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Mike Gravel would’ve been 93 today. Before the ‘08 election he took me to lunch on the recommendation from Ralph Nader’s camp, hoping I’d join his campaign. I was flattered but passed. I don’t regret it, but even with how I saw things go, I think it was a bigger opportunity than I understood.

Total Cost of AI?

I was listening to the latest episode of The Important Thing, where they meander around the implications of generative AI. One form of the question they articulated was what happens when stuff is cheaply generated for, as I heard it, by such AIs and for everyone.

The question that came to mind for me was: is it even cheap?

I don’t know.

I haven’t done my homework, so I am speaking for myself in articulating this question — I have a vague sense of recently seeing some reporting on energy usage by these breakthrough AIs (one reason they’re in the cloud is it isn’t practical to run this client-side, they need the cloud)… but I don’t know the particulars, or how it compares to say, crypto mining. But I think we’d even have to compare it to the total cost of feeding a human. The mining of ore and building of machines and generation of energy and environmental impact to run an AI vs. say … cost of same of humans. And that’s just in a sort of typical Capitalist framework.

This is just an inkling. I don’t really know all the bits I am alluding to here. My gut feeling is that when we internalize costs, the machines aren’t advantageous as is widely projected—whether or not that happens to be validated in this case.

Kevin Kelly repeatedly references (reported in Wired twenty years ago, recounted recently by Kelly in this conversation) what he learned about Amish communities' adoption of technology — slow, intentional, broader than most assume - and I kind of wish our society was more like this. Like the Luddites professed to be, with some core values.

Trying to build my first iOS app (again). SwiftUI this time. I figure I don’t have the baggage of other frameworks, and I don’t yet know what I’m missing either.

Some nights it is just our cat and me. I, sipping some whisky; him, staring into dark shadows of the alley, tracking the rats.

I was going to write something pithy, maybe slightly trite, which I thought to be true.

I recognized some complications and the pithy thing became definitely trite and untrue. I also realized I am not in a mood, or perhaps the mode, to try to share the more complicated rendition of the thing I thought worth sharing.

Still in sponge mode, and running a little dry.

About to put this device down.

I am rewatching the Bourne films as they popped-up on Netflix for me. I had to replay multiple segments because I was also trawling Mastodon and my RSS reader.

I remember when I’d pool my few dollars with friends and rent a VHS or two, hit up the pharmacy for some Mountain Dew and Dots, and watch the movies end-to-end with full attention. Then, we’d go upstairs to go sign-on to the Internet. (After making sure everyone else was asleep or at least didn’t need the phone, of course.)

My toddler received a STEM “certificate” from the LEGO education booth at the White House Easter Egg Roll with the slogan “rebuild our world” (it was a hashtag actually). My mind went to a dark place … he might just have to.

We’ve got the kiddo sleeping in his own bed again, mostly. He still needs some company (or, we offer it because it gets short term results) before he really falls asleep. As I was laying in the dark next to him, thinking he was almost out, I popped-in an earbud. I re-started a podcast. Something made me snicker to myself.

He angled his head over near mine and put his lips to my ear. “What’s so silly, Daddy?” he whispered.

I told him he was. True enough.

From the The Talk Show: a nostalgia session for Internet Olds/educational folklore session for you kiddos, by a couple of preeminent Internet Olds, talking about some other preeminent Internet Olds.

I remember picking apart 0sil8 as I taught myself HTML, later read Kottke.org forever, discovered Daring Fireball I think nearly as soon as it hit the scene, read Suck.com, subscribed to the email “re-issue” that went out a couple-few years ago, and my linkblog was linked from the top nav of Robot Wisdom myself, and used Dean’s web-based Textile processor before Markdown came to be, and consumed Dean’s photoblog of his weimaraner pups.

Dug up wee bits of correspondence… I once asked Jason Kottke how he did the link log interludes against his regular posts and I’ve got some scant back and forth with Aaron Swartz (a notable contributor to RSS and Markdown, among so many other things, RIP) later, in the mid-aughts.

A prelude to the real substance of this episode is Gruber’s and Kottke’s own instantiation of our collective semi-annual bitchin' about the time change. I do differ with @gruber’s advocacy for sticking with DST. I prefer we stick with standard time and not for any of the straw man reasons he rightfully takes down.

I do wish Markdown had some more semantic options for cite and emphasis rather than just italics and bold.

I’ve been writing code again. Essentially tutoring a friend who has to wield some Python as he learns some natural language data analysis techniques. I’ve been remembering I actually know Python (I mostly applied in the context of Jython … long story … it even has a Peter Thiel digression) and learning little bits of NLTK, which once in a recent past life, I had a direct report trying to educate me as he applied it. Anyway, said friend got a 9/9 on his first assignment. He really leaned into it after initial despair and reticence, but I feel a little proud for myself too.

For all the warranted critiques of the New York Times, and laments about the arc of newspapers, I am grateful for the Metro Diaries feature of that paper. I have been reading it, on and off, for 25 years.

I think I have to give my Dad credit, to whom I don’t give a lot of credit, for pointing it out to me in a print edition of the Sunday New York Times about that long ago. Back when the Sunday Times was a big thick paper, and the Metro section (if you bought it within range of the city, at least) seemed bigger than my local city paper (with the ads removed, anyway).

Listening to self-aware comedians discuss their personal pasts (a la Maron’s WTF, and also Conan’s podcast) is almost as good as a therapy session.

How the day is going so far

Ordered a BLT. Having not explicitly checked the boxes for “Lettuce” or “Tomato,” when I received my order I was almost incensed: “Hey, I didn’t ask for … oh, wait.”

Found a stray turd in the house. Don’t know when it got there. Pretty sure I know who did it.

We have a 3 year-old who doesn’t like to poop, so holistically, this is a win… but clearly concerned that this happened in secret without being obvious to me for an unknown amount of time.

I may be a little burned out.

The Omni Group is 30 years old.

Jesus.

You know, I kind of think OmniFocus would look better on NeXTSTEP. (I kid, I love their software, but I think on that one front I’ve settled on Things.)

I did have the pleasure of running OmniWeb on a rescued NeXTcube … nearly a decade after the machine was made and a half decade after OmniWeb first came out.

A hard decision made, and just the hope of a new focus (coming around the corner), regardless of the challenges, has innate interests that have been dormant for a few years sprouting signs of life.

I think I’m doing the right thing.

We’ve not really figured out printing, calendaring or email… what makes anyone think we’ve got the rest of this figured out is beyond me.

I keep placing my coffee mug on my wireless induction charging pad, as if it were a coaster. ☕️🪫

Currently reading: The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow 📚

I first encountered Graeber (¡Presente!) on an Indymedia livestream giving an interview or speaking at a teach-in during a convergence to protest WTO or WEF. Something like that. Pre-9/11 revolutionary optimism on my part.