Warning: this post makes extensive use of unprofessional anthropomorphization. Today I’m releasing a new project called Stream of Consciousness. It’s a website where you can read the thoughts of Livia Pacifica, an imaginary person powered by Large Language Models, vector databases, and plain old storytelling. Livia is a digital artist. She uses text-to-image models to …
Folklore.org stories collected in epub format
I’m the furthest thing from an Apple fan, and I’m barely capable of operating a Mac or an iPhone. But I find some aspects of its early company culture fascinating and Folklore.org is a fabulous resource for a glimpse into that. I’ve just finished turning the stories collected there into an eBook in Epub format. …
Paradocsical – impossibly good docs
My good friend Davis and I have been working together on creating a repository for our favorite documentaries. As of today, this receptacle takes the form of a website where anyone can go through our curated list of what we consider the finest documentaries ever made, and can stream the ones that are available free …
Phishing/Malware attack (“WordPress Patch CVE-2024-46188”)
I’ve received this email: If you follow the link to phishing URL https://us.en-wordpress.org/plugins/cve-2024-46188/, download the file, and analyze the code, you immediately realize that this plugin is malicious and does the following: Pretending to be the Red Cross to perform a sneak attack is one of the vilest things a human being can do. Stay …
Replace a fine-tuned text-davinci-003 with Mixtral 8x7B
In a few short hours, OpenAI will shut down access to a few old large language models, the text-davinci series. Everyone who depended for some project on a fine-tuned version of these models and who hasn’t found a replacement yet might soon feel some pain. I was in that cohort until I found out how …
AI and creativity, an interview with Kevin Donnellan
Kevin Donnellan from Explainable was kind enough to interview me with some very interesting questions. Here’s the full interview: First off, The Infinite Conversation. What first sparked the idea, why Herzog and Žižek? And could you talk through how practically you set it up? I wrote extensively about how the idea came about in this article. …
Enantiodromia
Wikipedia informs: Enantiodromia (Ancient Greek: ἐναντίος, romanized: enantios – “opposite” and δρόμος, dromos – “running course”) is a principle introduced in the West by psychiatrist Carl Jung. In Psychological Types, Jung defines enantiodromia as “the emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time.”[1] It is similar to the principle of equilibrium in the natural world, in that any extreme is opposed by the system in order …
Version 2 of my solar-powered, ePaper digital photo frame
It’s been over two years since I started tinkering with the idea of a solar-powered, ePaper digital photo frame. My first version was functional but had a number of issues that made me go back to the drawing board. As a reminder, my goals were to build a digital photo frame that: The biggest issue …
Uncovering Uncommon Words in “City of Quartz” by Mike Davis
Recently, I finished reading “City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles” by Mike Davis. The book is an incredible journey through the history of Los Angeles, exploring its urban, social, and political landscapes. While diving into the story, I was struck by Davis’ unique writing style and the sheer number of uncommon terms …
The thread connecting Tatjana van Vark and Alexander Selkirk
A few days ago, a Hacker News post discussed the incredible work of Tatjana van Vark, a mechanical engineer known for her handcrafted machines and artifacts, which are among the most beautiful and intricate in the world. Among the comments on this post, one person raised an interesting concern about the potential fragility of our …