I’ve been awake less than a half hour and already found I forgot to make overnight oats last night and my phone is only 7% charge. Does Monday have a reset button?
Corporate greed, not workers, is the cause of inflation. We know this because CEOs tell us:
Call me a conspiratorialist if you must. But when CEOs get on earnings calls and brag about how covid, war, and scare-stories about inflation let them hike their prices and rake in never-before-seen profit margins, I think it’s reasonable to blame inflation on greed, not on workers getting a couple of relief checks during the lockdown.
Amazingly, this is a controversial position!
Cory Doctorow: “Look at all the great stuff we lost because of inflation scare-talk: We swapped pandemic aid, new spending and minimum wage hikes for wage suppression and mass layoffs.”
“Insufficiently Caffeinated” would be a good name for a band.
“… when you refuse to learn why something weird is happening online and just stop and gawk at it, you miss what is always a more interesting story.” — Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day
A good rule, online and in the world.
Dave Winer: “As a user, I no longer want to have to visit five sites to see what’s new. I no longer want to have to copy/paste my writing into those same five sites." Preach it, Dave. I’m sick of that copy-pasting.
Ostromizing democracy: Cory Doctorow discusses a proposed new subdiscipline of political science, Analytic Democracy Theory, that studies collective decision-making—a/k/a “democracy”—and particularly how it goes wrong.
Also: Libertarians are claiming democracy never works because it doesn’t always work. And the myth of the Tragedy of the Commons and other anti-democratic misconceptions.
I used ChatGPT to do background research for an article
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!
A new study by researchers at Duke University looks at the bumpy rollout of AI in healthcare systems, and describes what it’ll take to make AI into a useful tool for healthcare providers.
Meanwhile, a study in JAMA Internal Medicine found that ChatGPT “decisively bested doctors at providing high-quality, empathic answers to medical questions people posed on the subreddit r/AskDocs.” The responses were judged by a panel of three physicians with relevant medical expertise.
(Ars Technica / Beth Mole)
Nature red of tooth and claw came to the backyard: I was hanging here at my desk doing my thing and I looked out the window and saw a big bird of prey on the ground. I think it was an osprey, perhaps one of the ones I’ve seen at the park. It was 18 inches to 2 feet high, with something brown and lumpy at its feet, which I took to be dinner.
I got out the Nikon, which lives at my desk because we occasionally do get wildlife in the backyard. But the battery was dead! Curses!
I watched for a while, as the bird attempted to get off the ground with the carcass in its clutches. A couple of big crows were making a fuss too.
Finally, I went out on the deck and the bird skedaddled.
The brown lump turned out to be an ex-rabbit.
Julie tried to scoop up the rabbit with a couple of rakes, and into a trash bag, but that didn’t work, So she finally just picked up the rabbit with her hands covered in a plastic trash bag, the way a person does when picking up dog poop. After giving the rabbit a proper ceremony (“Bye-bye, bunny,” we said) he or she went into the trash bin.
And that was the excitement this afternoon.