Had to move my birthday celebrations two weeks into the future because there’s still flu going round in my family and I don’t want anyone else to catch it. Damn! Was really looking forward to tomorrow. But hey, it’s only postponed.
Finished reading: What A Way To Go by Bella Mackie 📚
Oddly gripping. I am torn about this book. Couldn’t abandon it but also am not super hyped I read it. 😅
Keep your hope
Despite feeling overwhelmed by global crises, it’s important to recognize that we still have the power to take meaningful action within our own sphere of control.
Heute morgen wieder die Kinder zur Schule gebracht. Dabei gesehen, dass auch Tramfahrer nur Menschen sind, manchmal zu schnell fahren und dann nicht mehr rechtzeitig bremsen können. Glücklicherweise nur Blechschaden bei dem Auto, wo die Tram hinten drauf fuhr. Dass so etwas vor der Schule meiner Kinder passiert macht mich etwas nervös.
Finished reading: Fool’s Fate by Robin Hobb 📚
Cried for the last 400 pages. What a book. What an ending. Intensive feelings as these is what books can give. More so than movies. I know these characters. They are my friends.
I recently started using a Bookwyrm instance (bookrastinating.com) to manage my book reading. They support ActivityPub and offer some more functionality regarding reading goals and book reviews. Is there anything planned on integrating with Bookwyrm @manton?
I started reading this a few days ago as a loan from the lib: What A Way To Go by Bella Mackie 📚
Very fun and just my kind of humor:
I rolled my eyes, closed the window and went back to bed. As I fell asleep, I remembered to practise gratitude. I was immensely grateful that despite the gruesome way my husband died, he’d done it with his clothes on, and not, like Jane Borrall’s husband, naked but for a latex trench coat.
The ugly American.
dgardner.substack.com/p/the-ugl…
Found through @Buddenbohm@fnordon.de
(if only so many good ppl wouldn’t share on Substack 😭)
Finished reading The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson 📚 yesterday evening. Stayed up until after 11pm to finish the book. My regular bed time would have been at around 9.30pm 🫣
I liked the trilogy very much. The ending has a believable, moving conclusion. I was captivated by the series. 🫶
More on AI. And fun with Jenny Lawson.
I just read an article from Jenny Lawson about how using AI is going very strong for her: No, I do not want AI to “polish” me.
But after I added the update gmail was like, “YOU’RE STILL DOING IT WRONG, IDIOT?” and the polish thing came up again and I was like, “Are you trying to AI fix a paragraph where I say how much I don’t want AI to fix shit?” And turns out, yeah, that exactly what it meant because it gave me this
I will not (hopefully!) write that much about AI in the future but yeah. It was too good to not share with you. Also: I mentioned recently how I sometimes use AI but didn’t give an example. So here is one. I like to use LLMs to rewrite my English sentences in a more idiomatic way. I use this mostly for writing where it’s important for me the reader has little option to mis-interpret my words. Because they might be bad English.
Found via @manton: www.manton.org/2025/01/2…