Category: Unclassified
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Generative AI as a potentially purer form of the capture of human genius than writing itself
Reading Time: 3 minutesWhat is the purest form of Chopin’s genius? There are a few levels. Level 1: Chopin improvising live Well, max-Chopin was surely to watch him improvise live, which he did with extraordinary style in among other places Parisian salons. It’s said that after a great session he’d hurry home to write down…
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Studs Terkel and the magic of reading
Reading Time: 4 minutesI first encountered the literary genre of the oral history at the same time I caught sight of probably its most masterful exponent, Studs Terkel. I was leafing around a book shop on the upper east side of NYC in Jaunary 2008, on my way to Obama’s Inauguration. I was leafing around…
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Agency and Consciousness in the Sonic Sphere
Reading Time: 19 minutesThis post is a birthday gift for Matt Mullenweg, who just turned 40, and modestly request blog posts as gifts. Matt cofounded WordPress, on which this blog is written; he’s been a wonderful conversational partner on topics of consciousness over the years; and he is also one of the chief sponsors and…
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Is San Francisco “back”? I audited its parties to find out
Reading Time: 7 minutesI lately had the luck to return to San Francisco for the first time since the pandemic, and I was very keen to discover whether the place was “back”. There had much been much talk on tech Twitter in the intervening period on the collapse of San Francisco (and by extension) the…
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Memorable dreams
Reading Time: 2 minutesIt isn’t just because our dreams are more interesting than our actual lives that they’re so worth remembering. There’s a further advantage: detailed dream-memory fosters the understanding that can enable us to recognize our dreams as they occur. If we can do that, then we can have the pleasure of taking control.…