I mentioned to someone recently that I publish four separate newsletters. Two publish weekly, one twice a week, and one daily. They asked how I did that.
Well. It’s not something I set out to do. It’s more of a journey.
On the 7 Takeaways home page I say:
Great content creators share one characteristic: they consume a lot of information. They read, they watch, they listen to a wide variety of topics that interest them. I started 7Takeaways because I want to be more like the people I admire, and I admire several great creators.
Here’s the thing: it’s more than great content creators. You’ll find that the most interesting and successful people you meet are those that consume good content across a wide range of topics and interests.
So, what’s “good content”?
So I typoed and asked ChatGPT for an image to illustrate “Uncanny Valet”. Was not disappointed.
I sometimes meditate outside, and I typically have my voice recorder running so I can record and not worry about forgetting random yet important thoughts. On this day there was a squirrel in a nearby tree who had a lot to say. This is the transcript, courtesy Google Recorder:
(Updated from a couple of years ago. I was about to write something about “is this what finally kills me” — an anxiety that increases in intensity as we age — and noted that it was already a small part of this larger topic.)
It almost feels trendy to talk about anxiety these days.
In part, I suppose, it’s become more prevalent because of the pandemic, and politics, and social media, and, and, and …
But has it, though? Has become more prevalent, or just more visible?
Based on my experience, I would say: why not both?
When I refer to magic here, I mean it literally. Like, in the Hogwarts sense.
I believe that creativity is a force of enchantment—not entirely human in its origins.
I heard a respected neurologist say in an interview, “The creative process may seem magical, but it is not magic.” With all due respect, I disagree. I believe the creative process is both magical and magic.
– Gilbert, Elizabeth. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Liz Gilbert believes in magic. Literally.
I support her in her beliefs — not because I think they’re true, I do not — but because beliefs exist for important reasons, even if we don’t all agree on what is and is not true.
It’s a cynical point of view, I get it.
I choose instead to support organizations like the EFF, ACLU, and others actually taking action, boots on the ground.
There’s a rash of popular social media publications that seem to be getting suppressed. Whether it’s intentional, accidentally on purpose, or truly a mistake of some sort is irrelevant. You cannot trust social media to show you what you’ve asked to be shown. (Some are better/worse than others, but still.)
Many of these popular authors have email newsletters. Find them. Subscribe to them. Support them if you can. And in doing so, side-step whatever the frak is happening on social media.
I’m only 67 as I write this, but I’m more and more finding myself the oldest person in the room. (I almost put the “only” in quotes, since of course perspectives on whether that’s “old” or not vary fairly dramatically. 
)
It’s pretty easy to rationalize this. After all, younger people are being created at a pretty decent clip every day, and, as harsh as it might sound to say it, older people are dropping at a similar (technically slightly slower) rate. It’s only logical, it’s only math, that I might be traveling to the far right of the curve.
And yet.
I’m experimenting a little with my personal blog. The TL;DR: is that:
If you’re curious about the why, and perhaps even the how, keep reading.
The word “ritual” has interesting overtones.
I know for many it has very specific religious meanings. For example, having grown up Catholic, I get that. I’ve lived it. Catholicism is full of rituals.
But I love when people expand their view on what it means, particularly in a more secular direction.
With ChatGPT’s new image generation capabilities, I decided to play. Specifically, I wanted to see how weill it would take this image:
from the Ask Leo! home page, and re-render it in different styles. (Click on any for larger, if you dare.)
AI is a simulation of intelligence. It’s right there in the name: artificial — not real — intelligence.
AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence is “a type of highly autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) intended to match or surpass human capabilities across most or all economically valuable cognitive work.”
A good way to think of it is that AI tends to be single task or limited in task focus, whereas AGI is, again by its very name, general purpose, where “general purpose” translates to “anything humans could choose to do”. I’m not sure I concur with Wikipedia’s inclusion of “economically valuable”, though.
But when questioning whether it’s actually intelligent, that pesky “A” is still there.
The real question should be: does it matter?
