“Writing is a task that takes both objective and subjective intelligence. LLMs ace the objective parts the same way they ace every test; you can’t fault their grammar, semantics, or syntax. But good writing requires an additional bit of juju that makes the prose live and breathe, a light on the inside that can’t be quantified or checklisted. And even though AI can now produce A+ five-paragraph essays, that light has never come on.”
– Adam Mastroianni, Infinite Midwit
“Asked if he has a lesson to share with the rest of us, Maxwell replies, “Don’t forget to be a member of your community. You’re asking people to give their trust to you when they come through your door, and you must pay back, not by just delivering on their expectations, but also by contributing to the community through political and charitable works. Giving back to the community is a vital part of the independent restaurateur’s life.””
– Restobiz, John Maxwell, Owner, Allen’s Restaurant
“The backyard steel of 1958 looked like steel. It was not steel. Today’s backyard AI looks like AI. It is not AI. A TypeScript workflow with hardcoded if-else branches is not an agent. A prompt template behind a REST endpoint is not a model. Calling these things AI is like calling pig iron from a backyard furnace high-grade steel. It satisfies the reporting requirement. It fails every real-world test.
– Rusty Foster, Everything Is Hacked Now
“Then it passes, and you realize with some embarrassment that being the recipient of this kind of polite compliment definitely absolutely means you are viewed as one of the elders, and also these punks probably didn’t even really mean it in the first place. They’re just trying to be nice. Unless??”
– Delia Cai, Theory on Gen Zs Complimenting Their Millennial Co-Workers’ Style
“Perhaps, too, Joseph Sedley would overhear the compliment—Rebecca spoke loud enough—and he did hear, and (thinking in his heart that he was a very fine man) the praise thrilled through every fibre of his big body, and made it tingle with pleasure. Then, however, came a recoil. “Is the girl making fun of me?””
– William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
“But not everything is a business, not everything is a loop, and the entire human experience cannot be captured in a database. That’s the limit of software brain. That’s why people hate AI. It flattens them. Regular people don’t see the opportunity to write code as an opportunity at all. The people do not yearn for automation.”
– Nilay Patel, The People Do Not Yearn for Automation
“Let me be clear about this: the most important goal of reading is to read. It’s exploration at an intimate human scale. You can immerse yourself in the history of this world. You can immerse yourself in new worlds. (Which are always not-so-secretly about our own world.) You can learn more about things you care about, and learn that you care about things you didn’t even know about. You can look at something from a point-of-view you hadn’t considered yet. A book is a time machine, a scalpel, and a rocketship. And it can all happen from your favorite reading chair. (You do have a favorite reading chair, right?)”
– Mike Monteiro’s Good News, How to Read
“Hardware brain is different from software brain. Software brain says Go faster; do more; the only mistake you can’t fix is having gone too slow. Hardware brain says Slow down; do less; focus; strive for perfection and never settle for less than excellence; mistakes are forever.”
– John Gruber, ★ the New York Times Printed the Wrong Crossword Grid Last Sunday, and I Find That Timing Serendipitous
““Hi there, good evening to you.” The man who came to the bar smiled adorably. “You musn’t let your guard down around shady characters you meet out at night. It goes without saying that you shouldn’t show us any weakness, either.””
– Tomihiko Morimi, The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl
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