Freundinnen & Freunde der Weisheit! Die Frage, ob unsere Persönlichkeit eher durch Gene oder durch Umwelt geprägt wird, beschäftigt die Forschung seit Jahrzehnten. Mittlerweile hat die Forschung einen komplexeren Blick auf die Thematik.

Heute zeichnet sich ein deutlich komplexeres Bild ab als früher: Weder einzelne „Persönlichkeitsgene“ noch einzelne prägende Lebensereignisse erklären zuverlässig, warum Menschen so unterschiedlich denken, fühlen und handeln.

Lange glaubte man, bestimmte Eigenschaften liessen sich direkt auf wenige Gene zurückführen — etwa Aggressivität, Extraversion oder Ängstlichkeit. Neuere genetische Forschung widerspricht jedoch dieser Vorstellung. Persönlichkeit entsteht offenbar durch das Zusammenspiel tausender kleiner genetischer Einflüsse, die jeweils nur minimale Effekte haben. Gleichzeitig zeigen Zwillingsstudien, dass Gene zwar eine wichtige Rolle spielen, aber keineswegs alles festlegen. Selbst eineiige Zwillinge entwickeln oft deutlich unterschiedliche Persönlichkeiten.

Überraschend ist auch, wie begrenzt der Einfluss einzelner Lebensereignisse zu sein scheint. Weder grosse Erfolge noch schwere Krisen verändern Menschen oft so stark, wie populäre Vorstellungen nahelegen. Persönlichkeit entwickelt sich vielmehr durch viele kleine Erfahrungen, Beziehungen und soziale Kontexte über lange Zeiträume hinweg. Forschende sprechen deshalb zunehmend von „poly-environmentalen“ Einflüssen — also einer Vielzahl kleiner Umwelteinflüsse statt einzelner prägender Schlüsselmomente.

Besonders interessant ist die Erkenntnis, dass Gene und Umwelt nicht getrennt voneinander wirken. Bestimmte genetische Veranlagungen können je nach Umfeld verstärkt, abgeschwächt oder sogar gar nicht sichtbar werden. Persönlichkeit erscheint dadurch weniger als starres Schicksal, sondern eher als dynamischer Entwicklungsprozess. Die Forschung deutet deshalb immer stärker darauf hin, dass Menschen formbarer und wandelbarer sind, als lange angenommen wurde.

Denkanstoss zum Wochenbeginn

„Es sind Persönlichkeiten, keine Prinzipien, die das Zeitalter bewegen.“ – Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

ProductivityPorn-Tipp der Woche: Den Arbeitsweg sinnvoll nutzen

Wenn Du pendelst, kannst Du diese Zeit sinnvoll nutzen – sei es zum Lesen, Lernen oder zur mentalen Vorbereitung auf den Tag.

Aus dem Archiv: Schluss mit Meeting-Overload

Neulich in einem meiner Leadership-Kurse im Thema mündliche Kommunikation entspann sich eine unerwartet lebhafte Diskussion. Eigentlich ging es um das Thema Auftritt und Wirkung. Doch ein Teilnehmer meldete sich zu Wort und meinte mit hörbarer Frustration: „Ganz ehrlich, ich habe das Gefühl, die Hälfte meiner Zeit geht für Meetings drauf, die kaum etwas bringen.“ Sofort nickten mehrere andere, und schon bald tauschten wir Beispiele aus: endlose Online-Sitzungen ohne klare Agenda, spontane Ad-hoc-Meetings im Büro, bei denen am Schluss niemand wusste, was nun eigentlich entschieden wurde.

weiterlesen …

Vielen Dank, dass Du Dir die Zeit genommen hast, diesen Newsletter zu lesen. Ich hoffe, die Inhalte konnten Dich inspirieren und Dir wertvolle Impulse für Dein (digitales) Leben geben. Bleib neugierig und hinterfrage, was Dir begegnet!

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EpicMind – Weisheiten für das digitale Leben „EpicMind“ (kurz für „Epicurean Mindset“) ist mein Blog und Newsletter, der sich den Themen Lernen, Produktivität, Selbstmanagement und Technologie widmet – alles gewürzt mit einer Prise Philosophie.

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Disclaimer Teile dieses Texts wurden mit Deepl Write (Korrektorat und Lektorat) überarbeitet. Für die Recherche in den erwähnten Werken/Quellen und in meinen Notizen wurde NotebookLM von Google verwendet. Das Artikel-Bild wurde mit ChatGPT erstellt und anschliessend nachbearbeitet.

Topic #Newsletter

My boss had been talking to everyone about numbers: how many sessions we’ve been having, how many people we’ve been seeing, how many people show up or cancel. She noted that my numbers happened to be better than some of my colleagues, but there was a significant dip in August. This was merely an observation, not a criticism, and it was something I was already well aware of. I earnestly assured her that it would never happen again. “After all, my dad is unlikely to die again anytime soon.” My boss blinked once and said, with a chuckle, “Fair enough.”

It raises the point for me that it approaches the absurd that I am even worrying about this. Of course, I worry about most things, generally speaking, so why not this? Yet, even when going through the process of my dad’s dying and burial and everything that goes with those, I was also incredibly anxious about the time I was missing at work. Work-life balance seems to be a complete farce. Don’t get sick, and don’t have any relatives die, and definitely don’t have any friends die. Don’t think about a mental health day and don’t ever, ever take a vacation. Has this message been directly given to me? No, I don’t work for some sort of Silicon Valley startup. The message is given in far more subtle ways: Show up or shut up.

My dad was an incredibly hard worker. He worked more than anyone else I can think of. It served him well, and it certainly allowed us to have many nice things and opportunities and healthcare that I know others did not have. Still, he was always gone. Always at the office. Maybe the office in another state. Maybe in Asia or Europe. When I was about ten years old, an adult at Girl Scouts asked me where my dad lived. “In my house,” I replied, mildly confused. My father was so busy with work that there was an assumption that my mom was a single parent. In some ways, at some times, I guess she was.

In his later years, my dad was proud of what he had accomplished in his career, as he should have been, but he also wished he and my mom had traveled more together. They say that no one on their deathbed wishes they had worked more. This was certainly true for my dad. Work is important and hopefully meaningful, but there has to be more to life.

I suppose a lot of people make work the meaning and purpose of their lives. And without being meaningful, work is a soul-sucking nightmare. I do find my work meaningful, and this particular job is not too demanding of my personal time. Long gone are the days when I was on call for a month straight, 24 hours a day. Work-life balance was nonexistent at that point in my career. While it’s better than it had been, worrying about losing a chunk of a paycheck after also losing my father was adding insult to injury. I know I’m not the only person in such a situation, and a lot of workers in this country have things even worse. No ability whatsoever to take sick time, or to take time to care for family members, and no ability to mourn properly when someone dies. So many people are walking right on the edge of absolute disaster, and yet amazingly, we wonder why mental health is such a struggle in this country.

I think I’m getting old enough that while work is important, I’m not going to give in to the temptation to become obsessive about it. Work will be there. It’s a part of my life, but not my whole life. I’m grateful to have a job. I’m equally grateful for the many aspects of my life outside of work, and my goal is to keep everything in the ideal proportion.

By Andrew Wooldridge

The collection just reached 58 games. Each new one gets a statue in the Garden of Games, the walkable three.js island that serves as the launcher. The newest games stand closest to the hub, so these ten are the first ones you'll pass.

This batch covers a lot of ground: a 100-floor roguelike, a match-3 RPG, a gacha battler, a night drive with no goal, a recreation of a classic browser RPG, a DOOM-like, a helicopter bullet-hell, a castle-defence game, a twin-stick bug shooter and a cosy fruit puzzle.

They all follow the same rules: no asset files, and every model, texture, icon and piece of music is made in code. Every game plays on a phone as well as on a desktop. Each one also has a dev/ folder where a bot plays the game headlessly to tune its difficulty, and a Playwright harness that runs it in real Chromium on desktop and on touch-only phones.

Here's a quick look at each one.

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049 · Lanterndeep

Turn-based 3D roguelike · three.js

The lamps of Lastlight are going out. Your teacher Maren went down to tend the First Lantern a year ago and never came back. You take her spare lantern and go down the Hundred Stairs: 100 procedurally generated floors across ten worlds, among them a bioluminescent grotto, a drowned library, a dwarven forge split by lava, a clockwork machine and a vault among the stars.

The lantern is the main idea. It sets how far you can see, and it also works as your clock: it burns oil every turn, and when the oil runs out the Hush gathers. Every tenth floor holds a Warden, a multi-phase boss whose area attacks are marked on the grid before they land. You pick from three heroes, with procedural loot, 70 monster species and quests from wandering Wayfarers. Maren's ten journal pages are hidden along the way, and finding them unlocks the best of three endings.

The bot in dev/ plays all 100 floors with each hero to balance the difficulty.

050 · Tomebound

Match-3 fantasy RPG with an idle village · three.js

A smudge of living ink has scattered the thirteen greatest books of the Great Library of Lumenhall. You fight monsters Puzzle Quest-style on a shared 8×8 board of 3D gems. Matching gems gives you mana, damage, gold and XP, and every gem you take is one the monster can't have. Matches of four or five make Line gems, Bombs and Prisms. There are 19 spells, potions you brew yourself, and procedural gear.

Back home, a floating-island village rebuilds itself in real time, even while the game is closed, across 13 buildings. Each book you return grants a permanent bonus, and the Library heals as the books come home. Professor Hootsworth the owl keeps the story cheerful.

051 · Sigilborn

Gacha auto-battler with an idle citadel · three.js

Every hero in Sigilborn is procedurally generated: race, class, element, rarity, stat rolls with a grade, traits, a skill kit with generated names, a painted anime face and a chibi 3D body. One in fifty is a Radiant. Battles use Summoners War-style attack-bar turns, so speed is a stat you build up, and you can let them play out on auto or pick skills and targets yourself.

You play the Overlord, made in a deep character creator, and you have a lot to do: eight campaign regions with bosses, elemental Rifts, the roguelite Endless Spire and an Arena of rival Overlords. Between fights your floating citadel keeps working, with a Treasury, a mine you can dig in 3D, a real-time farm and kitchen, a forge, and expeditions. A progression bot plays three weeks of the game to tune the curve.

052 · Nightline

Lo-fi synthwave night-drive simulator · three.js

This one has no goals and no crashes. You set a cruise speed, signal for a lane change, and drive through an endless, rain-soaked city built in chunks as you go. It has five districts: neon downtown, a paper-lantern night market, a skyway, a harbour and residential heights. Every kilometre or so there's a place to pull in: a noodle bar, a diner, a record shop, an overlook, a laundromat. Parked, the camera frames the scene while the rain falls, and each visit goes in your night log.

Every sign and tail light reflects in the wet road, and the frame is rendered at 240 lines with bloom and scanlines. Three generative radio stations (synthwave, lo-fi hip-hop and slow analogue ambient) make up their own tracks as you drive. Turn on Drift mode and the car drives itself.

053 · Legend of the Jade Wyrm

Legend of the Green Dragon-style RPG · three.js

A tribute to the old LoGD browser games that recreates the whole online experience with no server. You get daily forest fights, beat your master to level up, and face the Jade Wyrm at level 15. Kill it and you start over at level 1 with a permanent gift. The village has everything the original had, from the inn and the bard to marriage, guilds and raven mail.

The clever part: the other players are simulated. Sixty of them, each with a personality and a real-clock schedule, log in and out, chat in the square, level up, die, marry, form guilds, and attack you if you sleep in the fields. The text-first pages sit inside a three.js frame with an oak beam, crossed swords and a window onto a low-poly village.

054 · Pale Engine

DOOM-style FPS with procedural levels and monsters · three.js

It's Io, in 2291. The station's Pale Engine has drilled through the bottom of everything, and you are the last Warden, with an AI called VESPER in your ear that has its own reasons for wanting you at the bottom. Ten levels in three episodes are generated from a seed, and a bot walks every level through the real collision code before you play it.

Each run rolls its own monster species from ten archetypes. They follow you, fight each other, stagger, and can be finished off with the blade for health. There are nine weapons up to a Singularity Cannon, DOOM's inverted-colour invulnerability, baked lightmaps lit by every muzzle flash, an industrial-metal score, an automap, par times and an Endless Descent mode.

055 · Rotorstorm

Top-down helicopter bullet-hell · vanilla JS + hand-written WebGL2

No libraries at all here, just vanilla JavaScript and hand-written WebGL2. A storm-steering AI called MERIDIAN has turned on the cities it protected, and you fly the AH-77 Kestrel through six operations over archipelago, jungle, desert, ice, neon city and volcano. The CPU and the GPU share one noise function, so gunboats spawn exactly on the water the shader paints.

Six multi-phase bosses fight with named spell cards. You graze bullets to charge Overdrive, wipe the screen with an EMP, rescue civilians, and spend salvage on a 28-node skill tree. The ending changes with the number of survivors you saved.

056 · Keepfire

Castle defence × Plants vs. Zombies × incremental · three.js

Aldmere's last keep starts as one tower with one archer. Procedurally generated monsters march down five lanes, and every kill pays gold that you spend mid-wave on your party: alchemists, knights, pyromancers, a frost witch, dwarf bombardiers, a ballista, a druid, a storm caller and more.

The best part is watching the castle model rebuild itself from your upgrades: towers rise, walls go from logs to banded stone, and the Keepfire beacon appears on top, ready to burn a whole lane. There are six biomes, six multi-phase bosses, relics after every wave, and a permanent Ember Tree for when you choose to start a new run.

057 · Hivebreaker

Twin-stick bug-swarm shooter · three.js

Think Enter the Gungeon meets Alien Breed. A black-site base under the ice of Erebus has gone silent with the President's daughter inside, and one Colonial Marine goes down through five procedurally generated sectors to get her out. Rooms seal behind you as swarms of hundreds of bugs pour out of the vents. Each bug type is one instanced draw call, with legs and wings animated in the vertex shader.

You can dodge-roll, throw grenades, erase bullets with the Shock Pulse, and carry four of nine guns, upgraded up to Mk III. Five bosses lead to a timed escape. It plays with keyboard and mouse, a gamepad, or touch twin-sticks.

058 · Bumble Basket

Cosy fruit puzzle · three.js

The newest game is the gentlest. Drag a bumblebee along a trail of fruit on a picnic blanket, where each fruit you hop to only has to share one trait with the last: kind, colour, size or family. So trails wander like a word ladder instead of needing identical pieces. The bee learns each trait as a “sense”, one garden at a time.

Full jars earn power-ups like the Honey Dipper and Rainbow Wings, and trails of seven grow golden fruit that links to anything. There are thirty levels in four gardens, an endless Picnic mode, an 81-stamp Fruit Album, and sixteen kinds of fruit with faces that blink and beam, plus ukulele-style music. A bot has to win each level often enough before it ships.

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Play them

Open the Garden, walk up from the dock, and look for the newest statues near the hub. The holographic carousel there shows the newest games first. If you'd rather click than walk, the classic card grid has all 58.

If you want to see how a game is built, every folder has a game-plan.md design doc and a dev/ folder with its test bots. Have fun!

At the forge And lonely to us now Pay for here And Scotland code This I am A lover unto you At distance might And in dispense of never The hearts of men Witnesses implore To help us her At better best deliver Knowing then To just escape The right and unrely When Heavens move We will know the West And win the work Ahead for all In Canada, we pray The Justice then Our here.

Lost In The Dew

We kept our hew In statesman-like to gold Fortuned to the deep Gaining us away And genius game Wafts of liver smoke In doing hell For lights and deadened river To empty guys And cloth upon the ground Who would woo us then But these utensils to end oil And nightshine Made for ever-grade Litmus to unwhen Of festering the deep And forest clear Places unrehome Shining might Level our remission For climate rise Earth in silence This will be our war.

Back in August, I got a Tempest Weather Station. I had been wanting a weather station for some time.

Why? Well, that is hard to put into words. I guess the answer is that I really like technology, I am fascinated with self-hosting as much as possible, and I like collecting data and contributing data to something larger without having to pay a subscription.

Anyway, I got this Tempest Weather Station for a great price during Prime Day. I put it up and integrated it into a Python weather program, while also using Tempest's own software. But there was something I didn't know, and probably should have checked. It wouldn't have changed my mind, but there are hundreds of these things around me.

Zoom out a little, and there are even more throughout the Tampa Bay area.

Then look at the wider area.

According to Tempest, this is a map of publicly reporting Tempest weather stations. So those pins represent actual stations whose owners have chosen to share their data publicly, although the location shown on the map may be moved slightly by the owner for privacy.

That makes the number of stations even more interesting to me. Tempest uses observations from its weather stations to help improve the current conditions and forecasts it provides to users. WeatherFlow also combines Tempest observations with data from many other public and private weather networks for its APIs and professional weather products.

So my little weather station isn't just collecting information for me. It is also one small part of a much larger weather-data network, which I find fascinating.

You can see mine below. This was captured one evening by my backyard Nest camera just after sunset. It actually caught a pretty nice sky, too.

In the coming months and years, I hope to do more with this system. For now, I just thought it was extremely interesting to discover that I am far from alone in combining an interest in weather with an interest in technology.

#community #selfhosting #technology

Chapter 1: The Quiet Decision to Pass Something On

There are moments when you are alone with your phone and nobody knows what you are thinking. Maybe the room is dark except for the screen. Maybe you are tired enough that you do not want advice, conversation, or another opinion. You just want something steady enough to quiet your mind for a few minutes. Then you come across this YouTube message about sharing Christian encouragement with someone who may need it, and something in it reminds you that whatever you are carrying does not have to separate you from God.

Sometimes encouragement does nothing more dramatic than give you enough room to breathe again. It reminds you that Jesus still meets people in ordinary moments, including the ones nobody else sees. That is why the quiet act of passing hope to another person can matter more than we realize. You do not have to understand everything someone is going through before offering them something that helped you find your footing again.

I think many of us hesitate before doing that. We wonder whether sharing something about faith will feel awkward. We worry that people will ignore it, misunderstand it, or assume we are trying to preach at them. Those concerns are reasonable because nobody wants to make someone feel pressured. But there is a meaningful difference between pushing religion on someone and gently offering something that encouraged you because you care about them.

Maybe you have a friend who has been quieter than usual. They still answer your messages, still go to work, and still say they are doing fine when you ask. Yet you can tell something is different. You may not know what happened, and they may not be ready to explain it. You could spend days searching for exactly the right words, or you could simply send a message that helped you and say that you thought of them when you heard it. There is no demand in that. There is only an open door.

That is the kind of support I am asking people to consider with this channel. We do not ask for donations, and we do not fundraise. I am not asking anyone to give money to prove that they believe in what we are doing. If these messages strengthen you, subscribe to the channel. When one speaks to something real in your life, share it with someone who may need it. If you know a person who would benefit from regular Christian encouragement, invite them to subscribe as well.

Those actions may seem too small to matter, especially when so much online attention is measured in enormous numbers. Jesus, however, had a remarkable way of noticing the individual inside the crowd. He stopped for people who would have been easy to overlook. He listened to people others dismissed. He gave His attention to people who had grown accustomed to being unseen. That changes the way I think about reaching more people. The purpose is not simply to make a number beneath a video larger. The purpose is to increase the chance that one real person, in one difficult moment, encounters hope.

Picture someone sitting alone in their car after work because they are not ready to walk into the house yet. They have spent the entire day being dependable for everyone else. Their body is tired, their thoughts are crowded, and they are carrying a problem they have not told anyone about. Their phone lights up with something a friend shared earlier. They nearly ignore it, but eventually they press play.

The message does not erase the bill sitting on the kitchen counter. It does not repair the strained relationship waiting inside the house. It does not immediately answer the prayer they have been repeating for weeks. What it can do is remind them that Jesus has not disappeared simply because life became difficult. It can give them enough hope to walk through the door, face the evening, and believe that tomorrow is still worth meeting.

The person who shared that message may never know any of this happened. They may have tapped a button during lunch and forgotten about it ten minutes later. There is something beautiful about that because it removes the need for recognition. You can help carry hope without needing to receive credit for where it eventually lands. You simply make something good available and trust God with the parts you cannot see.

That is the spirit I want behind the growth of this channel. I want us to build one of the strongest sources of Christian encouragement on YouTube. I have described that vision as building the biggest blowtorch for the message of Jesus Christ, but I do not mean anger, noise, confrontation, or trying to overpower anyone. I mean something bright enough, loving enough, and widespread enough that people who are struggling have a better chance of finding a message that points them toward Christ.

That kind of reach will never belong to one person alone. It grows when Christian brothers and sisters decide that good news is worth carrying beyond themselves. Your part may be subscribing today, sharing one message this week, or thinking of one person who could use some encouragement and sending it privately. None of that requires money. It only requires a willingness to help something hopeful travel a little farther.

You may never know where your share ends up or what happens afterward. That is all right. Faith has never required us to see every result before deciding to do something loving. Sometimes our responsibility is simply to recognize the light when we find it, refuse to hide it, and help another person see it too.

Chapter 2: Let the Good Thing Keep Moving

The next morning, you may be standing at the sink rinsing a coffee cup when someone comes to mind. Maybe it is your sister, a friend from work, or someone you have not spoken with in a while. You remember that they have been carrying something heavy, and for a moment you wonder whether reaching out would make any difference. That is often where love becomes practical. Not in a grand gesture, but in the decision to do the small good thing that is available to you.

Jesus showed us that people matter one at a time. He did not wait for perfect circumstances before offering compassion. He noticed the person in front of Him. That is a useful way to think about sharing Christian encouragement too. You do not have to blast a message everywhere. You can think of one person, one need, and one honest reason for passing something along.

Maybe someone you know is waiting for test results and trying not to show how afraid they are. Maybe a friend is dealing with a divorce and has gone quiet. Maybe a younger person in your family is trying to figure out whether faith has anything to say to the life they are actually living. You may not have the perfect answer. You can still offer something gentle and true.

That is the kind of community I want this channel to become. Not a crowd built around hype, but people who care enough to help good messages keep moving. If the channel strengthens you, subscribe. If a video speaks to something real, share it. If you know someone who could benefit from the encouragement, invite them to join us. There is no donation request attached to that. There is no fundraising campaign behind it. The support is simply participation.

I believe something powerful can happen when enough people make that choice with the right spirit. We can build a channel with enormous reach while keeping the purpose personal. We can help more people hear about Jesus without turning faith into pressure. We can become a network of ordinary people who keep carrying hope into places where somebody may be quietly running out of it.

You may never know who watches because of you. You may never hear the story that follows. That does not make your action smaller. Sometimes faithfulness looks like handing something good to the next person and trusting God with the distance it travels.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

Explore the complete Douglas Vandergraph Master Index: https://douglasvandergraph.com/douglas-vandergraph-master-index/

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s faith-based videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

Kim (part 8)

At seventeen Smitten to a pest For tiny visions Caricatures, and poem Then to then, the deep receive For filed letters To the rain apart from verse And taller men Off to better pastures Death to any cohort Esteem of rock and roll And fortunes to the top Afraid to year and year To those who see a pattern That to Women at the mill And substance being Torn apart to jest And deadened folds The rock and sand attire To this comprehend A planet will appear And as to course amend We made our God In fire and in first But studied then What able to recourse In high and might For disappearances for men Into swollen hole And barren eyes The lacrymal apprehend And men apart To Justice being judge And dear leader beheaded then In jest to never, ever be Alighting gyre And Heaven to the distance For proper weigh For our people to forget When verses when,- stopped the Shia site And to the Sun,- our lights were last And Victory to the Sun And past our code And we are victims Here ten thousand more Shares of time belight In Southern dawn For fortunes be across Korean then Our God unto his Heaven We searched for war And found none And Kim is nothing Our pain is gone And night will be our home- for evident be And to the sea forever When nights adore Our flight in first Across the day and then In solemn stir And torched our code This day forever, in heard- and exploding time, to verses do This Justice of The Peace In prayer for home Forever do In Pyongyang’s garden Treasure then to us Will you be our neighbour In simplest abide To absolutely welcome Our land and watching In favourite view Seoul and apprehend When Fall is right In peaceful code Five years And just as study days Courtesy and might Forever known This Korea home.

I've used AI to aid my writing process. I wrote my entire philosophical framework with AI as a thinking partner.

After probably 75 000 messages over two years or so, there are no more em dashes or phrases using the word “gently” in the output. ChatGPT now closely mimics my voice and how I talk. It turns out, you can make the em dashes go away without repeatedly prompting for it. Context and history play an important role in how AI responds to you.

Why did I use AI to write the framework? Because I wanted an a-moral, non-emotional, reasonably neutral framework that explained cause and effect independently of human story and perception. I used AI to help examine situations logically and question the assumptions behind them.

A simple example was a tree falling on my house. How does human perception work in that situation? What is actually true? What is potentially true? What is mostly human perception? What are the possible outcomes? What is the person reacting to? Perception or reality? I also used historical references. Given what we know about what happened, was the outcome logical within the context of the framework? Plug the World Wars into it. Does it make sense? I did this with ChatGPT and every other model I had access to. I'd feed their outputs back into ChatGPT, too. I wanted the AIs to break each other's logic. Agreement between models wasn’t enough. I wanted to understand whether the explanation held up and where it fell apart.

Across thousands and thousands of messages, with a lot of iteration, discussion, questioning and back and forth, I ended up with the framework I wanted.

Through that process, I learned a lot about prompting and getting AI to produce what I needed. I also began to understand the limitations of different models and which were more suited to working within a morally neutral framework. Some repeatedly brought moral framing back into hypothetical and historical discussions. Others produced output that was more machine readable than human readable, making them difficult to work with.

Now, ChatGPT is Grammarly with a personality. It's really good at cleaning up my writing after I write something. But I didn't get that from a good prompt. I got that from extensive history and context.

AI in writing is frustrating on a cold AI. You get the standard output format, complete with em dashes and “gentle” phrasing. That was true for me in the beginning, too. It took a long time to get ChatGPT out of therapy mode and get it to stop dragging morality back into things. But with enough effort, you can get customized output that closely reflects how you talk and follows how you think.

The average user isn't going to work that hard. I get that. I also believe that over time through training, the standard AI output will improve. For now though, persistence and time are the fixes that make AI output more helpful than not.

That’s not to say that AI is infallible. It does make mistakes. It is not perfect. You have to be willing to question its reasoning, point out the mistakes, and do the work.

From my perspective ChatGPT and any AI, can help to carry some of the mental load of organizing thoughts and generally structuring your writing. It can also help you find holes in your own thinking, show you where there might be a gap in your writing, or provide additional prompts that would add value to your work.

I understand that there are people out there that will simply prompt the AI, copy the output, and paste it as though they wrote it. When photocopiers were first available publicly, I’m sure somebody spent time photocopying entire books. Frankly, you can still check out a book from the public library or even buy it at the store, take it home and scan every page if you really want, and then bring it back. AI doesn’t change that, it just exposes that the possibility to make an electronic copy of something and repurpose, reorganize, or repackage it has been around for a long time.

Technology in general has changed how we function as a society. Music artists are having to figure out streaming. How do you make money in a world where everything is downloaded and records or CD’s are not the primary medium for sales? Artists were always at risk for theft. How many of us spent time listening to the radio with a blank cassette tape in the boom box ready to record a song when it came on?

Theft got easier, but we never actually resolved the reason for the underlying theft. Why did we record songs off the radio? Why do people try to find music for free? Why would somebody photocopy an entire book or take a book home, scan it, and return it? What is the underlying reason for that? Solve the original problem instead of just trying to put enough obstacles in the way to prevent it.

Why do people try to find things for free? What parts of society make that necessary and how do we resolve them? The flaw is in the function of society itself, not necessarily the individual people. Money or lack of it is what makes this necessary for some. How do we provide access to things for free as a means of limiting theft, while still making sure creators are paid for their content and the value of that content is respected? We can find ways to make sure creators get paid, it’s only a question of who is paying. Technology and AI expose this problem because they make putting obstacles in the way more challenging.

Why does somebody generate every single social media post using AI? When sheer numbers of posts become algorithmically more important than less frequent authentic posting, it means we’re serving the larger system of social media. Social media is “full” in some respects and that means that to be seen it requires an individual to become a content factory to hopefully float to the top.

Having a post go viral without needing to post 12 times a day 7 days a week, is like winning the social media lottery. It’s impossible to predict. Without a guarantee of that occurring, people naturally default to what they believe works, which is just sheer volume. Unless you can afford to pay somebody to follow you around with a camera all day and then post it for you, you’re probably not posting enough to float to the top on most platforms. Are there exceptions? Sure because different social media sites work differently. It can be slightly easier to be seen on a platform like LinkedIn if you have content that professionals want and it can also be highly challenging to be seen on Facebook where most pages simply fall out of sight immediately. By making AI produce content, you get the chance at visibility without taking on a second or third full time job. The system creates that through its own structure. The environment we have now is a direct result of the environment we came from.

We used to live in a pay to play world. Visibility was expensive and only a handful could be seen. You no longer have to pay to play. Technology levelled the playing field while also exposing the original exclusivity problem. Now if I’m a really good writer or musician that’s on par with or better than somebody who has a major contract, I can gain exposure through social media. I don’t have to pay thousands for vanity publishing, I can pay $20 for an AI subscription that can write social media content for me based on the content of the book or the lines of the song I give it. It doesn’t guarantee success but it lowers the cost of the ability to at least participate in the process in a meaningful way.

The original system was great for those who managed to find their way in, but it also left out a lot of people with dreams and good work of their own. Eventually technology brings the gates down and people bust their way onto the scene that would never have otherwise had the opportunity. But that’s not the fault of AI. Once again, that’s the old system creating a false barrier to success and visibility through money alone.

The amount of attention available is finite. There are still a limited number of people that want the work being produced. Lowered barriers to visibility don’t change the fact that visibility is still limited by the number of people available to see the content. That’s not system created, that’s just a function of life.

What we have gained though is choice. If I don’t want to buy from a big chain, I can find a locally owned shop. If I no longer want to support major record labels, I can support people that don’t have a record label. Choice allows the attention to move away from large corporations and back to the individual artist.

Visibility is what allows the attention to move and that’s where social media plays a distinct role. It makes clearer why AI created content has become a reality. People are vying for attention in a world of limited attention, most of them without multi-million dollar budgets. In my view, giving more attention to independent artists is a natural rebalancing of power that is long overdue. That’s the part that technology creates that the old system could never accomplish.

We put a lot of time into creating barriers to access and far less time exploring why we need those barriers in the first place. There are many discussions still to be had about the role of technology and AI in society. But one thing is clear: we need to move the conversation away from trying to prevent the technology from existing and towards changing the conditions that make people feel they need it to game the system.

So, the “Zionism is Racism” motion passed at conference, and as a Green Party councillor I will represent the policy our members have democratically decided.

I raised concerns before the debate, and I meant them, but the decision has been made. What matters now is how we carry it forward.

I’m encouraged by the statement from our MPs and leaders, which points to the common ground we share: standing against genocide, apartheid and occupation, defending the rights of Palestinians, and recognising there is no conflict between that and the rights and safety of Jewish people.

That’s the commitment I’ll be working to honour, and I know many colleagues across the party will too. Our solidarity with Palestinians is strongest when it goes hand in hand with the active fight against antisemitism. For Jewish friends and members worried about what this motion means for them: you belong in this party, and your safety and voice matter to me. Now the work begins.

#palestine #zionism

I’m in a bad mood. but im not angry, unfortunately. im not angry, it wouldve been easier to just say that. to just blame someone for it or yell at something or break something expensive and go with whatever calms me down, but no. im sad and upset. i dont know why. i hate that sentence. im sick, but i dont think thats it. im tired but i dont think thats it either. theres just something wrong with me lately and i guess nobody bothered to leave a note explaining what it is so i can just go back to my daily habits. i feel, lonely. which is embarrassing to admit because im not exactly surrounded by people i desperately want to talk to. i could have someone sitting beside me right now and still feel alone. my head is exhausting. usually, i can argue with it. i can tell myself i mbeing dramatic, stupid, irrational, random, whatever ive had enough practice at this point. tonight. i dont even want to argue anymore. im too tired to fight my own thoughts. they can say whatever they want. im just sitting here listening to them like some idiot who forgot how to change the channel on the remote. i dont want to do anything. i dont want to explain anything. i dont want to fix anything. i dont even want to think about tomorrow. i just want everything in my head to shut up for a while.

thats all, im tired of being inside my own head, and unfortunately thats where i live. and i hate it.

Sincerely, someone who’s obviously tired

En deux minutes, mon IA t’a remplacé.

Elle a repris toutes tes sources. Elle a copié, réorganisé, fait mieux. Je lui ai demandé quelque chose qui fonctionnait, elle me l’a donné. Aucun drame technique. Aucune raison de ne pas être satisfait.

Et pourtant.

PhoenixJP, c’est 26 ans. Plus que la majorité de ma vie. Jamais lâché un seul jour. Tu fais partie de ces choses auxquelles on ne pense pas à dire merci, parce qu’elles sont là et qu’on finit par confondre leur présence avec une propriété du monde. On ne se demande pas chaque matin si le ciel sera encore au-dessus de nous.

Je savais bien que tu n’étais qu’un site. Mais « ce n’est qu’un site » ressemble beaucoup à « ce n’est qu’une maison ». Cela décrit correctement l’objet. Cela ne dit rien de ce qu’on a vécu à côté.

Je suis celui qui a demandé à l’IA de te remplacer. C’est peut-être le plus étrange. Personne ne m’a retiré cette habitude. J’ai construit moi-même la raison de ne plus en avoir besoin. Puis j’ai regardé le résultat, content de ce que j’avais obtenu, surpris par ce que je venais de perdre.

Deux minutes pour reproduire une fonction. Vingt-sept ans pour lui attacher une partie de ma vie.

Ces deux durées ne mesurent pas la même chose.

Dans le ciel, regarder loin, c’est regarder dans le passé. La lumière nous apporte des nouvelles qui ont parfois voyagé bien plus longtemps que nous ne vivrons. Nous levons les yeux et nous appelons « maintenant » ce qui nous arrive d’autrefois.

Je crois qu’il se passait un peu cela avec toi. J’ouvrais une page pour voir du nouveau. Et sans le savoir, je retrouvais aussi quelque chose de l’homme qui l’ouvrait il y a tout ce temps. Les années avaient passé, mais l’adresse était encore là.

Il n’y a qu’une personne au monde qui pourrait vraiment comprendre. À qui je pourrais dire « Phoenix, c’est fini », sans présenter le site, sans raconter son histoire, sans justifier cette peine un peu ridicule devant une réussite informatique. Nous avons besoin de si peu de mots avec ceux qui connaissent le commencement.

Je ne vais pas prétendre que l’ancien était meilleur. Mon IA a fait mieux. C’est justement cela qui rend cet adieu difficile : je n’ai rien à lui reprocher. Je ne peux même pas défendre mon attachement avec un argument raisonnable sur la qualité du résultat.

Mais une copie, même meilleure, ne peut pas avoir été là à ta place.

Elle peut reprendre tes sources. Pas devenir rétroactivement un souvenir.

Alors, bye bye, PhoenixJP.

Je ne te dois pas de rester indispensable. Tu ne me dois pas de durer éternellement. Ce que tu as été n’a pas besoin de gagner contre ce qui vient pour avoir compté.

Je vais utiliser ce nouvel outil. Probablement avec plaisir. Je vais continuer à créer, à avancer, à m’étonner de ce que ces machines rendent possible.

Mais avant de passer à la suite, je voulais te dire au revoir.

L’IA a mis deux minutes à te remplacer.

Moi, j’avais besoin d’un peu plus pour te quitter.