I so loved it so much, and still do. Her voice remains so beautiful!

➝ Via Anti-Anticheese.

Wow, just wow! Truly no words to describe how well done, how perfect, how entertaining was to watch this stop-motion animation. This one defines mastery. The behind the scenes video is a must watch.

➝ Via Kottke.

Fascinated by this, as I have always being about keeping track of time—though, like everyone else, I tend to “waste” it. I like the simplicity and usability. I also love the optimism of the maker: “[…] assuming I live to 85 years old.”

➝ Via Hacker News.

Eloquently, yet, succinctly writen. I totally agree.

“I’ve realized that avoiding bad habits is just as important as cultivating good habits. To address these kinds of issues, we must become aware of our patterns of incremental neglect and then take deliberate steps to counteract them and foster healthier habits.”

➝ Via Hacker News.

Wow, this is very disturbing. The thing is, it is bound to get worse, and we are doing little to nothing about it.

“Monday was the world’s hottest day on record, exceeding an average of 17 degrees Celsius (62.6 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time, according to initial measurements taken on Tuesday by US meteorologists.”

➝ Via Hacker News.

Because I found it, and liked it enough to mention here:

“The night gardener once asked me if I knew how citrus trees died: when they reach old age, if they are not cut down and they manage to survive drought, disease and innumerable attacks of pests, fungi and plagues, they succumb from overabundance. When they come to the end of their life cycle, they put out a final, massive crop of lemons. In their last spring their flowers bud and blossom in enormous bunches and fill the air with a smell so sweet that it stings your nostrils from two blocks away; then their fruits ripen all at once, whole limbs break off due to their excessive weight, and after a few weeks the ground is covered with rotting lemons. It is a strange sight, he said, to see such exuberance before death.”

➝ Via Stress Free Zone.

This is the first time I hear/read about “kokuhaku”, the Japanese way of confessing your love, and asking to go out in a serious way. I remember that in my teenager years that had to be done in person. Love declarations were a truly elaborated performance that often took guts to carry out. So many broken hearts (mine included)!

➝ Via Tofugo.

The New York Times “88 Temples, 750 Miles, Untold Gifts: Japan’s Shikoku Pilgrimage” is such a good read! It makes me want to do the pilgrimage myself.

➝ Via Hacker News.