Federico Pereiro’s Being Fat is a Trap is, I think, a great piece of advice. Way more people than I wish who are close to me are struggling with eating disorders of all kinds, so I’m sensible about the topic. This sentence, in particular, rings true in an aching way: Judging people inside the fat trap just intensifies their misery and reduces the odds they can get out of it.
Knowing when to leave might be more important than knowing when to show up. – kupajo in When to Leave
Today’s Armin Ronacher’s AI Changes Everything strongly resonates with me1. I may not be using Claude Code as a daily driver as he now does, but I’ve slowly and steadily introduced large language models (LLMs) into my routine, and I’m reaping the benefits. It wasn’t the purpose of his article, but I wish Armin had gone into the details of how, why, and when he delegates tasks to Claude Code. Update: Armin later a follow-up. ...
In Moving On, Simone Silvestroni recounts how he moved away from the Apple ecosystem. It’s a move I’ve been contemplating for some time. Like Simone, I use Linux at work daily so that the task wouldn’t be too much of a stretch, but I’m probably too lazy (or too old) to execute it.
Run Your Own AI by Anthony Lewis is a concise tutorial on how to run large language models on your laptop from the command line via llm-mlx. It focuses on Macs M-series, but it’s also suitable for other hardware. Saving it here for a friend.
I just finished reading Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy1. On this occasion, I discovered a new use for ChatGPT and LLMs. ChatGPT and I chatted about the themes, especially the correlations and connections between the three short novels that comprise the volume. It was an alienating and revealing experience. For the first time, I am reasoning about a book with a machine, not a person. Because it knows everything about the text and draws on the shared global knowledge, it can give more satisfaction than most people do (also, it’s not easy to find someone around with whom I can talk about all the books I read!) Yes, it is wordy and repetitive, but it can stimulate and enrich my analysis2. ...
Kara Swisher, a dean in digital and classical journalism, has an interesting article in the New York Magazine. As a witness and protagonist she recounts how in the last 30 years digital has eaten away at traditional media and how today, with the advent of AI, there is a risk of it happening all over again. Above all, she reasons why it is essential for journalists not to surrender their weapons and lawmakers to step in and finally harness an industry that always had free reign and no regulation, as it is considered inevitable. ...
Why does man print “gimme gimme gimme” at 00:30? The maintainer of man is a good friend of mine, and one day six years ago I jokingly said to him that if you invoke man after midnight it should print “gimme gimme gimme”, because of the Abba song called “Gimme gimme gimme a man after midnight”. Well, he did actually put it in. A few people were amused to discover it, and we mostly forgot about it until today. ...
I never knew about the connection between Ray Bradbury, John Huston, and Herman Melville. Today, few people are aware that Bradbury, renowned science fiction writer, beloved fantasist, and mainstay on banned-book lists, wrote the screenplay for the 1956 John Huston adaptation of the Melville classic, which starred Gregory Peck as the iconic and obsessive Captain Ahab. Writing the screenplay was a dream come true for Bradbury, until it morphed into a waking nightmare. As the old adage goes: Never meet your heroes. ...
I admit, like many of my compatriots in this last year and a half, I follow a lot more tennis than usual, and it is all the fault (or merit) of Jannick Sinner. The top-level pro tennis field appears distant, privileged, brilliant and rewarding. We appreciate the immense talent of these players and sympathize with the struggle and stress they undergo. We praise their character, determination, and mental strength. They make a lot of money, so we infer they conduct fulfilling and satisfying lives. Most fans, however, ignore how crowded, harsh, lonely, and unapologetic professional players’ lives are below the elite. ...