Growing up, I was much more into Call of Duty than reading which I’ve heard is equally valid and useful to you later in life so shut up. Luckily for me, at some point Call of Duty began to suck and I started a masters degree that forced me to read. Naturally, as a 22/23 year old who was vaguely into tech and productivity, when prompted with the query “how read book tech?” the wisdom of the youtube algorithm delivered unto me an Ali Abdaal video on Amazon’s Kindle.

I can dance if I want to

I don’t dance. Never have. And i’m adamant that I can’t.

To no fault of my loving and accepting parents, I grew up a little repressed.

Some people refer to it as “Gifted Kid” syndrome. Personally, I was never given the title but I over-achieved and felt that paralyzing need to be correct - more than any authority figure could ever place on me. Even at that young age the need to be perfect had settled deep in my bones. And what does one do when their need to be perfect cannot be assuaged? They simply do not act at all.

Vim has some really useful but lesser known features that can be really useful when creating temporary shell scripts. In this tech quickie post, I use Vim :'<,'>! syntax to help me quickly define an entire project in Taskwarrior - a CLI for task and project management.

Visually Select a Set of Lines

In my case, I was setting a series of tasks to port my docker server from Ubuntu to Debian - a subset of the task are listed below.

Accepted at CHI 2024
Pre-Print
Github: ABScribe

Abstract

Exploring alternative ideas by rewriting text is integral to the writing process. State-of-the-art large language models (LLMs) can simplify writing variation generation. However, current interfaces pose challenges for simultaneous consideration of multiple variations: creating new versions without overwriting text can be difficult, and pasting them sequentially can clutter documents, increasing workload and disrupting writers’ flow. To tackle this, we present ABScribe, an interface that supports rapid, yet visually structured, exploration of writing variations in human-AI co-writing tasks. With ABScribe, users can swiftly produce multiple variations using LLM prompts, which are auto-converted into reusable buttons. Variations are stored adjacently within text segments for rapid in-place comparisons using mouse-over interactions on a context toolbar. Our user study with 12 writers shows that ABScribe significantly reduces task workload (d = 1.20, p < 0.001), enhances user perceptions of the revision process (d = 2.41, p < 0.001) compared to a popular baseline workflow, and provides insights into how writers explore variations using LLMs.

Clockwork and Clay

THRONE

We sired life in bronze and steam and lured in our clockwork Eve

When this the child of man claims its patricidal throne we’ll wonder how we failed to learn from the Gods that came before us

ORCHARDS

Who of us will learn to breathe the smoke and steam that rises form the orchards of Turing’s Eden

OLYMPUS

the flame for us

the bolt for you

I heard once, “It’s the comforts that make us feel numb” - Hozier

And you know what? I think he’s right.

I think the ways in which we save time, the little eases and comforts, the ergonomics of our lives numb us and erode our sense of meaning. Now, does that mean I churn my own butter and sew my own clothes? Of course not, but it does make me think about the little moments that make up my life and how they make up my sense of meaning.

Stop Trying to Remember Everything you Read.

The Having vs Being fallacy of digital second brains and remembering everything you read

I was seduced by the Capture Everything, Remember Everything you read, Digital Brain, trend for 2 years. You know what it got me? A Notion AND Roam Research so full I’m terrified of looking through them and a long list of books I’ve speed read but can barely recall.

👋 Hey Friends,

Getting into a new field of research requires reading dozens of landmark and seminal papers to understand that field’s foundations. This usually involves the manual process of searching key-words on google scholar, finding papers, polling friends, advisors, colleagues, and other experts for the most important papers. It’s an ad-hoc process that can take months.

Even more time intensive is conducting a proper, methodical, literature review. Establishing a method, identifying the correct keywords, finding the right databases - it’s difficult but vital work.

👋 Hey Friends,

Getting into a new field of research requires reading dozens of landmark and seminal papers to understand that field’s foundations. This usually involves the manual process of searching key-words on google scholar, finding papers, polling friends, advisors, colleagues, and other experts for the most important papers. It’s an ad-hoc process that can take months.

Even more time intensive is conducting a proper, methodical, literature review. Establishing a method, identifying the correct keywords, finding the right databases - it’s difficult but vital work.

💡 Truly great writing, the kind that moves us, comes from lived human experiences. This will always be the domain of Sapiens. — A trust me bro statement by Nathan Laundry

ChatGPT doesn’t have its own stories to share, but it excels at finding mistakes in the ways I write about mine! That’s why ChatGPT and I make a great team. I bring real stories and ChatGPT helps me convey them effectively.