Joe Cecil

Troubles with language models

Grossly simplifying, David Chapman's Better Without AI focuses on two kinds of machine learning models: (1) Recommender systems, and (2) "shiny" models. Among the "shiny" models are vision models like AlexNet, CLIP, DALL-E, VisualBERT and so on, as well as language models like BERT,

Review: "The Elephant Vanishes"

Another short story review. This time it's "The Elephant Vanishes" by Haruki Murakami. It's a really interesting short story. It opens with a mystery, given by the title, and evolves from there. I won't say more — ideally go and read it. So,

Track your response to elements of craft

I'm participating in a book club for an anthology of short stories. The hardest part of every book club is this (emphasis mine): Choose an element of fiction... that stood out for you as particularly important/developed in each story. Explain what you notice about how the writer

A bottomless crevasse

A quote from Tracts of the Sun: We have bad news for you all. You've just fallen from an incredible height into a bottomless crevasse. However — that's also the great news. It's bottomless, so you're falling into space. Happy landings. –Ngak'

taking my time

i read a quote recently, implicitly in the 'domain of creativity,' that said: "execute your ideas as quickly as possible, before you have a chance to get addicted to their potential." it reminds me of "speak before you think" from an ultraspeaking context. it&

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