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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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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What’s the Worst That Could Happen?

It’s rarely as dire as we imagine

A hand holding a red pill, and a hand holding a blue pill.
(Image: canva.com)

When I was approaching sixteen, it was still important, and even “cool,” to get your driver’s license as soon as possible. In my case, it was extra important, since we were about to move, and I’d need to drive to continue going to the same high school.

No pressure.

Looking back, I’m surprised by the approach I took. It’s an approach that has served me well throughout life.

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Where Do Friends Go?

An image capturing the bittersweet essence of friendships fading over time. Depict an autumn park scene with two empty benches facing each other under golden trees shedding their leaves. A pair of distant figures walking away from each other along a winding path symbolizes diverging paths in life.
(Image: DALL-E 3)

It’s easy to believe that friendships, once established, will last forever, or at least a very long time. Particularly when we’re young, there’s little evidence to the contrary.

And then we grow up.

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“Ok Boomer” and the Generational Divide

A 3D animation style scene featuring the phrase 'OK boomer' in bold, colorful, floating letters above a vibrant green field under a bright blue sky with a few fluffy white clouds. and a rainbow
(Image: DALL-E 3)

One thing I dislike about the phrase “OK, boomer”, besides its incredible condescension, is that it pretends all individuals of a certain generation are alike.

Trust me when I tell you we are not.

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The Flag and the Flag

US flag on a flagpole with a progress pride flag beneath it.
(photo: leonotenboom.com)

It was time to replace our well worn U.S. flag, but I was hesitant.

I’d planned on raising the new flag the day after the election, with the assumption that Harris would win. Needless to say that didn’t happen.

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Like? Subscribe! Support!!

A cartoon-style image of a character resembling Elmer Fudd, but with distinct differences to avoid copyright issues. The character is bald, wearing a hunting hat, and a plaid shirt, seated at a desk, leaning toward a computer screen. On the screen, a blog homepage is displayed, titled 'Ducks And Wabbits Weekly,' with a prominent 'Subscribe' button at the bottom.
(Image: DALL-E 3)

“Traditional media” is broken. It’s an echo chamber for singular perspectives that are driven by business and other interests. Examples abound, but the perhaps the most clear was Washington Post’s recent failure to endorse any presidential candidate. It’s a billionaire owner making a decision not because it’s good for the public or the press, but to protect his interests from a certain outcome. It appears to have paid off, perhaps at the cost of the country.

“Social media” is broken. Algorithms control what we see, and what we see is an attention bubble full of engagement bait. Most social media platforms exist only to show us more of what we’ll engage with, rather than what we actually ask for. Platforms that don’t are struggling because people end up finding their feeds, while exactly what they asked for, boring in comparison.

So, what’s the solution?

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Which Love Is It?

Perhaps the biggest misunderstanding of all

On the left, two men are standing and holding hands, both wearing rainbow pins, symbolizing love and acceptance of diverse sexual orientations. On the right, a preacher stands elevated above a fiery pit symbolizing hell, with flames and brimstone beneath. The preacher holds a religious text and gestures as if delivering a passionate sermon about salvation. The scene captures the contrast between love as acceptance and love as saving souls.
(Image: DALL-E 3)

Everyone seems to assume there’s just one definition of “love”: theirs.

One person’s quest to love is another’s heinous act.

And no, this isn’t a sex thing.

It’s a religion thing.

Does love mean accepting people or saving their souls?

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