In which I offer up a random selection of thoughts. You know, the usual.
Frustrations in life
Bill Watterson once wrote the following in one of his Calvin and Hobbes comics, in a line spoken by the exasperated parent of a six year old.
"Architects should be forced to live in the buildings they design, and children's book authors should be forced to read their stories aloud every night of their rotten lives."
I've spent a fair amount of time on the phone recently to various companies trying to sort out some complex issues. I'd like to append to this statement people who compose or choose on-hold music, to force them to listen to it through a poor quality phone speaker every day for the rest of their lives. Seems fair.
Fun ways to torture AI
I'm still not using AI very much. I think my main problem is that it seems determined to answer every question, even if there is no answer, or the answer is 'no this is a very bad idea'.
As an experiment I fed ChatGPT one of the pages on this site and asked it to find the hidden message (spoiler alert - there isn't one). First it found the message 'hello from the internet' hidden in the first letters of each paragraph (which doesn't exist). Then on further prompting it went to extraordinary lengths to construct vaguely boat related phrases using a complicated and inconsistent technique of choosing letters at certain points in the text.
To its credit, I did that a few weeks ago and attempting the same thing again produces no such silliness. Which leads me only to conclude that these things are getting smarter, and that the demise of humanity is accelerating. So not much of a better outcome.
Gotham City Tourist Board
I'm not sure of the exact ratio, but the amount of ideas I have for articles for this site far exceeds the number I actually post. After playing through Batman: Arkham Knight a few years ago, one such idea was a parody article about the Gotham City Tourist Board trying against all evidence to convince people that the city was a good place to visit.
I never finished the article (the idea just didn't seem funny enough in the end) but I got as far as taking a load of screenshots, which I recently found while clearing through my harddrive. To my mind they paint Batman as a lost tourist wandering the deserted streets, encountering fresh disappointments at every turn.
A selection below for your enjoyment.
Click bait headlines
By default Firefox shows a load of news stories when you open a new tab. After being exposed to this for a while I've become quite familiar with the art of writing a click bait headline. It's not actually that hard - it's just about trying to make the reader feel like they're missing out on something.
The following are fictional headlines I've written based on the patterns I've recognised. See if you recognise any.
- Revealed: this one simple daily exercise is all you need for a flat stomach
- This village in the UK has been voted the best place to visit - here's why
- Only true fans of Stranger Things will understand why the ending of season 5 changes everything
- This list of the most used things in our kitchens might surprise you
- The thing we're all doing wrong when walking - and why it's bad
- The secret to healthy teeth your dentist doesn't want you to know
- This one food contains all the protein you need - and something else besides
- This ancient tool invented by the Romans is still in use today
- The secret message hidden in Queen's 'We will rock you'
- Why millennials are increasingly ditching YouTube for this little known new app
Some particularly honourable mentions include "[actor] gives a definitive answer to whether they're in the new [tv series] or not" (an article that could surely be summed up in fewer words than its title) and another that was simply titled "The Batman Part 2" that provided literally nothing but speculation about said film. Bold.
Another pun best delivered aloud
I've written another one. You're welcome, internet.
I liked the first two Harry Potter books, they were a lot of fun. The third one was a bit Sirius, though.