It almost feels trendy to talk about anxiety these days.
In part, I suppose, because it’s become more prevalent due to 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?
For my essay Musings on AI, Learning, and Copyright I decided to ask ChatGPT to compare the ways humans and large language models consume information and then how they use that to create content.
My prompts, and ChatGPT”s full responses are below.
Earlier today I posted a eulogy for one of our Corgis who passed away last night.
Wrote, posted, and shared on social media.
I started to think it might be useful to consider why, why, and why.
“Investigators today believe that in the United States the 1918–19 epidemic caused an excess death toll of about 675,000 people”
The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History was published in 2004, a full 15 years before COVID-19 would race around the planet beginning in 2019.
My greatest takeaway from this book might well be a sense of disappointment: in our inability to learn, in our government’s inability to lead, and in our inability to understand and trust science.
In other words, not a lot has changed in 100 years. And that’s sad.
When we moved into our current home, over twenty years ago, we elected to enlist a service to mow our lawn and do some other basic maintenance on the large yard. We went through several services before finding one we would stick with for many years.
The most common cause of failure was actually very disappointing. While we expected the quality of the work to be the determining factor, it was something else entirely that had us more often than not looking for a new provider.
We ended up making our evaluation on what seemed the simplest of things: did they even show up regularly, as promised, to do the job?
Too many times the answer was “no”.
I was talking to a friend yesterday about our meditation practices. The observation we both made was that meditation, mindfulness, and related concepts were becoming more and more mainstream. What was once considered a fringe and somewhat “woo” activity had made its way into common discussions around everything from personal performance, to medical and mental health discussions.
But on one observation we differed in an interesting way.
Sheldon: But evolution is not opinion, it’s a fact.
Sheldon’s mom: And that is your opinion.
– Big Bang Theory
Nothing sums up the current political environment to me more than that quote.
I think everyone would agree that facts are facts. They are invariant, objective laws of the universe, subject to scrutiny and unchanging based on who’s doing the scrutinizing.
Until, it appears, you happen to disagree with a fact.
We love confirmation bias; you know, the fact that we more readily believe those things that confirm, rather than challenge, our existing beliefs.
We love it when we can use it to explain the behaviour of others, or our inability to persuade them to our way of thinking. “Oh, they’ll only listen to things that they agree with.”
But we have a blind spot:
A recent post on the (wonderful) “What If?” website entitled FedEx Bandwidth got me to thinking about a calculation I did some time ago, that for the life of me I can’t find, so I’ll have to re-generate. What’s the equivalent download bandwidth of a Netflix DVD subscription? You know, the option Netflix actually started … Read more
The recent deaths of pop icon Michael Jackson and pitchman Billy Mays caught
me be surprise. Not that their deaths shouldn’t have been unexpected – they
were – and by everyone, not just myself.
No, the problem, and the personal impact, relates to the fact that they were
my peers.
I want to thank Gene as well for sharing his poem and story. Debra’s a familiar face to those of us who’ve spent any time in the Alzheimer’s wing. I also have to echo Gene’s characterization of the experience as both educational, and humbling.
| This is the “Family Story” and “Ask” that I presented at the Elder and Adult Day Services luncheon on Februay 5th, 2009. (Dr. John Medina of Brain Rules was the keynote speaker.) |
I’m here to tell you some things that you probably already know.
Like my story.
The doll shop is officially “between locations” right now – our brick and mortar location is not only closed, but as of today empty.
The Bible turns out to be a handy unit of measurement,
particularly when you’re trying to help folks some grasp
large storage media or data transfer rates.
It doesn’t matter whether you believe in what’s in it, of
course, it’s just that most folks have seen one. I’d wager
that most folks have a reasonable concept of its size, even
if only in heft or “thud factor”.
I used it as an example way back when as I tried to convey
some concepts to my parents. This disk? It could hold X
bibles! And this connection here, we can send the entire
Bible in Y seconds! Wow!
A random copy of The Bible, text only, from project
Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org) “weighs in” at roughly
5 megabytes.
With that as a unit of measure:
Yes, yes, I know that the two heavyweights in the Seattle
marker, KIRO 710 and KOMO 1000 both claim to be news
stations. And yet…
KIRO changed branding some time ago from “News Radio” to
“News Talk” to finally reflect more accurately what they
really broadcast: News and Talk. More of the later than the
former, I’m afraid. Fair enough, at least they’re honest
about it. (And I’m a fan of the talk part … if
that’s what I happen to be looking for.)
The real offender, in my mind, is KOMO.
During my recent trip to San Antonio, I found myself in a small shop
(gourmet dog cookies, if you must know) across from a Starbucks.
I told the proprietor that I was visiting from Seattle, and she immediately
said, “Yes, the home of Starbucks!”
Indeed.
It made me realize that I’m really, really from Seattle, because:
So my credit card company (or rather, the credit card company that issued the
corporate cards used for my wife’s business http://dollsandfriends.com) “upgraded”
their card access web site recently.
Already you can see where this is going.
As our dogs age, a common scenario is the loss of mobility. Often the hind legs begin to deteriorate first, due to disease, injury or simply because our friend is getting on in years. The front legs can also begin to lose their ability over time as well.
All the while the dog frequently remains otherwise healthy and alert.
Our Pembroke Welsh Corgi Guido brought us to exactly that situation as he developed and progressed through degenerative myelopathy.
If you’re looking ahead to a time where your canine pal may suffer from partial or major mobility issues, here are some tips we picked up along our journey.
I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about what was
coming next for her web site. She has a new site design. The design itself is
ready to go, and I’d say that the “important stuff” has been moved into it, but
not everything. A bunch of older content hasn’t yet been moved. On top of that
the older content needs updating as it’s moved into the new design.
So she’s been waiting to release the new website design until more (all?) of
the old content has been revised and moved. And of course, that’s just an
overwhelming amount of work – all those pages. It’s a big deal.
So naturally, since it’s such a daunting task, it’s not happening. 
My response? Just do it.
No, not the old content migration. That is an overwhelming
task.