Read More, Read Wider, Read Better, Read

An important step on the path to success

Albert Einstein reading on an iPad.
(Image: ChatGPT)

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”?

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Uncanny Valet

So I typoed and asked ChatGPT for an image to illustrate “Uncanny Valet”. Was not disappointed.

Uncanny Valet
(Image: ChatGPT)

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Squirrel Talk

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:

Squirrel Talk
Squirrel Talk. Click for larger image.

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Acknowledging Anxiety

Teddy Bear
(Image: canva.com)

(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?

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Pope Leo

AI depiction of "Pope Leo".
(Image: some AI somewhere)

Someone “Pope’d” me. Bless you, my children…

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Believing in Magic

Two people sit across from each other at a café table. One has a laptop and a microscope, the other a crystal ball and a notebook of dreams. They’re smiling, mid-conversation, with light from the window casting a rainbow across the table — symbolizing respectful coexistence of logic and belief.
(Image: ChatGPT)

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.

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Why I Rarely Donate to Political Candidates

Money Flying Away

  • Spam. Donate even once and the flood begins.
  • Increasing demands/requests. Donate even once and it’s almost like a catphishing campaign: increasingly urgent demands for increasingly larger donations.
  • If they lose, I’ve thrown away my money.
  • If they win, but they’re in the minority, I might as well have thrown away my money, at least for important issues.
  • If they win, it seems they inevitably transition from representing the people to representing only the people and companies that gave them exorbitant amounts of money.

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.

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Subscribe to their newsletter

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.

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Last Man Standing

Racing to the far end of the bell curve.

Sunset at Pacific Beach Washington.
Sunset at Pacific Beach Washington. (Photo: leonotenboom.com)

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. Smile)

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.

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Every Day is an Experiment – Blog Edition

Every post is an experiment

My blog, versus weeds.
My blog, versus the weeds. (Image: ChatGPT)

I’m experimenting a little with my personal blog. The TL;DR: is that:

  • I’m adding social media posts to my blog, where they’ll be auto-posted on a few social media sites.
  • Normal posts (longer form essays like this one) will be auto-posted to the socials as well.
  • Normal posts will trigger emailed notifications to those who’ve signed up, social media posts will not.

If you’re curious about the why, and perhaps even the how, keep reading.

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Rituals

These aren’t your parents rituals. Or maybe they are.

Ritual Objects (a flight of beer)
Ritual Objects (photo: leonotenboom.com)

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.

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ChatGPT and Images

With ChatGPT’s new image generation capabilities, I decided to play. Specifically, I wanted to see how weill it would take this image:

Overly Excited Leo
Overly Excited Leo

from the Ask Leo! home page, and re-render it in different styles. (Click on any for larger, if you dare.)

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The Threshold of Intelligence

Does the source matter?

Good and Evil Bots
(Image: ChatGPT)

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?

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The Biggest Lesson From TikTok

Whether it comes back or not.

A comic style image of a digital house of cards made of smartphones and social media app icons, with some cards slightly tilted or about to fall, symbolizing the precarious nature of digital platforms.
(Image: DALL-E 3)

(This seems like something I’d more commonly post on Ask Leo!, but it feels a tad off-target for my audience there, so here it is in my personal blog. Enjoy. Smile)

As I first wrote this, the TikTok platform was no longer accessible in the United States. It’s since returned, at least temporarily. For how long we don’t know. 90 days? Longer? Permanently? Who knows?

TikTok allowed for the rise of what I’ll call the “accidental entrepreneur”. These are folks who began posting for fun, and then gained popularity to the point of generating enough revenue to be a small business. Several even quit their day jobs in favor of content creation on TikTok. It’s an awesome story.

Unfortunately, though, some of them are learning a hard lesson today. It’s a lesson every online business person needs to learn, and be periodically reminded of.

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