I see now that tech executives are once again warning about risk of human extinction caused by AI.
I think it’s adorable when the plutes worry about that kind of thing, while the rest of us worry about paying for healthcare, food, and housing.
More than 30 million Americans are living below the poverty line. And 40% of Americans were having difficulty paying for normal household expenses.. That’s scary.
AI is only scary to the extent that it will be an excuse to put more people out of work.
I woke up this morning and decided to break up with the novel I’m currently reading. This is a new thing for me; I recently decided to start more books and quit reading more books when they’re not working for me.
I’m not finding that resolution easy. A part of me feels compelled to finish a book once I start, as if failure to complete was wasteful, like not eating all the food on my plate. But of course, that’s ridiculous, and quitting reading a book that isn’t working opens up time to read something I might enjoy more.
The book I’m quitting is “Cetaganda,” by Lois McMaster Bujold. It’s part of her Vorkosigan series of novels. These are far-future science fiction about a hero named Miles Vorkosigan. Miles is the son of one of the most powerful men on the planet Barrayar, scion of a warrior caste. Miles’s father was one of the greatest warriors and statesmen of Barrayan history, who saved the planet after a revolution and coup against the rightful Emperor, and then ruled as regent.
But Miles is not his father; he’s disabled, short and frail, with a rare medical condition that makes his bones fragile and easily breakable. He’s also brilliant, hyperactive, a wise-ass, and prone to getting himself into trouble and thinking himself out of it. The books have an enthusiastic fandom and won a lot of awards.
But I always find myself having to push through the middle of the Vorkosigan books, and in the case of “Cetaganda,” it’s too much pushing.
The Vorkosigan stories are mysteries of one kind or another: murders to be solved, spy plots to be uncovered, military capers to be executed. The plots are intricate. I think the books are meant to be read quickly, over two or three days at most. I read books slowly, over weeks or months, and I get confused about what’s going on in the Vorkosigan novels and who’s who.
The books were written in the 90s, and they already seem a little dated.
Julie went to school with Bujold, though they were not close. And here’s an interesting Wikipedia bit: Bujold’s inspirations for Miles include T.E. Lawrence, a young Winston Churchill, a disabled hospital pharmacist she once worked with, “and even herself (the ‘great man’s son syndrome’).” I’ll have to ask Julie what, if anything, she knows about Bujold’s father.
I may come back to Miles Vorkosigan. But not today.
So what should I read next? I think I’m going to stick with series novels. I like series. Once you find a series you like, they’re reliable, familiar, and comfortable. Here’s what I’m thinking:
Blood Work, Michael Connelly’s seventh novel. Connelly primarily writes about Harry Bosch, an LAPD detective, but he also writes novels about other characters, and this character is new to me, Terry McCaleb, an ex-FBI agent retired on medical disability.
Robert B. Parker’s Little White Lies is not, despite the title, by Parker, but instead by Ace Atkins. It’s a novel about Boston private detective Spenser (first name never revealed), who Parker invented and wrote about in dozens of books until Parker died in 2010. Then Atkins was hired by Parker’s estate to continue the series.
The Parker novels meant a lot to me. I read them in my 20s, and they were the last books I read in a period of my life where I drew role models from fiction, which started in childhood. I looked to fictional characters as I tried to figure out how to live life, and Spenser was the last of those for me.
Also, I fell in love with Boston by reading the Spenser books and taking frequent business trips to that city. I moved there in 1992 and decided I wouldn’t say I liked it after all, but I met Julie there, and we moved together to California and got married.
So the Spenser books are a big deal for me.
Ace Atkins has done a surprisingly good job continuing the Spenser series. His first four books are good but could be better, but he gets going with the fifth, Slow Burn. I’ve read other series where a living author tried to pick things up from an original author who died, and they don’t quite work out; Atkins shows that it can succeed.
Slow Burn isn’t Parker’s Spenser; it’s a collaboration between the two writers (one of whom happens to be not living anymore).
Those are the leading contenders for what I’ll read next. Others on the candidate list:
I’ll probably go with the Connelly, but it’ll be hours and hours and hours until I decide, and who knows where the world will take me in that distant future of later today?
What great books have you read recently?
I have an expanse of blank white wall behind my desk, which always bugs me when I see myself on Zoom calls. This has been a stone in my shoe for three years since videoconferencing became commonplace. I’m jealous when I see other people have excellent backgrounds for their Zoom calls.
A friend suggested I just get a couple of guitars and put them behind me. “But I don’t play guitar,” I said. “Doesn’t matter,” my friend said. “Anybody asks, you just make a sad face and say, ‘Oh, I just don’t have time to play anymore.’”
I found a local shop that sells movie posters, with a focus on midcentury grindhouse horror movies. Having a poster for “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” hanging behind me for business meetings would definitely send a message.
Mimestream is a native Mac app for accessing Gmail. It gives you Gmail’s advanced capabilities, including Priority Inbox, categories, and labels, in an app that looks and works like a native Mac app.
The alternatives to Mimestream are Gmail’s web interface, which I find cluttered, or native Mac mail apps, which look and work like Mac apps should but don’t give you all of Gmail’s capabilities.
Mimestream has been in beta and free to use for years. I’ve been using Mimestream for most of that time. Now, Mimestream exits beta and gets a few juicy new features for organizing multiple accounts, muting some accounts at scheduled times (for example, if you’d like to mute your work account during personal time), configuring filters and more. Templates with variables will be useful for people who repeatedly send versions of the same email, such as customer support. And a menu bar extra lets you check to see what’s new without opening the app.
Other features of Mimestream: Support for Markdown formatting, Google calendar responses, Google Contacts integration, mentioning colleagues to bring them into the conversation, and syncing with Gmail signatures. More here.
Mimestream is a fast app. With it, I can fly through my email quickly, with minimal hassle. I’ve been using Gmail for more than 15 years, and there are still aspects of that interface I find confusing. That’s not a problem with Mimestream.
I’ve liked using Mimestream and will gladly pay for it. Pricing is US$49.99/year or $4.99/mo. Beta users, like me get 50% off for the first year. $25 is a reasonable price for a year of an app I use all day, every workday.
People who are only occasional Gmail users looking for an alternative to the Gmail Web interface might be happy just sticking with built-in Apple Mail, which is free with your (expensive) Mac. In the past, Apple Mail was unreliable with Gmail, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem lately.
Mimestream was founded by Neil Jhaveri, a software engineer who worked at Apple 7½ years, leading and managing engineering teams working on Mail and Notes. According to the product roadmap, the company is working on expanding Mimestream beyond Gmail to support other mail services, including Microsoft Outlook. They're also working on iPad and iPhone versions of Mimestream.
I’ve got an interview with a VP at a major vendor that I followed closely while at Light Reading but haven’t paid much attention to since. It’s for an article I’m doing on that company’s overall strategy.
I’m diving into some background to prepare for the interview, and I decided to start my research with ChatGPT. I asked: “What are some questions I can ask COMPANY-NAME about its overall strategy.” (I used the company name, which I’m redacting here.) ChatGPT had the following suggestions:
Can you tell me more about COMPANY’s current strategic priorities?
Who do you see as your competitors?
How does COMPANY differentiate itself from competitors in the industry?
Can you speak to any recent acquisitions or partnerships COMPANY has made, and how they fit into the company’s overall strategy?
How does COMPANY approach innovation and staying ahead of emerging technologies?
Can you discuss any challenges or opportunities you see on the horizon for COMPANY?
How does COMPANY prioritize and approach sustainability and corporate social responsibility?
Can you speak to COMPANY’s approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion within the company and in the broader industry?
How does COMPANY work with customers to understand and meet their needs?
Can you discuss any recent or upcoming product releases that you’re particularly excited about?
How does COMPANY approach talent acquisition and development, and what opportunities are there for employees to grow and advance within the company?
These are damn good questions. They’re generic—not specific to the company or even the tech industry—but helpful. This is a list of questions to get me started, and I’ll continue to work on them and polish them before the interview begins. A few questions are missing, but there are also a few I would not have thought to ask.
I’ve been using chat AI for a week now, and this is what I’m finding: It doesn’t do creative work, but it’s great as an assistant. Kevin Kelly said it’s like having an intelligent intern helping you out, and I think that’s a good metaphor.
Everything ChatGPT says is unreliable. Everything. It will all need to be verified.
I treat it like a source that’s plugged in to gossip. I’m used to dealing with those. They’re great, but you have to use the information right.
I ran this post through Grammarly after writing it, and Grammarly suggested corrections to phrasing in ChatGPT’s questions. One AI is now correcting another AI!
Seems like almost anybody thinking about buying one of the big iPads would be better off with a MacBook Air.
For most people, the 12.9” iPad is an ungainly platypus, neither mammal nor bird.
The only people who seem like they’d want the 12.9” iPad would be graphic artists and other people who really, really need that big display and touchscreen and Pencil support.
The 12.9” iPad is too big and heavy to be as portable as the smaller iPads. You can’t hold that 12.9” iPad in your hands for long, unless you’re Andre the Giant. And iPad OS isn’t as versatile as MacOS.
I have an 11-inch iPad Air with a Folio keyboard that I use as a mini-laptop when I want something like that, and I have an iPad mini that I use every day for reading and social media.
Honestly, I’d probably be happier with a MacBook Air than with the iPad Air, but I can’t justify the expense of buying a new MacBook right now.
Truthfully, the iPad mini was a foolish purchase, as I already had the iPad Air. But, still, I’m glad I bought the mini, because it’s my primary iPad now.
When I was a little kid, I watched old black-and-white reruns of Superman, Abbott & Costello, and particularly John Astin in The Addams Family, and thought to myself, damn, those guys looked sharp. Particularly the double-breasted suits.
Well, Lou Costello didn’t look sharp. But Bud Abbot? Sure. A good suit made even Abbott look good.
That feeling continues to this day.
We’ve been watching a few 1930s-50s movies, including the first couple of Thin Man movies (1930s), “My Man Godfrey” (1936), and just this weekend, “Executive Suite” (1954). And I think: Why don’t men dress like that anymore?
Why do we all go around dressed like hobos and toddlers?
And then a couple of days ago, I thought, you know, I could just buy a vintage suit.
I don’t know where I would wear it.
We watched “Murder Mystery,” a 2019 comedy-mystery starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston as married couple Nick and Audrey Spitz, a New York cop, and a hairdresser. On a flight to Europe for a bus-tour vacation, she strikes up a friendship with a dapper gentleman on the plane. The dapper gentleman spontaneously invites the New Yorkers to join him for a celebration on his billionaire uncle’s yacht. On the yacht, someone is murdered, and the Spitzes are the prime suspects.
It is an oddly old-fashioned movie. The gags all depend on the premise that the Spitzes are amiable lower-class shmos in a world of elegant toffs. We’re at an Agatha Christie murder mystery on a yacht, but instead of Hercule Poirot, our heroes are Oscar Madison and Laverne from Laverne & Shirley. Even the names Nick and Audrey Spitz seem to echo Nick and Nora Charles. I particularly liked the wardrobes—Sandler in baggy cargo shorts surrounded by men and women in tailored evening wear, Aniston in her outfits from Target (not Marshalls—she’s very clear on that point!).
The movie clocks in at 97 minutes, the ideal length for a movie, and ends in a lovely car chase through European streets.
You will like this movie very much if this sounds like the kind of movie you’d like. It is, and we did. 🎥
My father received these humorous fake orders when he was discharged from the army in 1945, the end of the war.
I found this document while doing some decluttering in my home office yesterday. The paper is brown with age and fragile to the touch. It’s apparently typed and mimeographed.
The document is written in the style of a military memo, instructing the men how to behave when they get back home to civilian life.
In America there are a remarkable number of beautiful girls. These young ladies have not been liberated and many are gainfully employed as stenographers, sales girls, beauty specialists, and welders. Contrary to current practices, they should not be approached with, “How much?” A proper greeting is, “Isn’t it a lovely day!” or “Have you ever been to Chicago?” Then ask, “How much?”
My father served in Burma, which is now Myanmar. I think he also did some time in Taiwan. When he was discharged, he was 21 years old. I think he served several years. A kid from Brooklyn. My father’s native habitat was the New York suburbs; I cannot imagine him in tropical Asia.
I found this document when I was a teenager in the 1970s, investigating the garage of our house on Long Island. I found it again while going through my Dad‘s papers after he passed in 2004. After that, the document disappeared into the clutter of my home office for nearly 20 years until I was decluttering this week, and the papers turned up again.
I have friends who used to go see movies at random. They caught movies the first days the movies were released before they saw trailers or ads or reviews. They would go to a theater, buy a ticket, and see whatever was playing. One of these friends based decisions on movie posters, and solely the posters. Another would drive to the multiplex and see the next movie that was playing after he got out of the car.
Having just seen “John Wick” and “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” I get the appeal of that system. The first half hour of both of those movies are very different from what comes later, and it would have been a delightful surprise to see all that spool out without expectations.
The first half hour of “Everything Everywhere” looks like an arty family drama about a middle-aged woman who’s estranged from her daughter and husband and struggling to save the family business. No science fiction or fantastic elements at all.
In the first half hour or so of “John Wick,” you don’t know he’s a super-hitman. You first get an idea when John Leguizamo recognizes the car. We’ve already seen those Russian young men are extremely dangerous, but John Leguizamo is more afraid of John Wick than of the Russians. We don’t discover John Wick’s full story until Viggo confronts his son.
Back to “Everything Everywhere:” A great thing about that movie is that it really is primarily an arty family drama about a middle-aged woman who’s estranged from her daughter and husband and who is struggling to save the family business. The science fiction serves that story. Saving the multiple universes is the B-plot. 🎥
