Sir_Twist

This reminds me of this comment, which I feel is a somewhat unsatisfying explanation, given that despite these difficulties, Windows somehow makes it work.

I never understood what this app was about. TikTok (and I would argue most modern social media platforms) isn’t really about sharing things with friends, it’s about entertainment. Most people watch TikToks and YouTube videos because they are entertaining. Beyond the initial 2-3 minutes of novelty, what do AI generated videos really have to offer when there is no shortage of people making professional, high quality content on competing platforms?

> Our findings suggest that brain synaptic plasticity evolves over 3–5 weeks in healthy humans following daily intake of escitalopram. This is the first in vivo evidence to support the hypothesis of neuroplasticity as a mechanism of action for SSRIs in humans and it offers a plausible biological explanation for the delayed treatment response commonly observed in patients treated with SSRIs.

Read about this study in an article and I thought it was interesting. I’m not a doctor, and my understanding the topic is purely based on my reading about it for curiosity’s sake. But I’ve always been curious about how SSRI’s work and how they are, seemingly, still pretty mysterious. It is fascinating to me that we’ve managed to make something that (save for the roughly 30% of people for whom they have no effect) works, yet we don’t quite know why.

I also think the neuroplasticity hypothesis is really interesting, and makes me wonder about how these drugs may change the way someone thinks in general, outside the specific realm of depression / anxiety.

Output: I am thrilled to announce that I have successfully spearheaded a critical infrastructure upgrade by single-handedly managing the end-to-end replacement of a mission-critical illumination unit. By identifying a single point of failure and implementing a high-impact solution, I’ve ensured 100% uptime for environmental visibility and optimized workspace productivity. Always striving for continuous improvement and leading the way toward a brighter future! #Leadership #Innovation #Infrastructure #ProblemSolver

Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetry-news/65332/successfu...

This is an interesting acquisition given their rumored Echo Show / Nest Hub competitor (1). Maybe this is part of their (albeit flawed and delayed) attempt to revitalize the Siri branding under their Apple Intelligence marketing. When you have to say the exact right words to Siri, or else she will add “Meeting at 10” as an all day calendar event, people get frustrated, and that non-technical illusion of the “digital assistant” is lost. If this is the model of understanding Apple have of their customers’ perception of Siri, then maybe their thinking is that giving Siri more non-verbal personable capability could be a differentiating factor in the smart hub market, along with the LLM rebuild. I could also see this tying into some sort of strategy for the Vision Pro.

Now, whether this hypothetical differentiating factor is worth $2 billion, I’m not so sure on, but I guess time will tell.

https://www.macrumors.com/2025/11/05/apple-smart-home-hub-20...

I think two things can be true at once: that there are many good things to appreciate about the modern world, and that the concerns they are raising are legitimate. There is room to have a bit of empathy here.

I believe it is completely reasonable for an artist to want to share their work publicly on the Internet without fear of it being appropriated, and I wish there was a pragmatic way they could achieve this.

If I were an artist, and I made a painting and published it to a site which was then used to train an LLM, I would feel as though the AI company treated me disingenuously, regardless of competition or not. Intellectual property laws aside, I think there is a social contract being broken when a publicly shared work is then used without the artist's direct, explicit permission.

From what I understand, the basic purpose of a union is to give its members more collective negotiating power with the employer. Its purpose isn't to better serve the company, necessarily, but to give the employees a more effective means of having their needs met – if employees feel these needs aren't being met, negotiating and making an agreement collectively could be a more effective route. Its job is to change the power dynamic between employees and companies, in favor of the employees. If this is the case, and the NYTimes tech staff who are union members like the outcome unionizing has had, then how is it a bad solution? What would be a better alternative of meeting the employees' needs?

I recognize my understanding is probably incomplete; I write this comment not to defend this position on unions, but to learn why it may be wrong.

I can't speak for anyone else, so I will just speak for myself: I am a college student, and my normal experience is having to fight tooth and nail for capturing every deadline, every little detail - the actual "difficulty" of the class is not what makes it difficult for me. I have had to construct systems around my symptoms: an "inbox" notebook for deadlines, a complex to-do list system, a system of pages upon pages where I break down large tasks into smaller ones, because only then will it be possible to get them done. A sleep tracking notebook, a notebook for exercising, a time blocking journal, and so on. I manage to get by, and I get good grades, but every morning I wake up prepared for war. I am in a permanent state of playing blitz chess against my mind's most insatiable distractions - a hard problem to solve with a system, since the only thing making me use a system is myself. I don't use TikTok or any other social media, which has garnered more than a few odd looks from my friends over the years, but frankly I consider it completely necessary.

I don't think about my ADHD as a part of my identity, or a part of my personality. It is, however, a disorder. Unless the world magically reconstructs itself around these symptoms, this will continue to be the case, because I simply do not have the same abilities as the average person in any given task of attention or impulse. Of course, the "average person" doesn't really exist; everyone has their own issues, their own reasons to wake up prepared for war. Everyone has something going on that deeply concerns them, whether others know it or not. But, for me, ADHD would not make sense if it weren't a disorder. It is a constant disabling factor in my life. Given that ADHD is one of the most well-researched and scientifically demonstrated neurological conditions, I doubt it is going anywhere anytime soon. But my ADHD is not a normal way to interface with the world. It was never "solved" with positive reinforcement from teachers, nor is it restricted to the classroom. Such a fundamental issue is not solved with basic accommodations - there is no silver bullet against the monkey in my head.

All of that being said, this is just my own experience, and my own thinking. I'm sorry for the long wall of text, but a lot of these discussions take the person out of the disorder, and consider broad swaths of the population according to the commenters' personal sociological constructions of the world, so I wanted to contribute my own individual experience here.