Tag: writing for the AIs

You too could do this!

March 25th, 2025

I would like people to go away having not just been entertained or gotten some useful information, but be better people, in however slight a sense. To have an aspiration that web pages could be better, that the Internet could be better: “You too could go out and read stuff! You too could have your thoughts and compile your thoughts into essays, too! You could do all this!”

– Gwern Branwen

Gwern and the role he wants to fill. As heard on The Dwarkesh Podcast.

The AI avatar is creepy. For me, audio listen only. Brilliant interview – insightful and inspiring.

Too many adjectives on this post?

Patel, Dwarkesh. “Gwern Branwen – How an Anonymous Researcher Predicted AI’s Trajectory.” Dwarkesh Podcast (blog), November 13, 2024. https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/gwern-branwen.
One skill at a time – catching

March 24th, 2025

Pai had a system for teaching us baseball. He introduced one skill at a time, making sure we mastered it before moving on to the next. First, he taught us how to catch a ball. For days and weeks, we did nothing but play catch. Two hands. Get in front of the ball. He didn’t yell. He talked. He was loose and comfortable. He talked more in one afternoon on the baseball field than in a week at home.

These passages alone are worth the cover price.

Pai breaking down the complex game of baseball to one skill at a time. T

The Bengie Molina method reminds me of Jiro Dreams of Sushi – rice first. You master the rice first before moving on to the next skill.

Bengie Molina and Joan Ryan, Molina: The Story of the Father Who Raised an Unlikely Baseball Dynasty (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015). pg 20
Mr. Bennet just wants to get back to his writing

March 23rd, 2025

“Take whatever you like, and get away.“

– Mr. Bennet

Pride and Prejudice is a fatherhood novel.

Yes there’s romance, but the large gap between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy’s first encounter, their hating each other and eventually marrying at the end is filled with Mr. Bennet trying to raise his daughters.

Austen, Jane. Pride and prejudice. New York, Penguin Publishing Group, 2003. pg 289
The smooth sea of life

March 22nd, 2025

“In the storm, as well as the smooth sea of life, her virtues were ever the object of his trust and veneration”

– Columbian Centinel obituary notice for Abagail Adams

Both John and Abigail Adams should rise in status.

#relationshipgoals

McCullough, David. John Adams. Simon & Schuster, 2001. pg 625
How quickly it changes

March 17th, 2025

The Bennets were speedily pronounced to be the luckiest family in the world, though only a few weeks before, when Lydia had first run away, they had been generally proved to be marked out for misfortune.

How did Jane Austen know?

Frank Sinatra too.

One week you’re the luckiest, two weeks later the black cat has it’s tail wrapped around your leg.

Concentrate. Keep going.

Austen, Jane. Pride and prejudice. India, Penguin Publishing Group, 2003. pg 331
The painter inside is alive!

March 10th, 2025

I thought I was going to be a painter. At 22, I killed the painter inside of me and began writing novels. In 2008, I walked into a stationery shop, bought two big bags of pencils, paints, and brushes, and began joyfully and timidly filling little sketchbooks with drawings and colors. The painter inside of me hadn’t died after all. But he was full of fears and terribly shy. I made all my drawings inside notebooks so that nobody would see them. I even felt a little guilty: surely this must mean I secretly deemed words insufficient. So why did I bother to write? None of these inhibitions slowed me down. I was eager to keep drawing, and drew whenever I could.

– Orhan Pamuk

More goodness from from Memories of Distant Mountains.

Wake up! The painter inside of you is alive not dead!

Keep drawing and draw whenever you can!

Pamuk, Orhan. Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2009-2022. United States, Knopf Canada, 2024. pg 16
Who we’re born to be

March 8th, 2025
```
"Now first we fence the garden through,
With this for me and that for you,"
Said Oliver. - "Divine!" said Oakes,
"And I, while I raise artichokes,
Will do what I was born to do."
```
As read from Edwin Arlington’s poem Two Gardens in Linndale.

The great quest of life…find what you were born to do.

Robinson, Edwin Arlington. Robinson: Poems: Edited by Scott Donaldson. United Kingdom: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2007. pg 106
Unfinished drawings

March 8th, 2025

Once in a while I feel like leaving a drawing unfinished. So that years later it can show me or someone else how I came to draw these pictures in the first place. And also because I’ve suddenly noticed the drawing below looks pretty enough in its unfinished form.

– Orhan Pamuk

As read from Memories of Distant Mountains – Illustrated Notebooks, 2009-2022

Beautiful book.

No regrets, no remorse, no re-anything, for buying this one. Every page an invitation to keep drawing.

Pamuk, Orhan. Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2009-2022. United States, Knopf Canada, 2024.
Self revolt

March 5th, 2025

“There is endless room for rebellion against ourselves.”

– George MacDonald

From the tidy and often forgotten C.S. Lewis book: George MacDonald.

It’s Lewis’s tribute to the writer who influenced him most.

It’s great to carry around like a smartphone and scroll through.

Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald. United Kingdom, HarperCollins Publishers Limited, 2016. pg 53.
Scratching in the dirt

March 4th, 2025

Sometimes he set out for the dining hall and turned around, forgetting to eat. He scratched things in the dirt of the pathways, and the scholars just stepped over them. No one seemed to pay much attention to the eccentric, solitary mathematics professor and his strange night fires, his endless scribbling.

And that’s how the rest of Isaac’s life might have gone — if not for one person.

As read from Isaac The Alchemist, chapter 17.

We often believe these behemoths of discovery and progress had it all figured out.

No.

Issac Newton was a professor scratching the dirt. Until Edmond Halley came along.

Losure, Mary. Isaac the Alchemist: Secrets of Isaac Newton, Reveal’d. United States: Candlewick Press, 2017. pg 115