Tom Scott: On Trying AI

“All I wanted to do was fix my email. I did not expect to have a minor existential crisis about how much the world is about to change.”
“All I wanted to do was fix my email. I did not expect to have a minor existential crisis about how much the world is about to change.”
“Look at that. I’m just watching, but it feels like my heart’s going to burst.”
We have this plastic tunnel thing that we bring out, from time to time. It’s older, and not something Hugo has really seen before.
Tonight, Liz threw few pellets inside to encourage Hugo to explore. Because Hugo, for all his size and weight, is still something of a scaredy cat.
On the cork – a bit of Klingon! At least, I think it’s Klingon? See, this is what I mean about me not being sure how strong of a Star Trek fan I am.
I will say this though: when we all gathered glasses to make a toast, I knew enough to yell out Qapla’.
There is a sadness and melancholy that emanates from both of these videos. Both of these videos evoke a sense of hurt and a sense of celebration, in equal measure. As does the act of sharing these videos, I think.
For no good reason, here’s a short video of Daisy and Hugo, chewing on a bit of cardboard.
This is going to be a bit of a ride, bear with me.
In the 1980’s, I was into Heavy Metal. Mostly hair metal at first. I was trying to move away from the musical instruments my parents forced me to learn (piano, violin) and was trying to learn how to play guitar.
I tried to be very quiet and slow, for fear of startling her. I got a few quick photos, and then decided to take some video of her just… well, sitting there. And then this happened:
Tonight when we were sitting with the bunnies (a nightly ritual for us, near the end of the evening), Hugo was bopping around some. But Liz and I were laughing at Daisy, who was just sitting still, with this kind of far-off daze on her face. Just totally checked out and indifferent.
A strange thing happened to me this morning. I was slowly waking up, browsing Instagram absent-mindedly… when I saw this video from nicolestorydent.
It’s pretty quick, so see if you can spot it. I almost missed it, the first time it flashed by. And then I watched it again, in disbelief.
The gameplay is a bit mesmerizing, and I find a kind of hypnotic appeal to the constant building and re-building of structures and roads, clearing out trees and setting up trade routes. Is it weird to say that it feels somewhat calming?
I want to argue that Cog (which came out in 2003) was one of the first “viral” Rube Goldberg machines to make the rounds on the Internet. Which was no small feat back then, since it would be another 3 years until YouTube came to be.
I’m a big, big fan of Sean Dunne, and am really taken by how he looks at the world. At people, in particular.
There’s actually two banks of elevators, but the vestibule area was cordoned off for some reason. The elevators were still working, but you could only enter them from the outside.
Peering into the vestibule area, every elevator door was criss-crossed with caution tape. It made taking the elevators feel really, really dicey.
One of my gifts was a new board game: Mandala. I came across this review of the game by Quinns, on Shut Up and Sit Down.