Toronto’s Queen Mother Café bills its Ping Gai as “the best chicken in the city.” I’ve only been here for about 22 hours, but I’m fairly sure they’re right.
Reading
How to Take Smart Notes
Sönke Ahrens
- add this event to my calendar [with ticket shown in Safari]
- add another event “Walk to [event]” with enough time to walk from my hotel
- Total Party Kill by The Incomparable
- The Knowledge Project by Shane Parrish
travel
Successful Siri AI today (on Mac):
Result: two calendar events at the correct times.
(Yes, I know …
I couldn’t figure out how to watch yesterday’s Virginia Tech game. ChatGPT found only one way (adding YET ANOTHER subscription on top of the ESPN rider we already added to Disney+).
I would have paid half a month’s sub cost for just that game. But …
travel
Flighty doesn’t always understand quick turnarounds; I slept at home last night, but it registers as an absurdly long layover.
I’ve been noodling on this post for a while; I appreciate Lex Friedman for publishing Streaks Considered Harmful and convincing me to hit Publish.
I shamelessly stole his title, because I don’t have a better one.
versenotes
Bible Streaks Considered Harmful
Extending your streak one more day won’t make Jesus love you any more.
Consistent, faithful, daily Bible reading can be a great thing: it feeds your faith, fixes your mind on God, restores your soul, and trains you in righteousness. The danger …
Anne-Laure Le Cunff in today’s Ness Labs newsletter reveals a secret I’ve been living by for most of my life:
What you want is to understand the ideas so well that you can trust yourself to find the words when you need them.
The critical exception …
A or An, English Edition (Hard Mode)
Trying to build a function a_or_an(word) proves hilariously challenging for English, surprising no one.
The author catches one dialectal land mine: herb begins with a vowel sound in American English and an /h/ sound in British English. But I see at …
travel
I just experienced a new type of inconsiderate flier: a man stood up during the safety video to get something from an overhead bin. They restarted the safety video.
People are endlessly innovative when it comes to being terrible co-travelers.
versenotes
Just finished Ezekiel 28, which officially brings me under 100 chapters left to write about for Chapter by Chapter.
It doesn’t seem like much compared to the 1,090 I’ve already written, but it includes Daniel and all the minor prophets.
versenotes
I have reached Ezekiel 25 in my Chapter by Chapter notes, and now all I want to do is watch Pulp Fiction.
I will execute great vengeance on them with wrathful rebukes. Then they will know that I am the LORD, when I lay my vengeance upon them.
— …
We should celebrate this kind of obsessiveness more often and more loudly.
The AI Detector Eats Itself
Today’s newsletter from Matt Ragland is… weird.
It’s titled, “The two words that out you as an AI writer” and boils down to: “genuinely” and “quietly” make your prose sound AI-written. …
Every Monday, Matt Gemmell posts a new short story. They’re usually good, or at least original and interesting.
Today’s is exceptionally well executed.
versenotes
I just realized I’ve finished notes on more than 90% of the Bible for Chapter By Chapter.
As of today, I’ve finished 1,086 chapters, or just over 91% of the Bible.
I have 103 chapters left to write about.
TIL
New word for me from today’s Apple crossword: “pluot.” Well, and “aprium.”
You’d think they were plum/apricot hybrids, and they are, but it’s more complex than that. Simple hybrids are calls plumcots and apriplums; these are “later generations.” …
Cal Newport says that there’s no concern that Tesla’s FSD will “go rogue” in the sense of disobeying traffic laws.
All I have to say is that he may not be as familiar with the state of AV technology in general, and Tesla in particular, as he is with …
travel
The bad news is my flight home got diverted.
A minor silver lining is I got to experience a new piece of Flighty UI.
Today, I realized I listen to two (totally unrelated) podcasts whose acronym uses the letters TPK:
Now I just need podcasts abbreviated KPT, KTP, PTK, and PKT.
When I encountered Mrs. Cotton’s delightful The Doors Stay Open, I initially thought that perhaps The Grudgery was leaking.
Considering the author, I’m not convinced it’s not.
Legibility of Care, Not Effort
Some of my oldest habits as a human creator have become markers of AI slop.
Example one: I love the em dash. I use it all the time. But for some reason LLMs, especially early chat models, developed a conspicuous fondness for the em dash—often in …
Visiting DC this week, and I continue to laugh at Americans who stand directly in front of subway doors to board and then get shocked when they have to move to let people off the train first.
The Guardian managed to write almost three thousand words about the history of the modern industrialized two-day weekend—published on a Sunday—without using the word “Sabbath” once.
Remarkable.
versenotes
TIL
Despite the repeated warnings about the invader/conqueror from the north, the book of Jeremiah doesn’t actually mention Babylon by name until chapter 20.
He spends nineteen chapters talking about this impending disaster “from the …