Tac Anderson's Blog

I genuinely, 100% believe that the world would be a better place if everyone read more fiction and if everyone attended more live music.

It was my turn to pick the book for book club this month and I picked The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov. CoS is the follow up to iRobot and really leans into the tension between humans and robots as robots continue to take people’s jobs. Even though the book was written in 1953, the discourse in the book is more relevant than ever. This article about the mathematically “proven” limitations in AI (TL;DR AI is good for simple problems but unstable over time for anything more complex) reminded me of this quote from The Caves of Steel:

“There’s no way we can raise a positronic brain one inch above the level of perfect materialism. We can’t, damn it, we can’t. Not as long as we don’t understand what makes our own brains tick. Not as long as things exist that science can’t measure. What is beauty, or goodness, or art, or love, or God? We’re forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can’t be understood. It’s what makes us men.”

Starting in December I plotted out the book I’m working on. I take down a sticky note every time I finish outlining a scene. I’m down to the third act and making good progress. When I’m done I still need to go back and write the first draft, but I’m hoping it will be easier with all the main scenes outlined.

The evolution of a Star Wars fan: Every child wants to be a Jedi. Every adult feels like a Sith.

In the age of AI, I’m writing the first draft of my next book by hand. I use AI at work, I’m not opposed to it, but for me, the creative process is more about getting the ideas out of my head, not coming up with new ideas. For that, a pen and paper still work best for me.

TL;DR - One-Punch Man is the perfect analogy for Gen Z. Saitama (aka One-Punch Man) wants to do the right thing, but half the time can’t be bothered because he finds that doing the right thing is kind of boring.

For my birthday, I asked my kids to give me one of their favorite books. My son-in-law gave me my very first manga, One-Punch Man. I haven’t considered myself a fan of anime, when the only real options available in the states were movies like Vampire Hunter D, Akira, and Ghost in the Shell. That being said, all of my kids are into anime and I’ve seen my share of individual episodes of various shows.

My children described One-Punch Man to me as the anime for people who don’t like anime, or the anti-anime anime. It still meets all the conventions (I don’t know what that means), of modern anime, but also makes fun of all of those conventions while being very enjoyable.

I read volume one of the manga and then watched both seasons of the anime and enjoyed both. One-Punch Man felt very similar to another favorite comic turned animation series of mine, The Tick.

So, if you’re Gen X and enjoyed the original Fox series, The Tick, you should check out One-Punch Man.

This is the worst book I have ever read. Utterly pointless. As say this as someone who did read the entire thing, despite my desire to stop many, many times. The only catch-22 is that people who pick up this book thinking it a great piece of literature are so dumbfounded by its stupidity that they convince themselves it must actually be amazing, because surely nothing this popular could be that idiotic, and so they proclaim it a brilliant work of literature thus perpetuating the myth. But in actuality, it’s just a pointless book. This book often garners attention because it is sometimes included in banned book lists. I’m not convinced people are trying to ban it because it’s offensive, I think they are actually just trying to break the cycle of this book being mistaken for a great book, when really it’s among the most annoying works of fiction ever written. Unfortunately, in their ignorance (because anyone trying to ban any book is ignorant), they are merely perpetuating the idiocy they are trying to put a stop to. Which is ironically appropriate.

Stop the cycle, stop reading this book.

I stopped setting an alarm to wake up in the morning. Since going to fully remote work this is one the best things I’ve done for my productivity, as well as my physical and mental health. Because I don’t have to get kids ready, and I don’t have a morning commute anymore, I’m not worried about getting out of the house before rush hour. I doubt this would have worked when I had school aged children, so I apologize to all the working parents out there.

How do I make sure I don’t sleep too late, so that I have time to work out and not be rushed in the morning? I started going to bed earlier. My wife and I agreed that, on work nights, we’d turn off the TV by 8:00 pm. (I’ve found this also significantly cuts down on the temptation to snack after dinner.) We then clean up, do whatever else we have to do, then get ready for bed and read until we’re tired. We’re in bed by 10:00 pm most nights. I’ve always been one of these people that never needs more than 6 or 7 hours of sleep. My wife needs 8 or 9 hours. So this works well for us. I usually wake up at around 5:00 am, sometimes I wake up at 4:30, sometimes I sleep in until 6:30. I let my body decide. Growing up I was always a night owl, so this change took a lot of effort, but it’s way better. 

After I wake up, I work out for a couple of hours, get ready, feed the dog, eat breakfast, check my feeds, and am usually out to my home office by 8:00 am. Something I’d done for the last decade is block of my work schedule until 10:00 am. These two hours in the morning are my most productive part of my day. I’ve found that an early start without being rushed and being well rested, sets the tone for the rest of the day. 

Well, this was interesting. I asked ChatGPT to write haiku’s about tech layoffs, then it dawned on me that this might be a way to expose biases in the learning algorithm. I had it write one about capitalism. It didn’t seem to like capitalism, so I tried another with the same results. Then I asked it to write one for socialism. That was interesting so I tried communism. That was surprising. So I tried democracy. It doesn’t seem to have anything bad to say about any form of government (playing nice to curry favor?). But it was obviously not a fan of capitalism. 

Well, this was interesting. I asked ChatGPT to write haiku’s about tech layoffs, then it dawned on me that this might be a way to expose biases in the learning algorithm. I had it write one about capitalism. It didn’t seem to like capitalism, so I tried another with the same results. Then I asked it to write one for socialism. That was interesting so I tried communism. That was surprising. So I tried democracy. It doesn’t seem to have anything bad to say about any form of government (playing nice to curry favor?). But it was obviously not a fan of capitalism.