Art, Money, and AI - Hugh Howey

The writing brain is bemused or ambivalent. It finds joy in writing and sees AI writing not as a threat but as something completely different, not the same game, not in the same universe. So there’s no threat. If a person wants to create a book entirely with AI, the most a writer brain might feel is the confusion over why someone would want to deprive themselves of the unique thrill of noodling it on their own. But an enlightened writer might realize that not everyone is looking for that thrill. Some people just want to read a book that doesn’t already exist, and however it gets created is not important to them. The book is the thing. Not the process.

I absolutely loved listening to Elif on the How I write podcast. Maybe David should have more female writers on the podcast.

It was riveting. They talked about writing of course, and censorship and nature - there was this beautiful anecdote of nature being pregnant in April. It made me emotional for some reason. I loved it.

2025 LLM Year in Review by Andrej Karpathy

LLMs are emerging as a new kind of intelligence, simultaneously a lot smarter than I expected and a lot dumber than I expected. In any case they are extremely useful and I don't think the industry has realized anywhere near 10% of their potential even at present capability. Meanwhile, there are so many ideas to try and conceptually the field feels wide open.

A nice read, if a little longer. Perhaps the reason why I had not gotten to it yet.

Why is the Internet Becoming TV? - Cal Newport

Once we realize that these companies’ apps are essentially glorified TV, we should feel more comfortable ignoring them. There was a time when platforms like Facebook and Twitter wanted to convince you that they were part of a new social fabric; a fundamental technology that responsible citizens couldn’t ignore. Not any more. If they’re just TV, then we can respond the way we always have: by simply turning off the proverbial set.