sandspar

If someone says that they can't get a camera to work, you tell them how to fix it, right? I can't think of what other response is appropriate.

"Progress by crashing into things then putting the broken pieces back together" is surprisingly effective.

Her job is dependent on being likeable to a mass audience. If you want to be likeable to a mass audience then it's most effective to repeat bromides.

Her essay makes it seem like she's mostly powerless. She gets shuttled around from place to place because other people make money by using her as a prop. She gets paid lots of money and is given freedom, in a sense, but it's freedom to gorge herself on basic pleasures like attention, drugs, and wealth. Overall it seems like a childlike existence.

Breaking an ankle bracelet and fleeing an international manhunt is a risky endeavour! Although I suppose world leaders tend to be risk takers. "I deserve the top job, and I'm going to scratch and claw my way to get it" isn't exactly a well-balanced thought.

Having social power is like owning a gun. Yes it's nice to have it and not use it. But there's often a temptation to use it. And if you use it incorrectly then someone can get hurt.

You spend years honing your skill with a weapon and then you stop using it.

The hard part is feeling like your weapon isn't being used. But you need to accept that disuse can be good. Otherwise you end up hurting people.

Basically, don't treat people like toys.

The author's next step will probably be to find places where he can go at full speed. Perhaps grief counseling, the clergy, hospice visits, or something along those lines.

Apropos, from a book I read long ago and have forgotten, except for this passage:

"Prior to the twentieth century, when life spans were shorter, a shepherd might have known hundreds of songs, poems, and stories and several languages, how to play several musical instruments, tan leather, make butter, dry and preserve meat, build a shelter, and prepare the dead for burial."

There is so much potential in all of us!

Thank you for proving my point.

Every American conservative knows the feeling of being at work and your liberal coworkers, not knowing you're conservative, start going on a rant about how terrible Republicans are and how stupid they are and how they all deserve jail etc.

In America today, liberals feel very comfortable speaking about their views in public. Conservatives don't.

You must have the most English name imaginable!

I haven't found this to be true. For marriage, sure, pick someone close to you. But I've found that IQ is mostly irrelevant for friendship. Character and compatibility matter more than IQ.

I've noticed that many smart people have never learned how to enjoy spending time in mixed-IQ settings. I feel a bit sorry for smart people who were raised with smart parents and smart siblings and smart friends etc. I find their perspectives very limited.

In "The Conquest of Happiness", Bertrand Russell wrote that, all else being equal, the man who enjoys eating strawberries has a happier life than the man who dislikes strawberries.

I feel that way about AI haters like the author. She spends lots of time feeling "disgust", "skin crawling", "the ick". Meanwhile people who are fine with AI are feeling happy emotions. There's so much to look forward to!

Just seems like a glass half full/half empty thing.

I think the Job To Be Done of dating apps is "kill time on the couch". Dating apps aren't competing with speed dating; they're competing with Bejeweled. Basically dating apps are to love as Duolingo is to learning a language.

The article suggests that 2-3% of people have aphantasia.

Many people with aphantasia skip descriptive passages when reading books.

>Does anyone watch mainstream media?

Many people over 60 (i.e. the people who vote) watch nothing but.

The subreddit r/MyBoyfriendIsAI has 37,000 subscribers. And in the fantasy and science fiction section of big chain bookstores, 90% of the titles are porn for women. Women are absolutely the target market for text porn.

>Politics is everything

This will sound rude but I'm trying to be sincere. You might want to take a break from social media. It sounds like you're neglecting your real life a little bit.

Thousands of indie games die on the vine for every one breakout. It's like saying you can make millions of dollars if your acting career takes off.

User: list crafts that software has automated

GPT-5: Typesetting and paste-up, film prepress/stripping, CMYK color separations, halftone screening, darkroom compositing/masking, airbrush photo retouching, optical film compositing/titling, photochemical color timing, architectural hand drafting, cartographic scribing and map lettering, music engraving, comic book lettering, fashion pattern grading and marker making, embroidery digitizing and stitching, screen-print color separations

AI hatred is a shibboleth in western creative circles in 2025, but that doesn't mean it's wise or useful. It's also not universal (e.g. Chinese creatives are happily experimenting with AI). And the shibboleth may not last as AI improves. Most people will eventually adapt; those who don't adapt will drop out and disappear from the conversation.

I think humans are information-eaters, basically. Short-form video is a highly efficient way to consume information.

I think that HackerNews is full of old techie greybeards, whereas Liquid Glass is designed for Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Young people tend to like things that wiggle and bounce around and so on. If I were Apple then I'd say hmm, we still want to be around 20 years from now. So let's design for young people.

I think that would be considered a huge compliment in the "Gen-Z designer" scene that many of Apple's designers probably inhabit.

Erdos is awesome but he's so singular that I think his exception makes the rule.

Awesome. I like how fitness snowballs. Once you develop a decent body, it feels like a shame to eat bad food. And so on. It's like a guy who has a beat up car, doesn't like the way it looks, so doesn't take care of it - then buys a nice car, likes how it looks, so starts taking care of it. Staying fit becomes easier and easier.

Sora 2 is a lot of fun. Using it feels like a glimpse into the future. The last time I felt this was with the Sesame voice demo.

Looking through Google's ad platform recently, I was struck by how searches like "how to become a game developer" have tens of thousands of searches per month and $50 CPC, whereas technical searches like "level design in Unity" have ~ a couple hundred searches per month. The basic shape of the market is hordes of people clamoring to "become" a game dev, shady schools selling introductory courses for tens of thousands of dollars, and very few people doing actual work.

Check large chains like Indigo Books in Vancouver - Gibson lives there.

One of Picasso's acquaintances said that he would suck people's energy. When you hung out with him, you'd leave his presence feeling emotionally drained and frazzled. And the more Picasso drained you, the more enlarged he himself seemed to feel. It was like he stole people's energy and used it as fuel.

I heard that anecdote ten years ago and can never get it out of my mind.