Fun fact: you know how you can maintain a conversation while listening to music, but it’s awful hard to do so while reading text? Well, musicians trained to do so can read a music sheet while talking because “reading music” triggers the same brain bit that is used to process music, so they’re effectively “listening” to the music while talking.

Also, I’ve heard 3 different orchestra conductors say that no orchestra performs better, no matter the piece, than the one in their minds.

Damn that flew right over me…

This would stump even me. Why is it raptor-specific? Maybe I just have overly-sweaty hands.

Or you could just… you know… not use Google.

The M4’s Hobbit version has vastly improved my opinion of the Hobbit movie(s). I now include it in my yearly LOTR marathon.

This great! Very clever way to aid the quote.

I’d love to watch a Ted on that, sounds meta interesting. I tried searching for something on the subject on YT but only found grammar/language-oriented videos. The identity construction molding the culture due to their language structure sounds like an amazing rabbit hole to learn about.

I like your style and the tone of your humour. I feel like it does its own thing and it has its particular brand of funny. All this to say that I look forward to following your work until I’m able to finally get your book.

I’ve seen that some anti-AI folks get very irrationally angry when you don’t share their hate towards AI. It often degenerates into personal attacks, as in “how could you be so stupid as to not share my views?”, which translates into the knee-jerk reactions you mention. There’s no searching for nuance.

For the articulated response, I agree with you though. I’ll copy a comment from another thread that I think shines a really valuable light on the issue:

Most arguments people make against AI are in my opinion actually arguments against capitalism. Honestly, I agree with all of them, too. Ecological impact? A result of the extractive logic of capitalism. Stagnant wages, unemployment, and economic dismay for regular working people? Gains from AI being extracted by the wealthy elite. The fear shouldn’t be in the technology itself, but in the system that puts profit at all costs over people.Data theft? Data should be a public good where authors are guaranteed a dignified life (decoupled from the sale of their labor).Enshittification, AI overview being shoved down all our throats? Tactics used to maximize profits tricking us into believing AI products are useful.

This is great! Thanks for sharing.