I was really excited to listen to today’s episode of The Daily with Kasmir Hill, whose work I have always really enjoyed. I don’t listen to The Daily often and in this case the topic and Kashmir were the draw. The episode was about a woman who fell in love with ChatGPT. About a quarter of the way into it, I had the urge to turn it off and by the time I got half-way through it, I turned it off. It made me so uncomfrtable. I was genuinely interested, but this was not the intellectual conversation or exploration I was hoping for. It felt like an exploitation. It felt like a daytime talk show.
I’m not sure if it’s the alignment of the planets or what, but today was a real Monday if there ever was one. I was on an all-day marathon of a work call.
- Daughter came home, but son did not. There seemed to have been a miscommunication and only the daughter was picked up from school.
- Daughter left her computer in the car of the person who picked her up (thankfully we got it back)
- Daughter forgot to look for her lost Stanley at school (again)
- It took a minute to register that the boy was supposed to be home, but was not. I sent a text message to the wife, who was at the dentist, having work done. She happened to read my text and had to leave the dentist.
- Because of him being left at school, he missed his guitar lesson. Thankfully it was able to be rescheduled for this evening.
Wow. That’s a very pretty camera.
Brilliant idea. Music To Refine To feat. ODESZA. How is this not available in Apple Music?!
I finally started watching the show. I’m on episode 6 of season 1 and I don’t love it. That’s hype for ya, I guess.
Fascism always fails. We will win. Such a great post from Dan Sinker.
Amazon is removing the “Download & Transfer via USB” option for books at the end of this month (February 26, 2025 to be exact). If you have ever wanted to download your Kindle books for any reason, you will want to do that ASAP. I have hundreds of Kindle books, so downloading them one-by-one would be pretty time consuming. Thankfully this handy utility did the trick (with a little help from Claude).
I’m going to guess most people don’t know and don’t care about this feature. I love reading books on an e-ink display, but have definitely been thinking about getting a device that allows me to take notes and not just read books and other documents.
Excited to check out the new podcast from Yancey and Josh
I got the dumbest injury today and hate adhesive bandages, but I needed one. When I finally got him, the first thing I did was grab the Vet Bond (basically super glue intended for animal tissue) and as I was trying to repair my injury, I bonded three of my fingers together. In the many years I’ve been messing with super glue and Vet Bond, it had never happened. Thankfully soaking it in hot water and soap did the trick.
This thought-provoking back-and-forth between Henry Oliver and Sam Khan about AI and the future of literature had me absolutely floored! FLOORED!
My feelings about AI continue to evolve. I came across two things that caught my eye (and brain) this week. The first was a paper by Microsoft Research that discusses the impact of using AI tools like ChatGPT on critical thinking skills. Spoiler alert: It’s not good for critical thinking.
The latest episode of Search Engine, one of my favorite podcasts, delves into the use of AI tools by high school students and the impact of these technologies on teaching English and writing. I was listening to this one with my 12-year-old daughter, pausing throughout the podcast to discuss the topic.