January 29, 2023
News
After about 2 months of spending 90% of my time at Ilana’s condo in midtown, it’s now been a second week back at my place in Virginia Highlands. The neighborhood is fun, it’s nice walking around and going to coffee shops (there is an astounding FOUR coffee shops all within a half mile strip of a single street). It’s nice seeing the neighbors again, namely my neighbor Annie, who has lived right next to me for the past 3 years that I have been renting this place. She told me yesterday that my landlord fell off a roof. I haven’t talked to him in a few months, I would have never known if she hadn’t said anything. Anyways, she said he fell off a pretty high roof and was in the hospital for a week or so. How awful. He’s at least 70… at least. It’s hard to imagine he’ll be able to get around anymore after a fall like that. It’s hard to imagine that he’ll be able to walk at all. Who knows. I’ll give him a call today.
In other news, according to a corporation that was advertising their spicy-flavored tequila at a Spanish restaurant near the house, Thursday was National Spicy Margarita Day.
I got sick this week. I had a fever for 1 day, still felt shit the next day, felt tired the next day, then was pretty much better. Being sick is horrible. I got sick at the beginning of January too. I need to do something to boost my immunity. Maybe it’s time to turn back on the Joe Rogan podcast and start eating supplements every day.
Culture
Ilana and I have started watching movies most nights. Some that were particularly interesting: The Banshees of Inisherin (HBO Max), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (HBO Max). Some that I loved: Rocky 1-3 (Netflix), First Blood (Rambo 1) (HBO Max).
The first two movies might be called be some “films.” I think I’ve found out that the distinction between a movie and a “film” is that a “film” doesn’t really have an ending or a point to it. So you only know that a movie is a “film” at the end of it, when the movie stops and you say to yourself “I don’t get it.” That’s how you know, this isn’t just a movie, no, this is something transcending a movie, into the land of “filminess.” These movies are better than regular movies, because regular people can’t understand them. It takes many many years of watching these “films” to say “that was a very nice film” after watching one.
The latter two are American Movies. “Films” are an idea invented by the French to make French people feel like they are better than Americans. You see, people in other countries have to get very creative to convince themselves that their culture is in any way better than America. The French have tried here, and convinces some, but everyone knows that a true American movie beats out one of these French “films” any day.
Business
OpenAI has been taking the world “by storm” as they say with ChatGPT most recently, and previously DALL-E. These tools are really fun to use and the underlying technology is amazing. The general consensus seems to be that AI is going to explode in the next few years and our world will be completely changed because of it. I’m not convinced that there is going to be a cataclysmic change of any kind due to these AI advancements. The technology underlying ChatGPT has been out and open-sourced — meaning, anyone can download it, set it up, use it, and even build for-profit products with it for free — for at least 2 years. I believe the technology underlying DALL-E is actually newer than that of ChatGPT, but that also has been open-sourced for about 2 years, I believe. Companies have already been investing in AI, and almost every tech company is already implementing some sort of AI system in their product (typically these implementations go by the name “Machine Learning,” but they are one and same). Social media companies have been using machine learning for at least 5 years to personalize your feed. Companies with Customer Service lines have been using AI chatbots for a similar amount of time. Even Apple uses Machine Learning for many functions in our iPhone, namely, to maximize image quality when we use the camera. The technology has already been around, and is widely in use; but, it seems like companies are now all of the sudden scrambling to create new use-cases for this technology. I think this will lead to a lot of situations where companies fail to find product-market fit in the mad scramble to fit AI into every shaped hole they can find.
Travel
Two trips are booked for me so far this year — Blue Ridge Georgia for a weekend at my family’s cabin, and NYC to run the Brooklyn Half Marathon and see friends & family. Both are weekend trips, but I have two resolves for this year around traveling. Firstly, I am going to try to travel less, spending more time at home to explore Atlanta and areas in Georgia. Secondly, when I take vacation from work I am going to try to take one week at a time; whereas, in the past I have tried to only take one or two days at a time to allow for lots of long weekends.
Traveling can be a pain, what with flights and driving and staying in a hotel room and usually not having a car to get around with. It’s a lot of fun and of course everybody needs to get out and see a new place every once and a while to break up the feeling of monotony that arises eventually after staying in the same routine for long enough. However, I think last year I did too much traveling, so much so that I found myself wishing to stay in Atlanta for longer periods of time than I was.
In 2022 I took a lot of long weekend vacations, which means a high frequency of trips with short durations. Of course, with this setup the amount of time spent getting from one place to another in proportion to the time spent staying in the destination is much greater than if a lower frequency of vacations were taken with a higher duration. Additionally, I’ve found that long weekends don’t sufficiently allow me to “unplug,” as they say, from work. If I take 5 week long vacations this year, I think I will be able to enjoy the rest of the time not vacationing even more, since I will feel actually rested and had the opportunity to really appreciate and savor the time off with whatever I was doing.