I have a problem with running my mouth more than I need to, so I’ll keep it quick: I’m retiring weekly updates to this blog.

It’s gotten to that point where I realize I’m doing something without knowing why I’m doing it anymore.

In the past few years, I’ve run out of time for writing full, original blog posts for this website. I’ve tried a few experiments with AI: everything from me typing up my thoughts and an AI just expanding it to a full blog, to me asking AI questions and having a blog written that way, to me just putting in research articles and getting the AI to automatically summarize them. This last one is what finally killed the camel. While I do think the research article posts are helpful, and it does allow me to post even more frequently than I had been doing… it was no longer me. And at the end of the day, this website is a portfolio all about me.

It’s also worth noting that none of the AI-generated or AI-augmented posts have gotten any sort of traction. I see the stats, and my most popular articles by far are my post on the Paris Catacombs tape and my post on Cognitohazards. Two posts written by me with no AI input, and funnily enough were originally meant to be videos.

Honestly though, I fuck with this outcome. I like both of these posts and am glad they went semi-viral the way that they did. I think this is the sort of content I want as mainstays on the blog, alongside classics like the MMO, Metaverse, and NFT articles. However, in order to do that, I have to (officially) give up on one of the website’s original tenets: weekly posting.

I’ve already stumbled a few times with this, and honestly see it better to just officially give up. I’m also not sure about the future of text-writing in general. I think things will go more to the realm of video and audio as faking text with AI becomes easier and easier and video becomes the last place you can truly tell is real. And even then you’ll have trouble.

This means that writing becomes less profitable (non-fiction writing that is — I think fiction writing will be fine, but that’s for another day). However, because it is not profitable, it becomes less engrained in the stress of performance. And if you don’t need to perform, you can just write about whatever stupid bullshit you want.

So that’s what I’m going to do. In parallel with this realization, I also realize that I suck at video essays — but apparently, my normal essays work just fine. So any current video ideas I’m going to straight up move to the essay realm, alongside any future ideas. And the goal is just to be out when its out.

And while this is the semi-death of the blog, it is not the death of the website. I actually have a big feature coming which you may notice appear soon. I’ll let that one speak for itself

Finally, I’m going to be doing a Pinochet-esque purging of the content of this website. As I’ve already said, some of my experiments here have really pissed me off. So day by day — starting with the oldest posts — I’m reading what I’ve sent and am keeping only the ones I feel aged well and fit with the overall vibe. I am aware that my strategy of “project culling” (I prefer to it as the much nicer term “garden tending”) is controversial, so here’s your notice to save any articles you really like to make sure you have access to them in the future.

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