Recently my boyfriend was looking into buying some loppers for doing some yard work. We were in a couple of local big box stores, but the selection was limited and the products looked to be pretty flimsy. So, he decided to search online for a better alternative. Unfortunately, like so many products these days there are a lot of different options out there, but they are all of a terrible quality. Part of the race-to-the-bottom mentality of so much modern manufacturing means that you have to settle for something that’s flimsy and unlikely to make it through a single season let alone years of use.
Hey Alissa, that rhododendron bush is amazing! We have a much smaller one in front of the house. Half of it suddenly died in the late fall - we never did figure out why. What remains is flowering like a champ, though.
We've always had good luck with Fiskars, though since they're at Home Depot I imagine what you were looking at was not so impressive.
Re AI...it's an awful lot of hype right now, and (like the internet itself did) could easily go in several different directions. It lies...it lies a lot. And plagiarizes. But it can also be trained to do important things over and over without getting tired and screwing up. (Of course the flip side of that, is that people who were getting paid to do those things - and getting tired and screwing up occasionally - won't have those jobs anymore.) I work in IT, and we can all feel the sand shifting below our feet, but there are things to be hopeful about too - mainly improvements in the quality and consistency of work that can be routinized, so actual breathing people can go figure out other cool things to make the world a better place...hopefully (please, please).
I do agree about 90% with your point about generative AI being a waste. Certainly now it can't hold a candle to an actual person when it comes to creativity - as you point out, it isn't actually creative at all, it just remixes whatever it can find. In limited domains that's okay; in only 2-3 years we'll need a LOT fewer copywriters, paralegals, and medical narrative writers. But unless we completely lose our humanity and become extensions of our technology instead of the other way around (phone-obsessed millennials, you getting this?), human authors will always be necessary to plumb the depths and heights of the human experience, and to find new experiences. They might be inspired in some way by something AI comes up with, but it's their touch that will make it worthwhile.
Maybe you can get decent tools second hand? Craiglist, thrift shops, estate sales? The ones that were built to last are still around, and some people may be looking to offload them.
Hey Alissa, that rhododendron bush is amazing! We have a much smaller one in front of the house. Half of it suddenly died in the late fall - we never did figure out why. What remains is flowering like a champ, though.
We've always had good luck with Fiskars, though since they're at Home Depot I imagine what you were looking at was not so impressive.
Re AI...it's an awful lot of hype right now, and (like the internet itself did) could easily go in several different directions. It lies...it lies a lot. And plagiarizes. But it can also be trained to do important things over and over without getting tired and screwing up. (Of course the flip side of that, is that people who were getting paid to do those things - and getting tired and screwing up occasionally - won't have those jobs anymore.) I work in IT, and we can all feel the sand shifting below our feet, but there are things to be hopeful about too - mainly improvements in the quality and consistency of work that can be routinized, so actual breathing people can go figure out other cool things to make the world a better place...hopefully (please, please).
I do agree about 90% with your point about generative AI being a waste. Certainly now it can't hold a candle to an actual person when it comes to creativity - as you point out, it isn't actually creative at all, it just remixes whatever it can find. In limited domains that's okay; in only 2-3 years we'll need a LOT fewer copywriters, paralegals, and medical narrative writers. But unless we completely lose our humanity and become extensions of our technology instead of the other way around (phone-obsessed millennials, you getting this?), human authors will always be necessary to plumb the depths and heights of the human experience, and to find new experiences. They might be inspired in some way by something AI comes up with, but it's their touch that will make it worthwhile.
I love this post! So REAL! But - I also loved your telling us what you are reading, watching and listening to! Thumbs UP!
Maybe you can get decent tools second hand? Craiglist, thrift shops, estate sales? The ones that were built to last are still around, and some people may be looking to offload them.
About AI, though, I have no solutions!
https://open.substack.com/pub/valueneer/p/beyond-survival-of-the-fittest?r=28zrhq&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post