Shorts on rkempe’s blog

"Communication skills" should be thought of as two separate sets of skills

Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:54:31 -0400

I think “communication skills” should really be thought of as two separate sets of skills.

There are the “hard” communication skills, which are easily visible and which I’m going to call “expository communication skills”. These are things like being articulate, being able to write coherently, being good at public speaking, etc.

Then there are the “soft” communication skills, which I’m going to call “collaboration skills”, which are all about having the ability to understand and influence and compromise and work with other people. These are largely invisible.

It feels like we're supposed to default to asking AI for help these days

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 22:30:46 -0400

One thing that is really starting to bother me is how it feels like we’re supposed to default to asking AI for help these days instead of asking an actual human. Every once in a while, when I ask someone a question, instead of the person answering me themself, they tell me “I asked AI and got this” and forward me some AI-generated answer. I find this frustrating for two reasons, the first being that it feels like a condescending insult to my intelligence. I am perfectly capable of typing my own questions into a chatbot and reading the answers it produces. But the second reason is that if I ask someone a question, it’s because I want to hear directly from that person. I’ll often deliberately ask multiple people the same question so that I can get multiple sides of the same story.

AI art isn't for artists (third time's the charm?)

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 23:52:34 -0400

You know what the missing piece of the puzzle was? It was that AI art isn’t for artists.

Like, it can be. But for the most part it isn’t.

Okay so here’s a “thread” I wrote back in October, in the pre-ChatGPT era, right when everyone was freaking out about AI art, and I’m pulling it out for a third time to add some commentary on which of my thoughts have shifted and which I still think are relevant.

Maybe essays and poems are two sides of the same coin

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 22:13:19 -0400

I’m starting to think that maybe essays and poems are two sides of the same coin, where they’re both attempts to explain things, but an essay is what you get when you follow a thread through to the end, and a poem is what you get when you can’t quite isolate the thread and you don’t know where it ends.

I think fiction has a slightly different purpose. It’s for the things that need to be expressed but probably shouldn’t be explained outright.

I’m becoming increasingly concerned by this trend

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 18:46:26 -0400

I’m becoming increasingly concerned by this trend where we’re letting these AI companies convince us that we can use these systems to streamline our lives by flattening the complexity out of them, as if our problems are a standard dataset we can summarize our way out of instead of this massive nightmare jumble of causes and effects we don’t always see and that we definitely do not understand.

And I find it paradoxical how the word “context” has become so associated with the use of LLMs when context is precisely the thing that they are stripping out of our lives. Knowledge isn’t supposed to exist in a vacuum; it’s supposed to be developed through being in conversation with other people and their needs and with the real world and with other knowledge, and it is through the specificity gained through that kind of conversation that information becomes more meaningful. We act as if this act of seeking and internalizing context is grunt work that should be offloaded toa machine in order to make room for the real work, when it is, in fact, the real work.

The leading AGI shills subscribe to an insane secular religion

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 13:42:57 -0400

No one is talking about how the leading AGI shills subscribe to an insane secular religion that doesn’t give a shit about problems happening in the real world because supposedly it’s more pressing to create AGI that will “improve the lives” of trillions of “digital posthumans.”

The more I learn about this, the more disturbed I become, but alas, I cannot unlearn this.

Some pros and cons of being articulate

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 01:47:57 -0400

Pros of being articulate:

being able to express yourself precisely feels powerful
people will think you’re smart

Cons of being articulate:

people will expect you to know things
people will think you’re smart

Can we please stop referring to people as being "technical" or "non-technical"?

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 23:48:27 -0400

Can we please stop referring to people as being “technical” or “non-technical”?

What the hell does that language even mean?

Is a “technical person” a “holder of technical skills” or are we using this to mean “has domain expertise in applied work involving computer systems”?

One reason why someone might aim to be promoted

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 20:36:18 -0400

Something that just occurred to me is that one reason why someone might aim to be promoted is because if you keep getting promoted, then eventually your “above-my-pay-grade” questions won’t be above your pay grade anymore.

The difference between reading textbooks and reading academic papers

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 23:50:59 -0400

The difference I’ve found between reading textbooks and reading academic papers is that on my first pass through reading a textbook page, I read most sentences 1-3 times, whereas if it’s a paper, I’ll probably end up reading each sentence 3-5 times before turning the page.

Events can be interpreted on three different levels

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 21:11:24 -0400

One concept that I’m toying around with right now is the idea that events are interpreted on three levels:

Plaintext: what people said they did, or, alternatively, what was concretely observed.

Subtext: what actually happened behind the scenes that you sort of have to guess at unless you were there (incomplete definition but you get the idea).

Context: where this event fits into the bigger picture of what’s going on.

When did we decide it was cringe to put effort into things?

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 20:02:51 -0400

When did we decide it was cringe to put effort into things?

Like, if I put in more than the bare minimum effort required to achieve something, does that make me an idiot, or does that make me someone who cared?

The difference between structured and unstructured learning environments

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 20:41:24 -0400

A thought I’ve been having is that the difference between a structured learning environment (like a course) and an unstructured learning environment (like a research internship) is that structured learning is really defined by what is said, whereas unstructured learning is really defined by the spaces between what is said, and by what you, the learner, fill those spaces in with.

I think this is why you have to be really careful about who you choose to learn from. It’s much easier for someone to imprint themself on you by subtly nudging you to think like them than it is for someone to succeed at telling you what to think.

I think being good at writing is about a lot more than being good at language, structure and mechanics

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 13:57:16 -0400

I think being good at writing is about a lot more than being good at language and structure and mechanics and all. I mean, obviously those things are important – they’re the tools of the trade, I guess. But like any with other art form, I think curiosity and the ability to be observant are more important, and I love reading things written by people who clearly notice things.

I’ve said this before, but I think worrying about creativity is kind of overrated. I don’t think of myself as a particularly creative person. I usually feel like my ideas are obvious and inevitable, and I’m just stubborn enough to follow through with them more often than the average person. For example, one of my favourite projects I’ve done can be summed up by “I took pictures of my street for two years.”

It takes 4-6 months to build trust with a new mentor

Fri, 29 Aug 2025 17:41:35 -0400

I’ve been thinking a lot about mentorship lately, and I think one of my recent conclusions is that a new mentoring relationship doesn’t really become useful until after the first 4-6 months, because that’s how long it takes to build trust. Sometimes it takes even longer to build that trust. I’m not saying that the first few months won’t be useful at all – if you think they’re completely useless, that opinion is unlikely to change significantly – but you probably won’t be able to go very deep because you’ll still be vibe-checking each other at first.

Substack fascinates me as a platform particularly because it bothers me

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 19:49:20 -0400

Substack fascinates me as a platform particularly because it bothers me. There is a type of writer who writes on Substack, and a type of essay that people publish there (yes, I know it’s not a monolith, but hear me out for a second) and it is its own ecosystem for having conversations, and it just seems to encourage a very reactive and online form of essay writing, like if you took Twitter and made it longform and more polished but you could also choose to paywall your more controversial tweets.

You shouldn't just write because you want to brand yourself

Sun, 24 Aug 2025 23:35:44 -0400

There is a specific type of article, almost always posted on Medium, that is clearly intended to be included in a LinkedIn post for personal branding purposes. I hate those articles. They drive me insane.

You shouldn’t just write because you want to brand yourself, because if you do that you won’t have anything real to say. Figure out something to say first! It is not that hard.

And these articles all have the same stupid upbeat marketing energetic tone. It drives me crazy. Does anyone actually read and enjoy these things? Who are they for?

The cool thing about asking questions no one else is willing to ask

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 18:50:05 -0400

The cool thing about asking questions no one else is willing to ask is that you get answers no one else gets, especially if you ask the right people.

The problem with doing this is that you’re probably also perceived as an annoying person who asks too many questions. I think one of the most useful skills when you’re like this is learning to vibecheck people to guess whether or not you can ask them certain things and get real answers.

One of my new favourite ways to write blog posts

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 20:45:27 -0400

One of my new favourite ways to write blog posts, especially the ones that contain advice, is to write them as an imagined conversation with someone who won’t stop asking questions.

I think writing the questions is fun, I think answering them is fun, and I get to take myself way less seriously than when I answer questions in real life. Plus, then I get to answer the questions that people should ask but don’t.

Thoughts on writing with generative AI

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 00:19:20 -0400

I’ve been attempting to use generative AI to help me write documentation because there’s so much pressure to be able to say you’re using it right now, and I honestly think the outputs are unusable without essentially rewriting the whole thing.

I find the outputs are:

Excessively verbose (please get to the point)
Subtly incorrect, and I’d rather just research and write correct information than spend time fact checking AI
Not quite what I want, because the machine can’t read my mind, and I feel like prompting it correctly and then fact checking and editing the output would be more time consuming than just writing the damn thing
Just like, tonally weird

I don’t know, it’s a weird experience. I will give it this:

You can learn a lot about a person by examining what they read

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 22:30:55 -0400

I think you can learn a lot about a person by examining what they read.

I don’t know if you’ve ever opened a book someone recommended to you and been like, “oh, of course this person would like this,” but it can explain a lot.

The different types of white collar jobs

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 09:04:59 -0400

I think I can break down most white collar jobs into the following categories:

People who produce relationships (for example, sales or recruiting)
People who produce things (usually products)
People who produce infrastructure (usually involving technology)
People who produce processes
People who produce information
People who produce decisions

These 6 categories are what I suspect “value” in business terms can be broken down into, and of course, we spend a lot of time trying to quantify that value using dollar amounts. How much you get paid is a function of how much value you’re perceived to produce. For example, it seems like society has decided that producing decisions is a high value activity.

I'm not sure how I feel about everyone being on Substack

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 21:41:00 -0400

Everyone and their mom is on Substack now and I really don’t know how I feel about it.

Substacks aren’t really blogs; they’re part of an ecosystem that feels a little bit like the social mediaification of blogging.

Blogging is supposed to be one of the last defences against the shackles of social media expectations, but I feel like Substack centralizing so much of the long form discourse on the internet can’t be good. Every once in a while I consider getting on Substack, but it just feels wrong for some reason. I believe in people having their own space on the internet.

If researchers don't advance public knowledge, who will?

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 20:24:48 -0400

Here’s a thought: The set of “public knowledge” and the set of “human knowledge” are very different things: the first is a strict subset of the latter.

Researchers get paid to advance human knowledge. They do NOT paid to advance public knowledge.

So who advances “public knowledge”? Is it journalists? Educators? Should it be the burden of researchers?

Here’s another question: should all human knowledge be packaged in such a way that the public understands it? Is that a good use of time and resources? Does the average person actually need to be able to understand the newest developments in esoteric fields?

We need more cross-disciplinary interaction than ever

Fri, 06 Jun 2025 17:53:56 -0400

In this day and age, we need more cross-disciplinary interaction than ever, because technology has rapidly become everyone’s problem in a way it wasn’t before, and we all need to have common language to discuss what is happening.

I was listening to an English grad student talk about the environmental impact of “algorithms” during an academic panel today, and while I know that what he was talking about was really generative AI, technical people aren’t going to take you seriously if while critiquing them, you start conflating generative AI with algorithms in general.

The problem with education is that it can't be measured effectively

Wed, 28 May 2025 08:52:41 -0400

The problem with education is that it can’t be measured effectively, so instead we turn to credentials, which can.

Prompt engineering is not a real art process

Mon, 19 May 2025 19:54:04 -0400

Today it occurred to me that inherent in experiencing any artwork is the idea that I could someday meet the artist and ask them questions about it or at the very least have a conversation with them.

If the whole artwork is generated then there are no real questions that could be asked, because prompt engineering is not a real process.

I wish more people thought about the effects of class on education

Sat, 10 May 2025 09:56:45 -0400

I’ve been thinking a lot about how one’s background influences one’s experiences in education (and, in turn, what advice one gives to the next generation). Two people can have wildly different experiences in the same course, with the same instructor, at the same institution, and if you look deep enough the culprit is often socioeconomic differences, which tend to also line up with differences in academic achievement (but not always… it’s complicated).

Every minor should require taking a senior-level course

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 00:24:20 -0400

Here’s my possibly elitist university education hot take: I think completing a minor in a discipline should require you to take at least one fourth year course in that discipline.

A minor isn’t a degree, true. But I think claiming to have a minor in a field should mean you’re somewhat literate in a reasonable subset of the basics that any major in that discipline would know and that you have exposure to at least one advanced topic.

AI was never about democratizing creativity

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 21:15:34 -0400

I’ve started thinking a little bit about creativity in the context of AI. If you’ve known me for several years, you might be aware that I’m really not a fan of the word “creativity” or of its noun and adjective form “creative”. I’ve mellowed on it a little bit over the years, but generally speaking I still believe that it’s a wildly misused buzzword with dubious meaning in the average colloquial setting, and that lots of people actually have no idea what creativity is. It really bothers me when people conflate creativity with artistic ability, or when people act like it’s some sort of gene you either have or don’t, instead of understanding that it’s a skill you can improve. But in a lot of ways, it’s the best word we have, and so I’m going to use it today.

Generative AI devalues process work

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 19:10:54 -0400

Part of why Generative AI is bad is because it devalues process work. It devalues actually using your brain to think through problems, it devalues conversations, it devalues expertise, and in losing process work you also lose all of the other interesting directions/ideas/work that would have come out of it. Generally speaking I am quite concerned about this.

Once your art is out there, you don't own it anymore

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 20:20:33 -0400

Once your art is out there, you don’t own it anymore. People get to have opinions about it and frame or interpret it however they want. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

It can be very cool but it’s also strange and disorienting. I feel like what I like about my work isn’t necessarily what other people like about it.

Your artist bio should project confidence

Tue, 04 Mar 2025 09:00:06 -0400

One of the things I’ve noticed lately, as I read bios written by my peers (and ask them to write bios, in some cases), is how afraid so many people are to project any sense of artistic legitimacy in their bios. Even if you’re insecure in real life, your bio is not the place for that.

You can write whatever the hell you want in your bio, and no one will side-eye you, unless you outright lie about your credentials or accomplishments. Bios are how you choose to present yourself, not just to the world, but also to your peers and colleagues. If you don’t even pretend to believe you belong in a space, no one is going to believe that you belong for you.

One of the most useful ways I've found to learn about a deeply niche topic

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 01:42:11 -0400

One of the most useful ways I’ve found to learn about some deeply niche topic is to find a recording of a tutorial or workshop aimed at a research audience, and watch the video about 5 times slower than originally intended.

It usually makes more sense than attempting to read the papers the video is based on (and is self contained with all of the key important information), but the significant speed decrease is necessary because these research talks are freakishly information dense, and also, unlike the intended audience, I have no idea what the speaker is talking about.

One of the most disorienting experiences

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 23:47:17 -0400

One of the most disorienting experiences has to be realizing that the skills you take for granted might actually be important and have value.

Maybe imposter syndrome is a defence mechanism

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 10:47:55 -0400

I think sometimes imposter syndroming is intellectually safer than allowing yourself to feel any sort of confidence.

Or I guess I should say feels intellectually safer. Anyway, sometimes it feels safer not to believe in yourself than to shoot as high as you think you could and face the real possibility of failure.

Thoughts on the difference between writing fiction and nonfiction

Sun, 15 Sep 2024 09:18:35 -0400

This might be a really obvious thought, but it just occurred to me that the difference between writing fiction and nonfiction is that in fiction, you construct a world and a story, and your job is to create the illusion that there is stuff going on outside the boundaries of what you’re showing, or that the world is somewhat messier than the way you’ve depicted it.

When you write nonfiction, you do the opposite. The real world is an inherently messy place, and your job as the writer becomes trying to construct this illusion of order through what you choose to include (or not), how you choose to present things, and how you order or juxtapose different events and/or ideas.

Being an essayist is all about having an interesting perspective

Sat, 07 Sep 2024 20:45:36 -0400

I just had the striking realization that my tendency to have one foot in and one foot out of multiple disciplines might have something to do with my tendency to want to write about them.

Being an essayist is all about having an interesting perspective, and being scattered is definitely a way to do that. How good of a way to do that is it? I don’t know, but I’ve yet to run out of ideas.

A useful analogy from painting

Sat, 31 Aug 2024 00:49:53 -0400

Painters have this concept of the “ugly stage” of a piece, where a bunch of elements are starting to be there but everything lacks detail and is sketchy and messy and it doesn’t quite look like the painting it’s going to be just yet.

I think that idea applies to a lot more things than just paintings.

Some brief public speaking advice

Fri, 02 Aug 2024 22:55:33 -0400

I feel like I’ve been getting a lot of questions about public speaking recently.

Someone asked me, about two weeks ago, whether I have formal training in public speaking. The answer to that question is no; honestly, I’m not sure what that even means or would entail.

Anyway, here’s my public speaking “advice”:

Get good at writing – being able to clearly articulate your ideas in text helps with being able to express yourself in general.
I have a policy of not turning down opportunities to talk in front of people unless I have to. You get good at doing it by doing it more. The more terrifying the opportunity, the better, and the more variety in the experiences, the better. Speaking in front of 3 people and speaking in front of 700 people can be very different types of scary when it matters. I’ve done both.
You kinda have to believe in the moment that what you are saying is actually worth listening to and that people should care. Another term for this is “confidence”. I think this is the actual hard part, but it’s also the most valuable.

Tl;dr convince yourself that your ideas are important enough that you should be convincing other people to listen. I guess there is a certain level of arrogance involved in this… lol.

Some things I've learned so far this summer

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 14:12:22 -0400

Here are some things I’ve learned so far this summer:

Reading is slow.
Understanding things is slow and there are no shortcuts.
If you keep revisiting the same concepts they might make sense eventually, things aren’t impossible.
Academics are opinionated people who find it hard to agree on things, so faculty meetings are messy.
Most people are bad at writing.
Blackboards are a pain to work with.
Don’t self-select out of asking for things, initiative is good.
Talking to people can be hard.
File management is useful.
You can always break down problems further.
Someone projecting confidence may or may not actually know what they’re talking about.

Writing poems feels like abstracting the train of thought itself

Sat, 06 Apr 2024 11:21:08 -0400

Writing poems feels like abstracting the train of thought itself, and it feels a little weird, like I’m leaving gaps for the reader to fill in within the context of whatever “structure” or “internal logic” I’m trying to create.

I feel like the difference between trying to write prose and writing poems is that writing prose feels like creating chains of causality between things, whereas writing poems sometimes feels like constructing a world where two (or more) things are related, and then placing both things in that world.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of academic lineage

Sat, 23 Mar 2024 19:12:30 -0400

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of “academic lineage” recently and I don’t have anything concrete to say yet but it is very interesting.

Thoughts on Range (by David Epstein)

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 01:23:40 -0400

So I’ve been rereading this book called Range (by David Epstein), and I’ve come across some interesting ideas that didn’t really stick with me on my first reading. For example, one concept I’m finding intriguing is the idea of “match quality”, which is basically a measure of fit between a person and their job/occupation.

The idea presented in the book is essentially that improving match quality only comes through exploration – you don’t figure out who you are by locking yourself in a room and thinking about it, but by trying out different things.

Thoughts on expressing thoughts

Wed, 19 Jul 2023 21:49:50 -0400

One of the things I’ve always worked towards is expressing my thoughts in the clearest way possible. I feel like I’m decent at it in text form, because text doesn’t happen in real time. But verbal communication is a whole other story. Trying to explain an abstract thought during a conversation is like looking at some delicate cobweb you can barely see and trying to lift up the edges, only for them to disintegrate under your fingers.

Eight great reasons to make a zine

Fri, 07 Jul 2023 23:36:49 -0400

I think more people should make zines. Here are some good reasons to make a zine:

Because you can.
Seriously, no one will stop you.
It can be as silly or serious or simple or complicated as you want.
Books are cool.
You can do trades with other zinesters, and trades are fun!!
Because it helps you practice and figure out how you may want to curate or present or contextualize your work.
You can make a short one in a weekend and feel accomplished.
Why not?

Thoughts on résumés and the "shortcut game"

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 07:50:48 -0400

So I’ve been thinking a lot about résumés lately and I think one of the reasons why I might have such a vendetta against them is because of something I’m going to call “the shortcut game.”

When I say “shortcut” here, I mean anything someone can at least semi-truthfully claim that will encourage people to make positive assumptions about them. For example, when we say someone went to Harvard, we use it as a shortcut for saying they’re smart and competent and qualified, because those are things we generally believe about Harvard grads.

The idea of AI-assisted writing is absolutely terrifying to me

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 10:33:55 -0400

The idea of AI-assisted writing is absolutely terrifying to me, not because I’m worried about the future of writing as a career – that has been slowly dying for decades anyway - but because writing is the process of figuring out what you actually think, and that is a skill that is slowly dying.

I found 1984 to be an extremely disturbing novel, because the premise involved slowly limiting the types of thoughts the populace was able to have by limiting their language. I can’t help but worry that we’re headed on a different, more insidious path to the same end result.

What is nerdiness?

Fri, 02 Jun 2023 09:33:06 -0400

Is nerdiness a function of what you do? A function of what you know? A function of how you think? A function of what you’d like to know? A function of how you’re perceived? Or is it something like a multivariable function?

The three most important skills for artists

Wed, 31 May 2023 21:55:05 -0400

I think the three most important skills for artists are curiosity, initiative, and the ability to observe. Screw creativity, no one has any clue what that means and it’s a by-product of curiosity anyway. And skill is important, but that can come over time.

AI art isn't for artists (redux)

Tue, 16 May 2023 01:19:50 -0400

You know what the missing piece of the puzzle was? It was that AI art isn’t for artists.

Like, it can be. But for the most part it isn’t.

Here’s a “thread” I wrote back in October, in the pre-ChatGPT era, right when everyone was freaking out about AI art, and I’m pulling it out again to add some commentary on which of my thoughts have shifted and which I still think are relevant.

Why libraries are so important

Sat, 22 Apr 2023 22:45:42 -0400

Contrary to popular belief, no, you cannot learn everything from the internet, especially if it’s a niche discipline. If you want to learn about something in depth you’re going to have to talk to people and read books and look at other ephemera and do some trial and erroring eventually.

This is why libraries are so important!

I certainly can’t afford to spend thousands of dollars tracking down obscure books just out of my random interest, but a lot of the time cities or universities will have them, which is so cool.

One thing I've learned about my own artistic process

Thu, 09 Feb 2023 21:20:47 -0400

One thing I’ve learned about my own artistic process is that I can force myself to finish work, or I can experiment, but I can’t do both at once. If I force myself to finish something in a short amount of time, I can do it, but only by leaning on the skills and habits I’ve already developed and not straying too far our of my comfort zone.

But experiments? Those get finished on their own time, because my brain needs time and space to figure out how to stretch itself. You can’t complete an experiment using only approaches you’re already familiar with. Whenever I work on something that’s more of an experiment it needs quite a bit of time to breathe. It’s hard to make a plan for finishing something that doesn’t know what it’s trying to be yet.

Stress-timed vs. syllable-timed languages

Sun, 05 Feb 2023 00:08:44 -0400

Today I learned something really cool, which is that while English is a stress-timed language, where each word has a stressed syllable, French is syllable-timed and has almost no stress at all within words. This explains why French words tend to sound weird to me when said in English – because in English, there’s a need to assign a stress. In French, it might be cli-ché, but in English, it’s cli-CHÉ.

Mathematicians are very much like artists

Thu, 13 Oct 2022 15:36:22 -0400

Mathematicians are very much like artists in the sense that they won’t shut up about the need to “use your creativity.”

That being said I have yet to hear a math prof tell someone they need to take more creative risks, maybe that’s also in my future… hmm.

To the person who made an AI generator for Kim Jung Gi's art style

Fri, 07 Oct 2022 15:30:20 -0400

To the person on Twitter who made an AI generator for Kim Jung Gi’s art style immediately after his death and is now clamoring for credit, screw you.

AI art isn't for artists

Sun, 02 Oct 2022 23:35:23 -0400

You know what the missing piece of the puzzle was? It was that AI art isn’t for artists.

Like, it can be. But for the most part it isn’t.

Like, when you think about it, if you need a bowl, you can commission a ceramic artist to make a beautiful one for you, right? Or you can make one yourself, which will give you varying results depending on how skilled of a potter you are. Or you can just go buy a bowl at Dollarama, because you need a bowl, don’t have (or don’t want to spend) a shit ton of money, and Dollarama gives you enough choice that it’s not really worth dealing with a potter or becoming one. It’s just a bowl, for god’s sake. Who cares?

The lack of broader perspective in tech

Fri, 30 Sep 2022 22:43:22 -0400

You know, if arts education at the elementary and high school level was better maybe we’d have to deal with less bullshit from tech bros.

I very much feel like most people in tech with any sort of inclination towards caring about anything else get pushed out, and that lack of perspective is a problem.

AI "artists" should just become writers instead

Fri, 30 Sep 2022 13:05:35 -0400

AI “artists” should just become writers instead, they’ll still get to use words to make art and it won’t be theft!!

Except that writing is actually difficult and takes real time and effort and skill, lol.

Also, the amount of people who compare typing in text and choosing from auto generated work to photography is staggering. Bro, do you even understand how photography works?

You don't need to experience heartbreak to be an artist

Mon, 26 Sep 2022 01:23:54 -0400

The problem I have with telling people that they need to go out and experience heartbreak and stuff before they can be a good artist is that I don’t know if we should be encouraging people to actively seek out negative life experiences for the sake of having a broader outlook on the human experience (or whatever bullshit terminology is being used these days).

That’s actually a really concerning mentality. Just try to live outside your head a little and do stuff, that’s all.

Reading through mathematical proofs

Sun, 18 Sep 2022 17:12:48 -0400

Reading through mathematical proofs sometimes feels like trying to understand gibberish while simultaneously trying to unravel where the spontaneous leaps of intuition came from.

Why do children's book characters always have terrible passwords?

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 23:18:00 -0400

Why do children’s book characters always have terrible passwords that can easily be guessed? Why is this a common plot device? Can we please start modeling proper digital literacy? Do we really want to be teaching kids that it’s okay to use the name of a family member or crush as your password?

Have you read any books on writing that you found helpful?

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 00:07:56 -0400

Never Say You Can’t Survive by Charlie Jane Anders is a good one I read pretty recently. It’s about using fiction both as an escape from and as a commentary on reality, and it has a ton of really interesting ideas about worldbuilding and what kind of characters are interesting and also about emotional and less technical aspects of writing. I’d say it’s definitely worth a read. Also, it has really good writing exercises.

Where do you get your inspiration?

Sun, 14 Aug 2022 22:50:54 -0400

I don’t. I ask my friends if I can steal their ideas instead. If we’ve been friends long enough, I’ve probably done it to you.

(This is only partially a joke.)

There are 3 main categories of books about creativity

Fri, 22 Jul 2022 16:19:19 -0400

There are 3 main categories of books about creativity, in my opinion:

Self-help books (which are, in my opinion, terribly useless, though they sometimes include a few interesting ideas).
Books written by researchers (which tend to make more objective claims and which I personally find more interesting).
Books written by journalists, which tend to be either/or.

I want to talk about this poster briefly

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 01:44:35 -0400

So I want to talk about this poster briefly (it’s from Michèle Provost’s installation at the SAW gallery)¹.

Mainly, I want to talk about why I dislike it.

The text on the poster was “Words will always be this clumsy approximation of something that can be best explained through drawing.” I’m not including the actual photo, because it looks terrible.

The first time I saw the poster it wasn’t even at the show – it was on a picture my friend took of the installation on her phone so she could tell me about it, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

I think I understood about 5% of what you just said

Wed, 06 Jul 2022 20:40:35 -0400

My favourite sentence to pull out when a bunch of people start having technical discussions and act like I’m not there is “I think I understood about 5% of what you just said.”

Never be afraid to tell someone you have no clue what they’re talking about (and definitely ask them to explain).

Mathematicians throw the word "creativity" around a lot

Wed, 06 Jul 2022 02:58:12 -0400

Mathematicians definitely spend just as much time throwing around the word “creativity” as people in more conventionally artistic fields.

I was reading a bunch of articles written by math people and noticed this, and then I remembered that the math contests I wrote in high school all had some spiel about expressing creativity on them.

I also found contest math to actually be interesting, despite being pretty disastrous at it (which… most people are too but still). Like I remember once banging my head against some practice problem until someone pointed out a super elegant solution to me and I was like, how does your brain even do that???? I hate the way math is taught in school.

If you ever buy a printer, here's a short PSA

Mon, 04 Jul 2022 23:01:44 -0400

If you ever buy a printer, here’s a short PSA:

If you’re using a laser printer, no matter what paper you use, everything will come out looking the same, because the toner sits on top on the paper (so the surface you’ll end up looking at will be bonded toner, not paper). This can be good or bad, depending on how suitable the toner look is for what you’re doing.

My favourite thing about language

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 16:59:04 -0400

My favourite thing about language is how it can be used to express ambiguity with such delightful precision. I mean, I can’t do it, but I’m jealous of people who can.

Maybe you should be patient with your brain

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 11:32:57 -0400

Sometimes I have to remind myself that if someone is able to do something super cool and I can’t even begin to understand how they came up with it, it might be because they’ve built up more layers of knowledge that have become automatic, which frees up their brain to handle more complexity than mine can with its limited context.

Of course a toddler isn’t going to try to write a novel, sentences might not even be automatic yet.

Confusing vs. confused music

Wed, 06 Apr 2022 21:24:47 -0400

I think there’s a difference between music that is confusing and music that is confused. It can be a fine line sometimes, but if it sounds confused, that’s not a good thing.

I think documentaries are very underrated as an art form

Tue, 22 Mar 2022 23:47:40 -0400

I think documentaries are very underrated as an art form. Maybe this is just my biased opinion as someone who mainly writes non-fiction, but I think the ability to frame and elevate real life just doesn’t get enough credit.

I feel like from an artistic standpoint there’s so much more public respect for making something believable out of thin air. I’m not saying that’s not impressive – I know how hard that is – but I feel like making people care about real life is also hard because we kinda feel like everything about the real world is mundane.

I was thinking about what actions society inherently considers to be artistic

Fri, 18 Feb 2022 03:07:20 -0400

I’ve been thinking about the concept of art style pretty heavily lately, which has come with a lot of brain tangents.

For example, I was thinking about what actions society inherently considers to be artistic. Obviously, this kind of implies a whole “what even is art” discussion that I don’t really want to have right now. But for example, we seem to view any drawing as an exhibit of artistic skill, whereas getting up on a stage and talking at people is only seen as an art form in certain circumstances.

I just got off a zoom call with a "utility" NFT developer

Mon, 07 Feb 2022 18:08:50 -0400

So I just got off a zoom call with a “utility” NFT developer and it was truly one of the most frustrating, low-key terrifying, and shockingly informative conversations I’ve had in my life.

I wish I had recorded the conversation, because some of the things he said were so egregious.

At one point I asked him about privacy concerns related to the blockchain and he said they were “just trusting on the underlying technology to provide that security.”

I think NFTs are inspired by the contemporary art market

Sun, 06 Feb 2022 23:16:12 -0400

I can’t help but think that NFTs are hugely inspired by the high-end contemporary art market. Like, both markets have some questionable values and artworks.

Buying an NFT is like owning the certificate of authenticity for a work you don’t have access to and also probably don’t care about.

A certificate of authenticity is kind of like a receipt for an artwork. It proves that the artwork you own is the artwork you say it is, and they’re very important in the high end art market. But when it comes to some of the more… esoteric installations, we kind of behave, legally anyway, as if the COA is the artwork.

A quick guide to 90% of NFT scam type news

Fri, 04 Feb 2022 19:05:38 -0400

A quick guide to 90% of NFT scam type news (it mostly falls into one of these categories):

Rich person got hacked and they lost their NFTs and therefore, money. Hacker gets rich.
Organization mints NFTs of stolen artwork and tries to sell them.
Rich person/corporation is ruining the lives of regular people by mining crypto.
Organization starts an NFT scam in order to get rich, then disappears.
People have discovered that this organization is buying its own NFTs in order to create hype and make them seem more valuable than they actually are to outside people.
Organization mints NFTs in “honour’ of people who do not or never would have wanted to be associated with NFTs.
Person minting NFTs forgets that photographs exist.
Crypto bros fail to understand how the real world works.
Public figure/corporation backs out of NFT project after receiving heavy backlash.
Hacker airdrops NFT malware into unsuspecting wallets.

And the worst thing is, I’ve seen small artists who are legitimately just trying to live off of their art get death threats on Twitter for making an NFT sale. Which… death threats are never a great reaction, but you’re definitely threatening the wrong person here.

Opinions on social media follow the 80-20 rule

Fri, 04 Feb 2022 04:54:27 -0400

I think opinions on social media follow the 80/20 rule, where people get 80% of their idea across, then stop, because the remaining 80% of the work is nuance.

Please don’t take this as me judging anyone. I just did it too. I do it all the time.

But do realize that this is what is going on.

So today I watched a YouTube video about iMessage lock in

Sat, 29 Jan 2022 19:49:58 -0400

So today I watched a YouTube video about iMessage lock in, and it was an unfair reminder of the Apple bullshit I experience as an Android user.

Just like… the experience of being added to an iMessage group chat as an Android user is enough to make someone want to switch to an iPhone, and I don’t know how that nonsense isn’t breaking monopoly laws.

This is a the iMessage experience on Android, in a nutshell (100% speaking from personal experience).

Feeling attacked by Daniel Thrasher

Sat, 22 Jan 2022 19:52:50 -0400

Daniel Thrasher made a video called “gifted kid syndrome” a while ago, and watching it still makes me feel incredibly attacked.

Eloquence is about using the right word, not the fanciest word

Sat, 08 Jan 2022 21:29:18 -0400

Eloquence is about using the right word, not the fanciest word, and people who are obviously trying to sound smart tend to fail at this because they forget that using jargon incorrectly doesn’t actually hide the fact that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

Trying to cover up not knowing your shit is really just intentionally alienating and intimidating anyone who has no idea what you’re talking about and throwing away any credibility you might have had in front of someone who does.

Can brands stop saying that their software has a "more creative workflow"?

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 04:36:24 -0400

Can brands stop saying that their software has a “more creative workflow”? What the heck is that even supposed to mean?

In my experience software doesn’t have a “workflow”, it has features, a UI, and technical requirements.

Good UI and good features means I will probably be able to figure out a workflow that works, and that means I will make more stuff.

A janky or mediocre UI combined with good features means that I guess I’ll figure it out and deal with the bugs, but I’ll also complain a lot.

The word "creativity" feels like a buzzword now

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 20:19:01 -0400

I feel like the word “creativity” has become so twisted, like it’s been simultaneously corporatized and filled with arbitrary connotations concerning “quality” and “external appeal” (however the hell those are defined now) and it’s become like one of those resume buzzwords that you use not because they actually mean anything, but because they look and sound fancier and because everyone else is using them.

I wasn’t “trying to be creative” when I was a kid, I was just messing around. And I feel like that meaning has been lost, like somehow, over the past several years, we’ve collectively decided that yeah, people should be putting themselves out there and trying stuff but like, only the glossy version of trying stuff.

Books aren't screenplays (and most cannot function as such)

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 20:18:16 -0400

People who expect screen adaptations to unfold exactly like the book are just setting themselves up for disappointment.

Books aren’t screenplays and most cannot function as such. It’s called an adaptation for a reason.

I don't want to be self-employed, actually

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 17:53:40 -0400

This might just be a gen Z thing (though it started before our generation), but I’m starting to feel more and more like the societal expectation is for us to want to be self-employed in some way.

As in, that should be the dream.

As in, you know you’ve made it when you can quit the day job and pursue that thing you’re super passionate about full-time. Even better if you never have to have the day job.