Month: August 2024

Today is, for some reason, historically a notorious day for disasters. An oddly large number of notable disasters happened on this day.

On August 31 1420 a huge earthquake in Chile caused a massively destructive tsunami that swept through not only Chile but also Hawaii and Japan. Then on August 31 1886 another huge earthquake in Charleston South Carolina caused many deaths and millions of dollars of damage as far away as Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Cuba and Bermuda.

On August 31 1940 a commercial flight crashed near Lovettsville, Virginia. Ten years lager, on August 31 1950, a TWA flight crashed near Itay El Barud in Egypt, and then on August 31 1972 an Aeroflot flight crashed in Bashkortostan in the USSR.

On August 1986 an Aeroméxico flight collided with a Piper Cherokee over Cerritos California, killing people both on the air and in the ground. On the same day, the Soviet passenger liner Admiral Nakhimov sank in the Black Sea after colliding with the carrier Pyotr Vasev, killing 423.

Exactly one year later, On August 31 1987, a Thai Airways flight crashed into the ocean near Ko Phuket, Thailand, killing everyone aboard. Just one year after that, on August 31 1988, a Delta Air Lines flight crashesd during takeoff from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. On the same day, a CAAC Flight overshot the runway at Kai Tak Airport and crashed into Kowloon Bay.

On August 31 1999 a LAPA Boeing crashed during takeoff from Jorge Newbury Airport in Buenos Aires. Then on August 31 2002 Typhoon Rusa, the most powerful typhoon to hit South Korea in 43 years, killed at least 236 people.

On August 31 2005 the Al-Aaimmah bridge stampede in Baghdad killed 953 people, and on August 31 2019 a sightseeing helicopter crashed in the mountains of Northern Norway, killing everyone aboard.

As many people know, August 31 was also the day of the year that Diana, Princess of Wales, her partner, Dodi Fayed and their driver died in a car crash in Paris.

My advice: Stay home if you can on August 31.

A movie is generally made to speak to its time. It picks up and reflects back to us all sorts of ubiquitous cultural norms of our time.

So what happens when you watch a movie decades after it was made? All of those cultural norms, once so ubiquitous as to be invisible, become glaringly obvious.

An old movie is, inevitably, an anthropological examination of another era. You see the cultural assumptions of another time laid bare.

Although this is never the intention of filmmakers, it becomes inevitably so over time. Maybe this is one of the reasons we love watching old movies.

Yesterday I posted a letter written by ChatGPT, in response to my asking it to write a romantic breakup letter in the style of a business letter. The result was pretty funny, but it also led to an interesting little discussion.

A reader commented that it read like a resignation letter. I had thought quite the opposite. To me it read like somebody firing somebody else.

Now I am wondering exactly what the difference is, if any. When you quit a job, or when you fire somebody from a job, is there really a difference? In both cases, you are taking control of a situation for your benefit, and only theoretically for theirs.

This is true whether it is a romantic relationship, a business relationship, or any other kind of relationship. There is a power balance that shifts when somebody says “I am severing my ties with you.”

When somebody does this, it doesn’t seem to matter what the power relationship was before that moment. In that sense, severing a relationship seems to be the ultimate power move — for better or worse.

If you ask ChatGPT to tell a joke on any given subject, the results are invariably unfunny. ChatGPT just doesn’t get humor.

But that doesn’t mean ChatGPT can’t produce humor. You just need to know how to ask.

Because ChatGPT will faithfully produce any content that you request, in any style, you can produce some hilarious juxtapositions. Here is what happened when I asked it to express breaking up with a romantic partner in the style of a business letter:

Subject: Termination of Relationship

Dear [Partner’s Name],

I hope this message finds you well.

I am writing to formally address a matter of significant personal importance. After considerable reflection and review of our relationship dynamics, I have come to the conclusion that it is in both of our best interests to terminate our romantic partnership effective immediately.

This decision was not made lightly, and it reflects a careful evaluation of our compatibility and long-term objectives. Despite our efforts and shared experiences, it has become apparent that we are not aligned in ways that are essential for a fulfilling and sustainable relationship.

I want to express my sincere gratitude for the time and experiences we have shared. Your contributions to my life have been valued and appreciated. However, it is clear that continuing this relationship is no longer beneficial for either party.

Please consider this letter as a formal notice of the end of our relationship. I am hopeful that we can navigate this transition with respect and understanding, honoring the positive aspects of our time together while acknowledging that it is best to move forward separately.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. I wish you the very best in your future endeavors and personal growth.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

If you ask ChatGPT these days to write a computer program, it often does a remarkably good job. Not only will it implement an algorithm for you nearly instantly, but it will also give you a good explanation for how that algorithm works, and why it took the approach that it did.

But given that all programs written by generative AI are pastiches — bits and pieces from a vast training set of existing human implementations cobbled together — I wonder whether there are specific limits to what genAI can do.

In particular, are there prompts you can give it that will always fail? Are there particular kinds of computer programs that a generative AI simply cannot write, either because they are outside that training set or else because they also call for a form of reasoning that is uniquely human?

I had a dream recently about someone I am no longer friends with. We had been good friends, but then we had had a very bad falling out.

In my dream, we were friends again, and everything was fine. I remember thinking in the dream how wonderful that felt, as though it was the way things were supposed to be.

Sometime the following day, I remembered the dream, and I also remembered that no, we are no longer friends. Interestingly, my waking self did not feel bad about this at all. I knew exactly why our friendship had fallen apart, and why I would no longer wish to be friends with this person.

And I realized that it was not the friend I missed, but the friendship.

Today I put together one of those DIY bed frames, ordered from Amazon. The instructions were very clear, mostly a series of diagrams with well-placed alphanumeric labels, to match the labels with numbers and letters affixed to the bed parts themselves.

It was really fun. Although it wasn’t very difficult, I had an enormous feeling of satisfaction when the bed frames was completely assembled.

I found myself thinking back on the first time I read Robert M. Persig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Early in the book, he is assembling a barbecue while trying to follow instructions that had been translated (sort of) from the original Japanese. Things have come far since then.

I was aware, during the entire assembly procedure, that I was experiencing a process that had been iterated and improved over many years. By the time it got to me, the modular bed parts and the sequence of instructions had clearly been optimized.

Not only was it fun to put the bed together, but it felt extremely satisfying to be part part of a design process that had been honed over time to a state of perfection.

In honor of the 125th birthday of Jorge Luis Borges, today I visited a library. To my delight, there was a book there all about celebrating the birthdays of famous people.

Curious, I turned to page 125. Within that page was the description of a library.

The library it described contained one special volume. The book gave instructions how to find that volume, and then it suggested turning to page 125, and reading the words that I would find on the page.

I wonder what they would say.

Today is the birthday of William Ernest Henley. Were he still alive, he would now be turning one hundred and seventy five years old.

Henley wrote my dad’s favorite poem, which our father would often quote to us when we were kids. Here it is, in its entirety.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul.

— William Ernest Henley

Today on Dorothy Parker’s birthday, her sage advice for those who would pick up the pen:

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”