Ben Galbraith

The Old King’s Crown! Play #3, and not quite sure if I like it yet. Beautiful artwork though.

I feel the paradox of choice so much more intensely when I’m building hobby projects with agents. Because my own familiarity with a coding domain is no longer a useful razor at prioritizing, it’s very disorienting being able to do... anything!

I’ve come to dread the cognitive burden of new Apple hardware. I tell myself I don’t need to upgrade to the latest [phone / laptop / watch]. But then the daily struggle begins: “Wouldn’t it be nice to have that [new feature]?” “See that person? They have the new [y]; shouldn’t you have it?” 😭

Attack on Titan S4 is some heavy stuff

Not sure when Google Docs enabled right-clicking to copy embedded images to the clipboard, but I’m so grateful. All is forgiven, Google Docs. 🥳

I track things like the food I eat, shows I watch, how I spend my time generally, etc. Lately I switched from using custom apps for this (e.g., Sofa for media; MacroFactor for food) to just writing a free form log in a daily note and having my AI assistant analyze it. It’s so much better!

Finding it’s delightful to have put myself into two obscure categories, from an IT troubleshooting point of view: * Families with more than four children * Families who immigrate to another country but still want to have access to their original country’s digital assets Absolutely delightful.

I came to Track Changes expecting a fun bit of tech geek history. I found a rich vein of parallels to the genAI revolution. A great read. www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...

I’ve seen some high friction spam unsubscribe forms in my day, but this Amazon one is next level. Amazing. Illegal?

Reviewing my car insurance. Says I have 32 years of driving experience. First reaction: “That’s wild, I wonder where they came up with that.” Second reaction: 🥺

In practice, the new iOS text effects are just another way for iOS to do something to my text that I didn’t want, and for me to spend extra cycles trying to undo it. Yay.

“Dad, why do so many company names start with ‘a‘?” Son, lemme tell you a story about these ancient things called “phone books”...

Just discovered Ground News. Now I want my entire extended family to discover it, too! ground.news

Can’t decide which blows my mind more: • the Apple ][‘s peak sales year was six years after its introduction • the Apple ][ was an active SKU for 16 years • the Apple ][‘s lifetime sales of 6 million units is routinely bested by a few *days* of iPhone sales

I used to find most headlines from The Onion laugh-out-loud funny, but lately the jokes just aren’t landing with me. Have I changed, or have they?

@gwern.bsky.social’s solution to Gene Wolf’s short story Suzanne Delange is a delightful read. gwern.net/suzanne-delage

I’m surprised that cursor positioning and text selection remains excruciating on iOS in late 2024.

My daughter has a nice smartphone but asked for this for Christmas. 🤔

Some news: I’ve moved to London to join @tessl.io, a developer AI startup — and I’ll be working with @almaer.com again, too!

Weird to go from infinitely configurable custom feeds to “here’s a ton of threads that intersect in an undefined way between your interests and ours.”

Is it okay to start playing Christmas music in July if it’s lo-fi?

🤣🤣🤣

a story in 3 acts

Trying to grok the galaxy brain strategy Starbucks is employing that explains why their bakery display cases across the country are consistently gross.

There’s awful, and then there’s “incapable of using logic” and “posting videos of your lame workouts and then making excuses about them.” Two different leagues. JFK was a very rational, logical guy.

This one hits me hard. I have fond memories of looking through dozens of back issues of Nat Geo when visiting my grandparents, and of looking forward to each month’s new issue. Still, times are changing, and I haven’t subscribed for decades.

Who else grew up listening to this gem? https://open.spotify.com/track/4MVA30NmvNtpbDon1ZG7mk?si=GQeRLvacRBe-il2v7K9crQ

As I age, I wish more adventure games were *linear* and almost on rails. I don’t have much free time, and any time spent wandering around wondering what to do next and whether I’m on the right track winds up being stressful. Just keep feeding me puzzles on a straightforward narrative track.

5k lbs per sq inch is truly 🤯

I feel like this is the right reaction

lol. everyone knows elon musk is gonna wuss out unless the chancery court of delaware forces him to fight mark zuckerberg

Playing Heat for this evening’s game night. Love this game. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/366013/heat-pedal-metal

Best Dad’s day gift.

Disappointing article. No effort to contextualize the performance of Tesla self-driving / automation, vs. human driving. Just some absolute numbers while acknowledging that Tesla’s scale dwarfs any other party attempting similar automations.

Loved this bit: “Mr. Gottlieb… often signaled changes with hieroglyphics in the margins: a wavy line for language too florid, ellipses or question marks advising a writer to ‘think harder and try again.’” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/14/books/robert-gottlieb-dead.html

Welcome to Bluesky, @alexgalbs.bsky.social! I can’t wait to see what you bring here.

“[some new startup] claims it is actually an AI play!” Shocking turn of events. 😉

This LLM stuff has me super uneasy about how often my brain generates words that I say, and then work out why I said them. Ideally it’s gen’d by some subsystem that actually has a goal aligned with something self-serving, but… how often is it just… pattern matching? 😬

Sometimes it’s fun juggling the preferences of all my kids. Other times I get challenges like this about days like this.

A friend just introduced us to The Quacks of Quedlinburg, and it’s quickly become a new family favorite. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/244521/quacks-quedlinburg

Welcome @mckillop.bsky.social to Bluesky! Big fan of your work cc @almaer.com

Hope this email finds you well..... Me:

Caught myself just now glancing at the upper right-hand corner of my newspaper to find out the current time.

Man, Sunday’s Succession epi was hard to watch