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(from my May 3rd, 2026 notes) Unfortunately, Richard Dawkins put out a book called The Claude Delusion and it’s being panned. The argument Dawkins makes in the book: “So my own position is: ‘If these machines are not conscious, what more could it possibly take to convince you that they are?’” His version of Claude…
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If you missed part one… you can find it here at Barnes and Noble: rescuegirl557.com/darkhorse You can find Volume 2 here on B&N: rescuegirl557.com/darkhorse2 This is the second volume of my wife Emily Slatin’s autobiographical essay series. I’ll be taking notes on this book just like any other. I will return to cover part one…
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I will finish this book at some point this year, hopefully. There’s just so much here and I’ve been in a terrible reading slump. I’ve gotten so much from just the introduction, written by Michael C Fisher. “A man of letters knows only a little about some major human concerns, but insists on relating what…
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John Koenig starts his 2021 book with a Steven Wright quote (the comedian not the knuckleball pitcher) The book is divided into six sections, likely how I will study this book is to give an overview of each facet of the human experience underrepresented by our common vocabulary: Koenig notes that these words he’s coined…
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Fun fact. I actually searched for the unabridged version of this book. Apparently I missed the joke at first… got me there. The inside of the book jacket starts with this: “Despite our clever linguistic abilities, humans are spectacularly ill-equipped to comprehend what’s happening in the universe. Our senses and intuition routinely mislead us.” And…
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I’m currently working on a massive project concerning mapping the CRAP framework I’m continuously developing onto the classical-based Trivium model of our modern institutional education systems in the Western world. It’s going to be a very long process, so I’ll be dropping in every so often to add more notes to this running document for…
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Music is a magical extension of the human soul. Without it, we’d all just slowly wither away into the unbearable void of silence, or worse, be left alone with our thoughts. With it, however, we have the unparalleled power to transform our minds into a war zone of emotions. Every single performance, even of a…
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Most of the things rattling around in our heads aren’t real. By “real,” I mean you can’t physically poke at them. Still, real or imagined, we love to give those intangible ideas a physical form. So, what do we do? We find a way to realize them by making these ideas into physical things so…
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“We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.” – Henri Poincaré This observation by Henri Poincaré — later referenced by Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World — hits harder today than perhaps either man intended. It suggests that delusion isn’t just an error in judgment,…
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The introduction goes into the math of if we celebrated Christmas every day. It’s obviously meant to be tongue-in-cheek. If I were in a better mood, I’d probably be chuckling. The part about how much room it would take to have free range turkeys for turkey dinners everyday was actually pretty hysterical, though. It goes…
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“That’s just the way it is…” those are words that “trap you like a bug.” Nana Visitor was dropped from her agency because the heads said that he had to feel she was “f-able.” Who says that to a 60 year old woman? But she didn’t say anything because her manager told her she would…
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I’ve read four books by Rob Sheffield. Two were excellent (“Turn Around Bright Eyes” about Karaoke and “Love is a Mix Tape” about, well, mixtapes), one was OK (On Bowie), and the one on Taylor Swift (Heartbreak is the National Anthem) was honestly mediocre. I have some notes on Heartbreak is the National Anthem live…
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From “Poetry and History” This is brilliant: “…it is not the poet’s function to describe what has actually happened, but the kinds of thing that might happen, that is, that could happen because they are, in the circumstances, either probable or necessary.” He continues, “The difference is that the one [history] tells of what has…
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Recently, I thought of writing about all the good things that came out of my decade-plus career working with Search Engine Optimization (SEO.) I often focus on the ill effects when I write about it today, but there are things, especially when it comes to hyper-local and long tail keyword research that are helpful in…
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While I’ve been sunsetting my interest in competitive Pokemon, the franchise still has that nostalgic pull on me, and Wolfe Glick has always made very interesting videos about strategy and how certain less popular Pokemon can be made to work in a high-competition setting. And yes, he’s talking about what the worst Dragon-type Pokemon is…
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In this video, RJ of The Flourishing YouTube Channel investigates how local large language models with four billion parameters or fewer [that is, local LLMs like Ollama] handle delusional patterns and hallucinations. He utilizes a series of “oblique strategies” to generate complex, philosophical follow-up questions that push these smaller models to their technical and creative…
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I remember reading this before and it’s still so true. Here’s what literary agent Noah Lukeman says about an MFA program in creative writing. “Take the $35-50K you’re going to spend ont he degree, buy yourself a good laptop and printer and a bundle of paper, and go off to a cabin and write. At…
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How the 2012 Red Sox Spent $200 Million On A Dumpster Fire – by Jolly Olive The 2012 Boston Red Sox season is widely regarded as the most embarrassing and toxic year in the franchise’s modern history. Following a massive late-season collapse in 2011, during which GM Theo Epstein also left the organization, the team…
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“No One Wants Albert Pujols’ Cards… Here’s Why!” – from Scottie B Cards I enjoy Scottie B’s videos because he dives into a lot of data that reveals some very interesting conclusions about the card market for certain baseball players. Albert Pujols is one of the greatest players of all time, with over 700 career…
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The introduction is called “Surviving Usefulness” which is a fascinating title. It begins with this great quote: “Redemption preserves itself in a small crack in a small crack in the continuum of catastrophe.” – Walter Benjamin The whole first paragraph is excellent. I’d copy down the whole thing, because I have things to say every…